There was a well-bred society in Carrington--new perhaps in the sense
that Carrington itself was young, but though the aggregate society might
be new, most of its members were not novices in the enjoyment of
beautiful things or in the traditions of manners. They came from a great
many places in the United States, settling in Carrington for the
“business reasons” of their sons or husbands or sons-in-law, and they
went back whence they had come, on visits, establishing valuable
rapports between the cities of their genesis and the one of their
habitation. The women went to New York to shop, if their incomes were
large enough, and, also, Carrington had its spring colony in California
and its winter colony in Florida. All these interchanges were useful.
They made of the mid-western city a place less provincial and less
conglomerate. Carrington could indeed bear its social head with more
pride and real distinction than many a larger place, overrun by
parvenus. Bluffing was difficult. A newcomer always found persons who
knew people of consequence in his former city, persons from his college
who would easily place him. Yet, for all that, where bluffing was not
involved to the point of being obnoxious, Carrington was tolerant and
allowed the newcomer every chance to make good; was not too cruel in its
comments, too exacting as to previous records. It had the laxities of
the great world and many of the fine distinctions of the smaller worlds
which revolve around the life of old cities. On the whole, a gracious
place--the kind of place that Europeans too rarely credit to the United
States.
Cecily was high enough on the social ladder to be unconscious of any
rungs to climb. And it had never been suggested at the Convent of the
Sacred Heart that it was a modern and edifying pursuit to watch people
swarming up from the ground and struggling to maintain a foothold on
that ladder. So it never occurred to her that it meant a great deal to
Fliss Horton to meet her, or that Fliss marked the day that she did meet
her as a red-letter one of social success.
Cecily had been singing at a musicale at the home of one of her mother’s
friends. She had sung two short songs in French and she had been both
worried and diffident about her performance. Still she did it admirably
and looked delightful, dressed in a soft silk velvet dress of black,
with only a silver cord to set off the exquisite lines of the frock and
of her slenderness. Fliss had been invited to the musicale. Invitations
came with reasonable ease to these semi-charitable affairs and they
could be made extremely useful. She listened to Cecily singing, but her
heart was in her eyes instead of her ears, watching Cecily’s clothes and
undoubtedly shrewdly guessing at their cost, for Fliss shopped much with
her lips in places where she could not at all afford to buy. Later she
met Cecily and told her how much she had enjoyed the singing. Cecily
actually blushed with pleasure.
“I was frightfully nervous,” she said. “It was the first time I had ever
sung anything in French without going over it with one of the French
nuns, you see. You imagine you are sure of your French until you have to
do something like that, absolutely on your own. Then you get so scared
for fear some one who really knows French will be listening.”
“I don’t know much about it, but it certainly sounded beautiful and you
didn’t seem the least bit frightened.”
Cecily smiled her thanks again and they moved off together, talking.
There were more older than younger people at the musicale and Fliss was
quick to seize on the other girl’s temporary lack of companionship. She
herself was looking very pretty--less overdressed than usual--and though
any of the older women might have criticized the high tan kid shoes and
the tight, short tan suit-dress, Cecily only admired its effect and
found herself interested in the new girl, who, it appeared, lived in
town, not far from her own house, who was the friend of other girls she
knew--as Fliss skillfully brought out--and who had an air of piquancy
about her that was very interesting and even charming. What Fliss
thought about did not matter. She was working hard to make an
impression, to be remembered if an occasion should arise on which she
would want Cecily to remember her. And there was a certain effectiveness
in the conversation between herself and the beautifully dressed convent
girl, of which Fliss was far too clever an artist to be unconscious.
Cecily might make her suffer in a way by the contrast--but it would
always be “in a way.”
It was late afternoon and a few men came in, most of them calling for
their wives by previous arrangement, with two or three who recognized
the occasion as a social one or had been called upon especially to come
with their checkbooks and charitable consciences. Bachelors came,
too--past the age of fearing such feminine social affairs, most of
them--and then one who came unexpectedly, for no expressed reason. The
older ladies beamed at the sight of him; the dark eyes of Fliss took on
a more excited radiance; and the slow color crept up into Cecily’s
cheeks as a tall figure singled itself out from the rest and Dick
Harrison made his way--his popular, friendly way--across the room to
her. He was good looking. Every one admitted that his brown hair, which
would curl even at thirty, and his athletic figure were in his favor.
But Cecily was beginning to see more than that. She had been meeting him
for a month now at one place and at another--dances, dinners, theater
parties. Dick was always an addition to any party, always desirable--she
had quickly discovered that people thought that. Partly it was because
he was wealthy and handsome; and because Carrington and Carrington’s
affairs were closely identified with all his interests; he was truly a
favorite son. No mother frowned upon any attentions he paid her daughter
unless she felt they were over-slight, and few daughters were altogether
indifferent. Dick was excused for dalliance with years of freedom,
because as a bachelor he was so desirable.
As for Dick himself, he had a good time and believed in his business,
which had to do with promotion of mining interests and the development
of the city, and had fairly tolerant political views, and lived with his
worldly-minded mother in a thoroughly pleasant house which seemed to him
far pleasanter than any of the apartments of most of his married
contemporaries. He had no desire to get married at all. That is, he had
had no desire until he met Cecily. He met her one night at her mother’s
house, and after that he sat back and let all the conventional things
happen to him, enjoying each one of them extremely. He thought about her
continually; he arrayed a new ideal of woman with all of her attributes;
he freshened up all the old phrases about purity and love--about men not
being fit for decent women. He could not keep his mind off possible
scenes in which he and she participated alone and he blushed hotly and
secretly at them--and recurred to them. He wanted to do all the things
that men have ever done to win women, and to enjoy his winning of her.
So he had seen Cecily even oftener than she guessed and he had aroused a
little whirlpool of comment around himself and her which he rather
gloried in. In the eyes of the city there was no possible objection to
any love-making which he might see fit to carry on, except a possible
reservation that a girl of nineteen was very young for marriage. But
with these two young people there was so much to make marriage easy that
it was hard to make an objection out of youth, especially when Dick’s
ten extra years were added to Cecily’s youth. Dick’s mother was highly
in favor of seeing her son married. Even Cecily’s mother----.
Cecily’s mother said very little. She put Dick next to herself at dinner
whenever he came to the house and talked to him about all kinds of
subjects, always making him talk a little more than she herself. She did
not mention him to Cecily except incidentally and not at all as a
subject for discussion. Now, as she saw him cross the room to her
daughter, she crossed too, most casually. That to the mixed glory and
discomfiture of poor Fliss.
Mrs. Warner smiled at Dick and the two girls and it became obvious that
she did not know who Fliss was. If Fliss had been of the slightest
consequence, Mrs. Warner would have known. As it was, she acknowledged
her introduction with great graciousness.
“Have you, like Cecily, just finished school? Where have you been
studying?”
It hurt Fliss to admit that sum total of High School, but she was far
too wise not to be frank.
“I’ve just finished High School,” she answered. “There was no use
sending me anywhere else. I wasn’t nearly clever enough.”
“She’s the infant prodigy when it comes to dancing, though,” said Dick
lightly.
After all, it was a great moment for Fliss. She was part of an intimate
group which was peerless socially--Cecily Warner, Mrs. Warner, Dick
Harrison--and then the moment passed. With what was almost a gesture of
dismissal, Mrs. Warner withdrew her daughter.
“We must hurry, dear. There are to be guests for dinner. Are you riding
with me or walking? Did you get any exercise to-day?”
Dick cut in lightly, taking Cecily’s arm, “She hasn’t had any exercise,
I’m sure. Let me walk her home, Mrs. Warner. And I’ll get her home in
lots of time because I have to speed on and get dressed myself if I’m to
get any of your dinner to-night.”
Fliss slipped out of the group a little awkwardly and, moving past the
indifferent hand of her hostess, found herself in the street. The motors
for the guests were gliding skillfully up and down before the house.
Here and there, a group before the open door of a limousine were still
gossiping, or three or four people turning away for a brisk walk home.
The little tan figure, drawing a modish, unpaid-for fur about her trim
little neck, stood for a moment on the steps, seeming to look on at the
spectacle of her own social inconsequence. Then she too slipped into the
shadows and on towards her own home.
A year ago she had prevailed upon her parents to take an apartment, for
the old, brown-porched house in which she had been brought up had been
almost intolerably shabby. It had seemed a very fine change to Fliss at
first. She liked the nouveau art touches in the apartment living-room,
the frescoed grapes in the dining-room, the mirrored door of the small,
inconvenient bathroom. But the glamour had largely gone by this time.
And to-night it was rather more faded than usual. To drive up to the
apartment house door in some one’s limousine was not so bad. To walk
down the stupid street by which she must approach the house was
different. It was depressing. Fliss, who seldom knew depression, had
the visible lines of it around her mouth as she pushed open the door of
the tiny hall and smelled the frying grease of the lamb chops in the
kitchen. She stood before the hall mirror, taking off her hat and
putting it away carefully, hanging her suit coat up carefully too, with
the fur draped over it. Her mother came in to watch her.
“Did you have a good time, dearie?”
“As good as I expected.” The girl’s tone was rather pathetically tired.
“Any one bring you home?”
“No, I walked--for exercise.”
Her mother heard no sarcasm. “It’s a nice night out,” she said. “I just
came in myself. I went to the White Sale at Barney’s and then dropped in
at the Majestic--Dorothy Danby in ‘Other Men’s Wives,’ you know. It
wasn’t very good--not worth a quarter.”
Fliss must have had a swift vision of the women who did not go to see
Dorothy Danby--of Mrs. Warner dealing at long range with her dinner
parties. Her face was dark and bitter.
“I hate this not being anybody--why aren’t we somebody?” she broke out.
Her mother looked daunted. “I’m sure you go everywhere you want
to--going to stay at the Spragues’ to-morrow night, out all this
afternoon, and there’s that swell dance at the Mortons’ next week--I
think you have a good time. It’s not my fault your father hasn’t more
money.”
“It’s nobody’s fault--nothing is. But that doesn’t make it easier. A
girl can’t do it all alone--she needs houses, automobiles, if she is to
get anywhere.” She stopped and looked at the stupid figure in front of
her, which could not seem to understand its own failure as a mother.
“It’s just that I’m tired and I think I’m getting a cold and it’s so
darn lonesome with all the girls away. That musicale was the deadest
thing you ever saw.”
She went to the kitchen and watched the chops sizzling, drearily, but
none the less with a certain interest. After all, the walk home had been
exercise.