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THE WAY OF ALL EARTH
THE WAY OF ALL EARTH
BY
EDITH BARNARD DELANO
_Behold, I have set before thee an
open door and no man can shut it._
REVELATION
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: 1925 :: NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1923, 1924, 1925, by_
EDITH BARNARD DELANO
_Printed in the United States of America_
First Printing, March, 1925
Second printing, May, 1925
PART I
THE WAY OF ALL EARTH
1
Five o’clock; and the lethargic slowness of the afternoon changed into
activity with the abruptness with which light comes after the turning
of an electric switch. The girls at the desks in the outer room--no
bobbed locks in those days, but grotesque oddities of coiffure drooping
low over foreheads and strangely puffed out over ears--stood up so
unanimously, so instantly, that it was plain they had been waiting for
the hands of the clock to mark the hour of liberation. The fugue of
typewriters stopped; voices and the shuffling of feet sounded another
rhythm. A stenographer closed a door behind her, came forward with
red-ruled notebook and pencil and made her way to a desk near a window,
a dissatisfied look on her face; she would have to get off those
letters before she went home. Men opened and closed the drawers of
their desks; then they, too, followed the girls down the stairs. One of
them raised his arms and yawned.
“This spring weather gets you,” said he.
But nobody answered. The moment of release had come; in every man’s
mind was the thought of getting away, just as eight hours before they
had all been motivated by the idea of getting to work.
“Take the ferry?” Brice Denison asked a man whose shoulders brushed his
as they went out the door.
“Tube’s quicker,” the other said.
“Well, I’ve got some grass seed to get.” He plunged into the human
stream rushing westward, battling against the other stream forging to
the east. Sometimes he could thread his way a step or two ahead of
someone in front; sometimes he could do no more than keep pace with the
onward moving crowd--a long step, a dozen short ones, looking for a
gap, taking it, held again, then on. A street or two crossed, and the
eastward stream grew less; it was possible to make better progress, to
dodge more, to pass a couple of girls or a man; to walk swiftly under
metal projections where halves of beef hung, and hogs with their sides
held out by wooden pieces displayed the inner sheathing of their ribs,
and crates and baskets of vegetables lay open to the dust, and fruit
stands were piled high with oranges and apples, and vendors’ carts
lined the curb with boxed strawberries. The air freshened as Brice
reached the street lined on one side with ferries. He paused at the
door of a shop, and stood for a moment looking at the blue and purple
and yellow blooms.
“I’ll take a couple of those,” he said, and thrust his hand into a
trousers-pocket.
Then over the broad street to the ferry house. Under a stairway the
boy from whom he always bought the evening paper. He was recognized;
the paper he wanted was snatched from the pile and thrust at him, his
coins dropped into a waiting hand. Not a second was lost. Men hurrying
to the ferry must not be delayed. Moments were precious, invaluable.
They were hastening home.
There were trains waiting on the other side. The ferry docked. Men
rushed off, parting to right and left. Some glanced at the clock, then
began to walk more slowly; others raced, and others went stolidly on
their way, through the gates, on to forward cars. The forward cars got
there a moment sooner. Brice found a seat, put his baskets of pansies
in the rack overhead, unfolded his evening paper. Other men were doing
the same thing. Their movements might have been directed as by an
orchestra leader. Headlines, first--they had seen them on news-stands,
in other men’s hands, glanced at them in ferry or tube; then in unison,
with a swishing sound, up and down the car the papers were turned,
folded. The base-ball season was open. Tired men, with no time for
play, lost themselves in the printed accounts of the game. The train
moved out, a few late-comers passing along the aisle in the hope of
finding seats. A hand fell on Brice’s shoulder.
“Why--hello there, Ned!” he said, as the other took the place at his
side. “Haven’t seen you for ages!” A wave of self-consciousness passed
over him; that was an inapt thing to say: no, he had not seen Ned Allen
for ages. But the other man ignored any awkwardness there might have
been.
“How’s things?” he asked. “How’s Anne?”
“Fine, fine! How’s Mabel?”
“She’s well. Billy’s had measles. I see you’re still the same old
farmer, Brice!”
Brice glanced overhead at his pansies. “Yes. But I had to buy a
lawn-mower when we moved, Ned. Gosh--those were great old days!”
The other grinned. “Yes. I miss your tool chest. Like your new house?”
“Not so new, now. Three years, nearly four, isn’t it? By Jove, it’s
five!”
“Five--so it is! We still miss you. Movies near you?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Anne’s sort of lost interest. Things come along, you
know. You meet people, all that. I tell you what, Ned. We want you and
Mabel to come up to dinner some night. Make it soon.”
“That’s indefinite. We’ll do better than that. Anything on tonight?”
“Not a thing.”
“Well then, you and Anne hop on a train and come down. Or maybe you
keep a car?”
“No such luck!” said Brice, with a comforting warmth suddenly flaring
within him; they had no car yet, but things were coming along.
“All right. You come down, and we’ll all go to the movies. Have a bite
on the chafing-dish afterwards. We’ve got a new one--electric. Be like
old times.”
“We’ll do it!” said Brice, as the train stopped and Allen arose. “In
time for the second show, anyway.”
He did not open his paper again. Good, that, to meet Ned, especially
today. Good to think of old times. That little two-family house, Ned
and Mabel in the apartment above. The lawn-mower that he borrowed
from Ned when his turn came to cut the small plot of grass. The tools
that Ned borrowed in turn. Mabel and Anne going shopping together,
sometimes on a matinée spree in town; small triumphs shared, simple
pleasures--good old times, particularly good to think about tonight.
Good to have had them, good to have gone on to something else; good,
very good, still to be going on.
The train stopped at his station; he thrust his newspaper into a
hip-pocket, took down the baskets of flowers. A short walk along the
side of the tracks, a turn to the left and a block or two--it was not
far to his house; its convenience had been one of their reasons for
choosing it, but now its nearness to things had become insignificant.
Its importance, its meaning had grown. It represented something more
than any other house on the street, even than the other houses that
he passed on the more important street. He never turned into the
by-street without a quickening of the pulse. His eye never caught the
gray stucco front with its roof of red tiles coming oddly down in a
sweep incongruously borrowed from the Chinese without a warm sense of
satisfaction. That house was not like other houses; it was not like any
other house on that street, even. They were all set on low terraces.
Some were shingled, some stuccoed; some had red roofs, and others
had brown; some were painted in gray or yellow, with white trimmings
and green blinds; some had two smaller windows on the front porch,
some had one larger. Those differences were due to the effulgence of
the builder’s imagination and to the real-estate man’s knowledge of
salesmanship. This was a neighborhood that was meant for nice people
with moderate incomes; at the time the houses were built there were
no garages, though later several owners had built them, of cement or
corrugated metal, in the tiny back yards. People who lived in nice
neighborhoods, however convenient to the commuters’ trains, did not
want to live in houses like all the other houses on the street. The
floor plans of all those on Lammermoor Place were as like as right
and left gloves; but outside no two were alike. Individuality was the
keynote; individuality and a certain smart look. That was what made for
quick sales. No need of substantial building. Looks, looks--that was
what counted. It had counted with Brice and Anne; but now the house had
taken upon itself for Brice a personality of its own. It was home. He
was going home tonight with grass-seed for that bare spot on the lawn,
and with pansies, and with something else. Anne would be pleased.
A little girl on roller skates skidded up to him as he turned the
corner, threw herself upon him. He laughed, held out his hand, and the
child set her feet together and let him drag her along.
“Mrs. Denison’s just come home. She came in an automobile,” she said.
“See--? She hasn’t got out yet, but she’s there.”
A long gray runabout, “the latest sports model,” was at the curb in
front of his house. Brice dropped the child’s hands as he reached it.
His eyes met Anne’s.
“I’ve brought her safe home, you see,” said the man at the wheel.
“Thanks,” said Brice, dryly, without smiling.
Anne jumped down, spoke a laughing word of farewell over her shoulder.
They went up the walk together. But in the hall she turned to him with
a look of resentment that was like a hand thrusting him away.
“I think you might have been ordinarily polite to Ranney,” she said.
“I thought I was,” said Brice; but without replying Anne started
upstairs. He set his baskets of pansies on the hall table. From the
landing where the stairs turned she looked down.
“Of course if you really want to make a white spot on the hall table
it’s quite all right to put those wet things there,” she said. He
hastily took them up. “I can’t see why you like to come home looking
like a delivery boy, anyway,” she added, and went on up to her room.
Brice carried the pansies through a swinging door into the kitchen.
“Hello, Lucille,” he said to a young colored woman who turned from the
stove to greet him with an exceptional dental display.
“My, ain’t them pretty!” she said.
“Yes. I’m going to plant them along the porch.”
“That’ll be grand! Mis’ Denison’s awful fond of flowers.”
“Got a tumbler or something?” Brice asked; he began picking off some of
the larger blossoms. The girl brought him a small slim vase which he
held under the faucet. Water splashed into the sink, spattered over his
hands and coat.
“I’ll wipe you off,” said Lucille. “That faucet cuts up all the time.”
“Needs a new washer,” said Brice. “I’ll fix it tonight.” He carried the
little vase into the dining-room, and in the doorway stopped short.
There were flowers on the table, white lilacs and deep red roses, and
thrust between them some purple orchids, such a forced mingling of
the seasons as only the very rich can achieve. But Brice did not know
that. He wondered vaguely what Anne had paid for them. Then he set his
pansies in front of her place.
She came down in a moment; she was always deft in her changes of
costume. It had not taken long, but she was fresh and elusively
fragrant in a gown Brice had not seen before. She was smiling.
“You forgot to kiss me when you came in!” said she.
“I can make up for that,” Brice said. “You look like a party!”
“This?” she shrugged, turned herself about. “Do you like me?”
“You bet I like you!”
Lucille came in at the moment, and Anne slid into her chair at the
table. She glanced at the pansies, set the vase out of the way. During
the meal their talk was only casual. For the past few years Anne had
insisted that their one maid should wait upon the table as nearly as
possible in the manner of the more highly-paid and trained servants of
her friends. For a time Brice found the result diverting. Often it was
ludicrous enough. But even a humorous thing may become irksome; when
the novelty began to wear off, he had protested.
“Oh, let the girl eat her dinner in peace, Nance,” he said, “and give
us a chance to be human and talk. I’m getting fed up with having her
stand there by the pantry door, listening to every word we say, and
staring at me every time I put the fork to my mouth like a dog waiting
for a bone. Call it off, can’t you?”
“No,” said Anne, decidedly. “If I don’t train her properly while we are
alone, what can we do when we have guests?”
“Let ’em get along as we do. Why not?”
“That’s absurd,” she replied.
It was not until their evening meal was ended and they went into the
greater freedom of the living-room that there was anything more than
broken, polite exchanges of phrases between them. Brice’s gift of small
talk was largely lacking, and he saw that Anne had something on her
mind. She was always preoccupied, when she had something on her mind.
“Coffee in the living-room, Lucille,” Anne said to the girl, from the
doorway.
Brice, already lighting his pipe, chuckled. Dinner had rested him.
His sense of humor was uppermost again, and Anne was lovely in the
light-colored gown. “You do keep it up, don’t you, old girl? You’re a
wonder!”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He looked at her quizzically over the flaming match. “Coffee--and
drawing-room. Gosh!” said he.
“Oh, I see the absurdity of it as well as you do,” she retorted. “This
room----!”
Brice sobered a little. “Nothing the matter with this room,” he
declared. “You’re a great hand at making a place home-like, old lady.
Mighty cozy in here.”
She looked at him for a moment; then she asked, quietly, “Is that
really your ideal, Brice? Cozy?”
“Well, why not? Looks good to me.”
She bit her lip, crossed the floor to press the little button in an
electric lamp. He looked after her, added, “Not that I don’t wish it
were--well, finer, and larger, and all that--for your sake.”
She came slowly back. He had thrown himself into a stuffed arm-chair
which was worn into a permanent impress of his figure. They had bought
it during the first year of their marriage, made an event of buying it,
called it his birthday present, that birthday being two months in the
future. He had never been willing to have it banished to those regions
above where most of their early purchases filled spaces that would
otherwise be vacantly gaping. Pipe-smoke was whirling about his head.
He looked at her through its comforting haze.
“Look here, Nance,” he said. “Old Grant is going to resign. I’ve asked
for his job.”
Instantly her expression changed.
“Oh, Brice! That will give us--how much does he get?”
“Well, twelve hundred, maybe fifteen hundred, more than I’m getting.
But I suppose they wouldn’t start me off with that, you know. Getting
the job’s the first thing.”
“But you will get it. Of course you will. And even twelve hundred more!
Oh, Brice!”
“Don’t count on it too soon, old girl. There’s Farren, you know. He has
more right to it than I have. And there’s always the chance of their
bringing in a man from outside.”
“Oh! That wouldn’t be fair! And you’ve been there longer than Farren.
Twelve hundred----”
The colored maid, with her cap awry and a grin on her face, at that
moment backed through the portières that separated the dining-room from
the living-room, bearing a tray too large for the two coffee-cups it
held. She swung around to face Anne, and the coffee splashed over the
rims of the cups to the saucers.
“Where you want it at?” she asked, cheerily.
“I will take it,” said Anne, with dignity, fully conscious of her
husband’s suppressed amusement. “And the smaller tray next time,
Lucille.”
The girl disappeared. “None of that for me,” said Brice. “Keeps me
awake.”
Anne’s eyelids flickered. “You will need it tonight,” said she. “We are
going out.”
“That’s so!” said Brice, cheerfully, reaching up for a cup. “How’d you
know? Seen Mabel?”
She looked at him, plainly surprised. “Mabel?”
“Yes, Mabel. Ran into old Ned on the train. Said he and Mabel had been
wanting us over in the evening for a long time, and why not tonight. So
I said we’d go. Of course. Don’t like to drop away from old friends.”
Old friends. Ned, and Mabel. There flashed across Anne’s mind those
first years of their married life, when she and Brice had had the
downstairs apartment; those days when Ned was beginning his career of
selling insurance, when Brice had been so triumphant over getting the
new job with Whitten & Company. Yes, they were old friends. They had
shared the lawn-mower, taken turns in clearing off the snow, gone to
the movies together, compared the price of groceries, run in and out
half a dozen times a day. Those grubby years, that she was so glad to
have come away from. She hated to be reminded of them.
“I’m sorry, Brice, I promised Tessie Ogden we’d go there for bridge.”
“Oh, but look here! Mrs. Ogden won’t mind. Can’t hurt old Ned’s
feelings.”
“I don’t want to hurt them. We’ll have them here to dinner some time.”
“But it’s been years since we were there, Nance. And I said we’d go.
They’ll have gotten things ready--you know how hospitable Mabel is.”
Anne knew. The latest record for the phonograph, perhaps a game of
five-hundred or the movies, and at the end of the evening something
on the chafing-dish, with Mabel explaining where she had discovered
the recipe. Anne knew all of it. The scurrying of Mabel to get things
in order, Ned hurrying across the tracks to the delicatessen store.
Mabel’s discussion with ten-year-old Florence about bed-time, Billy’s
calls for a drink of water. An endless retailing of jokes Ned had read
in the paper, by way of conversation. Oh, Anne knew it all; whenever
she thought of it she thanked the stars of her destiny that they had
helped her get away from it. Even as it was, she had not got very far;
but not back to that, not back to that. She thought of Tessie Ogden,
with her languid voice, thought of the richness of Tessie’s house, of
the people who would be there.
“I’ll telephone Mabel, Brice,” she said. “I can’t possibly disappoint
Tessie.”
Brice sat up. His pipe had gone out, and he sent an exploring thumb
into its depths. “I can’t see Tessie’s being disappointed, Nance, by
our not turning up. But Mabel--and old Ned----”
“I’m sorry, Brice. We shall have to go to Tessie’s. It’s bridge.”
“Well--that’s all the more reason, then. I told you before, Nance, I am
not going to play bridge with that bunch.”
She got up, moved about restlessly. If only Brice would not make
himself so hard to manage.
“Oh, you need not be afraid, this time, of losing,” she said. “Tessie
told me to say that she’d be your partner. She always wins.”
Brice stood up, crossed to the mantel for tobacco. “Sweet thing,
Tessie,” said he.
Anne flared. “She’s no worse than the facts. The fact is that my
husband is too--too----”
Brice supplied the word. “Stingy.”
“You said it, not I! But there it is, and everybody knows it, taunts me
about it. Laughs at me, probably, when I’m not there.”
“What do you care?” Brice looked at her with an oddly lifted eyebrow, a
trick of his that she used to love. Now it exasperated her because it
was always the sign that Brice was opposing his will to hers. “What do
you care what those people think or even say, Nance? What the dickens
do they _matter_?”
“They are my friends.”
“But are they? What do they mean to you, what would they do for you,
what----”
“Tessie, at least, would play as my husband’s partner to keep him from
losing.”
Brice sat down. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his
fingers fumbling over his pipe, his eyes on an unimportant figure of
the rug.
“Anne,” he said slowly, after a moment of thought, “it does seem funny
to have to try to make you understand. Can’t you, without our saying
anything?”
She managed to smile; one prettily shod foot was swaying a little. “But
if you play with Tessie, Brice, this time you’ll win,” she told him.
He bit his lip. “Look here, Nance,” he said, looking across at her.
“I hate like the dickens to can anything you want to do, or anything
you like to do. But this playing bridge for money. Honest, old girl, I
can’t choke it down. It’s not playing a square deal with our life, our
income being what it is.”
“Everybody does it. And you’ll win, if you----”
“Everybody does not do it. You may call me anything you like, but under
the circumstances I don’t think it’s decent. Even if you can afford
it--and you and I cannot, Nance--it’s a mere rushing into something for
the sake of excitement, unwholesome excitement. If you can’t afford it,
it’s all the worse. I am not gambling. If I have anything to do with
it, my wife doesn’t gamble, either.”
“You played the other night.”
“I did. I’m sorry I did. I felt like a cheap skate while I was doing
it. But we were there, and I’d have broken up the party if I stayed
out. My having lost has nothing to do with my being unwilling to play
again. I’m glad I lost. Served me right for being a coward.”
“You lost three dollars and forty cents. Was that much, for an
evening’s amusement?”
“No. But it has nothing whatever to do with it. I gambled, and I am not
going to gamble again.”
For a moment she was too angry to speak; then she stood up. “Brice,”
she said, “I don’t think you quite appreciate what I am trying to do
for you.”
“I think you’re a peach, Nance.”
Her head moved impatiently. “You don’t know how hard I have tried to
know the right people. You----”
“What’s the matter with Alice’s set?”
“Nothing. Alice is my best friend. She has always been, ever since we
were born. I met you at her house. But you know what Alice is, as well
as I do. She’s always had everything. She doesn’t want anything more.
She’s in a rut, and glad she’s in a rut, so long as George and the
children are there with her. The people I have worked hard to know and
make friends with, for your sake, are people who are not in a rut. They
are rising people. And they’re the right people. You don’t understand
how hard it is to keep up with them. I struggle and struggle, and you
don’t try to help me at all.”
“Sure I’ll help you! But after all, why the struggle? Where’s it going
to get you?”
“I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about you, your future.
It’s all so I can further your interests.”
His face clouded. “Where do my interests come in? We’re getting along.”
“Oh--getting along! You’ll never be a success until you know the right
people. There’s DeLancey Hunt--he’s made over a hundred thousand
this last year, they say. Meg’s got a new sedan, and Jack gave her a
sapphire bracelet on her birthday. There’s Burson, and Harry Claflin,
and the Averys. I don’t have to go over the list. The thing is that
they are successful. And you will never be successful until you get in
with them, know their ways, make friends of them. They can do things
for you.”
“I can’t thrill over that, you know. I don’t want to climb by means of
friends. Nor of people you and I play around with.”
“I know you don’t. That’s just what I’ve been telling you. You don’t
help----”
“How much’ll it help to let Mrs. Ogden keep me from losing money at
bridge?”
She ignored that. “There’s Ranney Copeland--you think so much of George
and Alice, you ought to approve of Ranney. He’s George’s brother. But
what do you do, the very first time he offers to help you? You turn him
down flat.”
“I don’t like Ranney Copeland. And I will not play stocks.”
“Because you’re afraid!”
“Yes. I am afraid. I’m not ashamed of that.”
“Well, I am! You’ve got to push ahead as these other men do, if you’re
going to get anywhere.”
There was silence between them for a full minute. Then he said, slowly,
“Anne, we seem to be talking a different language, these days.”
“Then it’s because you won’t look at life as it is. You won’t put your
hand out nor make any move to get ahead. You wait until some change
in the office shoves you into a better place. You won’t see things
that----”
“But life has a good many sides to it, old girl. We used to look at the
same side, together, and not think it so bad.”
“And what was it? What was it, but----”
“Not so bad,” he repeated, “not so bad. Just what a good many millions
of other men and other women are looking at, and finding it good.”
She waved a hand, indicating the room they were in, and laughed--not
joyously. “This?”
“Well, yes, this--or something like it. Looks all right to me. Meant a
good deal to us, getting these things together. Watched the house being
built--remember? Pretty good, first time I came home to it and found
you in the kitchen with a smudge on your nose. Still is pretty good.”
“Honestly, Brice, is that all the ambition you have?”
“Not all. No. I’d like to see you in a limousine of your own, and a
house on a hill-top, if you wanted it. But, after all, whether they’re
big and showy or not, the things men work for and want are just about
the same. Those other fellows, the ones whose wives you’re running
around with, don’t have any more.”
“Don’t have any more!” she repeated, incredulously.
“No. Home. Money enough to get by with. A wife, and--and children.”
She clasped her hands together. “Oh! I’m glad, glad, glad there are no
children!”
He was staring again at the figure in the rug. “Yes,” he said, slowly,
“I have known your feeling about that for some time.”
She jumped up, started to speak, but, instead, went out of the room. He
heard her step overhead. Presently he went to the telephone and spoke
with Ned Allen. Then for an hour or more he sat in the arm-chair, his
body in its familiar sag to the left; sat there with his pipe, his eyes
still exploring the intricacies of the pattern of the rug as a sick
man will follow the lines of the wall-paper, idly, perhaps--or perhaps
weaving into them strange figures.
2
In the morning she awoke to a spatter from the bath-room--Brice, as
usual, running off all the hot water while he shaved. But immediately
another thought came to her. Old Mr. Grant was going to resign. Twelve
hundred a year more, maybe fifteen.
At the breakfast table she was smiling, debonnair, fresh and youthful
looking in one of the simple ginghams that Brice loved. Owing to the
demands of the day’s work, at breakfast the maid did not preside, and
no cap was in evidence. Brice liked his coffee hot from the stove, so
Anne brought it in herself and poured in a goodly portion of cream.
Always, with Brice, each day began itself; there was no hanging over of
the discussion of the night before.
“When does Mr. Grant go?” she asked.
Brice grinned across at her. “Now don’t you go counting on that too
much, old lady.”
“But of course you’ll get it. I am going to see Alice about it today.”
He looked blank. “Alice?”
“Yes, of course. George Copeland is a stockholder in Whitten & Company.
A word from him----”
“Oh, please, Nance! You don’t understand.”
Her good humor was not to be shaken. “That is just what I was trying to
tell you last night, my dear. Everything is done through friendship,
nowadays. That is just the value of my having worked so hard to make
the friends I have. A word from George Copeland--I rather think nobody
will disregard that!”
“Oh, my dear girl! Look here--you can’t do that. I won’t have it. It
wouldn’t do any good, but I won’t have it. Think of the position it’d
put me in.”
“Oh, very well. You’ll get it, of course, anyway. And Brice, the
Dodsons want to sell their car.”
He got up, laughed, came around the table and bent over her. “Don’t you
go thinking about a car yet, my child. Plenty of time for that.”
He came back from the hall and kissed her again. She was all but
unconscious of it, yet when the front door had closed behind him she
sat there thinking about him. Brice, and their life together. Ten
years. What was it that Barrie had called it? Mid-channel, where the
waters were deepest, the seas most rough. Mid-channel, where the danger
was. But there could be no danger in her case. As a matter of fact,
she thought any woman was rather stupid to let danger come after ten
years of experience. Of course, those first years of adjustment were
difficult enough. She remembered days when she had thrown herself on
the bed and wept, for reasons long since forgotten. She remembered
those moments when little futile discussions had arisen between them
until they loomed like horrible dark barriers they could never cross to
come heart to heart together again. She remembered how furious she was
when Brice brought carnations on their first anniversary, forgetting
that she loathed the stiff scent-laden things and adored daffodils. And
she remembered how the next day she wept, and kissed the empty sleeve
of his coat in the closet, because Ned Allen had let it out that Brice
had gone without luncheon for four days in order to buy them. Oh, it
was difficult enough to adjust one’s self to marriage, at first. But
one learned. Certainly she had learned in those ten years what to
avoid, where to persist, how to work quietly, when to be tender and
yielding. Men did not learn as readily. Even now Brice did not trust
her to know what was best for them. Yet she knew how to manage him. In
the end he always came round to her way of thinking. He was going to do
that now. For she wanted things, so many things. There was no harm in
wanting them. The other women whom she had come to know during the past
three or four years all had them. Their husbands were no cleverer than
Brice. It was only that their attitude towards life was different,
their way of looking at things that made them successful men. She could
discover no other reason for it. She must, must, somehow, make Brice
see things as they did. The rest would follow; and she wanted the rest,
wanted it so.
She looked at the flowers on the dining-table for a moment, and a slow
smile came to her face. It was good of Ranney Copeland to have sent
them; he was always doing things like that. They must have fresh water.
She divided them, taking some into the living-room. In the merciless
revealing sunlight not even her determination could make it look
gay like Tessie Ogden’s. Nor like Alice Copeland’s, with its sedate
expensiveness. There was Brice’s old chair, with the cushions sagging
to the left. That, alone, kept it in the class of the one-living-room
house. The other things had been bought when they moved here from the
two-family house. Then they had been achievements, definite advances in
price and taste over anything they had possessed before. Now she saw
them for what they were, understood their incongruity, their--her mind
formed the word--their hideousness. Chairs, department-store Colonial.
Too glossy. The rug that had seemed so fine, and the one small Oriental
in front of the mantel, a later purchase whose price she had managed
to keep from Brice. The one good piece, an Empire sofa, that somehow
made all the rest look sordid. That, too, a later purchase, bought
under Alice Copeland’s advice, at a price which Alice declared a real
bargain, but one that had cost Anne some heart-burnings when Brice sat
for two evenings over their household accounts because he would not
consent to buying on the installment plan. That lamp on the table was
an earlier purchase. Mabel and Ned had come down to admire it the day
it came home. Perhaps she had been a little hard about Mabel and Ned
last night; but one had to do hard things, sometimes, for good to come
out of them. It was like surgery. Not pleasant, but sometimes necessary.
The door bell buzzed in the back of the house. She jumped up, then
sat down again and took up a piece of embroidery. It rang again, and
Lucille poked her head around the door from the kitchen.
“You answer the do’ bell?” she asked cheerfully.
“Certainly not,” said Anne. “Don’t forget your white apron.”
The girl brought in a couple of letters and a magazine. “Get the little
tray from the hall-table and bring them in on that, please, Lucille,”
Anne said.
The letters were not interesting. She usually found herself bored with
magazines. One had to look them over, just as one had to read the
novels that were being talked about and the headlines of newspapers.
She went to the telephone and called up the grocery-man. More than once
Brice had suggested that she could do better by going to the store
herself, that the morning walk would do her good. But what was the
use? You were only tempted to buy more when you saw things displayed,
and she hated to dress for the street early in the morning. Besides,
with this new prospect ahead of them, this new increase of salary,
there would be less need of being careful. Careful--how she hated being
careful. Brice even wanted her to keep accounts, as if it helped any
to know what the money had been spent for, after it was gone. Brice
didn’t realize how much she saved, anyway. On her clothes, for example.
She had rather a flair for clothes. It interested her to contrive them
out of little or nothing. Yes, little or nothing, since all she paid
for was the material. People wondered how she managed to have so many
dresses, but that was because she made them, of course with the help
of a cheap little seamstress. There was a dress on the figure upstairs
now that the seamstress had left for her to finish. She went up. If she
hurried, she could wear it that afternoon. Alice Copeland was coming to
take her to the country club. It was horrid, not having a car of one’s
own. The Dodsons bought a new car every year; the one they would sell
now was really as good as new. Brice would not refuse her that. She
would not have to contrive for it as she had for the country-club dues.
And he would not refuse to use the car, as he had persistently refused
to go to the club with her, say what she would about the desirable
people to be met there. The dues were only a hundred and eighty, after
all; and one did not have to have extras, in spite of what Brice
maintained. But that twelve hundred more they were going to have, or
fifteen hundred, would certainly ease things. Perhaps she would not get
the car this year, after all. That would make Brice happier. How he
did love to save. And there was always Alice. Alice was always willing
to give her a lift. Everyone knew they were almost like sisters.
They had always been like that, except a little less intimately during
the first few years of her marriage, when she was in that first flush
of excitement at being married to Brice and having a place of their
own, and Alice was busy with her babies. She and Alice and Nicky--they
had had good times together when they were children in the up-state
town where her father, Professor Warren, was principal of the high
school, and Alice’s father had owned the big mills. Anne, motherless,
was in a sense everyone’s child. There was old Miss Willy, her father’s
housekeeper, who did what she could; and Veronica’s mother on one side
and the doctor’s family on the other. Anne was as much at home in both
houses as in her father’s. Doctor Clark she adored, but there was a
perpetual feud between herself and the doctor’s only son, Ambrose.
Neither Anne nor Ambrose ever thought about the reason for the feud.
It was enough that Veronica was Anne’s “most intimate friend,” and
that Ambrose was forever wanting Nicky to stop playing with the girls
and help him with some of the strange machines he was always trying
to make. As for Nicky, her disposition towards the opposite sex was
ordained before she was born. There awaited her arrival five brothers
of her own and one Ambrose, who lived only two houses away, one
ever-adoring Ambrose. Emphatically, Veronica took them all lightly.
Alice was a plump, homely, shy little girl, an adoring slave of both
Anne and Nicky, and always a little afraid of the boys. Naturally
enough, it was Alice who had married first, just as it was natural that
she should have married even more money than her father possessed. She
was still a good deal the same sort of person as ever, plump and mild,
generous, sentimental; having no troubles of her own, she wore the
burden of others’ troubles on her heart, was forever being distressed
about something. Lately it had been about Veronica. Why should Nicky
persist in scorning marriage? Why wouldn’t she take Ambrose? Why did
she live in that horrible, slummy part of the city? Why did she let
herself come into contact with all sorts of grubby people, even have
them at her rooms? Why should any woman on earth want to work, when
she might have a nice home of her own and darling children? Those were
Alice’s arguments, at which Nicky laughed and wrinkled up her eyes at
Anne, or at Ambrose if he were present. Yet in her heart Anne agreed
more with Alice than with Veronica.
They talked about it that afternoon on the way to the country club.
“Yes,” Anne said, “I do think she’d be happier married. Ambrose would
be easy to manage.”
“They are both coming out to dinner tomorrow,” Alice said. “Will you
and Brice come, too?”
“Love to. I don’t think Brice and Ambrose see very much of each other,
these days.”
“Men are not like us in that,” Alice remarked. “When women don’t see
each other often there seems to be a lessening of intimacy after a
while, with most of us, anyway. Men take up where they left off.”
“I’ve never thought about it,” Anne returned lightly. “I know Brice and
Ambrose are awfully fond of each other. Of course, Ambrose detests me.
He’s never forgiven me for marrying Brice, though he did introduce us.
He thinks I’m not good enough for Brice.”
“Anne, you do exaggerate so,” Alice protested.
“Oh no I don’t. I never got on with Ambrose when we were children. I
don’t get on with him now. I think he’s stupid, if you ask me. But he’s
done awfully well. I don’t see why Nicky won’t have him. She’d still
have her own way.”
On that mild spring afternoon some of the women were out on the links;
others followed along, commenting, chatting, languidly paying tribute
to the call of the season. Others sat for a while in the sun on the
great rounded porch that hung above the first tee, Anne among them.
A few days of brisk breeze had dried the grass, but Anne did not
like walking. She waited with Mrs. Ogden until Alice and the others
returned. Then, in the sudden coolness of the late afternoon, they all
went indoors together.
“Tea, all you people,” Alice Copeland said. “My party.”
That was the hour that Anne liked best. Usually a man or two dropped
in. Today there was only one, Ranney Copeland, who was devoting
himself to a young bride. But now and again his eyes turned towards
Anne. She appeared oblivious, though as the talk went on her gayety
increased. She was standing at one end of the mantel, teacup in hand.
The firelight slid on the silk over her arm, played on the long line
of her hip, touched one side of her face to rosiness, emphasizing her
slimness, enhancing her air of youthfulness that for all her thirty-two
years was not wholly fictitious. She was conscious of being well
placed. She liked to feel herself poised, graceful, elegant from the
arch of her foot to the smooth bands of hair under the close hat. She
liked to be standing at ease while other women were seated.
“Now I,” she was saying across the steaming tea, “am what the
scientists call a throw-back. I’m the typical old-fashioned woman. It’s
the mental attitude that counts. Mine, you know very well, Jane, is the
sweet, old-fashioned one. I’m sure you have noticed it.”
“In a Callot model,” Ranney Copeland remarked. “Or is it a Paquin?”
Anne threw him a swift smile, and stirred her tea; but not before
she had caught an exchange of glances between two of the women, and
a raised eyebrow. Oh yes, the women understood about her clothes.
Still, she knew how to wear them. Even Alice, with all her money, never
succeeded in looking as well turned out.
“Is that why you didn’t show up for bridge last night?” Mrs. Ogden
inquired. “So you could hold Brice’s hand in front of the fire, or
something?”
“Of course,” Anne said calmly.
“Didn’t the old-fashioned woman always capture her husband’s
pay-envelope on Saturday nights?” another woman asked.
Anne tilted her chin a little, looked down. “Darling,” she drawled,
with an emphasis too tender.
“What Nance means to imply,” said Tessie Ogden, who had been twice
divorced, “is that she is all for the sweet sanctity of the family.”
“Thanks, dear,” Anne laughed. “How well you understand me.”
“Just the same, I don’t blame Nellie Callum for going to Reno,” said
the speaker Anne had first answered. “Though goodness knows, even
that’s getting to be old-fashioned enough.”
“I hope she stayed at the hotel I advised,” Mrs. Ogden remarked. “And I
gave her a letter to my lawyer.”
Anne smiled again. “I’m so old-fashioned that I think marriage is
absolutely sacred. I think I even go further. It’s so sacred that one
ought to keep on trying and trying it, until everyone’s satisfied. Like
you, Tessie dear.”
The little bride’s eyes were round, but the others laughed. Only Alice
Copeland looked distressed. “Nance never means half she says,” she
protested.
“Oh, but I do, dear. That’s part of my Early Victorianism, my utter
sincerity,” Anne returned.
Mrs. Copeland stood up, and the party drifted towards the place where
their wraps were. On the wide porch of the club-house Anne heard a
voice at her shoulder.
“You are wonderful, Nance,” Ranney Copeland was saying. “Just how much
of that did you mean?”
Anne smiled. “I wonder!” she said, demurely.
But Alice had heard, too. She turned, gave her brother-in-law a direct
look. “She didn’t mean a word of it, Ranney. And I won’t have you
talking to Anne like that, in whispers.”
Ranney grinned. “Sweet small Cerberus,” said he.
“You needn’t be rude,” Mrs. Copeland said. “I just stated a fact. Are
you coming, Anne?”
“Pardon me,” said Ranney. “Not my intention to be rude, my dear girl.
But, Alice--one has often thought of it--just how much good as a
watch-dog do you suppose old Cerberus was? One seems to have heard of a
good many people who successfully crossed that river.”
Alice had stepped into her car. “Come on, Anne,” she said, with no
further look at the man.
He stepped between Anne and the car, with a flash of the eyes at her
that she did not lose. “Anne promised to let me take her home. What
else do you suppose I came out for?” he said coolly to Alice.
Alice Copeland turned her head. Anne said, rather too quickly, “Sorry,
dear. I forgot to mention it. You don’t mind?” Whereupon Mrs.
Copeland’s car sped ahead.
When they had spun through the country-club gates, Anne spoke. “It is
really very thoughtful of you to give me a lift,” she said. “You knew,
as I did, that Alice was longing to get home to the babies. And I do
live so out of the way!”
The man at the wheel looked at her with a slow smile. “As you remarked
to Tessie just now, ‘Thanks, dear. How well you understand me.’”
They laughed. Then Anne gave him an upward glance. “The flowers were
lovely, Ranney.”
“I can do so little,” he said, in a low tone.
They went on for half a mile in silence, then abruptly Anne spoke, her
hands folded tightly together in her lap, her look straining ahead.
“Oh, I hate it all! All!”
His lips twisted. “Then you put up a pretty good front, my dear girl.”
“But I do hate it. The petty economies, the subterfuges that they all
see through.”
“You should worry! You can out-talk the best of them.”
“Oh--talk! As if that were all of it. I know what I have a right to--I
know what I owe myself. I know how I get it, I know what I have to put
up with to keep it. No one else knows, though they think they do. They
can’t, because there’s so much of it. And I hate it, hate not having
things, not being able to meet them on their own ground, hate living as
I do, where I do. I hate not having even a car of my own, having to
depend on charity.”
His car rounded a turn of the road, slipped ahead. “The charity is from
you to me,” he told her. “And I’ve told you how you can very easily
manage the rest.”
“I know, Ranney. But Brice will not hear of it. Money in the bank.
That’s as far as his imagination will let him go.”
“But it’s perfectly safe, my dear girl. Didn’t you tell him that?”
“Oh, I told him.”
“It’s done every day. I can’t quite get his point of view, you know. A
quick turn-over. No need of putting back any more than your original
investment. You’d always have that, and the profits are yours to do as
you like with. It’s perfectly simple. I should be very glad----”
“It’s no use, Ranney. He simply will not.”
“Let him go to some other broker, then. I can’t bear to see you----”
She shook her head. “To see it----! But I have to endure it.”
They were silent a moment. Then he asked, “Look here, Anne, just how
much of all that did you mean?”
She had forgotten her wild talk at the club. Her mind had been
traveling fast and far, had come back into more familiar country than
that speaker’s platform by the mantelpiece. “Of what?” she asked.
“What you said about marriage. Just--how--old-fashioned are you?”
Her heart seemed to leap. She felt a cold breeze on her cheek.
Her lips could scarcely articulate. She leaned forward a little.
“I--don’t--know,” she whispered.
“Better let me out at the corner,” she said, later, and walked slowly
up the little street with the houses all trying to be different yet
all so alike. Brice was already home. He had set out the pansies along
the front of the porch, and was running a lawn-mower. She hated the
lawn-mower, but at sight of Brice a quick touch of compunction swept
over her. A sandy-haired man somewhere in his middle thirties, his
broad frame was already becoming stooped from desk work. His clothes
were inconspicuous, a little shabby, everyday clothes worn season
before last for best, now thriftily used for the office. There was a
sort of doggedness in the way he pushed the lawn-mower. Anne knew he
was tired.
He stopped when she turned into the short cement walk that led to the
porch, and laughed, rubbing a hand upward over his brow. “Hello, old
girl! Thought I’d get done before you caught me at it,” he said.
Anne smiled at him. His eyes took in all her spring prettiness. “I
believe you really do like it,” she said. “Just the same, I wish you
wouldn’t.”
“Oh, it’s good exercise. Gosh--a day like this makes you want to get
out and dig, or go fishing or something, doesn’t it?”
“It was lovely at the country club,” she told him. “Alice and some of
the others played golf. The dogwood is out.”
There was no news as to who would be chosen for Grant’s place. “Don’t
count on it too much,” he told her when he kissed her good-by the next
morning. “It may be a week before we know, anyway.”
She put her hands on his arms. “Don’t think of it that way, Brice. You
let things slide along so. Make them give it to you. You know you’re a
better man for the job than Farren.”
His face softened. “Think a lot of the old man, don’t you?”
“Well--of course,” she said, and kissed him again.
She went upstairs still with that sense of compunction. All the evening
before, all this morning, she had been very gentle with Brice. He was
so good. Of course he needed prodding. With another sort of wife he
would not have gotten ahead at all. He would have been like all the
other men on the street, humdrum, satisfied, smug. When they first
moved there he had rather tentatively scraped acquaintance with some
of them. She had been right, quite right, to put a stop to that. She
had learned her lesson. Their earlier friendship with Mabel and Ned
Allen had blocked their making other friends until they moved. Even
before the new house was ready she had made up her mind to know only
the right people thereafter. She had met some at Alice’s; through them
she told herself she would meet more. And she had. Brice might walk up
the street with the men, or talk a little when he was out with that
miserable lawn-mower; she bowed to the women, and saw to it that their
acquaintance went no further. Impossible to mix sets. Now things were
coming their way at last. That extra fifteen hundred. Poor old Brice.
It had not been quite fair of her to talk like that, even among the
women she had to amuse. For she did have to amuse them. Wild talk,
quick talk--what else had she to offer them? They liked it, accepted
her assumption that she was one of them, that only by the circumstance
of Brice’s not having got on as fast as other men was she unable to go
the whole pace with them. They were kind enough, for the most part.
Occasional snubs did not matter. Tessie Ogden was a good sort, in spite
of her varied matrimonial ventures; she had no end of money. One could
not afford to be too conservative, unless, of course, one had wealth
and position like Alice’s. Alice could afford to hold Mrs. Ogden at
arm’s length. Alice could afford anything. Any Copeland could. Ranney
Copeland, as well as Alice’s humdrum George.
Her thoughts brought her up short, there. What had Ranney meant by
his question of the afternoon before? She flushed. After all, what
she had said was true. They had thought it a joke, all those others.
She really was an old-fashioned woman. Divorce? It was grubby, rather
disgusting, on the whole. A woman’s job was not to go hunting for one
man after another, but to make the man she had married. As she intended
to make Brice. Good old Brice. She had forgotten to tell him to get
home early. They were going to Alice’s. Perhaps he would like to meet
Ambrose, come out with him. She went to the telephone.
3
Alice’s dinners were always sedate and somewhat elaborate; Anne envied
the perfection of service, and always had an eye to the novelty of the
hors d’œuvres. This evening there were only the six of them and Alice’s
older little girl, who had begged to stay up to see Aunt Nicky. She
was a dark, spindling little thing, with a rather disconcerting habit
of staring. After dinner she slipped her hand in Veronica’s, and when
her mother insisted that she must go up to bed wound her arms and legs
about Nicky and clung to her.
“But I don’t want to go,” she protested.
Nicky somehow unwound her, held her off a little in front of her.
“Elizabeth,” she said, seriously, “that’s the best reason in the world
for not doing a thing. Never do anything you don’t want to do. Unless
you have to. This is one of the times that you have to. So--scoot!”
When the child had departed George Copeland laughed. “You know I don’t
altogether go along with your philosophy, Veronica, my child,” said
he. He was a tall man, heavy and dark, usually shy. It was generally
supposed that he liked everyone a little, no one very much, and that in
business he knew how to drive a sharp bargain. Alice adored him.
“George,” Nicky said, looking up at him, “you’re six feet of sham. It’s
precisely your own philosophy.”
Alice flushed a little. “At any rate, Nicky,” said she, “we’ll admit
it is yours. You certainly do only what you want to. And I must say I
think they’re queer things, sometimes.”
Veronica stared for an instant, then settled back in her chair. “Ah,”
said she. “I thought you and Ambrose had your heads together at dinner.
I see he’s told you.”
“What is it?” asked Anne. “You’re always quarreling, you two.”
“I have not been quarreling,” Ambrose declared, setting his coffee cup
on a table. “But there are things I object to. I’ll admit I said that.”
“And I think you are right, Ambrose,” said Alice. “Nicky will persist
in living alone in a queer part of the city. That’s stupid, as I see
it. Anne agrees with me. I don’t think any woman living alone ought to
fill up her place with people off the street.”
Nicky laughed. “One person, please. But it does rather fill up the
place. I have to sleep on the sofa.”
“You don’t even know the girl,” Ambrose affirmed.
“Her name seems to be Stella,” said Nicky. “She says she’s a thief. And
none too straight otherwise. Also she was uncommonly hungry. So what
could I do?”
“What will you do?” Brice Denison asked, smiling a little, leaning
forward.
“That’s what I came out for,” said Nicky, calmly. “I’ve got to give her
a chance to get away from her man, you see. And I’m broke.”
“It’s not your affair, I tell you,” said Ambrose, savagely. “Turn her
out, if she hasn’t already left with everything you possess.”
“It certainly is not your affair, Ambrose,” Nicky returned. “How much
is it yours, George?”
“Why do you put it up to George?” Alice asked quickly. “If it’s money
you want----”
“Well, I do,” said Nicky.
“Is she married?” Alice asked again.
George Copeland said, kindly, ponderously, “Oh, come now, Alice. How
much do you need, Nicky?”
Nicky grinned up at him. “It’s not one of the times you have to, you
know, George!”
George’s hand went into his pocket.
An hour or two later, when the women had gone upstairs for wraps, Anne
said, “Why not come back with us for the night, Nicky? You won’t have
to sleep on the sofa and I think I have some clothes you might use for
your--thief.”
Nicky laughed. “Thanks. I’ll come. So I won’t have to go back in the
train with Ambrose.”
Alice looked troubled. “Why do you pretend to hate Ambrose?” she asked.
“You don’t really, you know!”
Nicky was putting on her hat in front of a glass. “Well, no. I think
I’m rather in love with him, really. Anyway, part of the time. But
this business of marriage----!”
“It’s the only real happiness,” Alice said solemnly.
Veronica turned, eyebrows raised. “Are you happy, Alice? Are you, Anne?
Are George and Brice happy?”
“Of course we are!” Alice cried, flushing. Anne echoed, “Of course we
are!”
Nicky looked from one to the other. “Of course and of course you are!
Great institution, this marriage, isn’t it? Nothing to equal it.”
The next morning Anne watched Brice and Veronica walk off towards the
station together. She had gone through her closets and found a number
of last year’s things for Nicky. She and Nicky’s protégée were about
the same size, it seemed, and she had a pleasant sense of having been
generous. They were mostly things that could have been made over for
herself. There was a glow of kindliness about her. She even joked a
little with Lucille, and told her about the clever sandwiches that
preceded the dinner at Mrs. Copeland’s. She went upstairs and threw
all the windows open to the soft breeze. Things were lovely today. It
would have been a day to play in, but there were no engagements. Well,
anyway, she intended to stay at home and mend. Brice had been rather
pathetic that morning, searching for a shirt with all its buttons. She
smiled at herself indulgently. Good old Brice. She really neglected
him a little, sometimes. She loved to make pretty things; mending was
stupid. But this day she would give up to Brice, make up to him a
little, however secretly, for her moment’s disloyalty at the club the
other day. Not that it was really disloyalty. It was nothing worse than
silly, wild talk.
The door-bell sounded. In a moment Lucille came up with a florist’s
box. “Mist’ Denison cert’n’y do think a heap o’ you-all,” said she.
“I’m going to git me a husband.”
Anne laughed. When the girl had left the room she opened the box.
Tulips, this time, and Ranney Copeland’s card among them. She arranged
the flowers about the house, smiling a little. Then she went back to
her sewing. She sewed on some buttons, and reached for a basket piled
high with stockings. Mending was stupid work. The curtains blew inward.
Everyone would be out on Main Street. She had not telephoned the order
for dinner. It would please Brice if she went to the store herself.
There was no darning-cotton, after all. There never was, when you
wanted it. She laughed a little at the eternal elusiveness of things
like darning-cotton, put the basket aside, got into her trimmest street
things.
She had barely turned the corner when a low, brown car swung up to the
curb and stopped just in front of her.
“Now don’t tell me you were trying to dodge me,” said Ranney Copeland’s
gay voice.
Anne laughed. “I had forgotten you,” she said, giving him a teasing
look.
Ranney’s composure was not shaken at that. He had stepped to the
sidewalk beside her. “I believe you were coming to meet me,” said he,
laughing with her. “Let me give you a lift, won’t you?”
It was not in Anne to resist stepping into that car; but when Copeland,
at the next corner, turned away from the main street where the shops
were, she protested. “Oh, I mustn’t, Ranney. I’ve an errand--really.”
“So have I,” he declared, cheerfully. “I’ve got to show you something I
came across the other day. Won’t take a minute.”
Yet the minute prolonged itself into an hour. The car spun out of the
town, climbed a hill or two with no lessening of speed, sped away to
the open country. Good company, was Ranney. After all there was all day
for the mending. It had waited so long that it could very well wait a
while longer.
It was past noon when at last the car stopped before a little gray
roadhouse, once the place where a tollkeeper lived, the old tollgate
now standing upright at one side of the road like a gaunt arm held high
in surrender before the exigencies of modern life. Inside, in the tiny
dining-room, beside a window that looked into budding apple trees, a
table was prepared for two. At her look Ranney laughed.
“You didn’t think I was going to let you stay in that house of yours on
a day like this, did you?” he asked.
She flushed. “It is the house that I live in,” she said. But her
attempt at dignity made no impression upon him.
“Oh, come now! You hate it, and I thought you’d like this! They give
you chicken and waffles. Not bad.”
Her lip quivered a little as she sat down. This was it. This was the
power she wanted, the power these people had with their magic of
money. To be able to get away from the little rooms of life, to ignore
distance, to speak a word over the telephone and find things prepared
for you, things, any kind of things.
Only a minute or two, and some of those things were there on the table
before them. When the waitress had left the room, Copeland leaned
across towards Anne.
“I didn’t mean to be brutal, you know. Honestly, I wanted to give you a
good time. Anne----?”
“I know, Ranney,” she said, a little wearily. “You’re a good friend.”
“That’s what I want to be,” said he. Presently he added, “Anne, I
wonder if you know what you’ve meant to me, these past months.”
“I don’t know, Ranney. Sometimes I’m numb. Sometimes I don’t know
anything, don’t feel anything.” Why was it that, with him, a sense of
utter helplessness against her fate, against the web she was caught
in, seemed always to close her in? Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred
more added to Brice’s salary. What, after all, would that little bit
give them? How far would she ever be able to get away from that eternal
grubbiness?
“It’s been a good deal, Anne. I wish I could tell you.”
“No. Don’t.”
“But I wish I could. I want to. You’ve been good, letting me see so
much of you.”
For the first time she thought of that. A good deal. Yes, it had been
that to herself, too. It had seemed natural enough, yet it was, it had
been, a good deal. Her eyes widened. She gave him a startled look. “Too
much, perhaps, Ranney. Perhaps I had better----”
“Oh, come now, Nance! Don’t begin to play the prude, just because the
old hens are cackling. You’re too good a sport for that. Don’t you
listen to Alice.”
He was leaning towards her again.
“Look here, Anne! Just how much did you really mean of what you said
yesterday?”
“Not one word,” she declared.
“I thought that. But why not? Why not, after all? Why not make a break
for it? A woman like you can get anything she wants.”
Her thought flew to Brice. Abruptly it was as though his good old red
head, his bowed shoulders, were there before her instead of young
Copeland’s sleek one and his shoulders so carefully tailored.
“But I have everything I want,” she said, her lips trembling a little.
He laughed. “I said you were a good sport. But I do want to do
something for you, Anne. I wish you’d make your husband give me that
money to invest for him. There’s a good thing I know of, right now.
You’d have a mighty nice turn-over in only a month or two.”
She leaned back, and he let her think it out. The morning’s revulsion
of feeling was not entirely banished by the hour with Ranney. She was
still feeling Brice, in that subconsciousness where a woman’s thought
of her husband is ever present, as the dear old blunderer who must be
protected and cared for. Her mood was still but little different from
what it had been when she had wanted to mend his stockings and sew on
his buttons. Old Brice--to do something for him--somehow to protect
him from those queer ideas of his, from his inhibitions. That money.
If only he would! Ease for them both. Yes, for Brice as well as for
herself. Oh, she knew how he thought about it. He called it gambling.
As if everybody didn’t do it. He said they must have something on hand,
something always available, in case anything happened. As if men could
not always borrow. He loathed credit accounts, he made himself an
object of gloom over every bill. As though credit were not to be used!
Besides, she could be careful. She would be.
“Ranney,” she said, her face suddenly a little pale, “I will do it. We
have a common account at the bank. I will give you the money to invest
for us. And be very grateful.”
4
Even more than before she was full of the feeling of wanting to do
something for Brice. As she stepped out of the tub she remembered that
she had not ordered dinner. She got into a bathrobe and called down to
Lucille.
“No’m, they ain’t any meat,” the girl told her. “I thought maybe
you-all was going out to dinner again, or else you forgot.”
Anne’s good humor held. “You ought to have reminded me, Lucille,” she
said gently. “But never mind. You just put on your hat and run over to
Main Street, won’t you? Get a steak, a good thick one. You’ll have to
hurry.”
“Yes’m, I’ll go. It’s plenty o’ time yet.”
Anne heard the pleased note in the girl’s voice. Ordinarily, of course,
it would be wretched discipline to let her go out except on her regular
days. But this time was exceptional. It was too late for delivery by
the market-man. She went back to her dressing. Fresh things, everything
fresh, the prettiest she had, and an old dress he was fond of. She
would make herself beautiful.
She was all the gentle wife when he returned, all grace, all
fragrance. Her consciousness was pervaded by the feeling of having
done something for him, even though he was unaware of it, of having
protected him against himself in the matter of the investment through
Ranney. She felt motherly towards him, and wifely, too. She would be
very sweet to him, yielding, caressing. She felt that she was quite
up to being gay and soothing, as well. As soon as he came in she knew
that there would have to be soothing. He was a little late, and more
than a little frowning. She went at once to the kitchen to have dinner
put on the table. She talked about light things, little things. He was
unresponsive. When the steak had been served he looked at the hovering
maid and frowned again.
“You may wait in the kitchen, Lucille,” he said. As the door to the
pantry swung to Anne looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Something has gone wrong. I can see that,” she said, gently. “But you
can’t talk here. She’ll be listening just the same, you know.”
Brice ignored that. “Look here, Anne,” said he. “Mrs. Ogden was on the
train tonight. Damned chatterer. She told me she saw you driving with
Copeland this morning. It’s the second time I’ve had that sort of thing
flung at me within the week. I won’t have it.”
Anne looked at him, her eyebrows slightly raised. Two little red spots
appeared in her cheeks. She pressed her lips together, touched her foot
to the bell under the table.
“Potatoes, Lucille,” she said, quietly. “And remain in the room,
please.”
The rest of the meal passed in silence. In silence they passed into the
living-room. Brice went for his pipe, was about to speak when the dusky
face under the white cap appeared between the curtains.
“You-all want any coffee?”
“No!” snapped Brice; and Anne took a seat by the table under the
lamplight.
The pipe under way, Brice, from the hearth-rug, turned to her. “You
heard what I said. I won’t have it.”
Anne’s tongue touched her lips. She was finding her rôle of maternal
patience difficult, yet something still remained of that warm
protective feeling. Brice’s furies were soon over.
“I don’t like that man, anyway. I don’t like his confounded
impertinence in trying to get you to give him that money to invest.
When I have any investments to make I can do it myself. He’s an idler,
a philanderer. I don’t want you seen with him.”
“You are speaking of a very good friend of mine, Brice.”
“Well, he’s not! None of them are. Another thing that Ogden woman
told me. That speech of yours at the country club, all that rot about
divorce. If that’s the sort of thing you’ve got to spout to keep up
with them----!”
“You needn’t be vulgar!”
“I’m not as vulgar as they are. Hang it all, Anne, I don’t like these
new friends of yours. They’re not our sort. I don’t like them.”
“What do you mean by our sort?”
“We’re not in their class. Not financially or any other way. And don’t
want to be. That’s what I mean.”
She was angry enough now. “Have we got to go over this every night?”
she demanded, standing and facing him. “I tell you, Brice, I am getting
tired of it.”
“And God knows I am!”