Steve knew he brushed by Aunt Belle, who was coming in to see what her
brother was roaring about, and down those detestable gilded curlicue
stairs to seek out his wife and try again to make her realize that for
once he was determined on what should come to pass as regarded their
future together, to force her to realize even if he created a cheap
scene.
Whatever blame fell upon Constantine's shoulders was not within his
province to judge--Constantine was a dying man and Steve was not quite
thirty-five. So that ended the matter from Steve's viewpoint. It was
his intention not to try to evade his personal blame in the matter but
to make reparation to his own self and to his wife if he were
permitted. If he could once convince his wife that their sole chance
of future happiness and sanity lay in beginning as medium-incomed
young persons with all the sane world before them it would have been
worth it all--excepting for Mary Faithful.
Even as Steve tried in a quick, tense fashion to dismiss Mary from his
mind and say that Beatrice was his wife and that love must come as the
leavener once this hideous wealth was removed, he knew the thing
was impossible. The best solution of which he was capable was to say
that he owed it to both Mary Faithful and Beatrice to play the game
from the right angle and that in causing Beatrice to disclaim her
title of Gorgeous Girl and all it implied he at least would find
contentment--the same sort of uninteresting contentment of which
Mary boasted.
He found Beatrice in a furore of tears and protests, angered at
missing the dinner engagement and not understanding why any of it was
necessary. She felt her own territory had been infringed upon, since
making a scene was her peculiar form of mental intoxication.
But Steve was composed, even smiling, and as he came up to her she
fancied her father had made everything all right as his check book had
seen fit to do upon so many occasions. The slight worry over Steve's
possible folly vanished, and she felt it safe to proceed to reproach
him for having been so horrid.
"Now, my dear Stevuns, why did you get me all upset? And yourself and
poor papa, to say nothing of my having to send word at the last moment
that we could not attend the dinner. Oh, Steve, Steve, will you ever
be really tamed?"
"Come and sit beside me." He drew out a notebook and pencil. "I must
tell you some things."
Rather curious, she obeyed, but keeping a discreet distance so her
frock would not be ruffled. "I'm still cross," she warned.
Steve was writing down figures, adding them and making notations.
"Look here, dear," he began, patiently; "this is just where I shall
stand--a poor man to your way of thinking, almost as poor as when I
set out to win you. I'm going into a salaried job for a few years--a
real hope-to-die job--and we can have a house----"
"I thought we talked that all out before," she interrupted, half
petulantly, half wistfully. "Why do you keep repeating yourself?
You'll be thumping your fists the first thing we know!"
"Do you fancy I am not going to do this? Are you not sufficiently
concerned to listen, to realize that I have been a blind, conceited
fool? But I have learned my lesson. I shall support my wife from now
on and live in my own house or else I shall no longer be your
husband."
"Steve!"
She opened and shut her fan quickly, then it fell to the floor. But he
did not pick it up.
"You were never keen for details, so I shall not irritate you now by
introducing them. But the fact remains that I have been made and
backed by your father merely because he wished me to be your husband.
You picked me out--and I was keen to be picked out--and he decided to
make me as proper a companion for you as possible. I am in some ways
as untried to-day as any youngster starting out; as I was when I
fancied I made the grand and initial stride by myself. Your father
feels that I ought to be eternally grateful--but then, what else could
the father of the Gorgeous Girl think? He has harmed me--but he has
ruined you. I hardly thought you would meet me halfway, still it was
worth the try."
Forgetful of her flounces Beatrice crumpled them in her hands, saying
sharply: "Are you taking this way of getting out of it?"
"Good heavens!" Steve murmured, half inaudibly, "I keep forgetting you
have never been taught values or sincerity! There is no way I can
prove to you how in earnest I am, is there?"
"You mean to say that I am a failure?" she preened herself unconsciously.
"The most gorgeous failure we have with us to-day! And the worst of it
is it is growing to be a common type of failure since gorgeousness is
becoming prevalent. There are many like you--not many more gorgeous,
and thousands less so. You are a type that has developed in the last
twenty years and is developing these days at breakneck speed! And you
can't understand and you don't want to and I'm damned if I'll try to
explain again."
"Well," she asked, shrewdly, quite the woman of the world, "what is it
you are about to do? Wear corduroy trousers and a red bandanna and
start a butcher-paper-covered East-Side magazine filled with
ravings?"
"No; that is another type we plain Americans have on our hands."
"Don't spar for time."
"I'm not. I'm through sparring; I want to go to work. I want----"
What was the use? He stopped before adding another spark to her
wrath.
"I suppose you want to marry that woman--Mary Faithful, who has loved
you so long and made herself so useful! She was clever enough to
pretend to efface herself and go to work for someone else, but I dare
say you have seen her as often as before. Oh, are you surprised I
know? I gave you the credit of being above such a thing, but Trudy
told me that this woman had told her the truth--so you see even your
Mary Faithful cannot be trusted. You had better turn monk, Steve, be
done with the whole annoying pack of us! Anyway, Trudy came running to
me, but I never lost sleep over the rumour. I felt you were above such
things, as I said, but presently little indications--straws, you
know--told me she cared; and if a woman cares for a man and is able to
pass several hours each day in his employ, unless she is cross-eyed or
a blithering idiot she cannot fail to win the game! Now can she,
Stevuns?"
Steve raised his hand in protest. "Please leave her out of it."
"So--we must talk about my being a failure, my father clipping your
wings of industry and all that--yet we must not mention a woman who
has loved you--and gossiped about it."
"She did not! You know Trudy--you know her nature," he interrupted.
"Taking up her defence! Noble Stevuns! Then you do reciprocate--and
you are planning one of those ready-to-be-served bungalows with even a
broom closet and lovely glass doorknobs, where Mary may gambol about
in organdie and boast of the prize pie she has baked for your supper.
Oh, Stevuns, you are too funny for words!"
She laughed, but there was a malicious sparkle in her eyes. She was
carrying off the situation as best she knew how, for she did not
comprehend its true significance, its highest motive. Underneath her
veneer of sarcasm and ridicule she was hurt, stabbed--quite helpless.
With her father's spirit she resolved to take the death gamely--and
make Steve as ridiculous as possible, to have as good a time as she
could out of such a sorry ending. But she knew as she stood facing
him, so tired and heavy-eyed, the rejected sheet of figures fallen on
the brocaded sofa between them, that it was she who met and
experienced lasting defeat.
By turns she had been the spoiled child of fortune, the romantic
parasite, the mad butterfly, the advanced woman, the Bolshevik de
luxe; and finally and for all time to come she was confronted with the
last possibility--there was no forked road for her--that of a shrewd,
cold flirt. She realized too late the injustice done her under the
name of a father's loving protection. Moreover, she determined never
to let herself realize to any great extent the awfulness of the
injustice. It was, as Steve said, a common fate these days--there was
solace in the fact of never being alone in her defeat. But at five
minutes after twelve she had glimpsed the situation and regretted
briefly all she was denied. Still it was an impossibility to cease
being a Gorgeous Girl.
She felt cheated, stunted, revengeful because of this common fate.
Steve was setting out for new worlds to conquer--he very likely would
have a good time in so doing. She must continue to be fearfully rushed
and terribly popular, having a good time, too. How dull everything
was! Strangely, she did not give Mary Faithful or her part in Steve's
future a thought--just then. She was thinking that Ibsen merely showed
the awakened Nora's going out the door--as have Victorian matrons
shown their daughters, urging them to do likewise. But it really
begins to be interesting at this very point since it is not the
dramatic closing of the door that is so vital, but the pitfalls and
adventures on the long road that Nora and her sisters have seen fit to
travel.
Beatrice was deprived of even this chance, even the falling by the
wayside and admitting a new sort of defeat, or travelling the road in
cold, supreme fashion and ending with selfish victory and impersonal
theories warranted to upset the most domestic and content of her
stay-at-home sisters. But she, like all Gorgeous Girls, must be
content to stand peering through the luxurious gates of her father's
house, watching Steve go down the long road, then glancing back at her
lovely habitation, where no one except tradesmen really took her
seriously, and where all that was expected of her, or really
permitted, was to have a good time.
Steve shrugged his shoulders. He felt a great weariness concerning the
situation, nonchalant scorn of what happened in the future of this
woman. As for Mary Faithful--that was a different matter, but he could
not think about Mary Faithful while standing in the salon of the Villa
Rosa with the Gorgeous Girl as mentor.
"Suppose we do not try to talk any more just now?" he suggested. "We
are neither one fit to do so. Wait until morning and then come to an
agreement." He spoke as impersonally as if a stranger asking aid
interrupted his busiest time.
Beatrice recognized the tone and what it implied. "I am agreed," she
said, after a second's hesitation. "Do not fancy my father and I will
come on our knees to you."
She swept from the room in a dignified manner. Steve waited until he
heard the door of Constantine's room bang. He knew his wife had rushed
to tell her father her side of the matter--to receive the eternal
heart's ease in the form of a check so she could go and play and
forget all about Stevuns the brute.
He walked unsteadily through the rooms of the lower floor, out on to
the main balcony, and back again. He could not think in these rooms;
he could not think in any corner of the whole tinsel house. It seemed
a consolation prize to those who have been forbidden to think.
He went to his own ornate and impossible room, which should have
belonged to an actor desiring publicity, or some such puppet as Gay.
He tried to sleep, but that too was impossible. He kept pacing back
and forth and back and forth, playing the white bear as Beatrice had
so often said, wondering if it would be too much the act of a cad to
go to Mary Faithful and merely tell her. He could think at Mary's
house--he must have a chance to think, to realize that Beatrice
refused to come with him and to tell himself that nothing should force
him to remain in the Villa Rosa and be the husband of the Gorgeous
Girl, set right by her father's checks, the laughingstock of the
business world that had called his hand.
The humiliation, the failure, the loss--were good to have; stimulating.
Wonderfully alive and keen, he did not know how to express the new
sensation that took possession of his jaded brain. He was like a
gourmand dyspeptic who has long hesitated before trying the diet of a
workingman and when someone has whisked him off to a sanitarium and
fed him bran and milk until he has forgotten nerves, headaches, and
logginess he vows eternal thankfulness to bran and milk, and is humbly
setting out to adopt the workingman's diet instead of the old-time
menus.
Steve could begin to work simply, to find his permanent place in the
commercial world. He had enough money--or would have--to start a home
in simple yet pleasant fashion; he had knowledge and ability that
would place him favourably and furnish him the chance to work
normally toward the top. That was all very well, he told himself
toward early morning--but must it be done alone? He had had the
Gorgeous Girl as the incentive to make his fortune, and now he had
Mary Faithful as the incentive to lose it--and if the Gorgeous Girl
stayed on at the villa and became that pitied, dangerous object, a
divorcee; and if Mary did care-----Strange things, both wonderful and
fearsome, happen in the United States of America.