Gloria's first thought the next morning was "This is my wedding day."
Her second was "This is the last morning I shall have to wake up in
this dingy old room, thank goodness!"
She hated everything in it, from the battered brass bed to the
imitation ivory toilet set.
By to-morrow morning she would be the wife of a man who could buy her
wonderful things ... a toilet set of silver, perfumes, lacy
handkerchiefs, chiffon stockings too thin ever to be mended!
She had made up her mind that her honeymoon would be a shopping trip,
too. With Dick to pay the bills!
"Sweetheart," Dick had said, "let's honeymoon in some quiet place
where we can be alone." But she had laughed him to scorn.
"Don't you know you can be lonelier in a big city than anywhere else
in the world, silly?" she had asked. "I've decided on Montreal.
It's romantic, but it's full of lovely shops and restaurants. And we
shall stop at the Ritz ... and be very smart and Ritzy!"
Dick had laughed. And she had her way.
So when a certain train rolled across the country that November
night, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gregory were on it. Their drawing room
was packed with brides' roses.
"You're like a rose, yourself, my little Gloria! All mine at last!"
Dick murmured. His arms held her close. His eager lips pressed down
hungrily upon hers that were so smooth and cool.
Her honeymoon was the most wonderful time of Gloria's life. She
slept the mornings away, and breakfasted elegantly at noon.
In the afternoons she and Dick hired a fiacre to take them far up the
steep road to Mount Royal, or out into the country.
They ate in quaint little French restaurants.
And Gloria shopped!
She bought beads and earrings and more than a dozen bottles of French
perfume, while Dick stayed in the hotel reading.
Gloria had never known any one who read so much as he.
"For a rising young lawyer, you're quite a high-brow, it seems to
me," she said one morning.
She was lying back in a long chair while the hotel hairdresser
marceled her reddish gold hair. She laughed almost scornfully.
Dick made no answer. He sat down and picked up a book, only to put
it down. He filled his pipe and laid it, unlighted, on the dresser.
"Come here, restless soul, I want to talk to you," Gloria held out to
him a slim hand. "Do you know, it's awfully cold out doors? I
nearly froze yesterday. I need a coat. I'd like a fur one. I've
been looking at one in that little shop down the street..."
Her voice trailed off. The hairdresser had finished her work and was
putting her iron and brushes away in a little black bag. Gloria paid
her.
The moment the door had closed behind her, Dick came across the room.
He put his hands under Gloria's elbows, holding her away from him.
"Look here, please don't have people hanging around here all the
time," he said. "You're beautiful enough without having your hair
curled every time the wind blows. I want you alone, all to
myself...."
With sudden passion he pulled her to him, and kissed her eyelids, her
mouth, the little hollow of her throat.
"Wonderful! Beautiful!" he said. His voice was choked and queer.
Gloria could feel the beating of his heart against her own, and the
quivering of his hands.
With one of her own she pushed him away from her. She smoothed down
her ruffled hair.
"Do you think you can afford the coat? It's four hundred dollars ...
the one I want, dear," she said coolly. "It's a jacket of Siberian
squirrel."
She laced her fingers at the back of his neck, and held her face up
to his. "Say you'll get it for me," she said.
Without a word Dick nodded and turned away. He picked up his pipe
and his book.
"I'm going down to the men's lounge for a while," he said shortly.
"I'll meet you at the elevator at two. We'll hunt up a new place for
lunch, shall we?"
And so it happened that the new Mrs. Richard Gregory came home from
her honeymoon wearing a costly fur coat, fragrant with scent.
They went to dinner that first night with Dick's father and mother in
the old homestead.
"Roly-poly pudding!" said Dick when Maggie, the maid, brought in the
dessert, "I'll bet Mother made it just for me."
"She certainly did," answered old Mr. Gregory. Mrs. Gregory beamed
at Gloria.
"Dick sometimes has nervous indigestion, as you probably know, my
dear," she said in her rich contralto voice, "and when he has an
attack, I always cook everything for him myself ... very carefully.
You undoubtedly will, too."
"I can't cook," Gloria said in a very small voice. "I can't cook at
all."
Mother Gregory frowned. Then her wide brow cleared.
"You will learn," she smiled comfortably. "You will learn."
And Gloria smiled back with her ripe lips. But there was no smile in
her amber eyes. They were like pools of water that no sunlight has
warmed.
... She would never learn to cook! She would never be a household
drudge, her hands shriveled with washing dishes. Her nails broken.
Her dresses smudged with pastry flour. ... If Dick's mother thought
this was the kind of girl her son had married, she was jolly well
mistaken!
Gloria widened her eyes. She turned to Mother Gregory.
"By the way, I'll need a cook right away," she said sweetly. "I
wonder if Maggie would know of any one who wants a place. If Dick
has a weak stomach, my efforts at cooking would kill him, most
likely."
After dinner she and Dick walked home to the new house. It was white
with green shutters, and it nestled among the evergreens that
surrounded it. Everything in it was fresh and new. Dick and she had
spent happy months buying furniture for it.
"I say, Gloria, I wonder if we can afford a cook," Dick began the
first of what Gloria later called his "economy sermons."
They had just come into the little house. Gloria switched on the
lights and sighed with joy. The house with its Chinese rugs and
yellow silk curtains was a dream. A dream come true!
"Afford a cook? Why, of course, we can afford a cook," she said.
It was absurd that a successful lawyer couldn't afford a cook for his
wife!
"I'm not so sure," Dick said. He set their bags on the floor and
dropped into a chair.
"You see, dearest," he went on, "the furniture isn't quite paid for.
And our honeymoon sent a thousand dollars to the four winds. Then,
there was the fur coat I gave you..."
"Well, for goodness' sake, what did you want to get married for, if
you couldn't afford to keep up a home?" Gloria asked with sudden
fury. She was tired, and she was sure that Dick's mother hated her.
"Your mother thinks that I ought to spend my whole life cooking, so
you think so, too! Well, I'm not going to ... d'you hear? I'm not
going to fry all the color out of my cheeks standing over a red-hot
stove for hours and days and years..." Gloria's voice rose in a
scream.
Then she burst into wild sobbing and ran upstairs.
She threw herself on the bed in their room, and waited for Dick to
come to her. She wanted him to comfort her, to forgive her, and to
tell her she could have a cook.
But he didn't come. She listened. No step on the stairs.
Then Gloria began to laugh. Not as she had ever laughed before in
all her life, but with great gasps that shook her from head to foot.
And as she laughed tears rolled down her face.
... All at once she was aware of Dick standing at the foot of the
bed. He had a big pitcher in his hands. Then she felt the sting of
ice water in her face!
It choked and blinded her. But she went on laughing and crying. She
tried to stop. She couldn't stop!
Presently she heard the low rumble of Dick's roadster under her
windows... And the next thing she knew it was broad daylight. She
lay in her own bed, very tired and hungry.
"What's happened?" she asked herself. For she felt blue and unhappy
as if something dreadful were hanging over her. Then she remembered
last night.
"Dick!" Gloria called. "Oh, Dick!"
Immediately he appeared in the doorway. His face was covered with
lather, and he held a shaving brush.
"Dick Gregory, why did you throw that water into my face last night?"
Gloria asked. Dick grinned.
"Because I thought you had hysterics, and I guessed right," he
cheerfully answered. "I went out and got Doc Seymour, and he gave
you some pills to put you to sleep, or you'd probably be crying yet
... or laughing. I'll admit that the laughing got my goat."
"Well, don't you ever dare to throw one drop of water at me ever
again, no matter what I do," Gloria said solemnly, "or I'll walk
right out of this house and never come back. D'you understand?"
Instantly he was beside her bed holding her close, stroking her
perfumed hair.
"Darling, I was a brute to do it, but I'd always heard that ice water
was a sure cure for hysterics..."
Dick stopped talking and put a finger to his lips in warning. From
the stairway came the tinkle of dishes and the aromatic smell of
fresh coffee.
Maggie, Mother Gregory's maid, walked into the room carrying a huge
tray!
"Here she is! The world's best cook!" Dick said with a flourish.
"Mother has promised to lend Maggie to us for a few weeks, until you
get your bearings, Gloria."
"Indeed, I wanted to come, Mr. Dick," Maggie said heartily.
"I phoned Mother last night that you were ill, and Maggie came over
first thing this morning," Dick explained when the door had closed
upon Maggie's broad back. "And she sent word that you are not to
worry about her. She says she can get along beautifully, alone, for
a few weeks."
It had not occurred to Gloria to worry about Dick's mother in a
maidless house. She seemed so large and capable ... so adequate to
any of the small worries of life.
There was breakfast for two on the big tray ... chilled grapefruit,
shirred eggs, and coffee with thick cream.
Gloria beamed at Dick over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were soft as
a child's, once more.
"Darling, I was dreadful last night, wasn't I? Tell me I don't
deserve such a duck of a husband," she cooed. She patted Dick's big
hand. She was yielding and adorable now that she actually had a cook
in the house.
For she had had her own way, as she always had since the day she was
born!
"I'm afraid my Gloria is a spoiled child," Dick said, but his voice
was deep with love.
"Next time she has a tantrum I'm going downtown and play poker all
night with the boys," he finished.
Gloria gave a gasp of surprise. This from Dick!
"Just you try staying out nights!" she cried. "Just you try to pull
anything like that on me! Do you know what I'll do?"
Dick laughed good-naturedly.
"Well, what would you do if I committed such a crime?" he asked.
"Break a butter dish, or something like that?"
"I'd be off in a flutter of dust, right back to my mother and father!
And you could keep bachelor's hall here all by your lonesome," Gloria
told him. "I'm not going to be like poor Lola Hough, waiting alone
night after night for Bill to stop gambling and stagger home!"
She meant what she said. She'd show him a thing or two!
Lola Hough, with her tired wrinkled face, might have to take such
treatment patiently. But she, herself, didn't. Not for a minute!
With her looks!
... Besides she knew she could manage Dick. He was helpless, because
of his love for her.