proves anything. Nevertheless Mrs. Dickett cannot deny that for a long
time, up to the period of her plunge into outer darkness, Molly was
confessedly the flower of the family. Eleanor was rather soggy, a
creature of inertia, chocolate caramels and a tendency to ritualism
which her mother could not have foreseen when she encouraged her
entering the Episcopal communion ("I don't mind candles so much," said
Mrs. Dickett, "but I must say I think it's very bad taste to call
yourself an American Catholic, when you can't help but feel that
Catholics should be foreigners").
Kathryn her mother pronounced "a very ordinary girl, very ordinary
indeed," up to the day when she was graduated, head of her class, at
the State normal-school. She showed every sign, even after that, of
snapping at the bait of a middle-aged widower with three children,
simply because his hook was labelled _New York_; but when it became
known, as a result of herculean detective efforts on Mrs. Dickett's
part, that he employed but one servant, insisted upon the payment of
what he termed "spot cash" for every article purchased in his
establishment, and disapproved of the theatre, Kathryn yielded to
reason and henceforth consulted her mother at each successive stage of
her growing career until such consultation was frankly deprecated by
the fountain-head itself.
But Molly was neither soggy nor ordinary, being distinctly handsome in
a grey-eyed, black-haired, white-skinned way, a clever student, an
original conversationalist--in short, a personality. Unlike the usual
victim to an older and a younger sister, she managed to get quite her
fair share of the family dignities and finances--was in fact accused by
her sisters of using undue influence in persuading her father to send
her to a woman's college. It is most characteristic of her that at
this accusation she refused the favour, interested her teachers in her
cause so that they procured her a full scholarship at the college of
her choice, and actually completed a four years' course there with no
other means than her share of the twenty-five dollars yearly placed to
his daughters' bank accounts by their father since the birth of each.
On this slender sum, plus the accruing interest, eked out by college
journalism, which began to be mentionable in those years--the early
90's--strengthened further in the last terms by tutoring, did Molly
Dickett triumphantly assert her independence, and I tell it of her at
this length so that none may throw "rolling stones" at her, in what
followed. A young woman of eighteen who can set her course in solitude
and steer it alone, friendless, except for what friends her qualities
can make her, absolutely unaided but for her own exertions, for four
years, is not to be called lacking in application, I submit. She got
out of that business just what there was in it, _and so_, she insists,
_she did at every stage of her subsequent history_. Note this, for it
is important.
Here you see her, then, at twenty-two; handsome, accomplished,
independent, well-rated on her particular 'Change--one fairly hears
Dick Whittington's bells in the air! Her mother, when Molly wrote home
the news of her appointment as under-reader in the office of one of the
new cheap magazines that began to appear with such frequency at about
that time, spoke of her with the typical respect of the dependent woman
for the wage-earner, and never dropped that note till the crash came.
Mr. Dickett was head clerk by now, with an appreciable advance in
salary; and Eleanor's wedding (it was in dressing the Roodscreen at
Christmas that young Farwell met his fate), with her sisters as
bridemaids, marked a distinct stage in the family's social career. Old
Mr. Farwell, who had long been nursing his only son's bank position,
did the handsome thing for the young couple, and stomached, very
decently, what must have been his regret at the boy's choice--for we
all like our children to "look up and not down," as the motto suggests,
in these matters. And he was paid for it, for Eleanor made a man of
the boy and a vestryman to boot, and quite won the old man's heart,
though he never loved Mrs. Dickett.
By the time Molly had been for two years at her post in _Slater's
Monthly_, Kathryn had moved back to her normal-school as
instructor--"and they paid well to get her, too," as Mr. Dickett
informed his stenographer confidentially. She had been invited to
supper more than once, had the stenographer, in the old days, and there
had even been a little talk of Kathryn's acquiring this accomplishment,
once, but Mr. Dickett was far too wise to suggest her presence at the
half-past six dinner now-a-days. He was far too wise, indeed, to do
anything that seemed likely to ruffle the increasingly easy currents
into which his bark had drifted of late. In a vague way he had always
counted on supporting four women until three of them--or two, say, for
Kathryn was plain and rather managing--should marry; and lo and behold,
all three were off his hands in a twinkle, and there was a pretty
little nest-egg growing for little Henry (for Eleanor had been very
discreet about the first baby).
So now we arrive at the day when Molly left her desk in the ante-room
of Slater's, walked through the book department and the art offices and
encountered Miss Spinner, the little dried and spectacled reader of
forty-odd years, and centuries (or their equivalent) of magazine
experience.
"Miss Spinner," said Molly, "do you mind telling me what they pay you a
week?"
"Twenty-five," Miss Spinner replied promptly. "Not at all. Of course
I'd been fifteen years at Franklin Square, and it was all that
experience that made them offer me the three dollars raise. So I left.
But, of course, there are five magazines now where there used to be
one. In ten years I think there'll be ten. So does Mr. Slater. That
means competition, and that means that experience will always be worth
something to the new ones. You started at fifteen, you see, and of
course I only got ten ... Gracious, isn't that Mrs. Julia Carter
Sykes's voice? Perhaps you'd better step out, my dear--Mr. Slater's
talking with that English prison man and said that he wasn't to be
disturbed if the Twelve Apostles came!"
Molly went with her swift, unhasty step (she had long legs) and
received Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes urbanely, as befitted the best paid
woman novelist of her country. Occasionally she had the fancy to "trot
around to the office" as she called it: it was believed that she
"picked up types" there. And Molly knew how to keep her waiting
without offending her, just as she knew how to dispose of the
illustrators, from the Great Moguls who came in cabs to scold about the
defects in half-tone processes, to the just discovered young genius who
waited an hour in the outside hall, his great pasteboard square between
his knees.
"You're much too pretty to be here, my child--do you like it?" Mrs.
Julia Carter Sykes remarked impertinently (she was supposed to believe
that her manner was that of the English Aristocracy, and asked the most
embarrassing questions of everybody with an income of less than fifteen
thousand a year).
"Not very much," Molly replied placidly. "It's a little dull. I'm
thinking of going into journalism. Couldn't you give me some letters
to some of the editors? I could do good special article stuff, I'm
sure."
"But certainly!" the novelist cried. "You are too delicious! I'll
write you a card to Hecht himself this moment--I'm dining with him
to-night--and I'll speak of you. I'll tell him to send you to
interview me at 'Bonnybraeside.'"
"Thanks," said Molly laconically and rose to show the celebrity to Mr.
Slater's sanctum. The English prison man, emerging, took in the
contrasted couple at a single glance, supposed them to be the whirlwind
editor's wife and daughter, from his greeting ("Come in, come in, my
dears, both of you!") and inquired of his wife, eight days later, how
she explained a woman of that type, "strung with sapphires, literally,"
and a daughter like a young duchess, with Irish eyes and a walk like
Diana's. His wife could not explain it at all, and said as much.
Molly left Mr. Slater somewhat puzzled. He raised her salary three
dollars, might have been pushed to five, but she merely smiled
deprecatingly.
"It isn't exactly that," she said, "but there seems no outlook,
somehow. I don't think it's a very reasonable profession--if it is a
profession."
He exploded into the name of a great English novelist who held
precisely that position.
"Yes. But I am not a great novelist, you see," said Molly, and cleared
out her desk with the swift thoroughness that characterized her. She
put a clean sheet of green blotting paper on it before she left, and
washed out the inkwell herself.
"That stenographer spells worse and worse, remember," she remarked.
"I'll look in for any mail."
"Why, aren't you going to stay at a hundred-and-three any more?"
Miss Pinner spoke with concern: she knew that the boarding-house
recommended highly by Eleanor's rector (his sister had stayed there
while studying singing) was very tautly managed, in an unobtrusive way,
and that the sisters who directed it had a shrewd idea of the goings
and comings of their "guests."
"No," said Molly. "I'll be out at all hours, maybe, and they wouldn't
like it. Don't be worried--I'll look in now and then."
And so, for a year, she did, and they were all delighted to see her,
for few people likely to enter such offices can talk more amusingly
than Molly Dickett. She had always used her material well, when it was
limited, and now, when it bumped into the Himalayas at one end (her
famous Rajah of Bhutpore interview) and rounded the hitherto
speechless promontories of Spud Connors' career, the champion
heavyweight of the world (she actually drew vivid metaphors from him
and he gave her a tintype of himself at eight years) the entire staff
gathered 'round her when she came, and Mr. Slater, under a temporary
financial cloud, wept literal tears because he could not afford to buy
her back to them. It was, of course, the "Bonnybraeside" interview
that did it. So cleverly was this column-and-a-half of chatty
sharp-shooting manoeuvred that Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes sent hundreds of
copies to her friends, while her fellow celebrities giggled among
themselves, and the publishers wondered exactly what the Public really
wanted, anyhow. You couldn't tell, any more, they complained.
Just here began the little cloud on Mrs. Dickett's happiness. For two
years the family were very proud of Molly, and Eleanor gave a tea for
her on one of her infrequent visits to them and got some people she
could never have hoped for otherwise on the strength of her sister's
celebrityship, for her Sunday morning column-and-a-half got to
two-thirds of the town's breakfast tables, and her picture was at the
head of it, now. At twenty-five she was called (and probably
correctly) the second highest paid woman journalist in the country, and
she spoke familiarly of names that are head-lines to most of us and
bought evening gowns at "little shops" on Fifth Avenue. She lived with
a red-haired friend, a clever illustrator of rising vogue, in a pretty
little apartment, and Mrs. Dickett dined there one night with a really
great novelist, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera House and a young
Englishman whose brother was a baronet. They had four glasses at their
plates and the maid's cap and apron were tremendously interesting to
Mrs. Dickett. But when she learned the rental of the apartment, the
wages of the maid, the cost of Molly's black evening-frock and the
average monthly bill for Molly's hansoms, she no longer wondered that
her daughter was always poor. She had never spent seventy-five dollars
for a single garment in her life, barring a fur-lined cloak, a
Christmas gift from her husband, and to drink creme-de-menthe at a roof
garden gave her a very odd sensation. However, there was the baronet's
brother...
But at one of the songs at the roof-garden Mrs. Dickett drew the line,
and the entire British Peerage, embattled, could not have persuaded her
that it could possibly be the duty--not to suggest the pleasure--of any
respectable woman to listen to it. As she put it later to the
red-haired girl and Molly, no unmarried woman could understand it and
no married woman would want to, a simple statement which they persisted
in treating as an epigram, to her annoyance.
"But nobody minded it but you, dear Mrs. Dickett," the red-haired girl
soothed her, "and it's all in how you take those things, don't you
think? Of course, if you find it wrong, why then it is wrong--for you.
But really, I assure you, I simply paid no attention to it..."
"Then you must allow me to say that I think you should have!" Mrs.
Dickett snapped out.
"Oh, come, mother, a woman of twenty-five is to all intents and
purposes as capable of hearing--anything--as a married woman," said
Molly lazily. "I'm not a school girl, you know."
"I know that," her mother replied shortly, and might have added that
Molly looked Kathryn's age--which she did, and Kathryn was twenty-eight.
She was, however, if anything, handsomer than when her cheek had its
fuller curve, for her eyes looked larger and her mouth had more
mobility: there was a stimulation in her tenseness. Mrs. Dickett felt
a little troubled.
"Although, of course, Molly admitted that the creature had no character
and sang that sort of song purposely," she confided to her husband.
Imagine, then, her feelings when Molly's interview with the singer was
printed! She began a severe letter to her--and ceased midway of the
first paragraph. What possible hold had she over her daughter? What
did she know of her friends and associates, and what, had she known and
disapproved, would it have mattered to Molly? Since the day she won
her college scholarship at eighteen she had been independent,
financially speaking, and, though financial independence is not, of
course, everything ... but it would almost seem that it is! There must
be some mistake here. Mrs. Dickett chewed the end of her pen and
thought as hard as she had ever thought in her life. Nonsense! What
finally settles the thing is public opinion--Society. If one's world
turns the cold shoulder, one retracts, capitulates, acknowledges that
the conventions are in the right of it. Well; but Molly's world was
not the suburban circle of the Dicketts and her world applauded her;
she stood high in it; her interview with the unspeakable one was "a
great hit," in their jargon. Molly, in short, applied different
standards, was in another class--was it, could it be, a Lower Class?
And yet, the baronet!
Mrs. Dickett tore her letter through.
It is quite true that they didn't see her for a year, after
that--eighteen months, if you except Kathryn's flying luncheon with her
at the time of the Convention of Associated Normal Schools. Kathryn
then informed them that the red-haired girl had married her teacher and
left the apartment and that Molly lived alone there.
"I'm very glad," said her mother. "I never liked that girl."
"She seems to have been a bad influence," Kathryn agreed
conservatively, and there, good, simple people as they were at heart,
it would have ended.
But here comes Eleanor upon the scene, Eleanor, with two boys, a
probable Warden for husband, and a father-in-law who has become very
respectably wealthy from long ago, almost forgotten investments in
Southern Railroads. And George is the only son. Eleanor wonders that
people can send their children to the public schools, and wishes that
Kathryn had married that college professor, even though his salary did
barely equal hers.
"Every woman ought to settle, you know--it's nonsense to discuss it."
"But I am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of
housekeeping. You don't get any time for anything else."
"!!!" said Eleanor.
Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows
lifted.
"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"
Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.
"Really, mother, I must say! She must be crazy. It's not right at
all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."
"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.
"As if that had anything to do with it! I'm going down to see her."
It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded. The
first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York
society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the
first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing
line." Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping,
dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous
at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at
Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet
backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman,
swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke rose from
the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room. Three
or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men
applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock
of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge
of technique to feel extraordinarily poignant and moving. All but the
dancer were smoking, and Molly sat on the floor (in copper-coloured
chiffon, too!) her hands clasped about her knees, a cigarette in an
amber holder between her lips and enunciated clearly,
"Bully!"
In describing matters afterward Eleanor referred to Molly's reception
of her as brazen. There is no reason to believe that this word has any
relation to Molly's state of mind: she saw nothing to be brazen about.
When she said, "How lucky you dropped in today, sis!" she unaffectedly
meant it.
"Well, rather!" one of the young men replied. "Won't you have
something, Mrs. Er--Oh, yes--Farwell? Rhine wine cup, what?"
"No, I thank you," said Eleanor frigidly. "May I have a few minutes'
conversation with you, Mary?"
"Not just now, I hope," said some one, "for she's going to dance again."
"In that case I will not trouble you," said Eleanor, rather
dramatically, one fears, and backed out to avoid the smoking violinist.
It was a little trying, and Eleanor should have had tact enough to let
the matter rest, but she was rather inelastic in her methods, and she
had come to New York with a Purpose. So Molly disappeared with her
into the bedroom, and they had it out, with what result it is
unnecessary to say.
It was from that moment that a doubt as to whether Molly were an asset
or a liability slipped into the Dickett family. It is improbable that
knowledge of the fact that "the disgusting foreign dancing woman" was
born and bred in Bangor, Maine, and had never been farther than a
stage-length from a vigilant mother, would have greatly affected their
judgment. And almost certainly the fact that the baronet's brother had
asked her to marry him would only have irritated them the more--and
perhaps with reason. Had he ever wanted to marry Molly? Maybe; she
never said so.
And here one must pause, to consider the interesting subject of Molly's
Relations with Men. It proved singularly lacking in richness. To
state that she had lived four years (as she did, ultimately) on the
staff of the largest New York daily newspaper, hanging personally over
the "forms" many a time, among the printers, from 10 P.M. until 3 A.M.,
walking home with the milk-carts in the lead-blue morning; sitting in
the outer office of one of the greatest city editors for three of these
years; studying every "first night," every picturesque slum, every
visiting or indigenous notoriety at close range--to catalogue a life
like this, add that it was the life of a handsome, well-dressed,
high-spirited girl, and pretend that it was an existence unqualified by
male adjectives, would be the merest absurdity.
I hear that from the tiniest, most impudent printer's devil up to the
Dean of College Presidents, who became so interested in her during his
famous interview of "_After Democracy--What?_" that his wife asked her
to luncheon and she spent the day with them, every man she encountered
"swore by her," as they say. In a novel, the editor-in-chief would
have married her and Eleanor would have been delighted; but in a novel
the editors-in-chief are handsome, athletic young bachelors (which
rarely occurs, as a matter of fact) or magnificent widowers whose first
marriages were tragic mistakes, so the emotional field is really clear.
Now Molly's editor-in-chief was, so far as is known, quite happy with
his wife, and his four daughters were not so much younger than Molly
herself. It is true, the art editor of the Sunday edition was supposed
to be pretty far gone, but he was married, too, and even his
stenographer, who was furiously jealous, admitted that Molly never gave
him the slightest encouragement. Such reporters as were free to do so
are generally credited with proposals in strict order of income (there
had to be some working system), but nothing but continued good feeling
ever came of it; and the French portrait-painter who spent three days
at the Metropolitan Art Museum with her out of the ten he vouchsafed
America, declared openly that she was perfectly cold, a charming,
clever boy in temperament--"absolutely insulated." And perhaps she
was. She always said that she knew too many men to take them too
seriously. And yet when Kathryn remarked once that it was encouraging
to observe how women were gradually growing independent of men, Molly
laughed consumedly. So there, as the great Anglo-American novelist
says, you are!
Living, as she did, alone, utterly unrestricted in her goings,
uncensored except by her own common-sense, one readily imagines that
there may have been scenes ... how could they have been avoided,
mankind being as it is? But if her house was of glass, it was, by its
very nature transparent, and I do not see how any one who didn't
deserve it could have kept the consistent respect of the entire force
of _The Day_.
On her twenty-eighth birthday she came home from a very gay supper at a
very gay restaurant with a hard pain at the back of her neck and a deep
wrinkle from it between her eyebrows. They had been harder of late,
these headaches, and lasted longer, and this one not only failed to
yield to the practised massage of her kindly housemaid, but baffled the
nearest doctor and left her, finally, a pallid, shaken creature, who
saw written on every wall in the little apartment, as she dragged
herself about it:
_I must not take any coal-tar preparation because my heart simply won't
stand it!_
"And let me tell you this, Miss Molly Dickett," said the great
specialist she had consulted as a matter of course (he ordered Trust
Magnates to Egypt and consulted at Presidents' bed-sides, and if Mrs.
Dickett had known that he never accepted a cent from Molly, what would
she have said?) "let me tell you this. You think you're a very
remarkable young woman, don't you?"
"Don't you, Dr. Stanchon?" Molly retorted placidly.
He patted her shoulder and capitulated. "But you ought to be spanked,
you know," he said. "Now, listen. For what was all this vitality and
endurance given you, my child?"
"If you mean twins," said Molly curtly, "I won't. There are plenty of
women to have twins, doctor."
"But there are not plenty of women to have _your_ twins," said he.
She grimaced and blew a saucy kiss to him.
"I see why they all want you!" she told him. "But, honestly, do
married women never have headaches?"
"There's no good being clever with me, child," he went on, a little
wearily (he seemed middle-aged beyond words to her). "You are making a
great mistake and when you find it out, it will in all probability be
too late to remedy it, worse luck! _That's_ the real harm of all this
Advanced Woman stuff: if you could only get it over before twenty-five!
But when you wake up, you're nearer forty, and then--what's the
difference?"
"I'll marry, then, maybe!"
"Dear child, it doesn't matter a continental what you do, then," he
said simply.