Fliss--still Fliss despite the dignity of the name of Allenby--was,
after two years, still attracting attention. She reacted to it exactly
as she had reacted to her own popularity at the High School dances. It
enhanced every sparkling quality.
She had been busy. After her marriage, enforcedly quiet because it would
never do to draw unnecessary attention to the social unimportance of her
family, she and Matthew had gone traveling. They had had a good time.
She hung on his arm and petted him; she begged for things and was
enthusiastically grateful for them when he gave them to her. She kept
him laughing and herself in constant good temper and in every fresh
extravagance of silk or fur or velvet she was prettier than before.
Matthew laughed at her and let her pet him and expanded. He called her a
little crook and she admitted it, but he never had the bad taste to ask
her if she would have married him if he had been poor. They were frank
with each other, but never moved much below the easy surface of things.
Never had Matthew really played before, and under her skillful
leadership he learned a good deal about play. He learned the fun of
extravagance. His mother had not been a person to accept money or
presents easily. Fliss rose resplendent from a shower of them. And from
the depths of her little savage heart she was grateful for presents, for
relief from sordidness; and grateful most of all for the sheer content
with the life he made possible.
“Don’t we have _fun_?” she would say in her strongest italics, every now
and then, with a swift little caress that was perfectly honest in its
affection as far as it went.
“We do,” he would acknowledge with smiling, amused understanding--more
than that, with pleasure.
He had his second glimpse of his wife’s remarkable adaptability when
they visited his mother. His mother had been duly written of his
marriage, had duly written to say she expected to see them while they
were on their wedding trip, and, moved by some impulse, Matthew had
deliberately sandwiched a week in the little Indiana town between the
more brilliant points on their itinerary. They arrived in Peachtree
about nightfall, stepping from the jumpy local train to a station
platform dripping with rain and lit only by the dingy glow from a quick
lunch counter window. Fliss, well acclimated by this time to waiting
red-caps and taxis, looked about her and then at Matthew with amusement.
“You are completely out of the picture,” said Matthew. “You look
shockingly resplendent up against Peachtree. Don’t look about you for
cabs; there are no cabs. No one needs cabs here.”
His mother rounded the corner of the station house, driving her umbrella
before her. Matthew seemed to recognize her by the swish of her skirts
in the rain. He took her umbrella and kissed her gravely.
“Good boy,” she said. “Is this Florence?”
Fliss reached half way up on Mrs. Allenby’s spare, tall form. She was
silhouetted for a moment against the black dress of the older woman.
Then Mrs. Allenby inspected the bags.
“Dave Johnson can bring up your grips. You can’t manage the four of
them in this rain, even if it is only a step.”
They left the bags and Fliss, as they went along together, had a
consciousness of wooden sidewalks in indifferent repair, of the
stillness of a country village after the train has gone through, of a
town gone to bed unreasonably early.
Up a little path which crunched under their feet, on a tiny porch where
a rocking chair stood grotesquely upside down so that its seat might be
protected from the rain, through a low door. Matthew struck a match and,
moving familiarly in the darkness, lit a lamp. They were in the parlor.
Fliss had known poverty and shabbiness. This was different from anything
she had ever known. It was the acme of thrift, of cleanliness, of
economy and respectability, and pride. The very glow in the Franklin
stove, coming through the isinglass, was stiff and correct. The
furniture, the prideful Brussels rug with its over-pink central cluster
of roses was clean to extremity. The tidies on the chair backs were
straight. The Bible, flanked by an imposing parlor table volume,
margined the white cover on the center table. The young Mrs. Allenby,
standing in the midst of the intensity of order, felt as exotic and out
of place as she looked. But her mother-in-law, quickly divested of coat
and hat, was on her own ground. She gave Fliss a moment to gain her
impression and then led her upstairs to a bedroom which carried out the
spirit of the parlor. Fliss looked dubiously at the white crocheted
bedspread so perfectly wrinkleless, at the smooth chair tidies and then
at Matthew.
“If I should soil something!” she exclaimed in mock terror. “I shall die
if I do, Matthew! Where did your mother keep you when you were home? Not
in here?”
“No, I slept in the back room. Can you make yourself comfortable?”
“Well, I’m frightened.”
“Little liar! I want you to behave yourself.”
“Behave? I’m a model of decorum. But, oh, for a gingham dress! How long
are we going to stay--how long will your mother keep me?”
“A week is about the shortest.”
“Well,” sighed Fliss, inspecting her face in the mirror, “this mirror
makes humps in my face, but I’d do a lot for you, Matthew. If your
mother can stand me--all right, down we go.”
The supper was laid in the tiny dining-room off the living-room. A
polished china lamp in the middle of the table was the centerpiece, and
the dishes and linen were as spotless as everything else. Matthew and
his mother talked casually about local gossip and Fliss watched Matthew,
totally unfamiliar in this aspect, in his pleasant interest in the lives
of the grocer, the new druggist and the business of the church. Mrs.
Allenby, it seemed, was religious. Fliss decided, as she listened to her
mother-in-law, that Matthew’s business ability must have come from his
mother. She faced a picture of Matthew’s father, hanging over the low
door. It was an enlarged photograph, done in cruel colors, but even the
glassy blue which the enlarger had given to the eyes of Mr. Allenby,
senior, could not disguise the fact that their expression was mild and
guileless. Perhaps he, too, had an undeveloped taste for French poetry.
“Have you furnished your house?” asked Mrs. Allenby.
“We aren’t going to take a house at once. There’s an apartment hotel
where we shall live for a while.”
“Hotel?”
“It’s not a traveler’s hotel, mother,” said Matthew. “It is a place
where the apartments are furnished and there is a common dining-room
where you can take your meals if you like.”
“Later we can find a house,” supplied Fliss, “but rents are high.”
“I should think you’d buy a house, now that you’re well off, Matthew.”
The sharp, questioning eyes of the old lady flashed from her son to his
wife. “Don’t you like housekeeping, Florence?”
“I don’t know a thing about it,” said Fliss, with her usual frankness.
She seemed to have hit the right note with Matthew’s mother.
“Well, most girls don’t until they marry. But after you’re married, it
comes natural--like taking care of children.”
There was no embarrassment in the face of her daughter-in-law, only a
trace of distaste. She was silent, and the older woman did not pursue
the subject. They talked of the price of food and of Mrs. Allenby’s
gooseberry jam. Then Matthew smoked in the little parlor and Fliss
insisted, in the human way she could, upon swathing her broadcloth suit
with one of Mrs. Allenby’s aprons and helping with the dishes. Mrs.
Allenby eyed her a little grimly as Fliss stacked the dishes one on top
of the other without scraping off the left-over food, and Fliss caught
the look.
“I’m a shock as a daughter-in-law,” she said flippantly, and yet without
impudence.
“Well,” answered Mrs. Allenby, “I might not have picked you out for
Matthew, but he might have done a lot worse. You’re pretty and a man
likes a pretty woman. I always wished I’d been prettier. Matthew’s
father was a gentleman, but he did like pretty things. And then you’re
honest with my boy.”
“I am honest; I’ll always be honest. I promise you, Mrs. Allenby. I’m
silly and I haven’t much brains and I suppose you can see that in most
ways I’m not in Matthew’s class, but I’m going to try to give him a good
time and I’m honest with him.”
She meant more than that, but it was hard to say and, after all,
unnecessary. Mrs. Allenby gave her a little approbative tap on the
shoulder.
“Good girl,” she said. “Don’t you worry. I can see things. It isn’t
always the useful woman a man likes. I can see you aren’t much for
housekeeping--and babies. Some women aren’t. But just so as you make him
happy”--she paused and finished on a beautifully soft note--“he’s a
lovely boy.”
It was rarely that Fliss felt that some one understood her. She felt it
now. But both of them being very practical and unsentimental, they
carried the discussion no further. Mrs. Allenby cloaked herself in her
sharp efficiency and Fliss airily polished the plates. She told Matthew
that night that she was going to get on well with his mother. It was
then that he told her that she was adaptable.
“I shall never forget how you acted that night Cecily’s baby was born.
That was the first time I guessed how adaptable you were.”
“That was a funny time,” said Fliss, somewhat coldly.
They stayed a week with Mrs. Allenby and by the time they left Fliss had
begun to be very jocose and free with her mother-in-law. She showed her
how she was teaching Matthew to dance, she rendered popular vaudeville
songs on the wheezy old piano, she exhibited all her trousseau lingerie
to the old lady with a running fire of absurd comment, and tried to
bestow a lace trimmed boudoir cap upon her.
Then they left Peachtree for Chicago and spent a few weeks there,
Matthew doing business while Fliss soaked her pagan soul in the luxury
of hotels. Fliss loved hotels, their over-deep porcelain baths and the
little breakfast tables with shiny silvered dishes and wasteful expanses
of white linen, always immaculate. She liked having nothing to do with
the machinery of her comfort, to have a telephone at her bedside which
could whisk servitors out of space to do her bidding. And she liked the
great hotel lounges and parlors, with their heavy commercialized luxury
of velvet and gilt, their desks with low lights at which one might sit
and write letters while engaging the attention of any good-looking men
who might be passing. Padded corridors, handsome men and luxurious
women, dining-rooms pompous with elaborate service, the ceaseless flow
of people who might be coming from anything and going anywhere--it all
completely captured that roving spirit of excitement which was Fliss’s
imagination. She watched with ecstasy, copying here, adapting there,
learning every minute.
The nervousness of buying which always accompanies a small, overworked
purse, had disappeared. Fliss had money and she bought with glory, with
a certain amount of dignity and restraint too. She passed, as cheap and
tawdry, things which she had formerly coveted, but she penetrated the
French millinery shops, the dressmaking establishments with a new air,
head held high, demanding service like a barbaric princess. It seemed to
her that all she had needed to give her complete content was a husband
and money. She had no discontents now. She sparkled and glowed and
enjoyed from morning until night.
The glow was at its best when they returned to Carrington, hurried by
the long-pending declaration of war with Germany. From the apartment
hotel, where Matthew had rented a friend’s suite temporarily, Fliss
dashed up to see her mother. She knew exactly how she meant to deal
with her mother. Mrs. Horton must not obtrude or be tedious, and if she
were not she would share in Fliss’s good fortune. She entered the dreary
little flat, infinitely more dreary after the glories of the wedding
trip. Her mother came to meet her, kissing her affectionately and
admiringly.
“I would have come to the train if you hadn’t especially said you didn’t
want me to, Flissy.”
“We got in too late. It was nearly midnight and we were too tired to
talk.”
Her mother surveyed her with an unconfident look as if not sure of the
propriety of her own interest.
“Is everything going nicely, dearie?” she ventured.
“Of course. I had the time of my life. Such fun!” Her glance swept the
tawdry walls and furnishings. “I never knew there were such lovely
things in the world as I’ve seen.”
“And how is Matthew?”
“Matthew is a darling. He gives me everything, mother. Of course, he’s
got it to give, but he’s such a dear about it. Oh, you just watch me
make this town sit up and take notice. Mrs. Matthew Allenby! This fur
alone cost Matthew a cool eight hundred. And you should see the things
he bought me in Chicago.”
“Are you going to live in the hotel?”
“Just until I look around. I want a place of my own, but I don’t want to
make any mistakes. There’s a lot to plan and you and father must come to
see us. By the way”--and here she was for once a trifle shamefaced--“I
want you to take this. Buy yourself a suit--no, I’ll come with you--and
a fur (it should be mink, I think).”
“No, Flissy, you spend it on yourself.”
“I’ve gobs of money, mother, and it would help me if you fussed up a
bit. I’ll want you and dad for dinner, and you see I want you to look
nice.” So it was settled and the principle established. Fliss dressed
her mother handsomely, and upon that rather protesting lay figure
descended certain duties of chaperonage, occasional appearance with
Fliss, so that no story could be started regarding Fliss’s neglect of
her parents. She regulated her mother’s appearances, painted in a
background. Mrs. Horton was obviously to the world a quiet woman of no
social pretensions who had no worse fault than obscurity, and that was
no doubt traceable to lack of money. Plain, but nice. In suppressing her
parents Fliss would have done herself harm. Bringing them forward in her
seemingly ingenuous, but actually deliberate way, she helped herself,
and gave them a certain amount of uncomfortable pleasure.
But she gave her mother no intimacy. At first Mrs. Horton took advantage
of her daughter’s married state to make several leading statements about
men and matrimony and was even curious as to the possible plans for a
baby. But Fliss repressed such attempts at intimacy ruthlessly. It
became very apparent to her mother that as far as Fliss had planned it
there were to be no grandchildren, and other domestic confidences were
never made.
Fliss established herself and Matthew, after a few months in a hotel, in
a house. There had been a few bad weeks when Matthew had told her he was
going into the army and she had been compelled to look up the advantages
of being left alone so soon after her marriage. But it had come out all
right. Matthew was rejected on examination. Some leaky, treacherous
valve in his heart cheated him out of his war service. That, coupled
with his age, put him out of the running, and a little depressed, but
quite controlled, he had accepted as his personal war service the
chairmanship of the Carrington draft board. He cautioned Fliss about
the propriety of economy, but he gave her her house. It was a very new
house and its only sins were its newness and its rather elaborate
interior decoration. Fliss had not quite learned the restraint of the
inner circles of the wealthy. She could imitate them in lavishness, but
to pin herself down, hold herself in--that took more careful discipline.
Her house was a bit too complete and it showed that Fliss carried
nothing over from the past. There was none of her mother’s furniture
which Fliss could use and though she had coveted some of the things in
Matthew’s rooms, she found to her dismay that she was not to be allowed
to ransack his bachelor apartments. In regard to those Matthew told
Fliss that he thought he would keep the furniture for his rooms on the
third floor of the new house.
“Of course I have the office, but that is crowded and noisy and
impossible to get to after the elevator stops running nights, unless I
want to die of heart failure after the tenth flight of stairs. I think
I’d like a place where I could study a bit by myself now and then. Let
me have my sanctuary upstairs and then when you are entertaining people
I don’t care about or too many of them I’ll sneak off there and not
bother you.”
Fliss had that divine gift of being able to leave a man alone. She
puckered her brow a bit, sized up the fact that his wish was very real,
and agreed.
“You are a very satisfactory person to have married,” he finished.
“Do you like this place at all?” asked Fliss, looking around her
breakfast-room with its old blue curtains, painted furniture and long
windows at which two canaries sang charmingly.
“I like it a lot. I like to charm my eyes with it. It suits you exactly,
but it’s young and there may be times when I’ll feel my age. Then the
old furniture will rest me. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Fliss, quite truthfully.
So it was arranged. And sometimes when the crowd of people who flocked
to Fliss’s house--an ever-increasing crowd, whether they came for Red
Cross work or for amusement--were too noisy or too heterogeneous for
Matthew’s taste, he undoubtedly found it sanctuary indeed. It kept him
from getting tired of his home, too, kept him able to appreciate its
color, its spirit, its accord with a gay, fashionable time. With all
these things it was also always comfortable. Fliss could not cook, but
she had discretion enough to hire a good cook, to spare no expense on
her table, even though she conformed to war regulations outwardly, to
have a housemaid who knew how to keep bedrooms fresh and clean and sweet
smelling. Matthew’s home was orderly; he was subject to no discomforts
and he had good food, as well as a wife who carried no flavor of the
domestic side of living around with her. Matthew used to like to come
into her room, morning or night, and see her, elaborate in negligees,
always pretty, always light, always with a smile for him. He called her
a good investment and he never criticized her expenditures.
Matthew came first. Fliss was thoroughly honest about that. She attended
to his wants with ungrudging pleasure. Then came her next interest, the
business that intrigued her greatly and aroused less kindliness and
perhaps a slight feeling of revenge--establishing her position in
Carrington society.
It was not nearly enough to be counted smart and fashionable by the
public who read the society columns and sighed for them. Fliss could
gain that end easily enough, but she wanted to be genuinely accepted by
the inner circles as well--to have none of the finer lines of
distinction drawn against her. She was armed with a thorough knowledge
of the city. She knew who was merely rich and who combined riches with
social standing approved not only in Carrington, but in New York,
Florida, California. In those rather cruel years between her school and
her marriage she had studied little else except the shadings of people’s
importance. That was to stand her in good stead now, as was her
consciousness of her own best weapons in any attack on social
citadels--her frankness, her power of deference and her brilliance of
manner.
She gave little parties that were very gay and bright and somehow
different from other people’s little parties--probably because Fliss
gave individual attention to each of her guests, in selection and
entertainment. She struck the note between the amusing and the risqué
and never wavered as she held it. People responded by forgetting that
Fliss Allenby had anything to gain by playing her social game well,
having too good a time in her company to keep recalling that her steps
were premeditated.
To gain an end, she was willing to be bored indefinitely. She went to
the war time charitable affairs of older women, if they were important
enough, and made a bright spot of color in the company, always
deferential to the elder ladies, a little simple in her talk (she
avoided pretense of intellectuality like the plague and played up a
certain ingenuousness of ignorance that aroused the protective,
educative instinct in others). She gave Matthew’s money lavishly. She
was backed by his real importance and the solidity of his war work. Also
she was willing to spend any amount of time on planning her clothes. She
was always different from every one else, never fading into the
inconspicuous, but always managing to avoid being called cheap or
tawdry, even when, like every one else, she made a fashion of economy.
In her own way she was soon unassailable. She became a figure on the
social lists. She became important. Then, to crown her luck, just as the
war was beginning to make Matthew always unsmiling, always worried; just
as she was beginning to see that the world was veering shockingly
towards pain and horror--the war was over suddenly. In the reaction from
the seriousness, the reaction shared largely by people who had suffered
from no strain, Fliss knew how to lead. She led. After more than two
years of marriage she was still a person to brighten the public eye with
interest. Matthew had taken her traveling several times and it had
improved her confidence. She knew pretty largely now what people were
talking about when they referred to things they had seen and places they
had been outside of Carrington.
* * * * *
Forced out of the City Club one October day by an influx of visiting
salesmen come to some convention, Dick Harrison met Fliss at the Lennox
restaurant. It occurred to him as he nodded to her that he had not seen
much of her lately and, taking a second look which was really due the
green feathered turban which closed so piquantly down on her black
fringe of hair, he saw that she was apparently alone and crossed at once
to sit opposite her. She told him that she was alone and only down town
at all because she had been delayed in her shopping.
“It’s an awfully busy week. There’s such a lot going on that if I don’t
get my shopping done to-day I’ll not have another chance.”
“Is it awfully busy?”
“Don’t you really know, Dick?” She rattled off a list of functions to
him. “Where are you and Cecily anyway these days? Aren’t you just a bit
too domestic?”
“With three babies you’re apt to be a bit domestic. You haven’t any,
have you, Fliss?”
Fliss laughed at his thrust. “Don’t be nasty, Dick. You know well I
haven’t. You and Cecily have probably decided I’m a vicious wretch
because I haven’t. People with children are always so much
holier-than-thou to those who haven’t. They insist not only on the fun
of having them, but on making the world unpleasant for the rest of us
because we aren’t sharing the fun. Isn’t it a curious attitude?”
Fliss was decidedly more sophisticated.
“How’s Cecily?”
“Busy--struggling with servants.”
“Has she a lot of trouble?”
“Some. Of course we always have the faithful Ellen, but it isn’t nearly
enough.”
“I remember Ellen,” said Fliss.
“She’s a regular member of the family now.”
He ordered his lunch and Fliss, eating hers slowly so that he could
catch up, contemplated him gravely.
“You haven’t been in my house for six months,” she said.
“My Lord, Cecily’s baby’s only three months old. We haven’t been able to
go about.”
“I know, but sometimes you surely could. When you and Matthew got so
tied up with that mining business last winter I supposed it meant seeing
a lot more of you. Instead it’s been less and less.”
“Well, Cecily and I are going through the baby phase now.”
“I know--but isn’t it possible that you are overdoing it?” Dick flushed
a little, and Fliss leapt over his embarrassment. “It’s really bad for
Cecily to be so tied down, you know.”
“How can she help it?”
“She should help it for her own sake. Don’t tell her I said so. It’s
impudent enough to say it to you. Cecily has come to think I’m
anathema.”
“What nonsense!”
“Truly. It began during war time. She couldn’t take the things I was
doing seriously. Well, some of them weren’t too serious, but somebody
had to do the cheering up! And now that the mess is all over she thinks
we still ought to be long-faced. I won’t! I think we’re in for a good
time. It isn’t going to help any of the poor boys who got theirs to be
gloomy now.”
“How do you know?” asked Dick, teasingly, lighting his cigarette.
Fliss leaned on two unwrinkled elbows and looked at him. “Look here,
Dick, if you’d been killed over there----”
“Instead of hanging around on this side nearly killing myself.”
“Poor Dick! It was rotten luck. But it wasn’t your fault they wouldn’t
send you over. Or maybe it was; you were too useful on this side. But
listen! If you had gone over and been killed do you think your soul
would still be hanging around glooming because a few people were trying
to amuse themselves? You would not!”
“I would not!” grinned Dick cheerfully.
“That’s what I told Cecily once. Cecily is in grave danger of getting
too serious. With all those babies----”
“Don’t over-count, now.”
“Oh, Dick!” said Fliss, patting his hand ever so lightly with her slim
glove. “Come on and play once in a while! You really mustn’t drop us,
Dick, even if I am frivolous. For Matthew’s sake you ought to stand by.
He considers you and Cecily the high spots in our whole list of
friends.”
“Oh, I see Matthew every day,” protested Dick.
“I suppose you do, but Matthew doesn’t see Cecily and he misses it when
he doesn’t. He says so. He likes to talk to her. I’ve always been
jealous of her and rather glad you saw her first.”
“Don’t be foolish, Fliss.”
“As you say. Well, it’s been nice to see you. No, I must pay for my own
lunch. It makes our lunching together so definitely respectable.”
It ran through Dick’s mind that afternoon at intervals that perhaps he
and Cecily were getting a bit too domestic. He decided to take the
matter up with her. There had been a time, immediately after his
disappointing war service--a service which had kept him from going
overseas because he was found to be immensely useful in training camps
on his own side of the ocean--when Dick had felt like plunging into
society a bit more deeply than he had ever done since his marriage; when
the allurement of light talk and loose manners had been strong for a few
months.
But the imminent coming of their third child had been announced and
Cecily herself was too thoroughly out of sympathy with moods of
lightness to even have him suggest that she join in them. She herself
had been willing to make any necessary sacrifice during the war. She had
waited, during the year and a half when the United States was at war, to
see Dick go at any moment to France and to death. She had maintained
herself in a continual state of sacrifice. The evils of the world and
the crusading spirit had pressed upon her. That she had not been called
upon for personal sacrifice did not mean that she could alter the
attitude in which she was ready for sacrifice. And the seriousness of
childbearing again had weighed her down. “Yes,” thought Dick, “we’re
getting a bit heavy.”
The impression lasted until he went into his house that night and then
he felt suddenly absurd. Upstairs he could hear the sounds of the babies
being put to bed. Around him everything was orderly and still, waiting
for him. It was comfortable and quiet and the sense of possession which
so often came over him as he entered his home quite destroyed that vague
feeling that he and Cecily weren’t quite getting all they might be
getting out of things. And a sense of shame at even this slight
disloyalty to all she had done to make him happy put extra devotion into
his greeting of her.
She came down the stairs a little abstractedly. In two years she seemed,
like Fliss, to have changed little--very pretty, very young still--only
where the magnetism of Fliss had increased, Cecily’s had perhaps
somewhat diminished. The constant day by day responsibility of caring
for her babies had weighted her manner. Her mind was on the business of
being a mother and a housekeeper--not on Dick, even when she kissed him.
“They are all quiet now,” she said. “If you must go up, don’t disturb
them, will you?”
“No,” he promised. “Did the new housemaid come?”
“Yes, she’s here. I don’t think she’s going to be very good, though.”
“Don’t be critical, if she’s just here.”
Dick went past the nursery door, looking in to call to the two older
children, then to Cecily’s room to see the new baby, so pink and
well-cared for in its bassinet. Finally he went to his own room. He felt
a little lonesome and would have been amazed if he had analyzed his
feelings far enough to know what it was that he felt. But that was it.
He wanted to be singled out for attention, and all he was getting was
general care.
Cecily and Ellen were in quiet conference when he went down. They were
talking in the hall about the merits of the new housemaid. He gathered
that they were very disparaging and felt that their standards were
over-high.
“I had lunch with Fliss Horton to-day--Fliss Allenby, I mean,” he told
Cecily when she faced him as usual over the pleasant table.
“Lunch with Fliss? How did that happen?”
“I ran into her at the Lennox Restaurant. The Club was crowded and I
went there at noon. She was kicking about not seeing more of us. Rattled
off a bunch of talk about this and that engagement she had for this
week. Are we asked to the things that go on--the Harris’s reception and
this big dance Leonard Pollen is pulling off?”
“Of course we are. I don’t bother to show you the cards because we
decided that we couldn’t do that sort of thing now.”
“Fliss said that she thought we were getting too domestic.”
“Fliss would think so.”
“Did you and Fliss ever quarrel?”
“Why, no, Dick. Why?”
“I just wondered, after she called it to my attention, why we hadn’t
seen them in a long while. Not that I wanted to especially,” he added
unnecessarily.
“We haven’t seen them for a long while. I miss Matthew, too. We used to
have the finest talks. He had a way of making me think about things. I
don’t know why I haven’t seen them, but I really haven’t seen anybody.
For a while you know I was a bit down--low in my spirits, after----”
“Poor old Cecily. You certainly had every right”
“We mustn’t, Dick. It doesn’t sound as if we wanted the baby. I feel so
guilty when I look at him to think I ever didn’t. Well, when I was
feeling like that I didn’t want to see Fliss. She was so awfully
gay--and so pretty and slim, you know. It used to irritate me. So I
didn’t ask her here any more. And that meant not asking Matthew, of
course, though I did miss him a lot.”
“Well, you’re slim enough now--and a lot prettier than Fliss ever was or
could be--and with something to show for your trouble.”
“I know. But we don’t somehow jibe in ideals--Fliss and I. She likes
that endless party-giving and party-going. I don’t think she wants any
children.”
“Well,” said Dick, tolerantly, “she’s hardly the type.”
Cecily became a little rigid. “She hasn’t any right to dodge
responsibilities. And I’m sure Matthew would like children. He is so
fond of Dorothea and Leslie.”
“It’s hardly our business, dear.”
“Of course it isn’t. But I was fond of Fliss, especially after she was
so fine when Dorothea was born. You know we did entertain for her and
tried to make her know a few more people when she was just married,
until we went to war. But she doesn’t seem to have much depth. Do you
like a person who hasn’t more depth than Fliss?”
“I have all grades of liking,” pleaded Dick. “She’s amusing.”
“Well, if you feel so keenly about it,” said Cecily, “I’ll ask them to
dinner next week. I’ll be glad to see Matthew and we’ll have an old time
party.”
“Theater afterwards--maybe the Orpheum? We can get home early from
there.”
“If you like,” assented Cecily.
Dick felt as if a point had been conceded to him when he was not in the
least anxious for a personal concession. He went a few mental steps
backward to see just where he had gone off the point, but it was an idle
chase and he abandoned it after a moment.
Their evenings now had become rather of one pattern. They talked or
read; Mrs. Warner came in; they went driving in the Warner’s big car or
in Dick’s small one; they went to a moving picture or made a call on
Dick’s mother--but always with the need of getting home early to the
baby--always with the fear that Cecily was getting overtired hanging
over them. Even their pleasures, their diversions, were never carefree.
There were times when Dick felt that nurses and doctors and precautions
about health had surrounded them rather unpleasantly long. But any such
thoughts were always suppressed by the feeling that it was immensely
selfish to feel any personal repressions when he had three healthy
children and Cecily had been through so much. Three babies in four
years! He had come to know and abhor the tone in which people,
especially women, made that statement.
His talk seemed to bother Cecily. She brought it up again later in the
evening when they had come home from a ride in the country and were
giving the children a final inspection for the night. Dorothea and
Leslie, in their white cribs, sturdy little bodies outlined under the
miniature coverlets, were very pleasant to look at. It was a rite with
Cecily--this last look--a reward for all the care they caused her and a
further prayer for their health and safety.
“Don’t you think,” she said softly, as she stood looking at them, “that
they are much more important than all the fun we might have had playing
like Fliss?”
“You can’t compare two such dissimilar things,” said Dick, and then knew
immediately that his remark had been true, but inadequate.
“But you’d sooner have these?”
He became a little irritated that she should have to ask such a
question. Merely asking it assumed that he was hankering after things
that he was not even wanting--that he wasn’t a devoted parent.
“Wouldn’t you?” he countered, rather cruelly.
Cecily merely looked at him in high reproach.
Then, because he felt a little conscience-smitten at the fact that
Cecily was hurt, he followed her into her room and played with the
little baby, who had waked up for his supper. He was a very gay father
and ordinarily Cecily loved this mood and joined him in it, but to-night
she was wrapped in seriousness.
“Of course they’ll be older soon, and then I can leave them to a nurse,
but while I am still nursing the baby, I don’t see how I can manage a
lot of society.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Cecily, don’t be so absurd. Who wants you to do
society? I wouldn’t let you if you wanted to. Who could be happier than
I am just as I am?”
Cecily sighed. “I know you’re happy,” she said, “and I’m happy. But this
thing that came up to-night isn’t new. I hear it from other
people--people who talk about my being ‘tied down’ and say I ought to
enjoy myself while I’m young; people who say that they never see you
about any more and talk about how you used to enjoy dancing and such
things; women who say they don’t intend to have babies. You’ve no idea
how they talk.”
“Haven’t I? Don’t I get the looks from the women who imply I’m some sort
of monster because you have three children at your age?”
“I love the children. I couldn’t not have them.”
“Now, look here, Cecily, you’re tired out to-night. The worry of that
new maid and the change in the baby’s feeding have left you flat. You
just stop worrying about all this. We’ve been over it before, you know,
lots of times, and we like our way of doing things. We may be a little
out of fashion--we may not do things just as other people are doing
them, but we are doing them the way we want to do them and that ought to
satisfy us. I’m absolutely with you and I’m not hankering after any gay
society. I do think we ought to get out as much as we can--for your
sake--but while these kids are small and with the damned lack of
servants--or lack of damned servants--we’ll just have to stay by the
ship. And you mustn’t worry.”
All of which was very logical and straight. Only Cecily had developed a
little taste for virtue and the praise of virtue and the fact that they
had chosen their own way was not enough. She wanted to be reassured that
they had chosen the higher and better way and Dick should not have
qualified by saying that they should go out as much as possible.
However, he had stated the case, and Cecily was reasonable enough to
know it.
She lay awake rather late, pondering things--whether things weren’t a
bit unjust, since Fliss and her kind (she wanted to pin the problem down
to Fliss somehow) had such a good time without responsibilities--what
men liked in women and why Fliss looked so well in flame colored
things--whether Matthew wanted children and wasn’t secretly unhappy.
Finally, catching herself in the midst of a picture of Fliss miserable
in a childless old age while she herself--she laughed, proving that she
had that sense of humor which her stepfather had questioned once, said
aloud, “Can this be the fair Wendy?” and went to sleep.