There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze
age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age. In the cut-glass
age, when young ladies had persuaded young men with long, curly
mustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward
and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass
presents--punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses,
wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and
vases--for, though cut glass was nothing new in the nineties, it
was then especially busy reflecting the dazzling light of fashion
from the Back Bay to the fastnesses of the Middle West.
After the wedding the punch-bowls were arranged in the sideboard
with the big bowl in the centre; the glasses were set up in the
china-closet; the candlesticks were put at both ends of
things--and then the struggle for existence began. The bonbon
dish lost its little handle and became a pin-tray upstairs; a
promenading cat knocked the little bowl off the sideboard, and
the hired girl chipped the middle-sized one with the sugar-dish;
then the wine-glasses succumbed to leg fractures, and even the
dinner-glasses disappeared one by one like the ten little
niggers, the last one ending up, scarred and maimed as a
tooth-brush holder among other shabby genteels on the bathroom
shelf. But by the time all this had happened the cut-glass age
was over, anyway.
It was well past its first glory on the day the curious Mrs.
Roger Fairboalt came to see the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper.
"My dear," said the curious Mrs. Roger Fairboalt, "I LOVE your
house. I think it's QUITE artistic."
"I'm SO glad," said the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper, lights
appearing in her young, dark eyes; "and you MUST come often. I'm
almost ALWAYS alone in the afternoon."
Mrs. Fairboalt would have liked to remark that she didn't believe
this at all and couldn't see how she'd be expected to--it was
all over town that Mr. Freddy Gedney had been dropping in on Mrs.
Piper five afternoons a week for the past six months. Mrs.
Fairboalt was at that ripe age where she distrusted all beautiful
women---
"I love the dining-room MOST," she said, "all that MARVELLOUS
china, and that HUGE cut-glass bowl."
Mrs. Piper laughed, so prettily that Mrs. Fairboalt's lingering
reservations about the Freddy Gedney story quite vanished.
"Oh, that big bowl!" Mrs. Piper's mouth forming the words was a
vivid rose petal. "There's a story about that bowl---"
"Oh---"
"You remember young Carleton Canby? Well, he was very attentive
at one time, and the night I told him I was going to marry
Harold, seven years ago in ninety-two, he drew himself way up and
said: 'Evylyn, I'm going to give a present that's as hard as you
are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through.'
He frightened me a little--his eyes were so black. I thought he
was going to deed me a haunted house or something that would
explode when you opened it. That bowl came, and of course it's
beautiful. Its diameter or circumference or something is two and
a half feet--or perhaps it's three and a half. Anyway, the
sideboard is really too small for it; it sticks way out."
"My DEAR, wasn't that ODD! And he left town about then didn't
he?" Mrs. Fairboalt was scribbling italicized notes on her
memory--"hard, beautiful, empty, and easy to see through."
"Yes, he went West--or South--or somewhere," answered Mrs. Piper,
radiating that divine vagueness that helps to lift beauty out of
time.
Mrs. Fairboalt drew on her gloves, approving the effect of
largeness given by the open sweep from the spacious music-room
through the library, disclosing a part of the dining-room beyond.
It was really the nicest smaller house in town, and Mrs. Piper
had talked of moving to a larger one on Devereaux Avenue. Harold
Piper must be COINING money.
As she turned into the sidewalk under the gathering autumn dusk
she assumed that disapproving, faintly unpleasant expression that
almost all successful women of forty wear on the street.
If _I_ were Harold Piper, she thought, I'd spend a LITTLE less
time on business and a little more time at home. Some FRIEND
should speak to him.
But if Mrs. Fairboalt had considered it a successful afternoon
she would have named it a triumph had she waited two minutes
longer. For while she was still a black receding figure a hundred
yards down the street, a very good-looking distraught young man
turned up the walk to the Piper house. Mrs. Piper answered the
door-bell herself, and with a rather dismayed expression led him
quickly into the library.
"I had to see you," he began wildly; "your note played the devil
with me. Did Harold frighten you into this?"
She shook her head.
"I'm through, Fred," she said slowly, and her lips had never
looked to him so much like tearings from a rose. "He came home
last night sick with it. Jessie Piper's sense of duty was to much
for her, so she went down to his office and told him. He was hurt
and--oh, I can't help seeing it his way, Fred. He says we've been
club gossip all summer and he didn't know it, and now he
understands snatches of conversation he's caught and veiled hints
people have dropped about me. He's mighty angry, Fred, and he
loves me and I love him--rather."
Gedney nodded slowly and half closed his eyes.
"Yes," he said "yes, my trouble's like yours. I can see other
people's points of view too plainly." His gray eyes met her dark
ones frankly. "The blessed thing's over. My God, Evylyn, I've
been sitting down at the office all day looking at the outside of
your letter, and looking at it and looking at it---"
"You've got to go, Fred," she said steadily, and the slight
emphasis of hurry in her voice was a new thrust for him. "I gave
him my word of honor I wouldn't see you. I know just how far I
can go with Harold, and being here with you this evening is one
of the things I can't do."
They were still standing, and as she spoke she made a little
movement toward the door. Gedney looked at her miserably, trying,
here at the end, to treasure up a last picture of her--and then
suddenly both of them were stiffened into marble at the sound of
steps on the walk outside. Instantly her arm reached out grasping
the lapel of his coat--half urged, half swung him through the
big door into the dark dining-room.
"I'll make him go up-stairs," she whispered close to his ear;
"don't move till you hear him on the stairs. Then go out the
front way."
Then he was alone listening as she greeted her husband in the
hall.
Harold Piper was thirty-six, nine years older than his wife. He
was handsome--with marginal notes: these being eyes that were too
close together, and a certain woodenness when his face was in
repose. His attitude toward this Gedney matter was typical of all
his attitudes. He had told Evylyn that he considered the subject
closed and would never reproach her nor allude to it in any
form; and he told himself that this was rather a big way of
looking at it--that she was not a little impressed. Yet, like all
men who are preoccupied with their own broadness, he was
exceptionally narrow.
He greeted Evylyn with emphasized cordiality this evening.
"You'll have to hurry and dress, Harold," she said eagerly;
"we're going to the Bronsons'."
He nodded.
"It doesn't take me long to dress, dear," and, his words trailing
off, he walked on into the library. Evylyn's heart clattered
loudly.
"Harold---" she began, with a little catch in her voice, and
followed him in. He was lighting a cigarette. "You'll have to
hurry, Harold," she finished, standing in the doorway.
"Why?" he asked a trifle impatiently; "you're not dressed
yourself yet, Evie."
He stretched out in a Morris chair and unfolded a newspaper. With
a sinking sensation Evylyn saw that this meant at least ten
minutes--and Gedney was standing breathless in the next room.
Supposing Harold decided that before he went upstairs he wanted a
drink from the decanter on the sideboard. Then it occurred to
her to forestall this contingency by bringing him the decanter
and a glass. She dreaded calling his attention to the dining-room
in any way, but she couldn't risk the other chance.
But at the same moment Harold rose and, throwing his paper down,
came toward her.
"Evie, dear," he said, bending and putting his arms about her, "I
hope you're not thinking about last night---" She moved close to
him, trembling. "I know," he continued, "it was just an
imprudent friendship on your part. We all make mistakes."
Evylyn hardly heard him. She was wondering if by sheer clinging
to him she could draw him out and up the stairs. She thought of
playing sick, asking to be carried up--unfortunately she knew he
would lay her on the couch and bring her whiskey.
Suddenly her nervous tension moved up a last impossible notch.
She had heard a very faint but quite unmistakable creak from the
floor of the dining room. Fred was trying to get out the back
way.
Then her heart took a flying leap as a hollow ringing note like a
gong echoed and re-echoed through the house. Gedney's arm had
struck the big cut-glass bowl.
"What's that!" cried Harold. "Who's there?"
She clung to him but he broke away, and the room seemed to crash
about her ears. She heard the pantry-door swing open, a scuffle,
the rattle of a tin pan, and in wild despair she rushed into the
kitchen and pulled up the gas. Her husband's arm slowly unwound
from Gedney's neck, and he stood there very still, first in
amazement, then with pain dawning in his face.
"My golly!" he said in bewilderment, and then repeated: "My
GOLLY!"
He turned as if to jump again at Gedney, stopped, his muscles
visibly relaxed, and he gave a bitter little laugh.
"You people--you people---" Evylyn's arms were around him and her
eyes were pleading with him frantically, but he pushed her away
and sank dazed into a kitchen chair, his face like porcelain.
"You've been doing things to me, Evylyn. Why, you little devil!
You little DEVIL!"
She had never felt so sorry for him; she had never loved him so
much.
"It wasn't her fault," said Gedney rather humbly. "I just came."
But Piper shook his head, and his expression when he stared up
was as if some physical accident had jarred his mind into a
temporary inability to function. His eyes, grown suddenly
pitiful, struck a deep, unsounded chord in Evylyn--and
simultaneously a furious anger surged in her. She felt her
eyelids burning; she stamped her foot violently; her hands
scurried nervously over the table as if searching for a weapon,
and then she flung herself wildly at Gedney.
"Get out!" she screamed, dark eves blazing, little fists beating
helplessly on his outstretched arm. "You did this! Get out of
here--get out--get OUT! GET OUT!"