It was noon before Helen Starratt finished her housework next
morning--an unusually late hour for her, but she had been preoccupied,
and her movements slow in consequence. A four-room apartment, with
hardwood floors and a vacuum cleaner, was hardly a serious task for a
full-grown woman, childless, and with a vigor that reacted perfectly
to an ice-cold shower at 7 A.M. She used to look back occasionally at
the contrast her mother's life had presented. Even with a servant, a
three-storied, bay-windowed house had not given Mrs. Somers much
leisure for women's clubs. The Ladies Aid Society and a Christmas
festival in the church parlors were about as far along the road of
alleged social service as the woman of the last generation had
traveled. There was marketing to do, and sewing continually on hand,
and house-cleaning at stated intervals. In Helen Somers's old home the
daily routine had been as inflexible as its ancestor's original
Calvinistic creed--Monday, washing; Tuesday, ironing; Wednesday,
cleaning the silver; Thursday, at home to visitors; Friday, sweeping;
Saturday, baking; and Sunday, the hardest day of all. For, withal, the
Puritan sense of observance, that had not been utterly swamped by the
blue and enticing skies of California, Sunday was a feast day, not in
a lightsome sense, but in a dull, heavy, gastronomic way, unleavened
by either wine or passable wit. On Sunday the men of the family
returned home from church and gorged. If the day were fine, perhaps
everybody save mother took a cable-car ride, or a walk, or something
equally exciting. The sparkle of environment had won these people away
from tombstone reading and family prayers as a Sabbath diversion, but
even California could not be expected to make over a bluestocking in
an eye's twinkling. Mother, of course, stayed home on Sunday to "pick
up" and get ready for supper in the absence of the servant girl. A
later generation had the grace to elevate these slatternly drudges to
the title of maid, but a sterner ancestry found it expedient to be
more practical and less pretentious in its terms. On these drab
Sundays Helen Somers had passionately envied the children of foreign
breed, who seemed less hedged about by sabbatical restrictions. Not
that she wished her family to _be_ of the questionable sort that went
to El Campo or Shell Mound Park for Sunday picnics and returned in
quarrelsome state at a late hour smelling of bad whisky and worse gin.
Nor did she aspire to have sprung from the Teutonic stock that
perpetrated more respectable but equally noisy outings in the vicinity
of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float
oil-like upon the surface of this turbid sea, touching it at certain
points, yet scarcely mixing with it. Indeed, this inclination to taste
the core of life without committing herself the further indiscretion
of swallowing it grew to such proportions that at the age of fifteen
she almost succumbed to its allurement. Even at this late date she
could recall every detail of a seemingly casual conversation which she
had held with the stalwart butcher boy who came daily to the kitchen
door to deliver meat. The first day she merely had broached the
subject of Sunday picnics; the second she had intrigued him into
giving her one or two fleeting details; the third day she held him
captive a full ten minutes while he enlarged upon his subject. And so
on, until one morning he said, quite directly:
"Would you like to go to one?... If you do, I'll take you."
She had drawn back at first from this frontal attack, but in the end
she decided to chance the experience. She pretended to her mother that
she was going to see a girl friend who was sick. She met her crude
cavalier at the ferry. She even boarded the boat with him. At first he
had been a bit constrained and shy, but soon she felt the warm, moist
pressure of his thick-fingered hands against hers. And presently his
arm encircled her waist. With curious intuition she realized the
futility of struggling against him... She had to admit, in the end,
that she found his physical nearness pleasurable... She often had
wondered, looking back on that day, what might have happened if she
had gone through with this truant indiscretion. But halfway on the
journey her escort had deserted her momentarily to buy a cigar. Left
alone upon the upper deck of a ferryboat, crowded with a strident and
raucous company, she had felt herself suddenly grow cold, not with
fear, but with a certain haughty and disdainful anger. These people
were not her kind! She had risen swiftly from her seat and hidden
discreetly in the ladies' washroom until after the boat had landed and
was on its way back to the city. When she got home she found the house
in confusion. Her father had been taken suddenly ill.
"I came very near sending to Nellie's for you," her mother had said.
The incident had taught her a lesson, but there were times when she
regretted its termination--when she was stirred to a certain morbid
and profitless speculation as to what might have been.
Shortly after this a reaction began to set in against the dullness
which certain people found desirable in the observation of what they
were pleased to call with questionable humility the Lord's Day, and by
the time Helen had budded to womanhood this new tide was at its flood.
People, even piously inclined, were taking houses across the bay, at
Belvedere or Sausalito or Mill Valley, for the summer. Somehow, one
didn't go to church during this holiday. Friends came over for
Saturday and Sunday to visit, and the term "week-end" became
intelligible and acquired significance. The Somerses took a cottage
for three successive seasons in Belvedere--that is, they spoke of it
as a cottage. In reality, it was the abandoned hulk of a ferryboat
that had been converted into rather uncomfortable quarters and set up
on the slimy beach. The effect of this unconventional habitation
slowly undermined the pale ghost of the Somers' family tradition. They
became bohemian. Instead of the lugubrious Sunday feast of thick
joints and heavy puddings, they began to make the acquaintance of the
can opener. And from can opener to corkscrew it was only a brief
step... It was at this point that Helen met Fred Starratt. Quite
naturally the inevitable happened. Moonlight rowing in the cove at
Belvedere, set to the tune of mandolins, was always providing a job
for the parson, and, if the truth were told, for the divorce courts as
well. It all had been pleasant enough, and normal enough, and the
expected thing. That's what young people always did if the proper
setting were provided, especially when the moon kept on the job.
Helen Starratt had read about the thrills that the heroines of novels
received from the mating fever, but she had to confess that she had
not experienced anything as exciting as a thrill during the entire
period of her husband's wooing. She had felt satisfaction, a mild
triumph, a gratified vanity, if you will, but that was as far as her
emotional experience had gone. After all, her career had been
marriage, and she had taken the most likely situation that had been
offered. She presumed it was the same when one graduated from business
college. You were expected to land a job and you did. Sometimes it was
a good one, and then again it wasn't. Looking back, she conceded that
her choice had been fair. Fred Starratt didn't drink to excess, he
didn't beat or swear at her, he didn't make sarcastic remarks about
her relations, or do any of the things which anyone who reads the
daily papers discovers so many men do under provocation or otherwise.
But, on the other hand, he hadn't made a fortune or bought a car or
given her any reason for feeling compensated for the lack of marital
excitement. His friends called him a nice fellow--in some ways as
damning a thing as one could say about anybody--and let it go at that.
However, Helen Starratt's vocabulary was just as limited when it came
to characterizing her conventional aims and ambitions. If,
occasionally, her speculations stirred the muddy reaches of certain
furtive desires, she took care that they did not become articulate.
This term "nice" included every desirable virtue. One married nice
men, and one lived in a nice neighborhood, and one made nice
acquaintances. In her mother's day she had heard people say:
"I believe in having the young folks identified with church work--they
meet such nice people."
And years later a friend, attempting to interest her in the activities
of a local orphan asylum, had clinched every other argument by
stating, blandly:
"You really ought to go in for it, Helen--you've no idea what nice
people you meet."
When America's entry into the war brought up the question of Red Cross
endeavor, her first thought had been:
"I really ought to do something, I suppose. And, besides, I'll meet
lots of nice people."
Well, she had met a lot of nice people, but the only fruitful yield
socially had been Mrs. Hilmer. And somehow it never occurred to Helen
to apply such a discriminating term as nice to her latest acquisition.
Mrs. Hilmer was wholesome and good hearted and a dear, and no doubt
she was nice in a negative way, but one never thought about saying so.
And Hilmer...? No, he was not what one would call a nice man, but he
was tremendously interesting and in the hands of the right woman...
You see, Mrs. Hilmer was a good soul, but, of course, she didn't quite
... that is, she was a bit old fashioned and ... well, she didn't know
how, poor dear!
Thus it was that over her household tasks on this particular February
morning Helen Starratt dawdled as her mind played with the fiction of
what Hilmer might become under the proper influence. Now, if _she_ had
married him!...
It was all very well for Mrs. Hilmer to see that her lord and master
was fed properly, but why did she waste hours over a custard when she
had money enough to hire it done? That course didn't get either of
them anywhere--Hilmer remained at a level of torpid content, and
naturally he looked down on his wife as a sort of sublimated servant
girl who wasn't always preparing to leave and demanding higher
wages... No, most men fell too easily in the trap of their personal
comforts. Even Fred had become self-satisfied. Beyond his dinner and
paper and an occasional sober flight at the movies or bridge with old
friends he didn't seem to have any stirring ambitions. That was where
a wife came in. Hadn't she been casting around for bait that would
make Fred rise to something new? Hadn't she invited the Hilmers to
dinner in the hope that the two men would hit it off? The very first
time she had met Hilmer she had thought, "There's a man that Fred
ought to know."
She was perfectly willing to concede certain virtues to her husband,
and she flattered herself that with the materials at her command she
had managed to keep Fred pretty well up to the scratch. The only thing
that had been lacking was plenty of money. If she had had one quarter
of Hilmer's income she would have evolved a husband that any woman
could have been proud of, instead of one that most women would have
found merely satisfactory... This was the way she had argued before
her absurd dinner party. She had to admit, after it was all over, that
her husband had managed to make her thoroughly ashamed of him. It was
better to have an outrageous husband than a ridiculous one. And she
fancied that Hilmer could be outrageous if he chose... But she was
sure of one thing ... if Hilmer came home and announced that he had
given up his position and had decided to plunge in boldly for himself,
his wife would scarcely give the matter a second thought. Hilmer would
carry the thing through ... _some way_. A man who could brain an
assailant and fight for a mouthful of bread would put things over by
hook or crook. There wasn't much chance for failure there. But Fred
Starratt ... well, he was apt to have some ridiculous scruple or too
keen a sense of business courtesy or a sensitiveness to rebuffs. Take
his passage at arms with the drunken maid ... if he had thrown her out
promptly, or come in and frankly borrowed the money from Hilmer, it
would have at least shown decision.
Of course she couldn't do anything, now that he was committed to this
new business venture. It was all very well for him to snarl: "Don't
worry... I sha'n't ask you to do without any more than you've done
without so far."
That was the lofty way most men theorized when their vanity was
wounded. But she knew enough to realize that if he failed she would
have to share that failure. Of course, if Fred could interest
Hilmer... Perhaps she could help things along in some way ... with a
chance remark to Mrs. Hilmer. Would it be better to cast the seed more
directly?... If she could only manage to run across Hilmer--she
wouldn't want to seem to be putting in her oar... Would it be very
dreadful if she were to think up some excuse and go beard the lion in
his den?
She was still interested in her orphan asylum. Why not go ask him for
a subscription? She wondered if he would be very brusque; insulting,
even. The possibilities fascinated her. She felt that she would like a
passage at arms with him. He was a man worth worsting. Under such
circumstances Fred Starratt would be either liberal beyond his means
or profusely apologetic. Not by any chance would he give a prompt and
emphatic refusal... The more she thought about it the more enticing
the prospect became. She felt sure that if Hilmer didn't approve of
her charity he would say so frankly, perhaps disagreeably. And if he
didn't think much of her husband's venture he would be equally direct.
She rather wanted to know what he _did_ think about Fred Starratt. She
ended by coming to an emphatic decision. She would not only go, but
she would go that very afternoon. If there were any chance for her to
prepare an easy road for Fred's advance it lay in speedy action.
When she finished dressing for the encounter and stood surveying
herself in the long mirror set into the closet door of her bedroom she
had to admit that she had missed none of her points. Most women at her
age would have been sagging a bit, the cords of youth slackened by the
weight of maternity or the continual pull against ill health and
genteel poverty. Or they would have been smothered in the plump
content of Mrs. Hilmer. Helen Starratt's slenderness had still a
virginal quality and she knew every artifice that heightened this
effect. To-day she was a trifle startled at quite the lengths she had
gone to strike a note of sophisticated youth. She had long since
ceased dressing consciously for her husband, and dressing for other
women was more a matter of perfect detail than attempted beguilement.
She was curious, she told herself, to see whether a man like Hilmer
would be impressed by feminine artifice... Did a black silk gown, with
spotless lace at wrist and throat, spell the acme of Hilmer's ideal of
womanhood? Was woman to him something durable and utilitarian or did
his fancy sometimes carry him to more decorative ideals?
She did not go directly to his office; instead, she dawdled a bit over
the shop windows. Things were appallingly high, she noted with growing
dismay, especially the evening gowns. On the shrugging, simpering
French wax figures they were at once very scant and very vivid ...
strung with beads and shot through with gold thread or spangled with
flashing sequins. She tried to imagine Mrs. Hilmer in one of these
gaudy confections. Almost any of them would have looked well on Helen
herself. But any woman who went in for dressing at all would need a
trunkload, she concluded, if one were to decently last out a season.
She found herself speculating on just what class of people would
invest in these hectic flesh coverings. Certainly not the enormously
rich ... they didn't buy their provocative draperies from show
windows. And even the comfortably off might pause, she thought, before
throwing a couple of hundred dollars into a wisp of veiling that
didn't reach much below the knees and would look like a weather-beaten
cobweb after the second wearing. With all this talk about profiteering
and economy and the high cost of living, even Helen Starratt had to
admit that one could go without an evening gown at two hundred
dollars. But, judging from the shoppers on the street, there didn't
seem to be many who intended to do without them. She began to wonder
what her chances were for at least a spring tailor-made. She supposed
now, with Fred going into business, she would be expected to make her
old one do. Well, she decided she wouldn't make it do if she had to
beg on the street corner. She'd had it a year and a half, and during
war times that was quite all right. The best people had played
frumpish parts then. But now everybody was perking up. As for an
evening gown ... well, she simply couldn't conceive where even a
hundred dollars would be available for one of these spangled harem
veils that was passing muster as a full-grown dress... If she had
possessed untold wealth, all this flimsiness, this stylistic froth,
would have appealed to her; as it was, she was irritated by it. What
were things coming to? she demanded. Just when you thought you were up
to the minute, the styles changed overnight. It was the same with
household furniture. Ten years ago, when she and Fred had set up
housekeeping, everybody had exclaimed over her quaint bits of
mahogany, her neutral window drapes, even at her wonderful porcelain
gas range. Now, everything, from bed to dining-room table, was painted
in dull colors pricked by gorgeous designs; the hangings at the
windows screamed with color; electric stoves were coming in. The day
of polished surfaces and shining brass was over--antiques were no
longer the rage.
Her dissatisfaction finally drove her toward Hilmer's office. She
stopped at one of the flower stands on Grant Avenue and bought a half
dozen daffodils. She begrudged the price she had to give for them, but
they did set off the dull raisin shade of her dress with a proper
flare of color. She concluded she would play up the yellow note in her
costuming oftener. Somehow it kindled her. She wondered for the first
time in her life what gypsy strain had flooded her with such dark
beauty. She stopped before a millinery shop and peered critically at
her reflection in a window mirror. Yes, the yellow note was a good
one, but she was still a trifle cold. If her lips had been a little
fuller... Strange she had never thought about that before. Well, next
time she would touch them ever so deftly into a suggestion of ripe
opulence. She sauntered slowly down Post Street, turned into
Montgomery. There were scarcely any women on the street and the men
who passed were, for the most part, in preoccupied flight. Yet she saw
more than one pair of eyes widen with brief appraisal as she went by.
Hilmer's offices were in the Merchants' Exchange Building. Helen
decided to slip in through the Montgomery Street entrance. She felt
that there might be a chance of running into Fred on California Street
and she didn't want to do that.
As she shot up toward the eleventh story in the elevator she rehearsed
her opening scene with Hilmer. She decided to take her cue flippantly.
She would banter him at first and gradually veer to more serious
topics... But once she stood in his rather austere inner shrine of
business, she decided against subterfuges. He had stepped into the
main office, the boy who showed her in explained. Would she have a
seat? She dropped into a chair, taking in her background with feminine
swiftness. A barometer, a map, two stiffly painted pictures exhibiting
as many sailing vessels in full flight, a calendar bearing the
advertisement of a ship-chandlery firm--this was the extent of the
wall decoration. The office furniture was golden oak, the rugs of
indifferent neutrality. On his desk he had a picture of Mrs. Hilmer,
taken in a bygone day, very plump and blond and youthful in a soft,
tranquil way. And by its side, in a little ridiculously-blue glass
vase, some spring wild flowers languished, pallidly white and withered
by the heat of captivity. She checked an impulse to rise when he came
in. For a moment his virility had overwhelmed her into a feeling of
deference, but she recovered herself sufficiently to droop
nonchalantly into her seat as he gave her his hand. He was not in the
least put out of countenance by her unexpected presence, and she felt
a fleeting sense of disappointment, almost of pique.
"I suppose you're wondering why I'm here," she began, tritely.
He swung his swivel chair toward her and sat down. "Yes, naturally,"
he returned, with disconcerting candor.
She touched the petals of her daffodils with a pensive finger. "Well,
really, you know, I'd quite made up my mind to pretend at first...
Women never like to come directly to the point. I thought up a silly
excuse--begging for an orphan asylum, to be exact. But I can see that
wouldn't go here... And I don't believe you're the least bit
interested in orphans."
"Why should I be?" he asked, bluntly.
She had a dozen arguments that might have won the ordinary man, but
she knew it would take more than stock phrases to convince him, so she
ignored the challenge. "You see, my husband has decided to go into
business ... and ... well, I thought perhaps if you had any insurance
... a stray bit, don't you know, that isn't pledged or spoken for ...
it would all be _so_ encouraging!"
He smoothed his cheek with an appraising gesture. Against the blond
freshness of his skin his mangled thumb stood out vividly.
"Why doesn't your husband come to see me himself?"
She drew back a trifle, but her recovery was swift. "Oh, he intends
to, naturally. I'm just preparing the way... Fred's a perfect dear and
all that, but he is a little bit reserved about some things... It
would be so much easier for him to ask a favor for some one else... Of
course, he'd be perfectly furious if he knew that I had come here. But
you understand, Mr. Hilmer, I want to do all I can... I'd make _any_
sacrifice for Fred."
She paused to give him a chance to put in a word, but he sat silent.
It was plain that he didn't intend to help out her growing
embarrassment.
"It's all come out of a clear sky," she went on, trailing the fringe
of her beaded hand bag across her shoe tops. "He only told me last
night... There isn't any use pretending ... he hasn't any capital to
work on. And until the premiums begin to come in there'll be office
rent and a stenographer's salary piling up ... and our living expenses
in the bargain... A friend of his is putting up some money, but I
can't imagine it's a whole lot... I'm a little bit upset about it, of
course. I wish I could really do something to help him."
She knew from his look that he intended to hurl another disconcerting
question at her.
"Well, if you want to help him, why don't you?" he quizzed.
"Why, I ... why, I'm not fit for anything, really," she tried to throw
back.
"My wife said you were pretty efficient at the Red Cross."
"Oh, but that was different!"
"Why?"
"Well, I can't just explain, but it's easy to do something you ...
you..."
"Feel you don't have to," he finished for her, ironically.
She shrugged petulantly. "What do you want me to do? Solicit
insurance?"
He smiled. "That's what you're doing now, isn't it?"
"Mr. _Hilmer_!" She rose majestically in her seat.
He continued to sit, but she was conscious that his eyes were sweeping
her from head to foot with frank appraisal.
"A pretty woman has a good chance to get by with almost anything she
sets her mind on," he said, finally.
She drew in a barely perceptible breath. The blunt tip of his shoe was
jammed squarely against her toe. She withdrew her foot, but she sat
down again.
"I really ought to be angry with you, Mr. Hilmer," she purred at him,
archly. "It's very nice of you to attempt to be so gallant, but, after
all, talk _is_ pretty cheap, isn't it?... So far I don't seem to be
making good as a solicitor. So what else is there left?"
"How about being your husband's stenographer?" he asked, without a
trace of banter.
She forgot to be amazed. "I don't know anything about shorthand," she
replied, simply.
"Well, you could soon learn to run a typewriter," he insisted. "I have
a young woman in my office who takes my letters direct on the machine
as I dictate them. She's as good as, if not better than, my chief
stenographer. That would save your husband at least seventy-five
dollars a month."
She had an impulse to rise and sweep haughtily out of the room. What
right had this man to tell her what she could or could not do? The
impudence of him! But she didn't want to appear absurd. She leaned
back and looked at him through her half-closed eyelids as she said,
with a slight drawl:
"Would my presence in the office be a bid for your support, Mr.
Hilmer?"
"It might," he said, looking at her keenly.
She did not flinch, but his steady gaze cut her composure like a
knife. She got to her feet again.
"What silly little flowers!" escaped her, as she took a step near his
desk and pulled a faded blossom from the blue vase.
He left his seat and stood beside her. "I got them down by St. Francis
Wood last Sunday," he admitted. "They reminded me of the early spring
blossoms in the old country ... the sort that shoot up almost at the
melting snow bank's edge... The flowers here are very gorgeous, but
somehow they never seem as sweet."
She looked at him curiously, almost with the expectation of finding
that he was jesting. This flowering of sentiment was unexpected. It
had come, as he had described his native spring blooms, almost at the
snow bank's edge. She reached out, gathered up the faded blossoms
ruthlessly, and dropped them into a convenient waste basket.
"Do you mind?" she asked, lifting her eyes heavily.
He did not answer.
Slowly she unpinned the flaming daffodils from her side and slipped
them into the empty vase. She stepped back to survey their sunlit
brilliance, resting a gloved hand upon the chair she had deserted. She
was conscious that another hand was bearing down heavily upon her
slender ringers. The weight crushed and pained her, yet she felt no
desire to withdraw...
The office boy came in. She moved forward quickly.
"There's a gentleman named Starratt waiting to see you," he announced.
She threw back her head defensively.
"This way!" Hilmer said, as he opened a private exit for her.
She found herself in the marble-flanked hallway and presently she
gained the sun-flooded street. The blood was pounding at her temples
and its throb hurt.
She walked home rapidly, swept by half-formulated impulses that
stirred her to almost adolescent self-revelations, yet when she
reached her apartment she was quite calm, almost too calm, and
outwardly cold.
That night over the black coffee Fred Starratt said to his wife, with
an air of restrained triumph:
"Well, I landed the insurance on Hilmer's car to-day."
She flashed him, an enigmatical smile. "Oh, lovely!"...
He sipped his coffee with preening satisfaction.
"Everything is going beautifully," he continued. "I hired an office
and began to connect up with two or three firms. That preliminary from
Hilmer was a great boost... A man named Kendrick handles all his
business, so I've sort of got the street guessing. They can't figure
how I could even get a look in... Of course I'm convinced that
Kendrick shares his commissions with Hilmer, which is against the
rules of the Broker's Exchange. But he didn't ask for any shakedown...
Brauer and I ordered some office furniture, and to-morrow I'll
advertise for a girl."
"I've got one for you already," she said, deliberately.
"Who?"
She reached across the shallow length of the table and touched his arm
significantly.
"I've decided to do it myself," she purred.
He patted her hand as an incredulous stare escaped him. "You!" he
laughed.
She suffered his indulgent and mildly contemptuous caress. "Don't
laugh, sonny," she drawled, almost disagreeably. "Your wife may prove
a lot more clever than she seems."