Gloria darkened the house, turned the key in her bedroom door, and
lay down to try to go to sleep.
But it wasn't the kind of night for sleep. A ray of moonlight lay
like a slim beckoning finger on the wall beside the bed. The
darkness seemed to be filled with an expectant hush.
There was a high excitement in Gloria. She swung her naked feet over
the side of the bed, and crossed the room to the window.
A large white moon hung low in the sky like a Japanese lantern. It
turned the fluttering leaves of the poplar trees to silver spangles.
The world outside seemed unreal ... disturbing in its beauty. But
the lonely woman at the window hardened her heart against its magic.
She had a feeling that the only way for her to go on was to harden
her heart against everything ... not only against things but against
people. Against Dick--
She must never let the thought of him into her heart again, she told
herself with a kind of dull anger.
And then she went on thinking about him.
Somewhere out there in the breathing night, he was.
And suddenly Gloria remembered another night when she had stood at
another window and wondered where Dick was. That had been long ago
... on the night before she had married him.
She remembered how he had driven up in the middle of the night, and
whistled softly in the darkness for her ... a low "Bob White"
whistle. He had begged her to come downstairs for just a second to
kiss him ... and she had refused.
"What a fool I was!" she told herself. "And how glad I'd be now if
he wanted to kiss me! How glad I'd be! ... But there's no chance of
that ever again...."
The tears that she had felt in her eyes all day ... and in her heart
... overflowed. She dropped to her knees on the floor and laid her
head down on the window sill and sobbed.
And then she seemed to hear a low whistle ... a long, clear note
followed by a shorter one. She held her breath and listened.... Was
it Dick's "Bob White" call?
Oh, no, it couldn't be--And then it came again!
Gloria raised her head.
Down on the lawn in the shadow of the trees was a darker shadow. It
detached itself and moved out into the moonlight. It was Dick!
Gloria's heart leaped in her breast. "Dick!" she said. And there
was a note of relief and sudden happiness in her voice.
"Come down and open the door," he said.
Without stopping to put on her kimono or slippers, Gloria ran across
the room, and down through the darkened house where the moonlight lay
in patches here and there on the walls.
She unlocked the door, and pattered out onto the porch. She stood
there in the mingled radiance of the distant moon and a street lamp
just in front of the house....
Some passing neighbors stopped to stare as she threw herself into
Dick's arms.
But neither she nor Dick saw them. For them in that moment they were
oblivious of all the world ... except themselves.
Dick's arms drew her up. He bent his head and kissed her as if he
never would let her go.
Then, abruptly he freed her.
"I thought you never were going to kiss me again," Gloria said
breathlessly. "You said you never would, you know!"
"We say a lot of things we don't mean in this world," Dick's voice
answered her. He put his arm around her and drew her into the dark
house.
His hand groped for the lights. Under their glare Gloria saw that
his eyes were almost black in his haggard face. There were lines
there that the last weeks had written indelibly.
"We do a lot of things we don't mean to do, too," Gloria faltered.
"Life seems to carry us along like bubbles along a wave.... Dick,
I've done a lot of things I haven't meant to do...."
Dick made a gesture of finality. "Well, there's no use talking about
it, now," he said. "Spilled milk, you know--"
He went into the living-room.
Gloria followed him. "Have you come home for good?" She was half
afraid to ask him that.
And in an agony of uncertainty she watched him fill his pipe ...
waiting tremulously for his answer.
Slowly ... as things seem to happen in a dream ... she saw him strike
a match, blow out its flame and lay it in the ash tray beside him.
"Well," he said finally, "it's this way, you see. This is the only
place in the world where I feel at home, somehow or other. And
I--can't get used to being without you."
Gloria laughed a little bitterly. "I'm a habit of yours ... that you
can't break. Is that it?" she asked. "The most deadly dull of all
things ... a habit?"
Dick shook his head. "No," he said. "It strikes deeper than that,
Gloria. You're my woman. There are a lot of men who can love a
score of women in their time. But I'm not one of them. I'm the kind
of fool who can never care for more than one woman, I suppose...."
"And am I that one woman for you?" Gloria asked. Her eyes were wide
and eager. "Are you sure?"
Dick looked at her. His mouth tightened as he took her into the hard
ring of his arms. "You are," he answered, and his voice was thick
and tense.
Gloria leaned back into his arms, and looked at him. "Then I won't
be jealous of Susan Briggs, any more, and I'll stop heckling you
about her," she said.
Dick waited a moment before he answered. "I've an idea that Susan
Briggs stopped working for me to-night," he said then, abruptly. "I
don't know what makes me think so, but I do, somehow."
Gloria laughed. "She'll be right there when you get to the office
to-morrow morning just as usual," she cried, "unless she knows you've
come back to me!"
"I think she does know it." Dick's voice was grave. "But don't
worry about her. You know I never cared about Susan Briggs ... don't
you?" He put his hands under her elbows and held her away from him.
"And I never cared about Stan Wayburn, either!" Gloria broke in
shrilly. "I've thought it all out, Dick, these last two weeks....
He was just part of Jazz to me, like cocktails and dance music. I
was hunting for a thrill, and he gave it to me...."
Her small face with its uptilted lips sobered as she went on: "He
told me all the things I wanted to hear from you ... how beautiful I
was, and how I could knock him off his pins. Oh, Dick, we women need
flattery and love ... or love-making! It's our job, you know! To
keep you men in love with us...."
Dick laid his hand over her mouth. "All right, all right," he said
impatiently. "And that about ends Stanley Wayburn and Susan Briggs,
for good, doesn't it? ... What I want to know just now is whether
you're going to be contented with me from now on?"
"Contented? I'm going to be happier than any lark!" Gloria bubbled.
"Why, it seems wonderful to me to be here in your arms again! I
thought I'd lost you forever and ever, just when I found out how much
I love you...."
"Yes, but there's more than just love in this marriage business,"
Dick answered. "Love's only an occasional flash to brighten the
whole.... You're going to have to do your own work, for I shall
always be poor, I suppose. And there'll be worries, and illness...."
"And babies, and bothers ... and all the things that make life worth
living!" Gloria went on. She had one of her penetrating flashes.
"And I shall grow old and lose my looks, and you'll grow staid and
pompous and prosperous," she went on with a wry little smile. "But
we'll still love each other, won't we? ... And let me tell you
something ... you'll have to set your foot down harder than you ever
did before, with me! A woman loves a man to run her to a frazzle!
If you'd done that in the beginning, I wouldn't have got into so much
mischief!"
Dick threw back his head, and laughed. "Gloria, you're a wonder!" he
said, his eyes twinkling. "I knew that, somehow or other, you'd lay
all this trouble we've had on my doorstep.... Well, all right, it
was my fault you got into mischief. What else did I do that I
shouldn't have done?"
"Your technique as a husband was all wrong." Gloria made a sweeping
gesture with one small dramatic hand. "You shouldn't have let me
leave you and go home to my mother.... But, thank Heaven, we've both
fallen on our feet! And we're here together, at last! ... Oh, I
can't believe it. I thought you were gone for good."
She drew his head down to hers.
... Ah, it was good to be here ... to be held ... to surrender
herself! Gloria felt as if she were in a globe of happiness.
"Dick," she said, drowsily, contentedly, from the shelter of his
arms. "Did you ever stop to think how nice it is for two people to
care for just each other ... and to have little children because of
their caring so? Don't you think there's something very fine and
sweet about it?"
Dick held her closer. "Of course, I do," he answered. "I've been
trying to tell you that all along, Flapper. But you never would
believe it before, would you?"
She shook her head. "Oh, my dear, to think that I almost lost you!"
she cried, half strangling him with her arms. Most surprisingly, she
burst into a storm of tears.
"What a simp I am to cry like this!" she sobbed against his coat.
"What am I doing it for when I'm so h-happy?"
Dick patted her soft hair. "There, there, cry all you want to!" he
said. "I know.... I understand."
He raised her hidden face, and kissed the tremulous scarlet mouth ...
the wet, white eyelids. Then he moved away from her toward the outer
door.
"Where are you going now?" Gloria cried in foolish panic.
"Just out doors, for a second," Dick answered. "Wait here for me,
... I want to pull that 'For Sale' sign out of the front lawn!"
And so the story of Gloria, the Flapper Wife, ends. And the modern
chronicle of Gloria, the Wife and Mother, begins.
We say to-day that we have a New Woman, who votes and drives her own
car, who plays golf and ... sometimes ... smokes a cigarette. But
she's not a New Woman, at all! At heart, she is the same woman who
brought up her stalwart young in a cave; who reared them in log
cabins on the New England coast three centuries ago; who took them
with her into the Covered Wagons that were part of a westward-moving
army almost a hundred years before our times!
... And she is the same woman everywhere, whether you find her in an
igloo in an Eskimo village or in many-towered Manhattan ... or in the
romantic islands of the Southern seas!
THE END