The next ten days were a nightmare to Gloria.
Dick hovered between life and death. Sometimes he called for her in
his delirium. Sometimes it was his mother he wanted.
Mother Gregory came every morning and sat in the sunroom, knitting or
reading her Bible.
At meals, she and Mrs. O'Hara told each other all their best stories
about operations and unusual diseases. Gloria shivered through these
meals.
One sunshiny afternoon she made up her mind to ask May Seymour to go
for a walk with her. She went out into the hall and picked up the
telephone to give May's number.
Mrs. O'Hara was talking on the extension, up in Dick's room. Gloria
listened intently.
"He'll get well if his heart holds out. But it's pretty weak," she
heard Mrs. O'Hara say.
Then another voice answered her.
"Well, I'm at his office. Phone me if anything happens," it said.
It was Miss Briggs' voice! She and her sister were talking about
Dick!
Gloria held her breath and listened. Her ear was pressed tight to
the receiver.
Then Miss Briggs' voice came over the phone again. This time it was
choky with tears.
"Tell me the truth ... is Mr. Gregory going to die?" she asked
brokenly.
"I don't think so. The crisis is past," Mrs. O'Hara answered, "but
these heart complications are tricky things."
"How does that wife of his take it?" Miss Briggs asked.
Gloria frowned. What right had these two women to be talking about
her and Dick in this way?
"Oh, don't ask me to figure Mrs. Gregory out! She's too deep for
me!" she heard Mrs. O'Hara say. "She never comes near her husband's
room ... but I can't get her to stir out of the house. I'll say this
for her, though: She's the prettiest thing I ever saw."
Miss Briggs sniffed.
"Do you think so?" she asked.
Stealthily Gloria hung up the receiver. She stood biting the pointed
ends of her fingernails, thoughtfully.
Of course, Miss Briggs couldn't see that she was pretty! She was too
jealous of her! She hated her because she was Dick's wife!
... Why couldn't Miss Briggs see that it was her own fault that she
hadn't been able to "land" Dick?
Gloria was sure that any woman could marry any man she chose to
marry.... All she had to do was to "vamp" him intelligently.
These women like Miss Briggs, who scorned a bit of honest make-up and
a curling iron! What conceited simps they were!
No man was going to take the time to look past their colorless faces
to find their beautiful souls. Not on your life!
And Miss Briggs, with all her brains, hadn't had sense enough to see
that, Gloria decided.
She ran upstairs to her own room that had been the "spare" bedroom
until Dick's illness.
As Mother Gregory had privately remarked to Maggie.... "Anybody with
a nose would know it was Gloria's room!" For it was fragrant with the
smell of Gloria's favorite perfume and powder. The bed was heaped
with tiny slumber-pillows, and an untidy pile of motion picture
magazines littered the window seat.
It had always been the dream of Gloria's life to break into the
movies ... or to go on the stage. The thought still lurked in the
back of her mind, teasingly.
She leaned over the dresser and held her face close to the mirror, so
that the coppery sunshine of her hair brushed the glass.
... How could Miss Briggs say she wasn't pretty? Why, she was
beautiful!
Dick had always said so. So had--Stan Wayburn.
Stan Wayburn!
The very thought of him was like sudden light to Gloria. Ten days
ago she had made up her mind never to see him again. She had kept
her mind on home and poor Dick. She had seen no one but the nurse,
the doctor, and Mother Gregory.... And oh, but she was sick and
tired of the four walls of the house! She needed cheering up, she
told herself.
In a flash, Gloria's mind was made up.
She would see Stan Wayburn that very afternoon! She would call him
up and ask him to take a walk with her. Surely there could be no
harm in that.
Then, after that, she would never see him again--perhaps.
... Gloria dressed to go out, with feverish haste.
When she was ready, she tried to slip quietly out of the house
without letting Mother Gregory know she was going.
But Mother Gregory had X-ray eyes and the ears of a fox.
"Where are you going, Gloria?" she called. "I want you to get some
darning cotton for me at the store, if you're going out."
"Oh, the dickens!" Gloria remarked to herself. She didn't want
Mother Gregory to see how she had dressed herself to go out to meet
Stanley Wayburn. But there was no way out of it.
She dragged herself unwillingly into the sunroom. Mother Gregory had
been darning Dick's socks and sewing buttons on his shirts, all day.
"Gloria," she asked now, "don't you ever do any mending for Dick?"
Gloria shook her head impudently.
"I don't know how to mend. My mother always kept my clothes in order
for me," she said. "Now when my stockings have holes in them, I
throw them away.... I hate darned stockings."
Mother Gregory set her lips firmly.
"I've always said," she remarked, rolling a pair of socks into a neat
ball, "that a lazy wife could throw more money into the rag bag and
the garbage can than her husband could earn working night and day."
"I'm no worse than the rest of the women I know," Gloria defended
herself.
"Then you know the wrong kind of women--you flapper wives aren't real
wives!" replied Mother Gregory. She picked up the Bible that lay on
the wicker table beside her. She opened it, and put on her glasses.
"Let me read you something," she said. "Listen to this ... 'Who can
find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart
of her husband doth trust her. She will do him good and not evil....
She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands.'"
Gloria laughed.
"That's the bunk ... that old stuff. Times have changed since the
Bible was written," she said.
"That's where you're wrong, Gloria. Times haven't changed. They're
just the same as they were in the days of King Solomon," Mother
Gregory went on, "and it looks to me as if a virtuous woman is just
as hard to find these days as she was thousands of years ago....
Where are you going all dressed up and covered with that nasty
perfume you use?"
Gloria began to feel that in some uncanny way Mother Gregory knew
that she was going out to telephone Stanley Wayburn to meet her.
"Is it tan darning cotton you wanted?" she evaded. "Like this?" She
bent to pick up a little piece that lay on the rug at Mother
Gregory's feet.
Suddenly she felt Mother Gregory's hands on her shoulders. She
looked up at her. The older woman's eyes were bright with tears.
"My dear," she said, "I talk to you this way only because I want this
marriage of yours and Dick's to be a success.... Let us try to be
friends, you and I."
Gloria found herself facing the most surprising fact in human
experience ... the kindliness of a person you believe to be
thoroughly unkind!
She couldn't find a word to say. Finally she rose to her feet, and
put the scrap of darning cotton into her purse. She went slowly out
of the house into the sunny street.
She telephoned Stan from the store where she bought the darning
cotton.
"Zowie, but it's good to see you again," he said when she met him.
"Didn't you come in your automobile?"
Gloria shook her head. Her eyes shone with welcome.
"No. I'm dying to walk, if you don't mind a little hike," she said.
"I've been penned up in the house ever since I saw you last. Dick's
had pneumonia, but he's better now.... I guess he'll be all right if
his heart holds out."
"Is that so? Sorry to hear he's been sick," Stan answered
indifferently as they swung along.
Then his tone changed.
"That explains why I haven't heard from you for so long," he said.
"Now tell me ... why, under heaven, did you suddenly get up and beat
it that day you came to see me at the hotel? I never was so
surprised in my life. What made you do it?"
Gloria blushed uncomfortably.
"Oh, I hate to tell you," she answered in a low tone. "It was
because of all those women's pictures in your room! I'm so jealous
of every woman you've ever cared about! ... And I hated to think I
was just one of them. I made up my mind that day that I'd never have
a thing to do with you again!"
Wayburn laughed. Then he turned slightly and tipped his hat to some
one who passed.
"That was your friend, Mrs. Wing ... the dizzy blond I met at your
party," he said.
"Is that so!" Gloria exclaimed. "I suppose by to-morrow she'll have
it all over town that I'm in love with Stanley Wayburn, the
well-known actor!"
Stan grinned. "Are you?" he asked.
"I wish I knew. One day I hate you ... and the next day I can't wait
to see you," the girl confessed. "But I think about you most of the
time. If that's being in love, I suppose I am."
Gloria walked along, deep in thought.
She wondered what it was she felt for Dick. It was true that life
with him was not exciting. And yet, she had said a prayer of
thankfulness the night he had passed his pneumonia crisis.
She had been filled with sorrow, that night, at the thought that Dick
might die and leave her.
But now that he was better, she was almost indifferent, again....
What ailed her, anyway, Gloria wondered. Why didn't she know her own
mind?
When she had married Dick she had been almost happy with him. But a
bottomless pit had opened between them, with the return of Wayburn
into her life.
Gloria looked at Stan. With his hands in his pockets, he sauntered
along humming a jazzy little tune.
Stan was almost always cheerful, full of pep, ready for a good time.
The wilder the time the better it suited Stan! ... He cheered Gloria
up like a jazz band.
"You're a great little worrier, Russet," he said now, showing his
white teeth in a grin. "Why can't you make up your mind that you and
I enjoy being together ... and let it go at that? Why must you worry
yourself about the other women I know? ... You know I think you're
the 'some baby' of all the world, don't you? Isn't that enough?"
He took her hand in his and pressed it tight, for a moment. Then let
it drop.
"Perhaps you do think that. But you don't love me," Gloria cried.
"You don't love me enough! When a man has cared for a girl the way
Dick has for me, she can never be fooled by imitation love again.
She knows the real thing..."
"Tragedy queen!" Stan said, with a mocking light in his eyes.
Gloria stamped her foot. Why couldn't he take her seriously once in
a while?
Gloria and Wayburn walked on in silence for a few minutes.
Then Wayburn spoke again. "Look here, Russet! What do you want to
bother with me for any longer?" he asked. "You quarrel with me all
the time we're together, anyway. It doesn't make you happy to be
with me any more, does it?"
Gloria frowned thoughtfully.
"It makes me awfully unhappy not to be with you," she said simply.
"And, Stan, I don't quarrel with you."
"You nag me about other women, though," Wayburn said, "and I don't
deserve it. I'm no sheik."
Gloria brightened.
"You do like me, don't you?" she asked, comforted.
Wayburn nodded. "And there's something else I want to say to you,
Russet.... You know, I have a hunch that you care for this husband
of yours a lot more than you think you do. What you hate is married
life--being tied down. Isn't that so?" he asked.
Gloria stopped dead. She turned to Wayburn in a blaze of anger.
"So that's it! You're tired of me!" she declared. "You want to kid
me into thinking I'm crazy about Dick, so I won't bother you any
more, don't you? ... Well, maybe I am crazy about him! ... But you,
you oil can! I'll bet you have some new girl on your string this
minute ... some cheap Sonya Chotek or other!"
A wild passion of shame and self-disgust swept over her.
She turned to run away from Wayburn. But he caught her by one arm
and drew her to his side with a strong steady pull.
"You young wild cat!" he laughed. "Who could be tired of you?"
But Gloria was not to be soothed. She jerked herself from Wayburn,
and dashed furiously down the street.
A minute later she was sorry she had lost her temper.
She violently wished that Stan would call her back, or come after
her. But he did not.
She walked on toward the center of the town with her head held high.
Hot tears stung her eyeballs. But she blinked them away.
The sun had set. And the chill of early evening crept into the still
air.
Gloria went into a drug-store and bought a theatrical magazine. She
read it, sitting on a high stool, as she slowly sipped a chocolate
malted milk.
On the cover was a picture of Kit Cameron, a hometown girl, who had
become a Broadway chorus girl.
Gloria knew Kit Cameron. She and Kit had gone to business college
together four years ago.
"And here she is on Broadway!" Gloria said to herself, "and I'm still
here in the same old rut, wondering what it's all about!"
She looked longingly at Kit's picture, wishing her own were in its
place. Then she raised her eyes to the mirror at the back of the
soda fountain.
Her own reflection smiled back at her, adorably.
"Why, I'm twice as good looking as Kit!" she told herself. "I'll bet
I could land a job on Broadway in fifteen minutes, if I half tried!"
The thought was comforting to her wounded vanity. She felt much
better as she left the drug-store and stepped out into the darkness.
She walked home, trying hard not to think of Stanley Wayburn.
When she got home, Mrs. O'Hara was playing solitaire in the
living-room. She looked up as Gloria came in.
"Ranghild left your supper in the warmer for you," she said.
"I don't want it. I just had a malted milk, and I'm so afraid of
getting fat," Gloria answered. "How's Dick to-night?"
"He seems a little better. Wouldn't you like to stop in a minute to
see him? He's awake," said Mrs. O'Hara in her sweet voice, that was
so like Miss Briggs' lovely accents.
"I think I will," the girl answered. She went upstairs and took off
her wraps. With unfailing coquetry, she powdered her nose and
fluffed up her hair before she went across the hall to see Dick.
He was lying in bed, perfectly still. Only his eyes moved. They
turned to look at her as she came into the room. They lighted up as
she came nearer. His lips moved. But he was too weak to speak.
Gloria sat down on the edge of the bed. She took one of Dick's hands
in both of hers. Her heart ached with pity for him.
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, much as a mother
might have kissed her sick child. Dick closed his eyes contentedly.
That was what he had wanted.
In a few minutes he was asleep.
On the table beside Dick's bed was a jar of heavy roses that were
beginning to wilt.
As Gloria looked at them a petal fell from one of them. Then another
and another dropped down upon the polished wood of the table.
... Life was like that. One by one the petals fell from it, leaving
it bare. First youth went. Then love ... and happiness.
At that moment Gloria was sure that life was a sad thing. She got up
and tiptoed out of Dick's room. She threw herself down on her own
bed and cried as if her heart would break because she had lost Stan
Wayburn....
Had she ever had him, she wondered. Had he ever honestly cared for
her?
Really, hadn't she, herself, pursued Stan? In her heart of hearts,
Gloria knew that she had....
Well, she had learned her lesson! She would never telephone him
again, or meet him again, anywhere! ... She would not even speak to
him if she met him on the street!