THE
FLAPPER WIFE
_by_
BEATRICE BURTON
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP,
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
BEATRICE BURTON MORGAN
THE FLAPPER WIFE
CHAPTER I
It was the last night of Gloria's girlhood.
To-morrow would be her wedding day!
With troubled eyes she stood looking down at the white satin dress
spread out on her bed.
It had been worn by two other brides ... her grandmother and, later,
her own mother.
"But I certainly don't intend to have the kind of life they had!"
Gloria shook her bobbed head at the white walls of her room.
... Her dead grandmother, whose work-worn hands had raised ten
children!
Ten children! Think of it ... Gloria shuddered.
"Not for me!" she said aloud. "Not if I know myself!"
Of course, Dick might want children. He probably would. Most men
did want them. Why not, since they had none of the bother and pain
of having them?
They could go on living their lives while the wives lost sleep and
freshness caring for the children.
They could rush about, doing as they pleased. For their women were
safe at home, chained to the cradle...
No, she was not going to have babies! Not even one!
So that was that!
Then Gloria's thoughts flew downstairs to the sitting room. She knew
her mother was there in the old rocker, mending stockings. She was
always mending. And still the basket was always full. It held an
endless job.
Poor Mother! How hard she worked!
There was nothing for her but housework and her family, year after
year. Ye gods, what a life!
... A woman was either a slave or a doll.
But if she was a slave, it was her own fault. And that's all there
was to it.
Gloria had made up her mind that she was through with hard work,
forever, last week when she had said good-by to her typewriter and
her job.
Gloria lifted the old wedding dress from the bed, and put it on a
clothes hanger in the closet. But the silk was heavy and the dress
slid off into a heap on the floor.
"Mother!" Gloria called downstairs. "Will you come up here right
away? I want you to help me with this tricky dress. It keeps
falling off the hanger."
Gloria Gordon's mother was a small brown wren of a woman. All her
life she had "babied" her beautiful daughter.
Now she hung the dress neatly in the closet. Then she turned down
Gloria's bed, and put a hot water bottle between the sheets.
"Dear me, Gloria," she fretted, "I don't know how you're ever going
to get along without me to take care of you, when you're married and
gone!"
"Don't you worry about me," the girl answered, "I'll be taken care of
all right. That's what I meant to-day when I told you I didn't want
to learn anything about housework. You see, if I don't know how to
do it, Dick will have to hire a maid for me right from the start."
She set her lovely mouth in a firm red line.
"I had different ideas when I was a bride," Mrs. Gordon said quietly.
"I thought a woman ought to help her husband."
"I know you did. Your idea of married life was to take care of your
husband. Mine is that he is to take care of me!" Gloria shrilled.
"Where you ran a carpet sweeper I'm going to run an automobile!
"I've made up my mind that I'm going to be Dick's sweetheart ... not
his housekeeper. I'm going to stay in bed every day till noon, and
keep my looks and my husband!"
She crossed the room to her dressing table. She leaned forward and
studied her face in the mirror.
She knew that she was beautiful. She had red-gold hair and dark eyes
and lashes. Her skin was smooth and white as a gardenia. And the
forces that had modeled her features had made them clear and fine.
But behind this sweet and womanly mask, she was wildly discontented
and eager for life. And Life--with a capital L--was beginning
to-morrow with her wedding day!
To-morrow she would burst forth like a butterfly from its cocoon, and
fly away--away from this shabby house, and the alarm clock that had
wrenched her from sleep at seven every morning for the last two
years--away from the necessity of working six days a week as typist
for a real estate firm.
And mixed up with Gloria's love for Dick Gregory was an enormous
gratitude toward him for taking her away from all this to a life of
ease with him.
At least, Gloria intended that it should be ease ... and luxury, too.
She was tired of penny-pinching and hard work, dead tired.
A job and a business career were all very well in their way for girls
who weren't beautiful and desirable ... girls whom men didn't want.
But with a face like hers...! Then she turned out the lights above
the dressing-table.
She climbed into bed, pulled the covers around her shoulders, and
sleepily kissed her mother good night.
Two hours later she sat up in bed wide awake, with the feeling that
some one had called her.
She listened. No sound in the darkened house.
Then suddenly she heard a low "Bob White" whistle out of doors.
Dick!
She swung her feet over the side of the bed, and flew to the window.
There he stood down on the moonlit lawn. She heard him laugh as she
threw up the window.
"It's our wedding day," he said. "Ten minutes after twelve! How's
my bride?"
"Oh, Dick, how wicked of you!" Gloria said, exasperated. "Don't you
know it's bad luck to see your bride on your wedding day before the
preacher makes her yours? And besides, what will the neighbors think
if they see you?"
"Oh, bother the neighbors! They won't be your neighbors after
to-morrow, anyway," Dick replied in a stage whisper. "Look here, I
want to kiss you.... I've been thinking about you all evening during
that doggoned bachelor dinner..."
With a bang, Gloria shut the window, and went back to bed.
She lay there waiting for the sound of Dick's departing roadster.
But there was no sound anywhere except the lonesome shriek of a train
in the distance.
At last she got up and looked out of the window. Dick hadn't moved.
He was still waiting for his kiss. Gloria opened the window.
"Why in the world don't you go home?" she asked crossly. Dick didn't
answer at once. He stood twirling his hat in his hands.
"Oh, have a heart, Gloria," he said finally. "Come on down to the
front door for just a minute.... I must kiss you, dear! Think, it's
our wedding day."
Gloria hesitated. After all, where was the harm in one little kiss
in the dead of night? In another twelve hours they would be man and
wife.
"All right, I'll be right down," she whispered.
She put on her bathrobe and thrust her bare feet into slippers. She
tiptoed out into the hall.
Halfway down the stairs she paused.
This was not the thing to do! She was making herself cheap ...
"easy." The way to hold a man was to keep him guessing. To kiss him
so seldom that love-making would never lose its tang and flavor....
A man was a born hunter. He loved the chase. As soon as he got what
he wanted he was off at top speed for something else, for somebody
else!
Well, she would keep Dick running after her! She would never go to
him as she was going now! Never!
She turned and ran back to her room.
"Dick!" she called softly from the window. He came out from the
shadow of the porch.
"Darling, I'm not coming down," Gloria said, "I just can't. It
wouldn't be right. You shouldn't have asked me to do such a horrid
thing!"
Without answering, Dick crossed the lawn and started his car.
Gloria lay in bed listening to the sound of it. She heard it for a
long time, and she knew that Dick had driven out to take one last
look at the house he had built for her. What a boy he was!
At twenty, she was more worldly wise than Dick, in spite of his
thirty years and his reputation as a lawyer.
He was like wax in her hands. She could make him utterly miserable
by refusing him a kiss. And when she was tender he would willingly
go through fire and water for her! He said so.
... When she did kiss him, she was never thrilled by it. What
excited her was the power that kiss gave her over him!
Yes, Dick was mad about her. He would give her anything she asked
for. And she was not going to be slow in asking for the things she
wanted ... leisure, love and luxury. But above all, luxury!