To keep down the rising tide of overweight Beatrice abandoned the
occult method of having a good time and turned her interest to new
creeds containing continual bogus joy and a denial of the vicarious
theory of life. But when she discovered that optimism was no deterrent
to the oncoming tide of flesh she began a vigorous course in face
bleaching, reducing, massage, and electrical treatments, with Trudy
playing attentive friend and confidante and secretly chuckling over
the Gorgeous Girl's fast-appearing double chin and her disappearing
waistline.
The extensive work of making the house into an Italian villa kept
Beatrice from brooding too much over her _embonpoint_. She enjoyed the
endless conferences with the decorators, drapers, artists, and
who-nots, with Gay's suave, flattering little self always at her
elbow, his tactful remarks about So-and-so being altogether too thin,
and the wonderful nutritive value of chocolate.
"Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty," he told Trudy soon
after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near.
"She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas
Day. Why doesn't someone tell her to stop?"
Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from
the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come;
Alice Twill's idea of a French chateau, however, had blown up
unexpectedly.
"Well, why don't people tell you that you look an utter fool with that
extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?"
Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she
saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant
attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by
flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had
moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary's
secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit.
It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think
for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating
herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So
she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her.
Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still
used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at
snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.
It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure--it almost
gave her a hold on her, she fancied--for Beatrice sighed with envy at
Trudy's one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for
eating candy.
"Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin," she told Steve.
"Yes; but she works and you don't. You don't even pay a gymnasium
instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself
if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator," he
continued.
Beatrice looked at him in scorn. "Do I ever please you?"
"You married me," he said, gallantly.
"When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I'm afraid,"
was his reward. "I wish you would study French--you have such a queer
education you can't help having queer ideas. And you can't always go
along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn't room for two
in the same family."
"Do you know the Bible?" he demanded.
Beatrice giggled.
"There you are! You think I haven't studied in my own fashion. Well,
if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton----"
"It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don't, Stevuns! Do you
know the latest dance from Spain--the _paso-doble_? Of course you
don't. You don't know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to
tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You
haven't read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when
they're mentioned. You won't play bridge, you can't sing or make
shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you've
made a fortune--enjoy it!"
Steve was silent. It was not only futile to argue--it was nerve-racking.
Besides, he had found someone else with whom argument was a rare joy
and a personal gain--Mary Faithful. At frequent intervals he had won a
welcome at the doorway of the little apartment. He almost wished that
Beatrice would find it out and row about it, leaving him in peace. He
had not yet assumed unselfish views as to the matter. He was no
longer in love with his wife but he was not yet in love with Mary.
Instead he was passing through that interlude, whose brevity has made
the world doubt its existence, known as platonic friendship.
Platonic friendship does exist but it is like tropical twilight--the
one whirlwind second in which brilliant sunshine and blue skies dip
down and the stars and the moon dash up--and then the trick is done!
But like the thief who audaciously walks by the house of his victim,
Steve was never accused of anything worse than using his leisure time
to frequent those low restaurants where they serve everything on a
two-inch-thick platter. Which, he had retorted, was a relief from
eating turtle steak off green-glass dinner plates.
The first wedding anniversary was a rather disappointing affair since
Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That
fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called
out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck
brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms of
reproach.
"Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away,"
her father said by way of clumsy consolation. "And he bought you a
mighty handsome gift."
"But I have one quite as lovely," Beatrice objected. "It was
unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let
the police arrest everybody."
She laid aside the gift, a glittering head-dress in the form of
platinum Mercury wings set with diamonds, fitting close to the head
and giving a decided Brunnhilde effect. "I hate duplicates; I always
want something different and novel."
"It's a good thing I gave you a check," said her father.
"Yes, because Gay can always find me something"--brightening. "And
tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?"
Her father held up his hands in protest. "Ask something easy. A mob of
workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers'
assistants--that's all I know. But not one of them touches my room!"
"All right, papa." She kissed him prettily. "And as I'm dead for sleep
and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run
along?"
Summoning Aunt Belle, who was approaching the Mrs. Skewton stage of
wanting a continuous rose-curtain effect, Beatrice stood at the window
with unusual affection to wave the last of her guests a good-bye.
She sat up until daylight, to her maid's dismay, still in her
remodelled wedding gown. She was thinking chaotic, rebellious,
ridiculous nothings, punctuated with uneven ragged thoughts about
matching gloves to gowns or getting potted goose livers at the
East-Side store Trudy had just recommended. The general trend of her
reverie was the dissatisfaction not over this first year of
married life but at the twenty-seven years as a Gorgeous Girl, the
disappointment at not having some vital impelling thing to do,
which should of course supply a good time as well as a desirable
achievement. The inherited energy was demanding an outlet. She
recalled the evening's entertainment--a paper chase with every
room left littered and disordered, her lace flounce badly torn,
her head thumping with pain, the latest dances, the inane music, the
scandal whispered between numbers, the elaborate supper and favours,
the elaborate farewells--and the elaborate lies about the charm of
the hostess and the good time.
She began to envy Steve as well as Trudy, Steve in his hotel busy with
Labour delegates, wrangling, demanding, threatening, winning or losing
as the case might be. She, too, must do something. She had finished
with another series of adventures--that of being a mad butterfly. It
was shelved with the months of a romantic, parasitical existence
misnaming jealous monopoly as love, an existence which all at once
seemed as long ago as another lifetime.
She would now be an advanced woman, intellectual, daring; she would
allow her stunted abilities to have definite expression. Either she
would find a new circle of friends or else swerve the course of the
present circle into an atmosphere of Ibsen, Pater, advanced feminine
thought, and so on--with Egyptology as a special side line. She would
even become an advocate of parlour socialism, perhaps. She would
encourage languid poets and sarcastic sex novelists with matted hair
and puff satin ties. She would seek out short-haired mannish women
with theories and oodles of unpublished short stories, and feed them
well, opening her house for their drawing-room talks. She would be a
lion tamer! She was done with sighing and tears, belonging to the
first stage of Glorious Girlism; and with pouting and flirting, which
belonged to the second--she would now make them roar, herself
included!
At noon the next day she sought Mary Faithful in her office, to
everyone's surprise. To her own astonishment she discovered her
husband busily engaged in conversation with some members of the Board
of Trade, his travelling bag on a side table.
"I didn't bother to telephone you or wire--I got in at eight this
morning and came right up here. I knew you'd not be up," he added,
curtly. "Would you mind waiting in Miss Faithful's office until I'm at
liberty?"
Beatrice was forced to consent graciously and pass into the other
room, where Mary was giving dictation.
When Mary finished she offered Beatrice a magazine but the Gorgeous
Girl declined it and began in petulant fashion:
"I've been thinking about you, Miss Faithful, and I do envy you. Do
you know why? You have more of my husband than I have; that was what I
came to tell you. For business is his very life and you are his
business partner. I only have the tired remnant that occasionally
wanders homeward."
Mary wondered what Beatrice would say if she knew of the supper talks
she had had with the tired remnant, who flung discretion to the winds
and clamoured for invitations as keenly as he had once begged for the
Gorgeous Girl's kisses.
"Oh, no, that's not true. You see----" she began, but she simply could
not finish the lie.
"I've decided that if business is more important to my husband than
his wedding anniversary I shall be of importance to him in his
business," she continued. "Be careful--you've a rival looming ahead."
Steve opened the door and nodded for his wife to come in. Mary was
left with rather unsteady nerves and a pessimistic attitude to round
out her day. Beatrice's hint had had an unpleasant petty sound that
she did not quite understand. She wished she had never allowed Steve
to draw her out of her businesslike attitude. However, when she
learned that he had very unexpectedly called off work for the rest of
the day to do his wife's bidding she told herself she was needlessly
alarmed, though it was always a rash thing to try exchanging her
heartache for a temporary joyful mirage!
The next evening, when Mary was in the throes of explaining this thing
in guarded fashion to Steve and Steve was arguing angrily and begging
for his welcome, Trudy Vondeplosshe happened in unexpectedly and very
much rejoiced inwardly at finding this delightful little tete-a-tete
in full progress.
Of course the couple gave business and the recent strike as an
alarming necessity for a private conference, and then Steve scuttled
away, leaving Mary to try to look unconscious and change the subject
to Trudy's new hat. But ever mindful of Mary's confession Trudy was
not to be swerved from the topic.
"I'm glad Beatrice was not with me," she said, sweetly, "for like all
heartless flirts she is jealous--ashamed of Steve half of the time and
mad about him the other half. I'd try to have the business all
transacted at the office. You used to. And Beatrice says business
isn't half as brisk as it was then."
The upshot of the matter resulted in Mary's applying for a two-months'
leave of absence. Spent in the Far North woods with Luke it would make
common sense win over starved dreams.
"I think I've earned it," was all she said to Steve.
"A year ago I went away and you stayed. Of course you have earned it.
But I am going to miss you."
The day before she left--it was well into July before she could
conscientiously see her way clear to go--she received a plaid steamer
rug. There was no card attached to the gift, and when she was summoned
to Steve's apartment to inform him about some matters, Steve having a
slight attack of grippe, she was so formal to both Steve and Beatrice,
who stayed in the room, making them very conscious of her apricot
satin and cream-lace presence, that Beatrice remarked later:
"It's a fortunate thing that she isn't going to visit the North Pole;
she'd be so chilly when she returned you'd have to wrap the entire
office in a warming pad. I was thinking this morning that with the way
she lives and manages she must have saved some money. Do you know if
she has--and how much? I hope you won't pay her her salary while she
is gone. It's no wonder she can afford nervous prostration if you
do!"
"I didn't know she had it," Steve said, dully.
"Whatever it is, then, that makes her take all this time. The way
employees act, walking roughshod in their rights! And now, deary,
hurry and get well, for I've a wonderful surprise for you." She knelt
beside the couch and patted his cheek. "I'm going to be your private
secretary during her absence--yes, I am. As soon as I finish making
the mannikins for the knitting bags at the kermis. Then I'm going to
try to take her place--well, a tiny part of her place to start with,
and work into the position gradually. Yes, I am. I'm determined to try
it. I've worried and worried to decide what to do with myself."
Worry was Beatrice's sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary
had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She
had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive--only after
fifty could it be counted a definite disaster.