It was almost sunset, and picnickers who had come to the park for
supper walked past them with baskets on their arms. Somehow or other
the women were better looking than the men. Perhaps it was their
ready-made smartness....
But anyway beside Dick the men looked flabby and weedy to Gloria ...
or else too fat and solid.... Why, she wondered, had she never seen
how much better he was to look at than any other man alive?
"Not that he's so handsome," she remarked to herself, "but he's so
... himself!" She loved him for the simple fact that he was Dick.
For his face, because it couldn't by any possibility be anybody
else's ... and for his mind that was so utterly sound and decent.
"It took me a long time to find it out," Gloria went on thinking,
"but I know it at last, now, when it would be better if I didn't!"
Wasn't that just like Life, though? It was full of such tricks....
Giving you what you wanted just a little too late? Like a Valentine
coming the morning after Valentine's day ... and in a plain envelope!
Gloria rose. "Well, this time I'm really going," she said,
unsteadily.
Dick rose with her, and they walked slowly out of the park together
... close together as lovers walk, and yet worlds apart!
The following day, Gloria started to go job-hunting again. A slip of
paper with two or three "want ads" on it was folded away in her purse
along with three ten-dollar bills ... her last week's salary.
She walked along the street looking in the shop windows. The hats,
as always, lured her. So did the crisp summer dresses, with their
sashes and lace.
In a window of a department store was a display of luster bowls ...
lovely orange and sea-blue ones. "The very thing for the mantel in
the living-room!" Gloria exclaimed, looking at one that glowed like
the sunrise.
Then, with a jerk, her brain told her that the living-room no longer
belonged to her. Dick was going to sell it and everything in it to a
couple who were looking at the house ... that is, if he could.
Gloria walked on down the street.
She didn't feel at all like going up into one of the great office
buildings to ask for a position. She felt like "Mrs. Richard
Gregory" that morning ... and she couldn't step into the role of
"Gloria Gordon," looking for a place to work.
She didn't want to work in an office. She wanted to go back to her
own house. She told herself truthfully that she had felt "like a
fish out of water" every minute since she had packed up her trunks
and left Dick.
At the street corner she met little blond Mrs. Wing.
To Gloria's amazement she came up to her and seized both hands.
"Hello, Gloria Gregory!" she cried. "It's so nice to see you again!
... Where have you been keeping yourself, for goodness' sake? ...
Just the other day the girls were asking what had become of you?"
Gloria stared at her in astonishment.
She remembered perfectly the night when she had tried to speak to
Mrs. Wing, and Mrs. Wing turned away her little blond head.
But why hold that against her? ... It was nice to have friends, and
it warmed Gloria's heart to have Mrs. Wing welcome her this way.
People were queer, inexplicable things, but they were also necessary
to each other.
So Gloria smiled back. "I've been down in New York the last few
weeks," she said grandly.
"Did you hear about May Seymour's husband?" Mrs. Wing asked.
"Terrible thing, wasn't it?"
"Dreadful," Gloria agreed. "And poor May's left town. Did you know
that?"
Mrs. Wing nodded. "The best thing she could do under the
circumstances," she said wisely. "I never could see what you saw in
May Seymour. She was so rattle-brained and--well, call it
unconventional. That's the kindest word for her."
She pressed Gloria's hand when she left her. "Now, do come to see
me," she said warmly. "Won't you?"
"It's a cinch she doesn't know I've left Dick, or she wouldn't be so
cordial," Gloria told herself.
"Little hypocrite!" she added to herself. She stood there in the
sunshine, thinking.
"What a fool I am!" she said inwardly, after a minute or two. "Just
because Dick doesn't want to live with me is no reason why I should
give up my home, and go back to a job that I hate! I guess I'd
rather be a housekeeping woman like Mrs. Wing or Mother than the best
stenographer on earth!"
Five minutes later she was in Dick's office. She knew that it was
the time when he went out to lunch.
Miss Briggs, very white in her dark blue dress, sat at her desk.
"How do you do," Gloria greeted her coldly. "I came up here to get
the key of my house. I gave it to Mr. Gregory a few days ago. Do
you know where he keeps it?"
Without a word Susan Briggs got up and went into Dick's office.
Gloria could hear her opening and shutting drawers, and rustling
papers as she searched through Dick's desk.
Presently she came out with a dozen keys in the palm of her
outstretched hand.
"Is any of these the key you want?" she asked as she threw them on
the table.
Gloria picked them up. Her own key was among them. She put it into
her purse.
"I don't know whether I ought to give you that key or not," Miss
Briggs said. "Mr. Gregory didn't say I could."
Gloria glared at her. "It's none of Mr. Gregory's affair, Miss
Briggs," she said. "The key belongs to me!"
Gloria flounced out of the office without even thanking Miss Briggs
for the key. She put it into the coin-purse in her bag, and started
home.
On the porch of her mother's little house stood an empty baby buggy,
filled with soft blue pillows and robes.
Gloria groaned. "I suppose Aunt Dorcas and Cousin Lulu have dropped
in for lunch," she said to herself.
It seemed impossible to face the pair again ... with their eyes that
searched her for a sign of weakness. But to her relief, only Lulu
was in the living-room of the house.
"Well," she greeted Gloria. "Did you get over your peeve yesterday?"
She giggled nervously.
"All over it," Gloria answered, tossing her hat down on the table
that stood between the windows. An open handbag stood there, too.
It was filled with infant's lingerie and nursing bottles.
"I suppose that is the wonderful baby," Gloria said, looking at the
small white bundle in Lulu's arms, "May I see her? I haven't yet,
you know."
"Sit down in that chair and I'll let you hold her," Lulu offered
generously. Gloria sat down in a chair by the sunny window and held
up her arms for The New Baby.
Lulu laid the small, warm thing in her arms, and for the first time
that she could remember, Gloria knew what it was like to hold a
baby.... It was utterly unlike anything she had ever known,
before--the feeling of compassion and tenderness that stirred in her
heart.
She was afraid she was going to cry. And when she smiled up at Lulu
her eyes were wet and starry with unshed tears.
"Lulu," she said slowly, "I ... I should like to have a baby of my
own, I think!"
The baby stirred in her arms, and laid its wee starfish of a hand
against her breast.
"It's a blessing it's got hair," she said airily to hide the emotion
that almost choked her. "So many of 'em are bald as billiard
balls..."
She scowled down, sullen-sweet, at The New Baby, and gave it back to
its mother.
Then she ran upstairs to pack her trunks. "Where's Mother? ... Up
here?" she called to Cousin Lulu as she ran.
Her mother's voice answered her from the "spare" bedroom.
"I'm in here, looking up some old baby clothes of yours to give to
Lulu," she said. "The poor child hasn't made a single flannel
petticoat for that blessed baby.... My goodness, the women nowadays!
They don't want their babies to wear any more clothes than they wear
themselves!"
She looked disapprovingly at Gloria's short-sleeved wisp of a dress,
as she stood lightly poised on the threshold.
"I thought you were going to work to-day," she remarked.
Gloria smiled and tilted back her head. "No, I'm going home,
Mother," she said, her eyes gleaming like amber through the thick
lashes that fringed them.
Her mother turned sharply toward her. "Have you seen Dick?" she
asked. "Have you made up with him?"
Gloria laughed. "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs,"
she said. "And don't say a word to Cousin Lulu or Aunt Dorcas about
what I'm doing.... Will you?"
At five o'clock when Gloria had finished packing, she telephoned for
a taxicab ... an unheard-of luxury.
"I wish I knew what you're up to, Gloria," her mother said anxiously
as she kissed her good-by. "If you've made up with Dick I think you
might tell me, at least."
Gloria smiled and kissed her. "Don't worry about me, Motherkin," she
said. "I always land on my feet, don't I?"
Her mother shook her head doubtfully. "I'd feel better if I knew
just what you're doing.... You have such wild impulses, Gloria," she
said.
But Gloria, herself, didn't know quite what she was doing. She knew
simply this: that she couldn't spend another night under her father's
roof. She was homesick ... and she was going home. That was all
there was to it.
She stopped the taxicab before a grocery store and went in. She took
out the money she had earned the week before, and bought tomatoes and
bread and lemons.
"Tomato sandwiches and lemonade," she said to herself. That was the
beautifying breakfast the heroine of a Scott Fitzgerald novel had
eaten, while her husband was away at war.
"I'm a sort of war-widow, myself," Gloria added mentally. "I suppose
a family quarrel is a war just as well as one between nations." She
sighed, dismally.
But her spirits lifted when the cab turned in at the driveway of her
own house. She turned her head away so that she didn't see the "For
Sale" sign as they swept past it.
The house smelled musty.
Gloria threw open the windows and doors. She took off her hat, and
ran out into the back yard to pick some of the late roses that glowed
among the leaves of the bushes.
She filled bowls and vases with them, and turned on all the lamps in
the living-room. The house began to feel home-like and happy
again....
There came a sound of footsteps on the back porch.
The Donberg twins stood there, peering in through the screen door.
Their noses were flattened against the wire netting.
"Hello," one of them said. "We're glad you're home again. We like
you."
"Because you're pretty," the other added, solemnly.
"You mustn't like people because they're pretty," Gloria told them.
"You must like folks because they're nice and good ... like your
mother."
"Aren't you nice and good?" asked one twin.
"Well, no.... But I can tell fairy stories," Gloria answered. "Come
over to-morrow and I'll tell you one about a poor girl who was
bewitched by an ogre."
She thought of herself and Stan Wayburn. In his own sleek, dapper
way, Stan had been a sort of ogre. He certainly had bewitched her,
after a fashion--Oh, well, what was the use thinking about it?
"Look here, infants," she said, suddenly. "Run over and ask your
mother if I can borrow a piece of ice from her. Just a little piece
... enough for a pitcher of lemonade."
The pair dashed down the steps, racing to see who could reach home
first, to be the proud bearer of the borrowed ice.
In a few minutes the light tapping of high heels came across the
porch. The twins' mother stood there, holding a large lump of ice in
one hand and a covered plate in the other.
"Hello, there," she called cheerfully. "What are you doing here? I
thought you and your nice husband had gone away for good."
"Oh, I just came back to pack up some things," Gloria put her off.
"And I thought while I was here, I'd get a bite to eat."
Mrs. Donberg laughed. "I've brought you another bite," she said,
uncovering the plate. "Some devil's food cake I baked this morning.
Mr. Donberg has such a sweet tooth.... Dessert's the whole meal to
him!"
A month ago Gloria would have sneered inwardly at her neighbor's
chatter. But now she listened with interest..... She had found out
the joy that lies in putting a good meal on the table for a
well-loved husband!
There was as much romance in cooking corned-beef-and-cabbage as there
was in writing a love letter. It all depended upon the person for
whom you cooked it!
"If I hadn't made such a mess of things I might be getting dinner for
Dick myself, right this minute ... waiting for him to come home," she
thought regretfully, as she peeled her tomatoes.
It wasn't until after she had eaten her lonely meal and put the
dishes away that she began to wonder why she had come there to the
house that seemed still to be alive with Dick.
"I ought to go back to Mother's," she told herself. "There's no
point in getting soft and sentimental about Dick now, when he hates
me.... If I had any sense I'd divorce him and forget him, I suppose.
There must be some one else somewhere who could make me happy."
But she knew there wasn't anybody else who could.
She closed and locked the doors and windows of the house and went
upstairs.
Her own room ... with its silk curtains rustling in the night
wind.... Ah, it was the sanctuary she needed! Away from every one
who would question her or give her advice.
To-morrow she'd brace up and get a job. She'd face the world, and
whatever was ahead of her. But to-night she'd stay here, hidden and
at peace....
She thought of the months before her marriage when she and Dick had
come here every day to watch the builders at their work of making a
home for just the two of them! ... She remembered how Dick had
watched her as she went around the half-finished house, planning the
furniture that was to go into it. He had loved her then! ... Could
it be possible that he had no feeling at all for her now?
"I'm going to telephone him right now and tell him to come here! I
want to see him!" Gloria said suddenly, moved by an impulse stronger
than herself.