EARLY in November there was a picturesque snow-storm, and that day
Kathleen telephoned her father at the university, asking him to stop on
his way home in the afternoon and help her to decide upon some new furs.
As he approached McGregor’s spick-and-span bungalow at four o’clock, he
saw Louie’s Pierce-Arrow standing in front, with Ned, the chauffeur and
gardener, in the driver’s seat. Just then Rosamond came out of the
bungalow alone, and down the path to the sidewalk, without seeing her
father. He noticed a singularly haughty expression on her face; her
brows drawn together over her nose. The curl of her lips was handsome,
but terrifying. He observed also something he had not seen before--a
coat of soft, purple-grey fur, that quite disguised the wide, slightly
stooping shoulders he regretted in his truly beautiful daughter. He
called to her, very much interested. “Wait a minute, Rosie. I’ve not
seen that before. It’s extraordinarily becoming.” He stroked his
daughter’s sleeve with evident pleasure. “You know, these things with a
kind of lurking purple and lavender in them are splendid for you. They
make your colour prettier than ever. It’s only lately you’ve begun to
wear them. Louie’s taste, I suppose?”
“Of course. He selects all my things for me,” said Rosamond proudly.
“Well, he does a good job. He knows what’s right for you.” St. Peter
continued to look her up and down with satisfaction. “And Kathleen is
getting new furs. You were advising her?”
“She didn’t mention it to me,” Rosamond replied in a guarded voice.
“No? And what do you call this, what beast?” he asked ingenuously, again
stroking the fur with his bare hand.
“It’s _taupe_.”
“Oh, moleskin!” He drew back a little. “Couldn’t be better for your
complexion. And is it warm?”
“Very warm--and so light.”
“I see, I see!” He took Rosamond’s arm and escorted her to her car.
“Give Louie my compliments on his choice.” The motor glided away--he
wished he could escape as quickly and noiselessly, for he was a coward.
But he had a feeling that Kathleen was watching him from behind the sash
curtains. He went up to the door and made a long and thorough use of the
foot-scraper before he tapped on the glass. Kathleen let him in. She was
very pale; even her lips, which were always pink, like the inside of a
white shell, were without colour. Neither of them mentioned the
just-departed guest.
“Have you been out in the park, Kitty? This is a pretty little storm.
Perhaps you’ll walk over to the old house with me presently.” He talked
soothingly while he took off his coat and rubbers. “And now for the
furs!”
Kathleen went slowly into her bedroom. She was gone a great
while--perhaps ten actual minutes. When she came back, the rims of her
eyes were red. She carried four large pasteboard boxes, tied together
with twine. St. Peter sprang up, took the parcel, and began untying the
string. He opened the first and pulled out a brown stole. “What is it,
mink?”
“No, it’s Hudson Bay sable.”
“Very pretty.” He put the collar round her neck and drew back to look at
it. But after a sharp struggle Kathleen broke down. She threw off the
fur and buried her face in a fresh handkerchief.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy, but it’s no use to-day. I don’t want any furs,
really. She spoils everything for me.”
“Oh, my dear, my dear, you hurt me terribly!” St. Peter put his hands
tenderly on her soft hazel-coloured hair. “Face it squarely, Kitty; you
must not, you cannot, be envious. It’s self-destruction.”
“I can’t help it, Father. I envious. I don’t think I would be if she let
me alone, but she comes here with her magnificence and takes the life
out of all our poor little things. Everybody knows she’s rich, why does
she have to keep rubbing it in?”
“But, Kitty dear, you wouldn’t have her go home and change her coat
before coming to see you?”
“Oh, it’s not that, Father, it’s everything! You know we were never
jealous of each other at home. I was always proud of her good looks and
good taste. It’s not her clothes, it’s a feeling she has inside her.
When she comes toward me, I feel hate coming toward me, like a snake’s
hate!”
St. Peter wiped his moist forehead. He was suffering with her, as if she
had been in physical anguish. “We can’t, dear, we can’t, in this world,
let ourselves think of things--of comparisons--like that. We are all too
susceptible to ugly suggestions. If Rosamond has a grievance, it’s
because you’ve been untactful about Louie.”
“Even if I have, why should she be so revengeful? Does she think nobody
else calls him a Jew? Does she think it’s a secret? I don’t mind being
called a Gentile.”
“It’s all in the way it’s done, you know, Kitty. And you’ve shown that
you were a little bored with all their new things, now haven’t you?”
“I’ve shown that I don’t like the way she overdresses, I suppose. I
would never have believed that Rosie could do anything in such bad
taste. While she is here among her old friends, she ought to dress like
the rest of us.”
“But doesn’t she? It seems to me her things look about like yours.”
“Oh, Father, you’re so simple! And Mother is very careful not to
enlighten you. We go to the Guild to sew for the Mission fund, and Rosie
comes in a handmade French frock that cost more than all our dresses
put together.”
“But if hers are no prettier, what does it matter how much they cost?”
He was watching Kathleen fearfully. Her pale skin had taken on a
greenish tinge--there was no doubt about it. He had never happened to
see that change occur in a face before, and he had never realized to
what an ugly, painful transformation the common phrase “green with envy”
referred.
“Oh, foolish, they are prettier, though you may not see it. It’s not
just the clothes”--she looked at him intently, and her eyes, in their
reddened rims, expanded and cleared. “It’s everything. When we were at
home, Rosamond was a kind of ideal to me. What she thought about
anything, decided it for me. But she’s entirely changed. She’s become
Louie. Indeed, she’s worse than Louie. He and all this money have ruined
her. Oh, Daddy, why didn’t you and Professor Crane get to work and stop
all this before it began? You were to blame. You knew that Tom had left
something that was worth a lot, both of you. Why didn’t you do
something? You let it lie there in Crane’s laboratory for this--this
Marsellus to come along and exploit, until he almost thinks it’s his own
idea.”
“Things might have turned out the same, anyway,” her father protested.
“Whatever the process earned was Rosamond’s. I wasn’t in the mood to
struggle with manufacturers, I know nothing of such things. And Crane
needs every ounce of his strength for his own experiments. He doesn’t
care about anything but the extent of space.”
“He’d better have taken a few days off and saved his friend’s
reputation. Tom trusted him with everything. It’s too foolish; that poor
man being cut to pieces by surgeons all the time, and picking up the
little that’s left of himself and bothering about the limitations of
space--much good they’ll do him!”
St. Peter rose, took both of his daughter’s hands, and stood laughing at
her. “Come now! You have more brains than that, Kitty. It happens you do
understand that whatever poor Crane can find out about space is more
good to him than all the money the Marselluses will ever have. But are
you implying that if Crane and I had developed Tom’s discovery, we might
have kept Rosie and her money in the family, for ourselves?”
Kathleen threw up her head. “Oh, I don’t want her money!”
“Exactly; nor do I. And we mustn’t behave as if we did want it. If you
permit yourself to be envious of Rosie, you’ll be very foolish, and very
unhappy.”
The Professor walked away across the snowy park with a tired step. He
was heavy-hearted. For Kathleen he had a special kind of affection.
Perhaps it was because he had had to take care of her for one whole
summer when she was little. Just as Mrs. St. Peter was ready to start
for Colorado with the children, the younger one developed whooping-cough
and had to be left at home with her father. He had opportunity to
observe all her ways. She was only six, but he found her a
square-dealing, dependable little creature. They worked out a
satisfactory plan of life together. She was to play in the garden all
morning, and was not on any account to disturb him in his study. After
lunch he would take her to the lake or the woods, or he would read to
her at home. She took pride in keeping her part of the contract. One day
when he came out of his study at noon, he found her sitting on the third
floor stairs, just outside his door, with the arnica bottle in one hand
and the fingers of the other puffed up like wee pink sausages. A bee had
stung her in the garden, and she had waited half the morning for
sympathy. She was very independent, and would tug at her leggings or
overshoes a great while before she asked for help.
When they were little girls, Kathleen adored her older sister and liked
to wait on her, was always more excited about Rosie’s new dresses and
winter coat than about her own. This attachment had lasted even after
they were grown. St. Peter had never seen any change in it until
Rosamond announced her engagement to Louie Marsellus. Then, all at once,
Kathleen seemed to be done with her sister. Her father believed she
couldn’t forgive Rosie’s forgetting Tom so quickly.
It was dark when the Professor got back to the old house and sat down at
his writing-table. He would have an hour on his notes, he told himself,
in spite of families and fortunes. And he had it. But when he looked up
from his writing as the Angelus was ringing, two faces at once rose in
the shadows outside the yellow circle of his lamp: the handsome face of
his older daughter, surrounded by violet-dappled fur, with a cruel upper
lip and scornful half-closed eyes, as she had approached her car that
afternoon before she saw him; and Kathleen, her square little chin set
so fiercely, her white cheeks actually becoming green under her swollen
eyes. He couldn’t believe it. He rose quickly and went to his one
window, opened it wider, and stood looking at the dark clump of
pine-trees that told where the Physics building stood. A sharp pain
clutched his heart. Was it for this the light in Outland’s laboratory
used to burn so far into the night!