Author of "Corrie Who?" etc.
Like so many others of her class, Stella Willoughby was a
satisfied, confident woman, placidly aware of the station her
husband's money assured to her. For Willoughby was accounted
wealthy even in this lake town, where riches were so much in
evidence; and if the wife betrayed a cool superiority because of
his money, it was only natural, perhaps, since she and most of
her associates knew no other means of gauging success, or worth,
or the individual's place in life. Looking over her shoulder now,
she glanced nonchalantly across the club dining-room.
"You mean those people--the Severances, Mrs. Kinsman?" There was
a bland indifference in her tone that made the guest beside Mrs.
Willoughby look at her curiously, for she knew that Severance had
once been a suitor for Mrs. Willoughby's hand. "I believe we did
know them before they dropped out. He lost everything, didn't
he?--went to smash, as I vaguely remember."
Still with the same air of unconcern, she dipped the tips of her
fingers in the finger-bowl, and prepared to rise. "Queer they
should come back here, isn't it?" she commented idly; and then,
as if the subject had passed from her mind with the observation,
Mrs. Willoughby pushed back her chair in signal to her guests,
and led the way from the room. In the hall, while the maid was
putting on her wraps, she turned and looked back, still idly as
before. Her eyes, traveling about, rested a moment on the man
sitting at the distant table, and then, when he half rose from
his place as if to bow, they journeyed on again, coolly
unconcerned. A moment later, smiling gayly, she walked down the
steps to her carriage, and, with her guests, was driven away to
the theatre.
Yet, somehow, in spite of this sureness of speech and manner, the
sight of her old-time suitor had wakened in Mrs. Willoughby the
subtle discontent that occasionally affected her--the discontent
of women who have only themselves to think about. One might have
said that at these times she was subconsciously wearied of her
form of life; that, in so many words, though ignorant of the
fact, though, consciously, her vacuous life immensely satisfied
her, she was BORED. But to-day, bluntly speaking, it was about
her husband that her vague dissatisfaction centered; and when she
had glanced coolly at her former suitor, it was for the purpose
of comparison.
Willoughby was a fair type of the money-getter. Furthermore, what
he had built had been raised by his own hands unaided; he was a
self-made man, whose one boast was that he owed nothing to any
one, not even so little as a debt of gratitude. One realized the
fact, too, in the way he carried on his affairs; for in his
business he was alert and determined, implacably pursuing his
money-making as if it were a warfare, and considerate of none but
those joined with him in the moment's harvesting venture. Perhaps
his reasons were sufficient--who knows? Perhaps Willoughby was as
well aware as they that the friends of to-day might reasonably
become the enemies of to-morrow.
But at home the money gathered so ruthlessly elsewhere was thrown
about with a lavish hand. Nothing that wealth could provide was
denied Mrs. Willoughby or her boy; and though she had been poor
when she married, money, in the mere crudity of having it to
spend, had long since lost its novelty. To-day, beyond the pride
of having it, and beyond the luxury and ostentation it could buy,
money possessed for her a far greater significance in its power
to make one powerful. In that she had already tasted the
illogical enjoyment of one that can obtain power in no other way.
And it was because of this place that his money had bought her
that Mrs. Willoughby began to look on her husband with a critical
eye.
For she was an ambitious woman, though one with definite
limitations. Among different surroundings and in an atmosphere
less sordidly striving and commonplace, she was fitted to have
become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly
inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow,
money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them,
primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her
father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though
he had failed, to the last he had been goaded on by his one
eager, grasping hope. He had drummed into her head the single
lesson that without money one is nothing.
In itself it suggested to the few a plausible reason why she had
married Willoughby. There had been nothing openly unhappy in
their life together. Still, as others saw, Willoughby was much
older than his wife, radically without her social instincts, and,
furthermore, when she had accepted him, it had been pretty
generally understood that Severance had won her heart.
And now, as she sat back in her carriage, remembrance came
rapping like an unwelcome, unadmitted visitant. She tried to put
it away by chattering smartly; the theatre-wagon rolled along to
the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt; but through it all the
troublous knocking persistently recurred. For this was one of the
few times when she had lingered upon a thought of that first
romance of hers; and now, coupled with her hardening criticism of
Willoughby, it brought forth insistent questions.
Whether she had really loved her husband when she married him, or
whether she had not instead been dazzled by his peculiar
abilities remained in doubt.
Severance had come first; he had a little money to begin, and he
was doing well with it and seemed on the road to do better.
Therefore, her friends were secure in the belief that she would
marry him, when Willoughby had made his appearance.
He went at this love-making of his as he went at all his
affairs--implacably bold and ruthlessly sweeping aside whoever or
whatever came into his way. The fact that he and Severance were
considered friends seemed to have counted little; and when, a few
months later, it was learned that she had dropped one to take the
other, it was also learned that Severance had played at ducks and
drakes with his money. Briefly, he had become bankrupt in a
mining deal. He and others, Willoughby among them, had gone into
a Wyoming copper prospect--the Teton Sisters Company--and while
Willoughby apparently got off without damage, Severance had
dropped everything. How, was never clearly understood. Severance
and his sister had parted with their home to satisfy his
creditors, and then moved away.
In the twelve years of the Willoughbys' married life, the tide of
money had kept steadfastly on the flood. Nothing his hands
touched seemed to fail him. He had his fingers in every kind of
venture--mines and mills, foundries and furnaces, steam roads,
trolley lines and public utilities; and to each and every one of
these promotions, the name of Willoughby affixed the hall-mark of
success. Now his dollars jingled in every state of the Union--and
they jingled in his own home, too, almost as the only evidences
that the home was his. For Willoughby, pursuing money everywhere,
seemed to have lost interest in all else but his money-grubbing,
just as Willoughby's wife, excepting for the same money-grubbing,
seemed to have lost all interest in him.
And now she had looked at Severance; her eyes had rested on him
long enough to make comparisons--Severance much improved, cool,
suave, presentable, and deferential; her husband big and
masterful, a brooding, preoccupied man, and a kind of Orson to be
kept denned in his money caves. She sighed to herself
regretfully.
Some minutes after Mrs. Willoughby had found her seat in the
theatre box she was aware of another party coming down the aisle.
"Hello!" exclaimed the man beside her, "here come Hudson Mills
and his wife with Case Severance. I didn't know he was in town."
Mrs. Willoughby laid a gloved finger to her lips and affected to
yawn, though she stole a glance out of the corner of her eye. Her
guest was now nodding over her shoulder at the arrivals in the
seats below.
"Severance has made a ten-strike, I hear," he volunteered, in an
expressive, if inelegant, idiom of the money game; "there's a
story going the rounds that Mills and Severance have been gunning
together and that some one else got burned. Anyway, I hear
they've lined their pockets. Severance is rich again."
This mixed metaphor affected Mrs. Willoughby with a curious
interest. "Oh, is he!" she exclaimed, and, glancing down, she
looked unexpectedly into Severance's watching eyes.
But she seemed not in the least disconcerted. Severance was just
turning away, mindful of the previous snub, when, with a
reassuring smile, she bowed, and then smiled again. For why not?
Severance's position had been reestablished in her world.
It was late that night when Mrs. Willoughby returned home. There
was a light in her husband's library, and before going to her
room she stopped and tapped at the door. Willoughby, with a pile
of papers stacked before him, sat with his chin in his hand,
staring absently at the wall. As the door opened, he turned for a
moment, and then, seeing who it was, thrust his hands into his
pockets and slouched down in his chair. "Well?" he murmured,
absently.
Mrs. Willoughby, slipping out of her wrap, dropped into a
convenient seat.
"Are you still at it? It's nearly one o'clock, Harmon." Yawning
slightly, she wriggled her feet out of her carriage slippers and
kicked them under her chair. Willoughby looked up, silently
watching her, and a momentary small shadow crept into his face.
Yet the shadow, small as it was, could not have been because of
any flaw in his wife's appearance. Mrs. Willoughby was still
young and fair to look upon, clear-eyed and almost girlish, her
rounded, regular features set off picturesquely by her hat and
its flowing purple plumes, even though both hat and plumes were
extravagant in size. Willoughby must have known another reason to
frown.
"Where've you been?" he demanded, heavily, his voice bare of any
interest. He was a large, florid man, heavily built,
square-jawed, and with the deep, scrutinous eyes of one aware of
his own power and accustomed to enforce it. But now his eyes
seemed listless, as if weary of the strain that had kept them so
long on the alert.
"I? At the club," she answered, briefly. Though her own home was
large and amply appointed, few were ever asked there to anything
more formal than a luncheon or an afternoon at bridge. Home
hospitality and the housekeeping it involved had long since
become a bore to her; like many others in her set, she had
learned to square her obligations through the convenience of her
husband's club. The hospitality there entailed no other bother
than paying the bills. "Just dinner at the club, and the theatre
afterward."
She stripped off her long gloves and dropped them to the floor
beside her carriage slippers. Again her husband studied her,
almost covertly, one might have thought.
"Any one there?" Willoughby began absently to pick at the edges
of the papers on his desk.
She shook her head. "No one you'd care about, I think. There were
only three tables besides mine. Mrs. Chardon and her daughter
with some of her young friends, and then--" Mrs. Willoughby
closely inspected one of her rubies. "The Severances are back in
town, Harmon. He and his sister were there with Hudson Mills and
his wife."
"Severance--with MILLS!" cried her husband, lifting his head
alertly. It was not often that Mrs. Willoughby's talk with him
evoked such instant attention. "See here, Stella, are you sure it
was Severance?"
"Sure? Sure whether it was Severance? Why, of course I am!" she
answered petulantly. She and her husband had never discussed the
man, and it seemed a late day now to begin. "What in the world
is--?" she began, and then desisted. Willoughby, slouched down in
his chair again, had dropped his chin on his breast and was
nervously gnawing his lip.
His wife leaned over and gathered up slippers and gloves. "I
think I'll go to bed," she murmured carelessly, and wandered
toward the door. Willoughby made no response, and she turned and
slowly came back. A calendar hanging from the gas bracket had
fallen a little aslant, and she reached up and critically
straightened it. "Harmon, I hear Case Severance is rich again. I
wonder how he managed it."
"Hey? Who?" Willoughby jerked up his head as if startled from a
dream--and not a very pretty dream, either, if one might judge
from his countenance. "Oh, you mean HIM," he uttered thickly.
"How do I know. I suppose he's been up to some of his games
again." An almost savage dislike and contempt evidenced
themselves in his tone, and pushing back his chair, he picked up
his papers and arose. "You'd better go to bed Stella," he
suggested brusquely, averting his eyes from her quick scrutiny;
"I've got a lot of work here."
She laid a hand on his arm. "What's wrong with you?" she asked
intently. There was alertness in the question, rather than
responsive softness. Willoughby drew a hand across his mouth.
"Nothing's wrong Stella. I've had a hard day. Aren't you going?"
"Yes--in just a moment." She had moved toward the door again, and
now was standing with her hand on the knob. "It's Willard's
birthday next Wednesday." Willard was their boy. "He'll be
eleven, an he wants an electric runabout. The Doane boys have
one, and he's just crazy about it We'd better let him have it."
Willoughby frowned, and irritably ruffled the papers in his hand.
"A runabout. No; he sha'n't have it. He's too young, and
besides----"
"Oh, nonsense, Harmon!"
Willoughby fluttered his papers more irritably than before.
"Well, he can't have it; that's all I have to say." Ordinarily,
he gave to her and the boy what they wished, never questioning
the cost or character of what they bought "Eleven, and wants an
automobile!" he commented, sullenly. "When I was his age I was
working day and night to support my----"
"Yes, I know, Harmon," interrupted Mrs. Willoughby, affecting to
stifle a yawn "but Willard, fortunately, doesn't have to think of
that."
Mrs. Willoughby gave her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and
went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments
later, she heard the front door slam. Willoughby had gone out.
He was away for nearly a week; and when he returned, his eyes
were heavy and blood-shot, his face was pallid and wearily drawn.
"Well, so you are back. What have you been doing?" Mrs.
Willoughby asked, perfunctorily. Though it was late in the
morning she was still in bed, sitting up in a dressing sack, and
turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of
local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of
a dance she was to give shortly--at the club, as usual--and she
had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and
unctuous phrasing.
He answered evasively, "Oh, just away on business." As he walked
to the window and looked out, she carelessly turned the pages.
"Stella, what did you do for the boy's birthday?" he asked,
slowly pacing back to the foot of the bed.
She turned another page. "The boy? Oh, I gave him some money, and
sent him down-town with the coachman. I was too busy." Smiling
lightly, she went on glancing through the paper. "I suspect he
stuffed himself on candy."
But there was no answering smile on Willoughby's face. "On candy?
How much did you give him?"
Without looking up, she answered as lightly as before. "Oh, I
can't remember now. Let me think." Then she vaguely named an
amount, and Willoughby pressed his lips together.
"Stella," he said slowly, after a moment's darkening of his eyes,
"do you know that amounts to a week's salary of more than one of
my clerks? Don't you think it was a great deal to give a boy?"
She looked up now, astonished--a little vexed, too; for this was
the second time he had questioned her use of money. "Well, what
of it? It seems of little consequence." She buried her face in
the paper again after this shot, and Willoughby stared at her.
"No," he murmured, reflectively, an alarming bitterness in his
voice; "nothing seems of any consequence."
As she glanced casually over the top of her paper, she saw him
draw a hand across his face; but, still vexed, she took no
warning from the sign. "Well, there's no need of making a fuss,
is there?" she asked, rebukingly. Thus showing how distasteful
the subject had become, and, having had her say, she instantly
changed the topic. "You're coming home Thursday night, aren't
you?"