Mary Faithful felt no regrets at having told the truth about her love
for Steve O'Valley. The regrets were all on Steve's side of the
ledger. Contrary to customary procedure it was he who practised
nonchalance and indifference, and the office force saw no whit of
difference in the attitude of the president toward his private
secretary or vice versa.
Long ago the force had accepted the attitude of these two persons as
strictly businesslike and their conception of Mary Faithful was tinged
with awe and a bit of envy at her success. To imagine her desperately
in love with her employer, working for and with him each day, and
finally in extreme desperation telling the truth as brutally as women
sometimes tell it to women over clandestine cups of tea--was farthest
from their comprehension.
Nor would they have thought it credible that Steve, married to his
coveted fairy princess, should first become attached to Mary Faithful
by friendship and then find that friendship replaced by a deep and
never-to-be-changed love. It was an impossible situation, they would
have said.
The morning following Beatrice's parlour picnic and Mary's hard-wrung
confession Steve made it a point to be at his desk when Mary came in,
despite the few hours' sleep and the fact that Beatrice had willfully
chosen to take breakfast with him in sulky, tearful reproach. When
Mary was taking off her hat and coat he came to the door of her office
and made a formal little bow.
He found himself more in love with her than the night previous. There
was something so pathetic and lonely about her, successful business
woman that she was; the very fact of people's not suspecting it,
labelling her as self-sufficient and carefree, only emphasized this
loneliness now that he looked at her with a lover's eyes. He realized
that whereas he had had to win a fortune to marry the Gorgeous Girl it
would be as necessary to lose a fortune to marry Mary--if such a thing
were possible; that she was a woman not easy to win, one who would
find her happiness not in taking hastily accumulated wealth but in
making a man by slow processes and honourable methods until he was
fitted to obtain a fortune and then enjoy it with her.
"Good morning"--wondering if he looked confused--"I wanted to say that
I am on the country-club committee to welcome English golfers, and
I'll be away this week off and on. And--and whenever you want me to
I'll try to keep under cover for a bit.... I think I do appreciate
your telling me the truth last night more than anything else that has
ever happened to me; there was something so stoically splendid about
it--and I don't want to abuse the confidence. Please don't mind my
just mentioning it, I'll promise not to do so again; and we'll go on
as before. I was a cad to play about your fireplace--quite wrong--and
you had to make me realize it. Do you know, I was half afraid you'd
send in your resignation this morning? Women always do those things
in books. Please say something and help a chap out."
Mary was at her desk opening mail with slow, steady fingers.
"I have my living and Luke's living to make, and I could not resign
unless you asked me to do so," she told him. "I wondered whether or
not you would feel it the thing for me to do. It is a unique
situation," she said in a slightly more animated tone--"not the
situation, but my calm betrayal of it. Usually my sort go along in
silence and take our bursts of truthful rebellion on our mothers'
shoulders or in sanitariums. I really feel a great deal better now
that I have told you." Her gray eyes were quite fearless in their
honesty as she glanced up. "I feel that I can settle down in an even
routine and be of more service to everyone."
"We'll be friends," he urged, impulsively. It seemed hard not to say
foolish, loverish little things, try to make her believe in miracles,
make wild and impossible rainbow plans, precluding any Gorgeous Girls
and newly remodelled Italian villas.
"I wanted to add a postscript," she interrupted. "That's only running
true to form, isn't it? Here it is: If you ever at any time, because
you are emotional and in many ways untried, find yourself unhappy and
at cross purposes, and try to lean on a sentimental crutch which
inclines in my direction--I shall leave this office just as they do in
novels. And I shall not come back, which they always do in novels.
This would deprive you of a good employee and myself of a good
position and be foolish all round. You men are no different from us
women; once a woman knows a man loves her she cannot quite hate him
even if her heart is another's. Instinctively she labels him as a
rainy-day proposition and during some wild thunderstorm--well, idiotic
things happen! Whereas if she never knew he cared she might go about
finding a mild mission in life. A man is the same; and since I have
trusted you with my secret, and that secret happens to concern
yourself, the logical consequence is that you will never quite hate me
because I care. In some moods you might even try telling yourself that
you cared, too. Then I should not only leave your employ but I should
stop caring."
She went on with the morning's mail. Outside, the office force was
stirring. Raps at the door and phone calls would soon begin.
"Would you really?" he asked, so soberly that Mary's hands trembled
and she blotted ink on her clean desk pad as she tried to make a
memorandum.
"Really. I never can bring myself to believe in warmed-over magic."
"Then I shall never have any such moods."
He answered a phone call and there fell upon the office an atmosphere
of strange peace which had been missing for many months.
During the winter the rift between Steve and Beatrice became
noticeable even to the Gorgeous Girl's friends, to Trudy's infinite
delight; and by the time spring came it was an accepted thing that
Steve's share in the scheme of things was to write checks and occupy
as little space as possible in the apartment, whereas Beatrice's part
in the scheme of things was to badger and nag at her husband eternally
or be frigidly polite and civil, which was far harder to endure than
her temper.
The Gorgeous Girl's endeavours to become an advanced woman, an
intellectual patroness and so on, were amusing and ineffectual. She
soon found neither pleasure nor satisfaction in any of her near-lions.
Nor did she succeed in making them roar. Whether it was a parlour
lecture on Did a Chinese Monk Visit America a Thousand Years before
Columbus? or a Baby Party at which Beatrice and Gay dressed as twins
and were wheeled about in a white pram by Trudy, dressed as a French
_bonne_--the reaction was one of depression and defeat. Though
Beatrice still had her name printed on the reports of charity
committees she no longer took what was termed an active part. She
shrugged her shoulders carelessly and gave the reason that it was all
so hopeless--and no fun at all.
Inanimate things afforded the most satisfaction; at least she could
buy an individual breakfast service costing a thousand dollars and
have the item recorded in all the fashion journals, with her
photograph, and she could have the most unique dinner favours and the
smartest frocks, and they never disappointed her.
Besides, the Italian villa was to be finished shortly and that would
necessitate a new round of entertainments and minor adjustments and no
end of enviable publicity and comment. This diversion would take her
through the late spring and summer, and in the fall she fully intended
to take up dress reform and become a feminist. She had an idea of
wearing nothing but draped Grecian robes--which could be made to look
quite fetching if one had enough jewellery to punctuate the
drapes--and of going in for barefoot dancing on the lawn. It would be
more convenient if she could persuade her father and aunt not to stay
on at the Villa Rosa, as it was to be called. And certainly it would
have been more aesthetic to look across the street and see something
besides another expensive and hopelessly mediocre brick house which
another rich man somewhat after Constantine's own heart had built with
pride and joy. She wished she had bought a site back from the town and
created a real estate. The fact that she had not done so made her
miserable for over a week, during which Gay consoled her in most
flattering fashion, neglecting his own wife to do so.
Well, after the Villa Rosa--what then? Life seemed very empty. With a
certain natural squareness of nature Beatrice was not the sort of
woman to indulge in unwise affairs beyond a certain discreet point.
She had never learned how to study, so she could not become a devotee
of some fascinating and exacting subject. Her really keen mind had
merely skimmed through her studies.
Nor was she over fond of children. As she told Trudy, children were
absorbing things and goodness knew if she ever had any of her own she
would have a wonderful enough nursery and sun parlour with panels
designed by a child psychologist; there was everything in first
impressions. But take care of one of them? The actual responsibility?
Heavens, what a fate! She would engage a trained baby nurse--and then
drop in at the nursery for a few moments each day to see that
everything was going well.
Later, after the trying first years, she would be very proud of her
children. Besides, planning children's clothes was a great deal of
fun; and if she had a daughter she would see that the daughter
married properly. Whether or not she was thinking of Steve, Trudy did
not dare to ask; but she evidently was, as she added that one might
better marry an impoverished nobleman and live in an atmosphere of
culture and smart society than marry someone who never attempted to be
anything.
A child demanded of one intelligence up to a certain point, and
faithful service, but it did not require keen intellect. A primitive
knowledge of what their hurt or hunger or plain-temper cry meant--and
a primitive tender fashion of coping with whichever it might be--were
all that young babies demanded; and hence the Gorgeous Girl, like all
finely bred and thoroughly selfish women of to-day who are bent on
psychological nursery panels, refused to be tied down to the narrow
routine of a nursemaid, as she called it. Love-gardening is the title
old-fashioned gentlewomen originated.
Then Beatrice cited how carefree Jill Briggs was with her four
children. Goodness knew that Jill was always within hailing distance
of the big time; and except for a few little illnesses and the
fact that the oldest boy had died of croup the children were a
complete success and perfect darlings, and Jill dressed them like
old-style portraits. Besides, Jill had tried out a new system of
education on the oldest boy; he had been taught to develop his
individuality to the highest possible degree. At eight, just before
the croup attack--though he did not know his alphabet or how to tell
time and had never been cuddled or rocked to sleep with nursery
jingles as soothing mental food--he could play quite a shrewd game of
poker and drive a bug roadster. Beatrice, in talking over the child
problem with Trudy, decided that if she ever had a son she, too,
would develop the poker shark in him rather than the admirer of
Santa Claus and the student of Mother Goose.
"Of course Steve thinks a woman should drudge and slave over those
crying mites as if the nation depended upon it," she concluded, "but I
should never pay any attention to him. He said, in front of Jill, that
he always felt well acquainted with rich children, for he had passed a
similar childhood--meaning that living in an orphan asylum and being
brought up by a nursemaid were much the same thing. Quite lovely of
him, wasn't it?"
Trudy could not suppress her giggle.
"I'm sure the children get on well enough. Just think, if you had to
plan all the meals and dress and undress them and all the baths--ugh,
I never could! And when Steve begins his eloquent stories about these
nursemaids who neglect children or dope them or do something dreadful
I simply leave the room. He actually told Mrs. Ostrander that he saw
her nurse slap her child across the face, and proceeded to add: 'It is
never fair to strike a child that way. It breeds bad things in him.
And he wasn't doing anything; it was just nurse's day for nerves.' Of
course the Ostranders will never forget it. Now, Mrs. Ostrander is a
member of the Mothers' Council, and a dear. She just slaved over her
children's nursery and she reads all their books before she allows the
nurse to read them aloud. I'm sure no children were ever brought up as
scientifically; they have a wonderful schedule. She told me she had
never held them except when they were having their pictures
made--never!--and that crying strengthens the lungs. Of course Steve
says we feed our lap dogs when they whine but close the door on the
baby when he tries it. So what can you do with such a person?"
To which Trudy agreed. Trudy agreed to anything Beatrice might say
until the bills for the villa were settled and the O'Valleys
established in the gondola-endowed home. Trudy sometimes pinched
herself to realize that in such a short space of time she was living
in the Touraine apartment house and that her husband, whom she loathed
more each day, had actually scrambled into the position of being the
best decorator in Hanover and was busy splitting commissions and
wheedling orders from New York art dealers and Hanover's social set.
Sometimes Nature takes her own methods of revenge, and to Mark
Constantine's child she saw fit to send no son or daughter.
Constantine never mentioned his hunger for grandchildren. He had a
strange shyness about admitting the desire and the plans he had made
for them. But when he saw the completion of this villa and realized
the thousands of dollars squandered upon it and the impossible
existence his daughter would lead living therein he went to his
untouched plain room, looking out on sunken gardens, to try to figure
out how this had all come about.
He fumbled in mental chaos as to the meaning of all this nonsense and
longed more than ever for a grandchild, someone who should be quite
unspoiled and who would not approach him with light, begrudged kisses
and a request for money.
The formal Venetian ball which Beatrice gave to open her new home
merely amused Steve, who had really dreaded it with the hysteria of a
schoolgirl. He hated the whole scheme of the house and the man who
was reaping a rich harvest by engaging the army of persons who had
done the work therein. He rejoiced openly at each delay on the part of
the plumber, the tinsmith, the decorator; and openly gave a
thanksgiving when the illustrated wall paper for the halls, which told
the legend of Psyche and Cupid, had been sent to Davy Jones's locker
en route from Florence. Steve's name for the Villa Rosa was the Fuller
Gloom.
But when they did move into the new-old home and Steve was led through
each room of gammon and spinach, as he had faintly whispered to Mary
Faithful, he found himself only amused. Now that he considered it, it
was a relief to know Beatrice had such a new and absorbing plaything
to take up her time and keep her aloof from his personal affairs. He
sought out his father-in-law in his plain room with its walnut set and
stand of detective stories, and sat down in relief, though the two men
honourably refrained from criticizing a certain person openly.
At the ball Beatrice appeared in a wonderful black gown, so wonderful
and expensive that its creator had given it a distinct title--The
Plume. Steve did his duty as a handsome figurehead, as someone called
him; after which he was free to stroll in the gardens and smoke and
wonder what manner of folks inhabited the stars.
An inspection of the house had taken place with Beatrice and Gay
leading the procession, and Aunt Belle bringing up the rear. The oh's
and ah's and exclamations of approval, resultant of fairy cocktails,
rewarded Beatrice for her expenditure. When she brought them into her
own apartment she stood back, while Gay lisped out the story of the
greatest achievement and novelty of the entire house, watching the
faces of her guests so as to catch the first expression of envy which
should reveal itself.
The novelty consisted in the set of bedroom furniture, which, though
the rest of the house was Italian, as Gay hastily explained, was of
Chinese workmanship, carved and inlaid in intricate design--two
dragons fighting over pearls, with the various stages of the struggle
represented on the bed legs, the bureau drawers, the easy-chair, the
dressing table, and so on. The set had been made for the Emperor of
China, but when his private council inspected it, it was found that
one of the carved dragons on top of the four-poster bed had captured
the pearl for which they had been fighting in sixty-seven or so other
carvings. This signified bad luck for the emperor; misfortune and
rebellion would be his lot if he slept in the bed. Though regretting
the loss of the furniture the emperor felt the loss of his kingdom
would be even greater, and the furniture was placed on the market. To
Mrs. Stephen O'Valley was awarded the ownership as well as the
privilege of writing the check that made the purchase possible. On the
bed was a pillow of the material woven for emperors only, thrown in on
account of the ill luck that would attend him who slept in the bed
beneath the conquering dragon; and on a carved bone platter was an
antique Maltese shawl which gave a rare note to the entire room.
Steve, who had regarded the emperor's rejected furniture as a cross
between a joke and an outrage, gave way to his feelings by pacing up
and down the hall and capturing a tray of sandwiches being carried to
the supper room. But Beatrice, after Gay's speech, felt a rare
joy--for every guest in the room hated her for having won the prize.
What more could she ask by way of reward?
When they were alone in the new-old home Steve felt it only decent to
congratulate her. Somehow he had come to feel that keeping up sham
courtesies made everything easier.
"You have worked very hard, haven't you?" he asked. "But you have
wonderful results."
"Do you think so? Everyone hates me now, for there will never be
another royal bedroom set like mine on the market--when you think that
Gay skirmished about and won it for me, it is quite remarkable. And it
shows what Gay can do when he has a little encouragement. Alice Twill
was almost cross-eyed and crying; her husband nipped the chateau idea
in the bud. New York men are coming here to take photographs next
week. I wish the garden were in better shape. They are going to run
feature stories about it.... Oh, Steve, do you think of any new place
to go this summer?"
"I thought we had just moved to Venice," he said, still dazed at the
amount of carved fire screens, tapestries, dim, impractical
candlelights, and soft-eyed Madonnas which smiled at him on all
sides.
"I must have all the office force come and see this--it would be such
a treat. And we can serve tea on the lawn."
"Do. They don't often take time to go to museums."
Steve's bad nature was getting the better of polite resolves. He was
thinking of Mary's clear, witty eyes as she would view the remains of
a plain American house.
The next thing of interest to keep Beatrice at home was the advent of
a real lion cub, following Monster's departure to canine heaven. Being
too impossible of shape and disposition for any one's pride or
comfort, Monster was disposed of and buried in a satin-lined coffin
with a neat white headstone telling salient facts of her short
existence.
While Steve was giving devout thanks for the event Beatrice was
realizing that the gardens needed a dominating note, as Gay said.
During her reading of old fables and romantic legends about superwomen
or extremely wicked matrons she had discovered that they nearly all
possessed a lion or a bear or a brace of elephants to gambol on the
green. Such a pet symbolized its owner's power and fearlessness, and
any young woman who could have the Emperor of China's bedroom suite
brought post haste into Hanover, U. S. A., was surely entitled to
something in the jungle line for her front yard!
For the first time in his daughter's life Mark Constantine made a
faint protest, suggesting that she have a taxidermist mount several
lion cubs and group them about the hall--while Steve sat back in
cynical amusement and asked if she were going to request the goldfish
to step aside in favour of a few Alaska seals?
"If she gets a live lion--and she will, because I'm writing to a
circus man now," Gay told Trudy--"I'm going to sprain my ankle and be
laid up from the day the beast arrives until he goes--he won't tarry
long, the police won't have it. But I'm not going to take any chances.
Still, it would never do to make a fat commission on the deal and then
act as if I were afraid to come over and play cannibal with him. I
guess you can go," he added, insolently.
Trudy looked at him in scorn. "You are cheap," she said. "Well, I will
go! I'd just as soon be eaten by a lion as to have to live with a
shrimp."
The lion arrived in due time and was named Tawny Adonis. Beatrice
considered him a perfect love. He was a gay young cub and quite
effective in the new background, well intentioned but lonesome for his
old atmosphere of circus life and his mother and brothers. He was
given a large run in the Constantine grounds, and while Aunt Belle
stayed locked in her room the greater share of the time and Gay
immediately sprained his ankle and was forced to send Trudy as his
messenger, Mark Constantine and Steve found their time well occupied
in convincing the authorities that the town infantry would not be
devoured piecemeal. Hanover had never really approved of having an
Italian villa crammed down its throat, and it was certainly not
agreeable, to say the least, to have a lion cub at large as a
dominating garden note.
"You cannot keep him, even if you pulled all his teeth and taught him
to be a dope fiend," Steve said in desperation after the roars of
Tawny Adonis had been reported to the police as annoying. "He is
growing bigger every day and all he has done is demolish flowers and
shrubs and chew up fence posts. I'm sorry for him, and I'm not
particularly afraid of him, but if there was an accident with a child
even the owner of a dominating garden note could not expect to go
scot-free."
Her father and her friends championed Steve's stand in the matter and
after a little rebelling and pouting and having the pleasure of
seeing her name in all the papers as the owner of the lion cub and so
on, Beatrice consented to part with him on the condition that she be
allowed to give him a farewell birthday party, he being nearly a year
old. She was going to ask the children of all her friends. But getting
a hint of the event her friends hastily arranged a Tom Thumb wedding
for charity, and then assured Beatrice it was merely a coincidence
that the two things interfered with each other, wasn't it a shame?
Realizing that this dominating note was not a social asset Beatrice
hastily sided in with her father and the authorities.
Besides, she was tired of Tawny Adonis; he was destructive, and a
secret source of worry if she could have been made to admit it. So she
prepared for a birthday fete and determined to have the public-school
children as the guests. But these refused her invitation as well; so
she went into the slums and collected thirty harmless waifs who felt
that a lion's birthday party was not to be despised, and brought them
triumphantly into the Italian gardens.
The waifs gathered round an outdoor table, too busy swallowing food to
bother about their possible and likely fate. In the centre of the
table was a huge birthday cake for Tawny Adonis. It was made of raw
hamburger steak, generously iced with bone marrow, and the single
anniversary candle took the form of a balanced soup bone. After the
children had eaten their fill Tawny Adonis was let loose upon the
scene and at the birthday cake, and during the wild smashing of glass
and china and the excited shrieks of the waifs Tawny went to the
birthday cake and devoured it, soup bone and all.
Gay was out of town the day of the party but Trudy bravely assisted,
as did one or two others, Mark Constantine and his sister sitting in
the windows to watch the procedure while Beatrice in a gown of
turquoise velvet with a coronet of frosted leaves played Lady
Bountiful and dismissed the slum brigade as soon as possible, sending
them home with the confused knowledge that a beautiful lady in angel
clothes and a wild animal sometimes meant plenty of ham sandwiches and
ice cream, as well as the opportunity to slip a fork into one's
pocket.
Steve declined to take any part in the celebration, but at the
conclusion of the event he appeared with policemen and a patrol wagon
containing a cage, and amid gay farewells and grim coaxings Tawny
Adonis was escorted to the railway station and shipped back to the
circus man, at a loss of five hundred dollars--not counting the damage
done--to the Gorgeous Girl!