During the summer the O'Valley Leather Company discovered that Mary
Faithful made quite as efficient a manager as Steve O'Valley himself.
Nor did she neglect any of a multitude of petty details--such as the
amount of ice needed for the water cooler, the judicious issue of
office supplies; the innovation of a rest-room for girls metamorphosed
out of a hitherto dingy storeroom; the eradication of friction between
two ancient bookkeepers who had come to regard the universe as against
them. Even the janitor's feelings were appeased by a few kind words
and a crossing of his palm with silver when Mary decided to houseclean
before Steve's return.
It is impossible for a business woman not to have feminine notions.
They stray into her routine existence like blades of pale grass
persistently shooting up between the cracks of paving blocks. Quite
frilly curtains adorned Mary's office windows, fresh flowers were kept
in a fragile vase, a marble bust of Dante guarded the filing cabinet,
and despite the general cleaning she used a special little silk duster
for her own knicknacks. On a table was a very simple tea service with
a brass samovar for days when the luncheon hour proved too stormy for
an outside excursion.
Sharing Steve with the Gorgeous Girl, Mary had decided to clean his
business home just as the Gorgeous Girl would have the apartment set
in spick-and-span order. It was during the general upsetting with
brooms, mops, paint pots, and what not, while Mary good-naturedly
tried to work at a standing desk, that Mark Constantine dropped in
unexpectedly.
"Gad!" he began, characteristically. "Thought I'd find you in your
cool and hospitable office inviting me to have a siesta." He mopped
his face with a huge silk handkerchief.
"Try it in a few days and we will be quite shipshape." Mary wheeled up
a chair for him. "Anything I can do for you?"
He sank down with relief; his fast-accumulating flesh made him awkward
and fond of lopping down at unexpected intervals. He glanced up at
this amazing young woman, crisp and cool in her blue muslin dress, the
tiny gold watch in a black silk guard being her only ornament. His
brows drew into what appeared to be a forbidding frown; he really
liked Mary, with her steady eyes somehow suggesting eternity and her
funny freckled nose destroying any such notion.
"How are you getting on?" was all he said.
"Splendidly. We expect Mr. O'Valley a week from Monday--but of course
you know that yourself."
"Gad," Constantine repeated.
"And how is Mr. Constantine?" Mary asked, almost graciously.
"In the hands of my enemy," he protested. "Bea left a hundred and one
things to be seen to. My sister has sprained her ankle and is out of
the running. It's the apartment that causes the trouble--Bea has sent
letter after letter telling what she wants us to do. I thought
everything was all set before she went away but--here!" He drew out
violet notepaper and handed it over. "Sorry to bother you, but when
that girl gets home and settled I hope she'll be able to tend to her
own affairs and leave us in peace. I guess you understand how women
are about settling a new house."
Reluctantly Mary deciphered the slanting, curlicue handwriting, which
said in part:
Now, papa dear, I'm terribly worried about the painted Chinese
wall panels for the little salon. They are likely to be the wrong
design. Jill has written that hers were. So please get the man to
give you a guarantee that he will correct any mistakes. I want you
to go to Brayton's and get white-and-gold jars that will look well
in the dining room--Brayton knows my tastes. Besides this, he is
to have two rose pots of old Wheldon ware for me--they will
contain electrically lighted flowers--like old-fashioned bouquets.
I wish you and aunty would drive out to the arts-and-crafts shop
and bid on the red lacquer cabinet and the French clock that is in
stock; I am sure no one has bought them. I could not decide
whether I wanted them or not until now, and I must have them. They
will tone in beautifully with the rugs.
Mary turned the page:
Also, Aunt Belle has not answered my letter asking her to order
the monogrammed stationery--four sizes, please, ashes of roses
shade and lined with gold tissue. I also told Aunt Belle to see
about relining my mink cape and muff. I shall wish to wear it very
early in the season, and I want something in a smart striped
effect with a pleated frill for the muff. And the little house for
Monster completely slipped my mind--Aunt Belle knows about
it--with a wind-harp sort of thing at one side and funny pictures
painted on the outside. I have changed my mind about the colour
scheme for the breakfast nook--I am going to have light gray,
almost a silver, and I would like some good pewter things.
It seems to me I shall never be rested. Steve wants to see every
sunrise and explore every trail. We have met quite nice people and
the dancing at the hotels is lovely. Oh, yes, if you need any help
I know Miss Faithful will be glad to help, and Gaylord has ripping
ideas.
Loads of love to you, dear papa. Your own
BEA.
Mary returned the letter without comment.
"Will you help me?" Constantine demanded almost piteously. "Belle's
out of the running, you know."
"I'm cleaning my own house," Mary began, looking at the surrounding
disorder, "but I can run up to the apartment with you and see what
must be done; though it seems to me----"
"Seems to you what, young woman?"
"--that your daughter would prefer to do these at her leisure--they
are so personal."
Constantine moved uneasily in his chair. "I guess women don't like to
do things these days"--rather disgruntled in general--"but she might
as well have asked an African medicine man as to ask me. What do I
know about red lacquered cabinets and relining fur capes? I just pay
for them."
Mary smiled. Something about his gruff, merciless personality had
always attracted her. She had sometimes suspected that the day would
come when she would be sorry for him--just why she did not know. She
had watched him from afar during the period of being his assistant
bookkeeper, and now, having risen with the fortunes of Steve O'Valley,
she faced him on an almost equal footing--another queer quirk of
American commerce.
She realized that his tense race after wealth had been in a sense
his strange manner of grieving for his wife. But his absolute
concentration along one line resulted in a lack of wisdom concerning
all other lines. Though he could figure to the fraction of a dollar
how to beat the game, play big-fish-swallow-little-fish and get
away with it, he had no more judgment as to his daughter's absurd
self than Monster, who had gone on the honeymoon wrapped in a new
silken blanket. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, as Mary
had decided during her early days of running errands for nervous
modistes who boxed her ears one moment and gave her a silk remnant
the next. Neither can a man put all his powers of action into one
channel, blinding himself to all else in the world, and expect to
emerge well balanced and normal in his judgments.
As Mary agreed to help Constantine out of his debris of French clocks
and pewter for the breakfast room she began to feel sorry for him even
if he was a business pirate--for he had paid an extremely high price
for the privilege of being made a fool of by his own child.
He escorted her to the limousine and they whirled up to the apartment
house, where in all the gray stone, iron grille work, hall-boy
elegance there now resided three couples of the Gorgeous Girl type,
and where Bea's apartment awaited her coming, the former tenants
having been forced to vacate in time to have the place completely
redone.
"I wouldn't ask Gaylord if I had to do it myself," Constantine said,
brushing by the maid who opened the door. "There is a young man we
could easily spare. If he ever gets as good a job as painting spots on
rocking-horses I'll eat my hat."
Mary was surveying the room. "Where--where do we go to from here?" she
faltered.
Constantine sank into a large chair, shaking his head. "Damned if I
know," he panted. "Look at that truck!"--pointing to piles of wedding
gifts.
Mary walked the length of the drawing room. It had black velvet panels
and a tan carpet with angora rugs spread at perilous intervals; there
was a flowered-silk chaise-longue, bright yellow damask furniture, and
an Italian-Renaissance screen before the marble fireplace.
Opening out of this was a salon--this was where the Chinese panels
were to find a haven--and already cream-and-gold furniture had been
placed at artistic angles with blue velvet hangings for an abrupt
contrast. There was a multitude of books bound in dove-coloured ooze;
cut glass, crystal, silver candelabra sprinkled throughout. Men were
working on fluted white satin window drapes, and Mary glanced toward
the dining room to view the antique mahogany and sparkle of plate.
Someone was fitting more hangings in the den, and a woman was
disputing with her co-worker as to the best place for the goldfish
globe and the co-worker was telling her that Monster's house was to
occupy the room--yes, Monster, the O'Valley dog--a pound and a half,
he weighed, and was subject to pneumonia. Here they began to laugh,
and someone else, knowing of Constantine's presence, discreetly closed
the door.
Flushing, Mary returned to the drawing room and standing before
Constantine's chair she said swiftly: "I'm afraid I cannot help you,
sir. I'm not this sort. I shouldn't be able to please. Besides, it is
robbing your daughter of a great joy--and a wonderful duty, if you
don't mind my saying it--this arranging of her own home. We have no
right to do it for her."
"She's asked us to do it," spluttered the big man.
"Then you will have to ask her to excuse me."
Mary was almost stern. It seemed quite enough to have to stay at her
post all summer, run the business and houseclean the office for his
return, without being expected to come into the Gorgeous Girl's realm
and do likewise. In this new atmosphere she began to feel old and
plain, quite impossible! The yellow damask furniture, the rugs, the
silver and gold and lovely extravagances seemed laughing at her and
suggesting: "Go back to your filing cabinet and your old-maid silk
dusting cloths, to your rest-rooms for girls, and to your arguments
with city salesmen. You have no more right here than she will ever
have in your office."
When Constantine would have argued further she threw back her head
defiantly, saying: "Someone explains the difference between men and
women by the fact that men swear and women scream, which is true as
far as it goes. But in these days you often find a screaming gentleman
and a profane lady--and there's a howdy-do! You can't ask the profane
lady--no matter if she is a right-hand business man--to come fix
pretties. You better write your daughter what I've said, and if you
don't mind I'd like to get back to the office."
Constantine rose, frowning down at her with an expression that would
have frightened a good many women stauncher than Mary Faithful. For
she had mentioned to him what no one, not even his sluggish
conscience, had ever hinted at--his daughter's duty.
But all he said was: "Profane ladies and screaming gentlemen. Well,
I've put a screaming-gentleman tag on Gaylord Vondeplosshe--but what
about yourself? Where are you attempting to classify?"
"Me? I'll be damned if I help you out," she laughed up at him as she
moved toward the door.
Chuckling, yet defeated, Constantine admitted her triumph and sent her
back to the office in the limousine.
At that identical moment Gaylord, alias the screaming gentleman, had
been summoned to Aunt Belle's bedside. For Beatrice believed in having
two strings to her bow and she had written her aunt a second deluge of
complaints and requests. Bemoaning the sprained ankle--and the
probable regaining of three pounds which had been laboriously massaged
away--Aunt Belle had called for Gaylord's sympathy and support.
While Mary, rather perturbed yet unshaken in her convictions, returned
to the office and Constantine had decided his blood pressure could not
stand any traipsing round after folderols, Gaylord was eagerly taking
notes and saying pretty nothings to the doleful Mrs. Todd, who relied
utterly on his artistic judgment and promptness of action.
Whereupon Gaylord proudly rolled out of the Constantine gates in a
motor car bearing Constantine's monogram, and by late afternoon he had
come to a most satisfactory understanding with decorators and antique
dealers--an understanding which led to an increase in the prices
Beatrice was to pay and the splitting of the profits between one
Gaylord Vondeplosshe and the tradesmen.
"A supper!" Mark Constantine demanded crisply that same evening,
merely groaning when his sister told him that Gaylord had undertaken
all the errands and was such a dear boy. "And send it up to my
room--ham, biscuits, pie, and iced coffee, and I'm not at home if the
lord mayor calls."
He departed to the plainest room in the mansion and turned on an
electric fan to keep him company. He sat watching the lawn men at
their work, wondering what he was to do with this barn of a place.
Beatrice had told him forcibly that she was not going to live in it.
Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself
when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and
luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered,
the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable
slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he
read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor
moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early
endeavour--of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the
reverie he would tell himself with a flash of honesty, "Gad, it might
as well have happened to some other fellow--for all the good it does
you." Nothing seemed real to Constantine except his check book and his
wife's monument.
It was still to dawn upon him that his daughter partly despised him.
He had always said that no one loved him but his child, and that no
one but his child mattered so far as he was concerned. Since
Beatrice's marriage he had become restless, wretched, desperately
lonesome; he found himself missing Steve quite as much as he missed
Beatrice. Their letters were unsatisfactory since they were chiefly
concerned with things--endless things that they coveted or had bought
or wanted in readiness for their return. As he sat watching the lawn
men gossip he knitted his black brows and wondered if he ought to sell
the mansion and be done with it. Then it occurred to him that
grandchildren playing on the velvety lawn would make it quite worth
while. With a thrill of anticipation he began to plan for his
grandchildren and to wonder if they, too, would be eternally concerned
with things.
As he recalled Mary's defiance he chuckled. "A ten-dollar-a-week raise
was cheap for such a woman," he thought.
Meantime, Trudy informed the Faithful family at supper: "Gay has
telephoned that he is coming to-night. Were you going to use the
parlour, Mary?" A mere formality always observed for no reason at
all.
"No, I'm going to water the garden. It's as dry as Sahara."
Luke groaned.
"Don't make Luke help you. He's stoop-shouldered enough from study
without making him carry sprinkling cans," Mrs. Faithful objected.
"Nonsense! It's good for him, and he will be through in an hour."
"Too late for the first movie show," expostulated Luke.
"A world tragedy," his sister answered.
"I wanted to go to-night," her mother insisted. "It's a lovely story.
Mrs. Bowen was in to tell me about it--all about a Russian war bride.
They built a whole town and burnt it up at the end of the story. I
guess it cost half a million--and there's fighting in it, too."
"All right, go and take Luke. But I don't think the movies are as good
for him as working in a garden."
"You never want me to have pleasure. Home all day with only memories
of the dead for company, and then you come in as cross as a witch,
ready to stick your nose in a book or go dig in the mud! Excuse me,
Trudy, but a body has to speak out sometimes. Your father to the
life--reading and grubbing with plants. Oh, mother's proud of you,
Mary, but if you would only get yourself up a little smarter and go
out with young people you'd soon enough want Luke to go out, too! I
don't pretend to know what your judgment toward your poor old mother
would be!"
Mary's day had included a dispute with a firm's London representative,
the Constantine incident, a session at the dentist's as a noon-recess
attraction, housecleaning the office, and two mutually contradictory
wires from Steve. She laid her knife and fork down with a defiant
little clatter.
"I can't burn the candle at both ends. I work all day and I have to
relax when I leave the office. If my form of a good time is to read or
set out primroses it is nothing to cry thief for, is it? I want you to
go out, mother, as you very well know. And you are welcome to fill the
house with company. Only if I'm to do a man's work and earn his wage I
must claim my spare time for myself."
"Now listen here, dear," interposed Trudy, who took Mary's part when
it came to a real argument, "don't get peeved. Let me buy your next
dress and show you how to dance. You'll be surprised what a difference
it will make. You'll get so you just hate ever to think of work."
"Splendid! Who will pay the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?"
Mary thought of the wedding presents carelessly stacked about
Beatrice's apartment. One pile of them, as she measured expenses,
would have paid the aforementioned gentlemen for a year or more.
"Now you've got her going," Luke objected. "Say, Trudy, you don't kill
yourself tearing off any work at the shop!"
"Luke," began his mother, "be a gentleman. Dear me, I wish I hadn't
said a word. To think of my children in business! Why, Luke ought to
be attending a private school and going to little cotillion parties
like my brothers did; and Mary in her own home." She pressed her
napkin to her eyes.
"I admit Mary carries me along on the pay roll--I'm Mary's foolishness,"
Trudy said, easily. "Mary's a good scout even if she does keep us
stepping. She has to fall down once in a while, and she fell hard when
she hired me and took me in as a boarder."
Mary flushed. "I try to make you do your share," she began, "and----"
"I ought to pay more board," Trudy giggled at her own audacity. "But I
won't. You're too decent to make me. You know I'm such a funny fool
I'd go jump in the river if I got blue or things went wrong, and you
like me well enough to not want that. Don't worry about our Mary, Mrs.
Faithful. Just let her manage Luke and he won't wander from her apron
strings like he will if you and I keep him in tow."
Luke made a low bow, scraping his chair back from the table. "I'll go
ahead and get reserved seats and mother can come when she's ready," he
proposed.
Mrs. Faithful beamed with triumph. "That's my son! Get them far enough
back, the pictures blur if I'm too close."
"I'll do the dishes," Mary said, briefly. "Go and get ready."
"I'd wipe them only Gay is coming so early," Trudy explained, glibly.
"I'd rather be alone." Mary was piling up the pots and pans.
"Now, deary, if you don't feel right about mother's going," her mother
resumed a little later as she poked her head into the kitchen, "just
say so. But I certainly want to see that town burnt up; and besides,
it's teaching Luke history. Dear me, your hair is dull. Why don't you
try that stuff Trudy uses?"
"Because I'm not Trudy. Good-bye."
"You're all nerves again. I'd certainly let someone else do the
work."
"I need a vacation."
"That means you want to get away from us. Well, I try to keep the home
together. Leave that coffeepot just as it is, I'll want a drop when I
get back." Waddling out the door Mrs. Faithful left Mary to assault
the dishes and long for Steve's return.
"I wonder why the great plan did not make it possible for all folks to
like their relatives?" she asked herself as she finally hung the tea
towels on the line; "or their star boarder?"
Then she became engrossed in the way the newly set out plants had
taken root. Bending over the flower beds she was hardly conscious that
darkness had fallen over the earth--a heavenly, summer-cool darkness
with veiled stars prophetic of a blessed shower. She repaired to the
porch swing to dream her dreams of fluffs and frills, arrange a dream
house and live therein. It should be quite unlike the Gorgeous Girl's
apartment--but a roomy, sprawling affair with old furniture that was
used and loved and shabby, well-read books, carefully chosen pictures,
dull rugs, and oddly shaped lamps, a shaggy old dog to lie before the
open fireplace and be patted occasionally, fat blue jugs of Ragged
Robin roses at frequent intervals. Perhaps there would be a baby's toy
left somewhere along the stairway leading to the nursery. When one has
the cool of a summer's night, a porch screened with roses and a
comfortable swing, what does it matter if there are unlikable persons
and china-shop apartment houses?
Had Mary known what was taking place in the front parlour it would not
have jarred her from her dreams. For Gaylord, resplendent in ice-cream
flannels, and Trudy, wearing an unpaid-for black-satin dress with red
collar and cuffs, were both busier than the proverbial beaver planning
their wedding. It was to be an informal and unexpected little affair,
being the direct result of the Gorgeous Girl's demands as to settling
her household.
"You've no idea how jolly easy it was, Babseley. There was a dressing
case I know Bea will keep--it brought me a cool hundred commission--it
had just come in. I plunged and bought two altar scarfs she can use
for her reading stand--she likes such things, besides all the
bona-fide orders. I've been working for fair--and I've made over a
thousand dollars."
Trudy kissed Bubseley between his pale little eyes. "You Lamb! Sure
you won't have to give it back or that they will tell?"
"Of course not! They'd give their own selves away. That's the way such
things are always done, y'know. I've an idea that I'll go in seriously
for the business by and by. I don't feel any compunction; I'm entitled
to every cent of it; in fact, I call it cheap for Bea at a thousand."
"But will they really pay you?" Trudy was skeptical. It seemed such a
prodigious amount for buying a few trifles.
"The Constantine credit is like the Bank of England. I'll have my
money and we'll make our getaway before Bea arrives in town."
"Why?" Trudy did not approve of this. The contrast between her
marriage and the Gorgeous Girl's wedding rankled.
Gay hesitated. "I want to go to New York and see concert managers and
father's friends," he evaded. "Then we'll visit my sister in
Connecticut as long as she'll have us. And when we come back--well,
you'll--you'll know the smart ways better."
He was a trifle afraid of Trudy and he did not know how best to advise
her that her slips in speech and manners would be more easily remedied
by setting her an example of the correct thing than by staying in
Hanover and leading a cat-and-dog life, getting nowhere at all.
Trudy kissed him again. "Hurrah for the eternal frolic!" she said,
adding: "But we'll know Beatrice and Steve socially, won't we?"
"Of course!" he said, in helpless concession.
His one-cylinder little brain had not yet reckoned with Trudy's
determination to conquer the social arena. He knew he must have her to
help him; his efforts with creditors were failing sadly of late.
Besides, he admired her tremendously; he felt like a rake and a deuce
of a chap when they went out together, and he relied on her
vivacity--Pep had been his pet name for her before he originated
Babseley--to carry him through. It really would be quite an easy
matter to live on nothing a year until something turned up. The graft
from Beatrice was the open sesame, however, and the Gorgeous Girl
would never suspect the truth.
"Keep right on working hard," Trudy said, fondly, as they kissed each
other good-night. "I'll tell Mary to-morrow. I want to leave my big
trunk here because we might want to stay here for a few days when we
come back."
"Never!"--masterfully pointing his cane at the moon. "My wife is going
to have her own apartment. One of father's friends has built several
apartment houses and he'll be sure to let me in."
"Are we dreaming?" Trudy asked, thinking of how indebted she was to
Beatrice O'Valley, yet how she envied and hated her.
"No, Babseley, I'll phone you to-morrow and come down. If you see me
flying about in a machine don't be surprised; I'm to use their big car
as much as I like. But it would be a little thick to have us seen
together--just yet."
"I'll see that the whole social set gets a draft from me that will
open their eyes," Trudy promised, loath to have him go.
"If old man Constantine knew I drew that money down!" Gay chuckled
with delight. "When his favourite after-dinner story is to tell
how Steve O'Valley lay on his stomach and watched goats for an
education."
"I'd hate to have my finger between his teeth when he learns the
truth," Trudy prompted.
She spent half the night taking inventory of her wardrobe, her debts,
and her personal charms, practising airs and graces before her mirror
and calculating how long the thousand would last them. All the world
was before her, to Trudy's way of thinking. She would be Mrs. Gaylord
Vondeplosshe, and with Gay's name and her brain--well, to give Trudy's
own sentiments, they would soon be able to carry the whole show in
their grip and use the baggage cars to bring back the profits!