The day of Mrs. Faithful's funeral was the day that Beatrice O'Valley
had arranged to introduce Trudy Vondeplosshe to her bridge club, the
members of which were keen to see Gay's wife in order to prove whether
or not Bea's report concerning her was correct--that she was a clever
young person quite capable of taking care of both her own and Gay's
futures.
Beatrice particularly looked forward to the afternoon. Introducing
Trudy served as an attraction, and besides the hostess had telephoned
her that she had just received a box of Russian sweetmeats made by a
refugee who was starting life anew in New York, and two barrels of
china, each barrel containing but three plates and each plate being
valued at six hundred dollars. Furthermore, Beatrice was wearing an
afternoon costume that would demand no small share of attention, and
there was the additional joy of dazzling Trudy by her tapestry-lined
winter car. So when Steve reminded her in a matter-of-fact way that
the funeral services for Mrs. Faithful were to be at three she stared
in amazement.
"My dear boy, I am very sorry your secretary's muzzy has died--but I
cannot change my plans. I accepted for both Trudy Vondeplosshe and
myself more than a week ago."
Steve wondered if he had heard correctly. "You don't imagine for an
instant that Trudy will not go? She boarded there; they did
everything for her."
Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. "She was phoning me before lunch and
is all agog with excitement. Poor little thing, it means a lot for
her. She will be ready at three and I am to call for her."
"I don't think she understands the funeral is to-day. I know she is
heartless and shallow, but even she would scarcely omit such a duty."
Beatrice gave a long sigh. "Dear me, you ought to have been an
evangelist. I can't understand why you suddenly become punctilious and
altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and
wonder if I would marry you--you never cared who was dead or what
happened as long as you were secure."
"Quite true. But I have made a fortune and married you, and it is time
for other things."
"You are welcome to them," she said, quite enjoying the argument.
"Besides, I sent my card with the flowers."
"It isn't the same as going yourself, it is your duty to go, Bea. The
girl has taken the brunt of business while we played and she has only
the reward of a salary. Her mother has died, which means that her home
is gone. I call it thick to choose a bridge party instead of paying a
humane debt."
"Why am I dragged into it? She isn't working for me! Papa never asked
me to go when any of his people had relatives who died. I don't think
he ever went himself unless there was a claim to be adjusted."
"I shouldn't ask it if it were any one else--but Mary Faithful is
different."
"You are quite ardent in your defence of her. Be sensible, Steve.
What does it matter whether I go or don't go? I think it quite enough
if you appear. Now if she were in need of actual money----"
"Oh, certainly!" he said, bitterly. "That would give you the chance to
play off Lady Bountiful, drive up in state with your check book and
accept figurative kisses on the hand! But when a plain American
business girl who has served me more loyally than she has herself
loses her mother you won't be a few moments late at a bridge party in
order to pay her the respect employers should pay their employees. I
don't blame Trudy--I expect nothing of her--but I do blame you."
"So my plans are to be set aside----?"
"Plans!" he interrupted. "If someone else were to tell you that they
had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very
afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that
you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your
original hostess as well. That is about all your plans amount to."
Beatrice's eyes had grown slanting, shining with rage. "I wish you
would remember you are speaking to your wife and not to an employee. I
would not go to that funeral now if it meant--if it meant a divorce."
She pushed her chair back from the table--they were at luncheon--and
stood up indignantly.
Looking at her in her gay light chiffon with its traceries of gold
Steve wondered vaguely whether or not he had been wrong in selecting
his goal, whether he would ever be able really to understand this
Gorgeous Girl now that she belonged to him, or would discover that
there was nothing much to understand about her, that it could all be
summed up in the statement that her father by denying her a chance at
development had stunted the growth of her ability and her character
into raggle-taggle weeds of self-indulgence and willful temper.
"I shall not ask you to go with me," he knew he answered. It is quite
as terrifying to find that one's goal has been wrongly chosen and
ethically unsound as to find a boyhood dream merging into gorgeous
reality.
Beatrice swept out of the room. Steve made an elaborate pretense of
finishing his meal. Then he went into the drawing room in search of a
newspaper. He came upon Beatrice sitting on a floor cushion, feeding
Monster some bonbons.
"Have you been at her house?" she said, curiosity overcoming the
pique.
"Yes. Where is that paper? I dropped it in this chair when I came in
for luncheon."
"I had it taken away. I abominate newspapers in a drawing room--or
muddy shoes," she added, looking at his own. "What did she say? What
sort of a house is it?"
Steve stared at her in bewilderment. "What the devil difference does
it make to you?" he demanded, roughly.
She gave a little scream. "Don't you dare say such things to me." Then
she began to cry very prettily in a singsong, high-pitched voice.
"Monster--nobody loves us--nobody loves us--we can't have a merry
Christmas after all."
"I shan't be home for dinner," Steve added more politely. "Miss
Faithful's absence just now makes things quite rushed--I'll work until
late."
Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor.
"Oh, you are trying to punish me!"--pretending mock horror. "Stevuns
dear, don't mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to
understand. And I'll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding
for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads....
No? You won't let me fib? Horrid old thing--come and kiss me!... Ah,
you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy
shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale
tables--and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was
ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous
Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don't let the old funeral frazzle
you!"
Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too
seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether
his intuitive impression was correct--that Beatrice was not the sort
of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the
matter.
Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from
creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose
chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step
majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend,
for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car
through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back
and forth this same pathway twice a day.
Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of
eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any
of the customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told
him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers
on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the
face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had
ever been in life.
Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back
through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved
a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if
he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour
instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing
incessantly.
He was thinking about Mary Faithful's pleasant manner, the atmosphere
of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or
gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to
the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted
any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and
she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment
later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with
passing interest.
Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly
woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa
and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The
fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers,
the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there,
distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe
had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was,
to have such a sister.
Mary was about Beatrice's age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her
own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a
multitude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all
the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.
The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the
following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of
an excuse. He wanted to talk to her--not of business but of life,
of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help
her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help
him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with
him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss
Trudy's slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon
arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian
sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon
frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!
The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers
approached and halted before the cashier's cage. Steve began watching
them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding
behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting
slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of the
_High Blood Pressure Weekly_ lay at one side. What attracted Steve was
the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife!
Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock
with gold trimmings. Though it was December the toothpick point of a
white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian
necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier
was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice's general appearance. She had
the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her
eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the
customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she
spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become
owner of half a whitefish or so.
Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a
counterpart of Beatrice O'Valley was making change at Sullivan's Fish
Market--but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of
Beatrice O'Valley dressed and rouged--and acted very often--in such a
fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen
sought industriously to imitate them.
* * * * *
Luke showed his grief in the normal manner of any half-grown,
true-blue lad, singularly thoughtful of his sister's wishes, and
mentioning everyone and everything except their mother and her death.
"We won't give up having a home," Mary told him the night of the
funeral; "we'll move into a smaller place so I can take care of it."
"I guess I'll work pretty hard at school," was all he answered.
"Of course you will. I'm proud of you now, and if you work and show
you deserve it I'll help you through college."
Luke shook his head. "Takes too long before I could get to earning
real money. You ought to have it easy pretty soon."
"I love my work. Besides, you will live your own life, and so you
must grow up and love someone and marry her. I can't depend on any one
but myself," she added, a little bitterly.
Luke stared into the fire. Perhaps this tousle-haired, freckle-faced
boy surmised his sister's love-story. If so no one--least of all his
sister--should ever hear of the facts from his lips.
"I'm never going to get married. I want to make a lot of money like
Mr. O'Valley did--quick. Then we'll go and live in Europe and maybe
I'll get a steam yacht and we'll hunt for buried treasure," he could
not refrain from adding.
"All right, dear. Just work hard for now and be my pal; we'll let the
future take care of itself. Another thing--we want to have as merry a
Christmas as if mother were with us. It's the only thing to do or else
we'll find ourselves morbid and unable to keep going."
Shamed tears were stoically refused entrance into Luke's blue eyes. "I
guess I'll buy you a silver-backed comb and brush. I got some extra
money."
"Oh, Luke--dear!" Mary made the fatal error of trying to hug him. He
wriggled away.
"Trudy never came near us," he said, sternly.
Mary was silent.
"But Mr. O'Valley came like a regular----"
"Don't you think you ought to get to bed?" Mary changed the subject.
"Sleep in the room next to mine if you like."
"When are you coming upstairs?"
"Soon. I want to look over the letters."
Luke rose and pretended a nonchalant stretching.
"Are you going to the office right away?"
"Not until New Year's."
Something in the tired way she spoke evoked Luke's pity and sent him
away to smother his boy-man's grief by promises of a glorious future
in which his sister should live in the lap of luxury.
With its customary shock death had for the time being given Mary a
false estimate of her mother and herself, the usual neurasthenic
experience people undergo at such a time. It seemed, as she sat alone
by the fire, that she must have been a strangely selfish and
ungrateful child who misunderstood, neglected, and underestimated her
mother, and she would be forced to live with reproachful memories the
rest of her days. Each difference of opinion--and there had been
little else--which had risen between them was magnified into brutal
injustice on Mary's part and righteous indignation on her mother's.
This state of mind would find a proper readjustment in time but that
did not comfort Mary at the present moment. Her mother was dead, and
when a mother is gone so is the home unless someone bravely slips into
the absent one's place without delay and assumes its responsibilities
and credits. For Luke's sake this was what Mary had resolved to do.
As she could not sleep she rummaged in a cabinet containing old
letters and mementos, which added fuel to her self-reproach and
misery. She had borne up until now. Mary had always been the sort who
could meet a crisis. Reaction had set in and she felt weak and faulty,
longing for a strong shoulder upon which to cry and be forgiven for
her imagined shortcomings. As she read yellowed letters of bygone days
and lives, finding the record of a baby sister who had lived only a
few days and of whom she had been in ignorance, a scrap of her
mother's wedding gown, old tintypes--she realized that her family was
no more and that everyone needed a family, a group of related persons
whose interests, arguments, events, and achievements are of particular
benefit and importance each to the other and who unconsciously
challenge the world, no matter what secret disagreements there may be,
to disrupt them if they dare! Now only Luke and Mary comprised the
family.
After midnight Mary battled herself into the commonsense attitude of
going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she
found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though
her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not
utterly bereft of compensations.
Luke had thoughtfully risen early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get
breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake,
pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the
breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in
no half-hearted fashion.
The sun streamed through the starched window curtains, and even the
empty rocking-chair seemed serene in the relief from its morbid
burden. Christmas was only a few days away. Mary decided that they
should have a truly Christmas dinner, and that the words she had
bravely spoken as a three-year-old runaway, found a mile from home and
offered assistance by kindly strangers, should become quite true: "Not
anybody need take care of myself," Mary had declared in dauntless
fashion.
Later in the day Luke went to the office because Mary thought it best.
So when Steve called he found her alone, the same cheery fire burning
in the grate, the same posies blooming in their window pots, and the
smell of homemade bread pervading the house, Mary in a soft gray frock
presiding over the walnut secretary.
"I'm sorry not to be at the office," she began, thinking he had come
to persuade her to return. "Sit down. Well--you see," indicating the
stacks of addressed envelopes--"I really can't come back until after
the New Year. Do you mind? There is a great deal to be seen to here,
and I feel I've earned the right to loaf for a week. I want
particularly to make the holidays happy for Luke."
"Of course you do. Besides, you never had your vacation."
"We'll call this a vacation and I'll work extra hard to prove to you
that it was worth the granting." Still she did not understand that he
wanted to talk to her for the very comfort of her companionship, to
enjoy the fire, the smell of homemade bread, the atmosphere of shabby,
lovely, everyday plain living.
"We'll decide that later. I came to see just--you. Surprised? I wanted
to ask if there is anything I can do for you. I want to help if I
may."
"I've no exact plans. Just a definite idea of finding a small
apartment and making it as homey as possible. I loathe apartments
usually," she added, impulsively, "but we must have a home and I can't
assume a whole house. We will take our old things and fix them over,
and the worst of them we'll pass on to someone needing them badly
enough not to mind what they are." She was quite frank in admitting
the tortured walnut and the engravings.
"I'm glad you are not going to break up and board--though it's none
of my business. I brought some fruit. Do you mind?" He had been trying
to hide behind the chair a mammoth basket of fruit.
"No. How lovely of you and Mrs. O'Valley!"
"It was not possible for Mrs. O'Valley to come yesterday," he forced
himself to say. "She was very sorry and is going to call on you
later."
"Thank you," Mary answered, briefly.
"You have a nice old place here. Mind if I stroll about and stare? I
have very seldom been in rooms like this one. An orphan asylum, a
ranch, a hall bedroom, star boarder, a club, a better club, the young
palace--is my record. How different you seem in your home, Miss
Faithful. Perhaps it's the dress. I like soft gray----" he caught
himself in time.
Mary was blushing. She called his attention to some wood carving her
father had done. Presently Steve changed the subject back to himself.
"You don't know how I'd like a slice of homemade bread," he pleaded.
"Must I turn up my coat collar and go stand at the side door?"
"I made it because Luke had eaten nothing but pie and cake. You really
don't want just bread?"
"I do--two slices, thick, stepmother size, please."
It seemed quite unreal to Mary as she was finally prevailed upon to
bring in the tea wagon with the bread and jam trimmings to accompany
the steaming little kettle.
"Man alive," sighed Steve, stretching out leisurely, "I came to
console you and I'm being consoled and fed--in body and mind--made fit
for work.... I say, what do you think of letting the Boston merger be
made public at the banquet on----" He began a budget of business
detail upon which Mary commented, agreeing or objecting as she felt
inclined.
It was so easy to become clear-headed about work--details became
adjusted with magical speed--when one had a gray-eyed girl with a
tilted freckled nose sitting opposite. The soft gray dress played a
prominent part, too, even if the Gorgeous Girl would have been amused
at its style and material. Besides this, there was the wood fire, the
easy-chair with gay Turkey-red cushions designed for use and not
admiration, and no yapping spaniel getting tangled up in one's heels.
Before they realized it twilight arrived, and simultaneously they
began to be self-conscious and formal, telling themselves that this
would never do, no, indeed! Dear me, what queer things do happen all
in a day! Still, it would always be a splendid thing to remember.
Certainly it was more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous
Girl who had discovered that her maid had been reading her personal
notes.
"I sprinkled talcum powder on them and the powder is all smudged away,
so Jody has been spying. She is packing her things now and I shall
refuse any references. But who will ever take such good care of me,
Steve? And please get dressed; we are invited to the Marcus Baynes for
dinner. They have a wonderful poet from Greenwich Village who is
spending the holidays with them--long hair, green-velvet jacket,
cigar-box ukulele, and all. A darling! And I am going to take Monster
because he does black-and-white sketches and I want one of my ittey,
bittey dirl." And so on.
Certainly it was more pleasing than to have a shamed and confused
Trudy elegantly attired come dashing in with a jar of vanishing cream
as a peace offering, presumably to smooth out any wrinkles of grief,
and to explain hastily that it looked like a lack of feeling not to be
at the funeral but most certainly it was not--no, indeed; it was just
tending to business. She was sure Mary realized how essential it was
not to offend the Gorgeous Girl. How dreadful it was for poor Mary.
She, Trudy, had cried her old eyes out thinking about it. Did Mary get
the flowers she and Gay sent? She wished she could do something nice
for Mary. How would she like to have a black-satin dress made at cost
price? No? She wasn't going to wear mourning! Well, it was very brave
but it would certainly look queer and cause talk.... Gay's moustache
was coming on beautifully and no one at the bridge club had dared to
spoof her!
At least there was some excuse for the delivery on Christmas Day of a
parcel addressed to Miss Mary Faithful. It contained Steve's card,
some wonderful new books with an ivory paper knife slipped between
them. And when Mary wrote to thank him she found herself inclosing a
demure new silver dime, explaining:
"I must give you a coin because you gave me a knife, and unless I did
so the old superstition might come true--and cut our 'business
affections' right straight in two!"