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The Gorgeous Girl

by Nalbro Bartley · English · Gutenberg #29753 · 521,297 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Gorgeous Girl

Author: Nalbro Bartley


        
Release date: August 22, 2009 [eBook #29753]

Language: English

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THE GORGEOUS GIRL

by

NALBRO BARTLEY

Illustrated







[Illustration: "He was very diplomatic in his undertaking"]



Garden City--New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1920

Copyright, 1920, By
Doubleday, Page & Company
All Rights Reserved, Including That of
Translation into Foreign Languages,
Including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1919, 1920, by The Curtis Publishing Company




ILLUSTRATIONS

  "He was very diplomatic in his undertaking"             Frontispiece
                                                           FACING PAGE
  "The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the
      most gorgeous side of life"                                   12
  "It was with a charming timidity that she tip-toed
      into the office"                                             188
  "A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed"             284




THE GORGEOUS GIRL

CHAPTER I


"Before long two bank accounts will beat as one," Trudy said to Mary
Faithful. "Tra-la-la-la-la," humming the wedding march while the
office force of the O'Valley Leather Company listened with expressions
ranging from grins to frowns.

"Sh-h-h! Mr. O'Valley has just opened his door." As she was private
secretary and general guardian to Steve O'Valley, president of the
concern, Miss Faithful's word usually had a decisive effect.

But Trudy was irrepressible. Besides boarding at the Faithful home and
thus enjoying a certain intimacy with Mary, she was one of those young
persons who holds a position merely as a means to an end--the sort who
dresses to impress everyone, from the president of the concern if he
is in the matrimonial or romantic market to the elevator boy if said
elevator boy happens to have a bank account capable of taking one to
all the musical shows and to supper afterward. Having been by turns a
milliner's apprentice, assistant in a beauty parlour, and cashier in a
business men's restaurant, Truletta Burrows had acquired a certain
chicness enabling her to twist a remnant of chiffon or straw into a
creation and wear it in impressive contrast with her baby-blue eyes
and Titian-red hair. In the majority of cases where a girl has
neither family nor finances she must seek a business situation in
order to win a husband. Trudy went after her game in no hesitating
manner.

She had no intention of becoming one of the multitude of commercial
nuns who inhabit the United States of America this day--quiet women
with quick eyes, a trifle cold or pensive if analyzed, severely combed
hair, trim tailor suits and mannish blouses with dazzling neckties as
their bit of vanity--the type that often shoulders half the
responsibility of the firm. Whether achieving a private office and a
nervous stenographer who is disappointed at having a lady boss is to
be preferred to a house-and-garden career is, like all vital issues, a
question for debate.

Neither did Trudy propose to shrivel into a timid, slave-like type of
person kept on the pay roll from pity or by reason of the fact that
initiating a novice would be troublesome. Such a one was Miss Nellie
Lunk, who sat in a corner of the hall making out requisition slips and
taking care of unwelcome visitors--a pathetic figure with faded eyes
and scraggly hair, always keeping a posy on her old-style desk and
crocheting whenever there was a lull in work. Thirty years in business
was Miss Lunk's record, twenty-five in Mark Constantine's office and
five in the employ of Mr. O'Valley, that lovable, piratical Irishman
who achieved his success by being a brilliant opportunist and who, it
would seem, ran a shoestring into a fortune by a wink of his blue
eyes.

Trudy knew that Miss Lunk lived alone--the third story back, where she
cooked most of her meals, while a forlorn canary cheeped a welcome.
She possessed a little talking machine with sentimental records, and
on Sundays she went to a cafeteria for a good, hearty meal unless
cousins asked her to their establishment. Some day Miss Lunk would
find herself in a home with other no longer useful old people and here
she would stay with her few keepsakes, of which the world knew nothing
and cared less, the cousins dropping in at intervals to impress upon
her how carefree and fortunate she was!

In conclusion Trudy had decided not to accept the third choice of the
modern business woman, which, she decided, was Mary Faithful's
fate--to give your heart to a man who never had thought of you and
never would think of you as other than a reliable and agreeable
machine; as someone--should Florida and a certain Gorgeous Girl named
Beatrice Constantine beckon--who would say:

"Yes, Mr. O'Valley, I understand what to do. I arranged the New
Haven sale this morning. You were at the jewellery store to see
about Miss Constantine's ring. So I long-distanced Martin & Newman
and put it through. If the ring is sent in your absence I know what
you have ordered and can return it if it does not comply with
instructions--platinum set with diamonds, three large stones of a
carat each and the twenty smaller stones surrounding them. And a
king's-blue velvet case with her initials in platinum. And you want me
to discharge Dundee and divide up his work. Yes, I gave the janitor
the gold piece for finding your pet cane. I'll wire you every day."

And Steve O'Valley had swung jauntily out of the office, secure in his
secretary's ability to meet any crisis, to have to work alone in the
almost garish office apparently quite content that she was not going
to Florida, too. Trudy's imagination pictured there a someone
petulant, spoiled, and altogether irresistible in the laciest of white
frocks and a leghorn hat with pink streamers, at whose feet Steve
O'Valley offered some surprise gift worth months of Mary Faithful's
salary while he said: "I ran away from work to play with you, Gorgeous
Girl! See how you demoralize me? Even your father frowned when I said
I was coming. How are you, darling? I don't give a hang if I make poor
Miss Faithful run the shop for a year as long as you want me to play
with you."

Having the advantage of studying Mary Faithful's position both from
the business and family aspects Trudy had long ago decided that she
was not going to be like her. In no way did she envy Mary's position.

Since her dreamer of a father had died and left dependent upon her her
four-year-old brother and a mother whose chief concern in life was to
have the smartest-looking window curtains in the neighbourhood, Mary
went to work at thirteen with a remnant of an education. Possessions
spelled happiness to Mrs. Faithful; poetical dreams had been Mr.
Faithful's chief concern, and as an unexpected consequence their first
child had been endowed with common sense. With Mary at the wheel there
had been just enough to get along with, so they stayed on in the
old-fashioned house while Mrs. Faithful bewailed Mary's having to work
for a living and not be a lady, as she could have been if her father
had had any judgment.

Mrs. Faithful had become quite happy in her martyrdom as she was still
able to maintain the starched window curtains. After a conventional
period of mourning she began to relive the past, her husband's
mistakes, her own girlhood and offers of marriage--such incidents as
these sufficed to keep her from enjoying the present, while Mary rose
from errand girl to grocery clerk, with night school as a recreation,
from grocery clerk to filing clerk, assistant bookkeeper, bookkeeper,
stenographer, and finally private secretary to Steve O'Valley, one of
the war-fortune kings. And she had given her heart to him in the same
loyal way she had always given her services.

At home Trudy noted that Mary worked round the house because she liked
the change from office routine, deaf to the complaining maternal voice
reciting past glories in which Mary had no part. If the parlour
furniture with its tidies and a Rogers group in the front window
sometimes got on her nerves she forced herself to laugh over it and
say: "It's mother's house, and all she has." She concerned herself far
more with Luke, an active, fair-to-middling American boy somewhat
inclined to be spoiled. Mary had taken Luke into the office after
school hours to keep a weather eye on him and make him contribute a
stipend to the expenses.

"If a man won't work he should not eat," she informed him as she
proportioned his wage.

Recalling Mary's position at home--though Trudy rejoiced in her own
front room and the comforts of the household--she shrugged her
shoulders in disapproval. Certainly she could never endure the same
lot in life. For if one man will not love you why waste time bewailing
the fact? Find another. Mary could have had other suitors. Mr.
Tompkins, the city salesman, and young Elias, of Elias & Son, had both
made brave attempts to plead their cause, only to be treated in the
same firm manner that Luke was treated when he hinted of making off to
sea.

"She'll spend her life loving Steve O'Valley and slaving for him,"
Trudy had confided to her dozen intimate friends, who never repeated
anything told them. "And he will spend his life being trampled on by
Beatrice Constantine, and after they are married she will be meaner
than ever to him. But he will love her all the more. Honest, business
men make the grandest husbands! College professors are lots harder to
get along with--but business men are as cross as two sticks in their
offices and at home they're so sweet it would melt pig iron."

The first plank in Trudy's platform was to marry a business man as
nearly like Steve O'Valley as possible. The second was--whether or not
she had a stunning home with brick fireplaces--never to spend her days
hanging round them. Her most envied friend lived in New York, and her
life was just one roof garden after another. She had everything heart
could desire--Oriental rugs, a grandfather's clock, a mechanical
piano, bird-of-paradise sprays for her hat, a sealskin ulster, and
plenty of alimony. And in case said business man proved unsatisfactory
Trudy had resolved to exchange him for unlimited legal support at the
earliest possible opportunity.

But she would not trespass upon Mary's platform, which consisted of
loving Steve O'Valley yet knowing of his love for the Gorgeous Girl,
as Mark Constantine had named his daughter. And of course Mary must
have realized that though she might earn three thousand a year as
private secretary she would eternally lock her desk at six o'clock and
trudge home to her mother and the starched window curtains, watch
Luke fall in love and scorn her advice, wash her hemstitched ruffles
and black her boots, and keep her secret as she grew older and plainer
of face!

Trudy often tried to decide just how handsome and how plain Mary was;
it was a matter for argument because the expression of Mary Faithful's
eyes largely determined her charm. She was a sober young person with
thick braids of brown hair and surprising niceties of dress, sensible
shoes, a frill of real lace on her serge dress, no hint of perfume, no
attempt at wearing party attire for business as the rest of the staff
not only attempted but unfortunately achieved. She had honest gray
eyes, the prophecy of true greatness in her face with its flexible
mouth and prominent cheek bones, the sort of woman who would be the
mother of great men, tall and angular in build and walking with an
athletic stride offset by a feminine cry-baby chin and the usual
mediocre allotment of freckles on the usual mediocre nose! Mary
Faithful was not pretty; she was a "good-looking thing," Trudy would
usually conclude, glancing in a near-by mirror to approve of the way
her fluff of pink tulle harmonized with her pink camisole under the
tissue-paper bodice.

Indulging in one of these reveries Trudy suddenly realized that she
had not added the checks on her desk. She went to work disdainfully,
first feeling of her skirt and waist at the back, slipping a caramel
in her mouth, and making eyes at a clerk who passed her desk.

Mary came out of her office and stopped before Trudy accusingly. "I've
been waiting for these," she said.

"It's so grand out to-day--look at that sunshine! May's the hardest
month of the year to work; you just can't help planning your summer
clothes."

"Miss Constantine is coming to call for Mr. O'Valley and I want his O.
K. on those before he gets away."

"Listen, don't you think the diamonds he is buying her are vulgar? A
bunch of electric bulbs is what I call it, I certainly would not
permit----"

Mary's pencil tapped authoritatively on the desk, then she signed an
order someone brought her.

"Are they going to be married at high noon in church?"

"Yes--June the first."

"Lucky girl! She's older than me; everyone says so. It's only her
money and clothes that has built her up. I don't think she's so much.
Her nose is as flat as a pancake and she rouges something fierce. I
saw them at the theatre and I certainly was----"

Mary took the checks out of Trudy's hand and walked away. Undecided as
to her course of action Trudy hummed a few bars of "Moving Man, Don't
Take My Baby Grand" and then followed Mary into her office.

Mary added up the checks without glancing at her caller. Then she said
sharply: "I cannot pay out someone else's money for work that is not
done."

"Don't get a grouch on; it will spread through the whole plant. When
you're cross everybody's cross."

"Then do your work--for it isn't much." She could not help adding:
"You think I can smooth over everything just because you board with
me."

Trudy giggled. "It's the wedding in the air, and spring, and those
diamonds! She never works, she never does anything but spend the money
we make for her. All she has is a good time, and what's the use of
living if you don't have a good time? I'll have it if I have to steal
it. Oh, you needn't look so horrified. Steve O'Valley almost stole his
fortune just because he had to be a rich man before Constantine would
let him marry his daughter. Anyway, I'd rather have a good time for a
few years and then die than to live to be a hundred and never have an
honest-to-goodness party. Wouldn't you?"

"You're foolish to-day. If you only wouldn't wear such low-cut waists
and talk to the men! Mr. O'Valley has noticed it."

"I can get another job and another boarding house," Trudy began,
defiantly.

"You wouldn't last out at either. You need this sort of a place and
our sort of house, you ridiculous little thing. Besides, you have
Gaylord at your beck and call"--Trudy blushed--"and you seem to
manage to have a pretty good time when all is said and done. I do
feel responsible for you because at twenty-three you are more
scatterbrained than----"

"Finish it--than you were at thirteen! Well, what of it? I'm out for a
good time and you are always talking about the right time, I suppose.
I'll take your lecture without weeping and promise to reform. But
don't be surprised at anything I may do regarding tra-la-la-la-la."
She burst into the wedding march again and vanished, Mary shaking her
head as she prepared to sign off some letters.

Steve O'Valley opened the door connecting their offices, displaying a
face as happy as a schoolboy's on a Christmas holiday. "Miss
Constantine is downstairs, I'm going to escort her up," he announced,
shutting the door as abruptly as he had opened it.

Presently there came into Steve's office someone who was saying in a
light, gay voice: "Perfectly awful old place, Stevuns--as bad as
papa's. I hate business offices; make my head ache. It was Red Cross
to-day, and after that I had to rush to cooking school----"

Steve answered in rapt fashion: "I'll have to talk to Miss Faithful
for half a jiffy and then I'm free for the rest of the day----"
opening the door of Mary's office and beckoning to her.

Coming into his office Mary nodded pleasantly at the Gorgeous Girl,
who nodded pleasantly in return and settled herself in an easy-chair
while Steve rehearsed the things to be attended to the following day
since he was not to be at the office.

"I'm getting Miss Faithful ready to run the shop single-handed," he
explained, telling Mary details which she already knew better than he
but to which she listened patiently, her twilight eyes glancing now at
Beatrice and back again at Steve.

Outside the hum of commerce played the proper accompaniment to Steve
O'Valley's orders and Mary's thoughts and Beatrice's actions--a
jangling yet accurate rhythm of typewriters and adding machines and
office chatter, pencil sharpeners, windows being opened, shades
adjusted, wastebaskets dragged into position, boys demanding their
telegrams or delivering the same, phone bells ringing, voices asking
for Mr. O'Valley and being told that he was not in, other voices
asking for Miss Faithful and being told she was not at liberty just
now--would they be seated? Trudy's giggle rose above the hum at odd
intervals, elevators crept up and down, and outside the spring air
escorted the odour of hides and tallow and what not, grease and
machine oil and general junk from across the courtyard; trucks rumbled
on the cobblestones while workingmen laughed and quarrelled--a
confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave
his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the
drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve's life and of the
Gorgeous Girl's and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to
say yes and no in answer to his questions and to make an occasional
notation.

[Illustration: "The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most
gorgeous side of life"]

The panorama rather bewildered her; it was like being asked to
describe a blizzard while still in it, whereas one should be sitting
in a warm, cheery room looking impersonally at the storm swirl.

First of all, she thought of Steve O'Valley's Irish grandfather, by
like name, who spent his life in Virginia City trying to find a claim
equal to the Comstock lode, dying penniless but with a prospector's
optimism that had he been permitted to live _manana_ surely would have
seen the turning of the tide. Old O'Valley's only son and his son's
wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work
would have been their only alternative. So they left a small,
black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O'Valley to battle
single-handed with the world and bring honour to his name.

The first twelve years of the battle were spent in an orphanage in the
Grass Valley, the next four as a chore boy on a ranch, after which the
young man decided with naïve determination that in order to obtain
anything at all worth while he must be fully prepared to pay its
price, and that he desired above all else to become a rich man--a
truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far
as education was concerned he felt that if he was not quite so
brushed up on his A B C's as he was on minding his P's and Q's the
result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the
world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the
cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not to be duplicated
Yankee pep.

As Steve planned it he was to leave his mark on the world and not
endure the world's mark upon himself. This straight-limbed and
altogether too handsome youngster--his grandmother had been a
Basque--possessed the same quality of the fortune hunter as his
grandfather, only he did not propose to do his prospecting in the
mines of Nevada. Following the general tactics of a Stone Age man--a
belief in muscle and great initiative--Steve found himself at
twenty-four in the city of Hanover and in the employ of Mark
Constantine, a hide-and-leather magnate who was said to be like all
hard-boiled eggs--impossible to beat. After Steve advanced to the top
notch of his ability he discovered that the only reason he was not
considered as a junior member of the firm was because he could not buy
stock. At this same time Beatrice Constantine had become interested in
him.

To her mind Steve was different in other ways than merely being
handsome and possessed of physical strength. And she considered that
if he had a fortune he would be far more wonderful than any of the
young gentlemen of her set who wondered which would be the lucky chap
to lead Constantine's Gorgeous Girl to the wedding-license bureau.

In the seventeen-year-old patronizing fashion of a Gorgeous Girl she
permitted Steve to see that she was interested, and Steve with the
romance of his Basque grandmother and the audacity of his Irish
grandfather immediately thought of what a strange and wonderful thing
it would be if he could by hook or crook become a rich man all in the
twinkling of an eye, and marry this superior, elegant little person.

The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side
of life. Her father, self-made from a boyhood as poor as Steve's,
carved his way to the top without delay or remorse for any one he may
have halted or harmed in the so doing. He had wisely married a working
girl whom he loved in undemonstrative fashion, and when at the turning
point of his career she bore him a daughter and then died he erected
an expensive monument to her memory and took his oath that their
daughter should be the most gorgeous girl in Hanover and that her life
should be spent in having as good a time as her father's fortune
allowed. He then invited his widowed sister to live with him and take
charge of his child.

After this interlude he returned to his business grimmer of face and
harsher of heart, and the world was none the wiser regarding his grief
for the plain-faced woman in the churchyard. As his fortune multiplied
almost ironically he would often take time to think of his wife
Hannah, who was so tired of pots and pans and making dollars squeal so
that he might succeed and who was now at rest with an imposing marble
column to call attention to the fact.

So the Gorgeous Girl, as Hanover called her, half in ridicule and half
in envy, developed into a gorgeous young woman, as might be expected
with her father to pay her bills and her Aunt Belle to toddle meekly
after her. Aunt Belle, once married to a carpenter who had
conveniently died, never ceased to rejoice in her good fortune. She
was never really quite used to the luxury that had come to her instead
of to the woman in the churchyard. She revelled in Beatrice's clothes,
her own elaborate costumes, ordered the servants about, went to
Florida and the Bermudas whenever the Gorgeous Girl saw fit, rolled
about the country in limousines, and secretly admired the hideous
mansion Constantine had built--an ornate, overbearing brick affair
with curlicue trimmings and a tower with a handful of minor turrets.
It was furnished according to the dictates of a New York decorator,
though Constantine added several large pieces of village colour after
the decorator had pronounced his work as ended.

Hannah had always planned for a red-velvet cozy corner, and
Constantine didn't give a dozen damns if they were out of date--a red
velvet cozy corner was going to be installed in the blue drawing room.
A Swiss music box was another thing Hannah had hankered after--spoken
of just before she died--so the Swiss music box was given a place of
honour beside the residence pipe organ, and likewise some draperies
with plush tassels. The decorator, having his check, did not attempt
to argue, since his clientele were not apt to stop off at Hanover and
discover the crime.

Aunt Belle saw that Beatrice had a governess, a dancing teacher, more
party frocks than any other little girl in Hanover, and later on a
French maid and other accessories necessary to being a Gorgeous Girl.
In reality a parasitical little snob, hopelessly self-indulged, though
originally kind-hearted and rather clever; and utterly useless but
unconscious of the fact. She was sent to a finishing school, after
which she thought it would be more fun to go abroad to another
finishing school and study music and art, travelling summers instead
of having a formal début. Most of her chums were doing this and so she
went with them. The red velvet cozy corner and the music box and so on
disappeared immediately upon her first return visit. Likewise Beatrice
succeeded finally in dissuading Aunt Belle from wearing her jewellery
while travelling, though that outspoken lady never could refrain from
vivid descriptions of it to her fellow passengers.

After the European sojourn the Gorgeous Girl went in for Hanover
society and proved herself a valuable asset. She was nearly
twenty-four, almost as slight of figure as a child, as dainty as
Watteau's most delicate imaginings, with tiny, nondescript features,
lovely sunshine hair, and big dove-coloured eyes with pale-gold
lashes. Meantime, the question of a husband for this lovely young
person was before the household. She had had a dozen offers of
marriage but accepted none of them because she had plenty of time and
loads of money and she wanted to make the best of her unencumbered
youth as long as possible. Besides, it was now considered great fun to
go in for charities, she was ever so busy serving on committees, she
never had a moment for herself, and it would take months to plan a
trousseau and a wedding and decide about her house. Most important of
all was the fact that when she was about to go to the French finishing
school she had told Steve O'Valley that if he did not come to her
farewell party she would be quite hurt. She felt he did not appreciate
the honour in having been asked.

Steve, who would have lain down and let her walk over him roughshod,
said simply: "But I'm poor. I'm not in a position to meet your
friends."

"Then be rich--and I'll ask you again," she challenged.

"If I were a rich man--would you let me try?"

"See if I wouldn't." And she disappeared before he realized she had
practically said yes.

Characteristically Steve lost no time. He went to her father the day
after she had sailed, having sent her a veritable washtub of flowers
for bon voyage--and said briefly: "I have loved your daughter ever
since I first saw her. I'm as poor as you were once, but if I see my
way to making a fortune and can give her everything she ought to have
will you oppose my efforts to make her marry me?"

The daring of the thing pleased Constantine to the point of saying:
"Do you want a loan, O'Valley? I think you'll make good. Then it's up
to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do.
You're a decent sort--her mother would have liked you."

"I don't want a loan just yet. I want to make her marry me because I
have made my own money and can take care of my own wife. I'm just
asking you not to interfere if I do win out. I've saved a little--I'm
going to take a plunge in stocks and draw out before it's too late.
Then I'm going into business if I can; but I'll have to try my luck
gambling before I do. When I hang out my shingle I may ask you to
help--a little. Self-made men of to-day are made on paper--not by
splitting logs or teaching school in the backwoods in order to buy a
dictionary and law books--we haven't the time for that. So I'll take
my chances and you'll hear from me later."

While Beatrice was skimming through school and taking walking trips
through Norway punctuated by fleeting visits home, remaining as
childish and unconcerned as to vital things as her mother had been at
fourteen, Steve left the Constantine factory and took the plunge.

Good luck favoured him, and for five golden years he continued to rise
in the financial world, causing his rivals to say: "A fool's luck
first then the war made him--the government contracts, you know. He's
only succeeded because of luck and the fact of it's being the
psychological moment. Worked in the ordnance game--didn't see active
service--money just kept rolling in. Well, who wants a war fortune?
Some folks in 1860 bought government mules for limousine prices and
sold them for the same. Besides, it's only so he can marry the
Gorgeous Girl. I guess he'll find out it was cheap at half the
price!"

While talk ran riot Steve's fortune multiplied with almost sinister
speed. He learned that flattery and ridicule were the best weapons
known to man. And while the Gorgeous Girl flew home at the first war
cloud to bury herself in serious war activities Steve climbed the
upward path and never once glanced backward lest he grow dizzy.

At thirty-two, in the year 1919, he was able to say to Mark
Constantine, in the fashion of a fairy-story hero: "I still love your
daughter, sir, and I've made my fortune. We want to be married. Your
blessing, please." And to himself: "I'll show the worst side of me to
the world so wolves won't come and steal my precious gold that I had
to have in order to win her; and I'll show my best side to the woman I
love, and that's fair enough!"

With surprising accuracy Mary Faithful's keen mind, aided by a tender
heart, had pieced this mosaic business and love story together, and as
she finished the panorama she glanced at the Gorgeous Girl in her mink
dolman and bright red straw hat, the useless knitting bag on her arm,
and Steve's engagement ring blazing away on her finger, and she sighed
unconsciously.

"Don't tell Miss Faithful any more," Beatrice protested. "I'm sure she
knows about everything, and it's late--I'm tired."

"All right, lady fair. That's all, Miss Faithful. Good-night," Steve
dismissed her abruptly.

As Mary left the room he was saying tenderly: "What did you do at
cooking school?"

And the Gorgeous Girl was answering: "We made pistachio fondant; and
next week it will be Scotch broth. It takes an hour to assemble the
vegetables and I dread it. Only half the class were there, the rest
were at Miss Harper's classical-dancing lesson. That's fun, too. I
think I'll take it up next year. I was just thinking how glad I am
papa built the big apartment house five years ago; it's so much nicer
to begin housekeeping there instead of a big place of one's own. It's
such work to have a house on your hands. Are you ready?"

"Hold on. Don't I deserve a single kiss?... Thank you, Mrs. O'Valley."
Then the door closed.

Mary Faithful picked up her notations. She tried to comfort herself
with the thought that no one should ever have reason to guess her
secret. If all honest men steal umbrellas and kisses, so do all honest
women fib as to the size of their shoes and the person they love best
of all the world!




CHAPTER II


Sunday was a much-dreaded day in Mary's calendar, partly because she
surrendered herself to the maternal monologue of how dreadful it was
to have a daughter in business and not a lady in a home of her own,
and partly because she missed the office routine and the magical
stimulation of Steve's presence. Besides, Trudy was a thorn in Mary's
flesh and on Sundays the thorn had a chance to assert herself in
particularly unendurable fashion.

For instance--the Sunday morning following the Gorgeous Girl's visit
to Steve's office Trudy unwillingly dragged herself downstairs at
half-past ten in a faded, bescrolled kimono over careless lingerie,
her hair bundled under a partially soiled boudoir cap, and her feet
flopping along in tattered silk slippers.

"Oh, dear, it's Sunday again," she began. "Goodness me, Mary, I'd hate
to be as good as you are--always up and smiling! Why don't you have a
permanent smile put on your face? It would be lots easier."

At which joke Luke giggled, and Mrs. Faithful, ensconced in a large
rocker behind the starched curtains so that nothing passing on the
street could escape her eagle, melancholy eye, nodded approval and
added: "I should think Mary would lie abed the one morning she could.
But no, she gets Luke up no matter what the weather is, and flies
round like a house afire. When I was in my father's house I never had
to lift a finger. Trudy, I wish you could have seen my bedroom. I had
a mahogany four-poster bed with white draperies, and a dresser to
match the bed, and my father bought me a silver toilet set when he was
in Lexington, Kentucky, one time. He used to go there to sell horses.
I remember one time I went with him and if I do say so I was much
admired.

"I rode horseback those days and I had a dappled-gray pony named Pet,
and everyone said it was just like looking at a picture to see me go
prancing by. Of course I never thought about it. I wore a black velvet
riding habit with a long train and a black velvet hat with a white
plume just floating behind, and I had white gauntlets, too.

"Mary, Trudy wants her coffee. Hot cakes? Oh, pshaw, they won't hurt
you a mite. I was raised on 'em. I guess I'll have another plateful,
Mary, while you're frying 'em. I'm so comfortable I hate to get up....
You poor little girls having to go out and hustle all week long and
not half appreciated! Never mind, some Prince Charming will come and
carry you off sometime." Whereat she waddled to the table to wait for
the hot cakes to arrive.

Mrs. Faithful had pepper-and-salt-coloured hair and small dark eyes
that snapped like an angry bird's, and a huge double chin. Her
nondescript shape resolved itself into a high, peaked lap over which,
when not eating hot cakes, her stubby hands seemed eternally clasped.

"Mary takes after her pa, poor child," she had told Trudy confidentially.
"Lean and lank as a clothes pole! And those gray eyes that look you
straight through. I wish she didn't think so much of the office and
would get a nice young man. I'd like to know what it is in those books she
finds so fascinating. Can you tell me? I tried to read Omar Canine
myself but it was too much for me."

"I'm no highbrow," Trudy had laughed. "Mary is; and a fine girl,
besides," she had added, resentfully.

With all Trudy's shallow nature and shrewd selfishness she was as fond
of Mary as she was capable of being fond of any one. Besides, it was
more comfortable to be a member of the Faithful household for nine
dollars a week and be allowed hot cakes and sirup à la kimono on
Sunday morning; to have Gaylord Vondeplosshe, her friend, frequent the
parlour at will; to use the telephone and laundry, and to occupy the
best room in the house than to have to tuck into a room similar to
Miss Lunk's--and she was truly grateful to Mary for having taken her
in. She felt that Mrs. Faithful underestimated her man of the family.

Mary at the present time earned forty dollars a week. Out of this she
supported her family and saved a little. At regular intervals she
tried persuading her mother to leave the old-fashioned house and move
into a modern apartment, which would give her the opportunity of
dispensing with Trudy as a boarder. But her mother liked Trudy, with
her airs and graces, her beaux, her startling frocks. Trudy was
company; Mary was not. She was the breadwinner and a wonderful
daughter, as Mrs. Faithful always said when callers mentioned her. But
the mother had never been friends with her children nor with their
father. So Mary had grown up accustomed to work and loneliness; and,
most important of all, accustomed to considering everyone else first
and herself last. It was Mary who saw beneath the boisterousness of
Luke's boy nature and spied the good therein, trying to develop it as
best she could. Aside from Luke and her business she found amusement
in her dream life of loving Steve O'Valley and vicariously sharing his
joys and sorrows, safeguarding his interests.

She had told herself four years ago: "You clumsy, thin business
woman--the idea of halfway dreaming that such a man as Steve would
ever love you! Of course he's intended for the Gorgeous Girl; the very
law of opposites makes him care for her--pretty, useless doll. So take
your joy in being his business partner, because the Gorgeous Girl can
never share the partnership any more than you could share his name;
and there's a heap of comfort in being of some use."

After which self-inflicted homily Mary had set to work and followed
her own advice. She had discovered very shortly that there were many
things to enjoy and be thankful for.

As soon as she was able Mary had refurnished her father's study and
taken it for her own. Here she made out household bills, lectured
Luke, planned work, sewed, and read. It was a shabby, cheery room with
a faded old carpet, an open fireplace, some easy-chairs, and a
black-walnut secretary over which her father had dreamed his dreams.
On the walls were stereotyped engravings such as Cherry Ripe and The
Call to Arms, which Mrs. Faithful refused to part with; no one,
herself included, ever knowing just why.

Mary also took herself to task in the little study in as impersonal a
manner as a true father confessor. "You are twenty-six and growing
set in your ways," she would mentally accuse--"always wanting a
certain table at the café and a certain waitress. Old Maid! Must
have your little French book to read away at as you munch your
rolls and refuse to be sociable. Hermitess! And always buy chocolates
and a London _News_ on Saturday night. Getting so you fuss if you
have square-topped hairpins instead of round, and letting milliners
sell you any sort of hats because you are too busy to prink! Going to
art galleries and concerts alone--and quite satisfied to do so. Now,
please, Mary, try not to be so queer and horrid!" Followed by a
one-sided debate as to whether or not these were normal symptoms of
maturity, and if she were mistress of a house would she not entertain
equally set notions regarding brands of soap, and so on?

"Office notions are not so nice as the frilly,
cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn notions," she would end,
dolefully. "Fancy my tall self weeping on the superintendent's
shoulder because a cablegram has gone astray! Making women over into
commercial nuns is a problem--some of us take it easily and don't try
to fight back, some of us fight and end defeated and bitter, and some
of us don't play the game but just our own hand--like Trudy. And
what's the square game for a commercial nun? That is what I'd like to
know."

She would then find herself dreaming of two distinct forks in the
road, both of which might be possible for her but only one of which
was probable. Each fork led to a feminine rainbow ending.

The more probable fork would resolve itself, a few years hence,
into a trim suburban bungalow with a neat roadster to whisk
her into business and whisk her away from it. The frilly,
cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn part of Mary would have
long ago vanished, leaving the business woman quite serene and
satisfied. She would find her happiness in mere things--in owning
her home; in facing old age single-handed and knowing it would not
bring the gray wolf; in helping Luke through college while her
mother was in a comfy orthodox heaven with plenty of plates of hot
cakes and dozens of starched window curtains; in rejoicing at some new
possession for her living room, at her immaculate business costumes,
new books, tickets for the opera season; in vacationing wherever she
wished, sometimes with other commercial nuns and sometimes alone;
in having that selfish, tempting freedom of time and lack of
personal demands which permit a woman to be always well groomed
and physically rested, and to take refuge in a sanitarium whenever
business worries pressed too hard. To sum it up: it meant to sit on
the curbstone--a nice, steam-heated, artistically furnished
curbstone, to be sure, and have to watch the procession pass by.

The other fork in the road led to a shadowy rainbow since Mary knew so
little concerning it. It comprised the exacting, unselfish role of
having baby fingers tagging at her skirts and shutting her away from
easy routines and lack of responsibility; of having a house to suit
her family first and herself last; of growing old and tired with the
younger things growing up and away from her, and the strong-shouldered
man demanding to be mothered, after the fashion of all really
strong-shouldered and successful men--requiring more of her patience
and love than all the young things combined; of subordinating her
personality, perhaps her ideas, and most certainly her surface
interests. To be that almost mystical relation, a wife; which includes
far more than having Mrs. Stephen O'Valley--just for example--on a
calling card.

To her lot would fall the task of always being there to welcome the
strong man with tender joy when he has succeeded or to comfort him
with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring
him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof
from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser
emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or
moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered
to the needs of the strong man's very soul in unsuspected, often
unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp
for tired eyes; a funny bundle of domestic happenings told cleverly to
offset the jarring problems of commerce; a song played by sympathetic
fingers; a little poem tucked in the blotter of the strong man's desk,
an artful praising of the strong man's self!

Mary realized this latter fork was not probable--nor was she unhappy
because of it. She sometimes retired to her study to vow eternal wrath
upon Trudy Burrows for having attached herself to the household; or to
pray that her mother be enlightened to the extent of moving; but
beyond an occasional "mad on," as Luke said, Mary viewed life from the
angle of the doughnut and not that of the hole.

"I wish someone else would try baking these greasy things," she said,
coming in with another plateful.

"Why don't you slip on a kimono instead of a starched house dress,
Mary? Whoever is spick-and-span on Sunday morning?"

"Don't get Mary to lecturing," Mrs. Faithful warned between bites.
"She'll make us all go to church if we're not careful. Are you going
out with Gay to-day, Trudy?"

"Yes. And I'm awfully mad at him, too. It's fierce the way he
gambles."

"Don't be too harsh; it's a mistake to nag too much beforehand. He's a
lovely young man and I wish Luke could have one of those green paddock
coats. I always like a gentleman's coat with a sealskin collar, don't
you?"

"If it's paid for." Trudy's eyes darkened. "Just because Gay comes of
a wonderful family he thinks he has the keys to the city."

"He's a lovely young man," Mrs. Faithful reiterated. "Oh, what did
Beatrice Constantine wear when she came down to the office?"

"Clothes." Mary was deep in the Sunday paper art section.

"She looked like a Christmas tree on fire," Luke supplemented. "Lovely
butter-coloured hair she has!"

"That will do. She is very nice, but different from our sort." Mary
glanced up from her paper.

Trudy bridled. "She's no different; she has money. My things have as
much style. Gaylord knows her intimately, and he says she is a
wretched dancer and pouts if things don't please her. The best tailors
and modistes in the country make her things. Who wouldn't look well?
If I had one tenth of her income I'd be a more Gorgeous Girl than she
is--and don't I wish I had it! Oh, boy! Why, that girl has her maid,
the most wonderful jewellery you ever saw, two automobiles of her own
and a saddle horse, and her father owns the best apartment house in
town, and Beatrice is going to have the best apartment in it when she
marries Steve. And you can just bet she knew she was going to marry
him a long time ago--because she knew he'd rob the Bank of England to
get a fortune. She's flirted with everyone from an English nobleman to
the Prince of Siam, and now she's marrying the handsomest, brightest,
most devoted cave man in the world." Trudy glanced at Mary. "Yet she
doesn't really care for him, she just wants to be married before she
is considered passée." Trudy was very proud of her occasional French.
"She'll be twenty-six her next birthday!"

"Dear me, girls take their time these days; I was eighteen the day Mr.
Faithful led me to the altar."

"When are you going to get married?" Luke asked Trudy with malice
aforethought.

"Oh, I'll give Mary a chance. She don't want to dance in the pig
trough."

Mary laid down the paper. "I wish you people would finish eating.
Luke, are you going fishing with me out at the old mill? Then you
better get the walks swept. We'll be home in time for dinner, mother.
I'll leave the things as nearly ready as I can. How about you,
Trudy?"

"Gay wants me to go to the Boulevard Café--they dance on Sunday just
the same as weekdays--and then we'll do a movie afterward. I suppose
Steve and his Beatrice are now revelling in the Constantine
conservatory, with Steve walking on all fours to prove his devotion.
Why is it some girls have everything? Look at me--no one cares if I
live or die. First I had a stepmother, and then I tried living with a
great-aunt, and then I went to work. Here I am still working, and a
lot of thanks I get for it. I'd like to see the Gorgeous Girl have to
work--well, I would!"

Mary brushed by with some dishes. Whereupon Trudy settled herself in
an easy-chair and ran through the supplement sections, discussing the
latest New York scandal with Mrs. Faithful. The next thing on Trudy's
Sunday program was washing out "just a few little things, Mary dear;
and have you a bit of soap I could borrow and may I use the electric
iron for half a jiffy?"

Presently there were hung on the line some dabs of chiffon and lace,
and Trudy, taking advantage of her softened cuticle, sat down and did
her nails, Mrs. Faithful admiring the high polish she achieved and
reading Advice to the Anxious aloud for general edification.

After ironing the few little things Trudy shampooed her hair with
scented soap and by the time its reddish loveliness was dry it was
high noon and she repaired to her bedroom to mend and write letters.
At one o'clock, in the process of dressing, she rapped at Mary's door
and asked to borrow a quarter.

"I'm terribly poor this week and if I should have a quarrel with Gay I
want to have enough carfare to come home alone--you know how we
scrap," she explained.

About two o'clock there emerged from the front bedroom an excellent
imitation of the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy had not exaggerated when she
boasted of her own style. Though patronizing credit houses exclusively
and possessing not a single woollen garment nor a penny of savings,
she tripped down the stairs in answer to Luke's summons, a fearful,
wonderful little person in a gown of fog-coloured chiffon with a
violet sash and a great many trimmings of blue crystal beads. She
boasted of a large black hat which seemed a combination of a Spanish
scarf and a South Sea pirate's pet headgear, since it had red coral
earrings hanging at either side of it. Over her shoulders was a
luxurious feline pelt masquerading comfortably under the title of
spotted fox. White kid boots, white kid gloves, a silver vanity case,
and a red satin rose at her waist completed the costume.

Standing in the offing, about to decamp with Mary, Luke gave a low
whistle to tip her off to look out the window and not miss it. Mrs.
Faithful was peeking from behind the starched window curtains as there
glided before her eyes the most elegant young woman and impressive
young man ever earning fifteen dollars and no dollars a week
respectively.

"How do they do it?" Mary sighed. "Come, Luke, let's get on the trail
of something green and real."

A few moments later there hurried along the same pathway a tall young
woman in an old tailored suit which impressed one with the wearer's
plainness. Instead of a silver vanity case she was laden with a basket
of newspapers, string, and a garden trowel, indicating that fern roots
would be the vogue shortly. Shouldering fishing tackle Luke turned his
freckled face toward Mary as they began a conversation, and his
perpetual grin was momentarily replaced by an expression of respect.
At least his sister was not like the average woman, who depends solely
on her clothes to make her interesting.

Meantime, Trudy and Gaylord Vondeplosshe were beginning their
Sunday outing by walking to the corner in silence--the usual
preliminary to a dispute. Gaylord was quite Trudy's equal as to
clothes, not only in style but in forgetfulness to pay for them.
Still, he was not unusual after one fully comprehended the type, for
they flourished like mushrooms. His had been a rich and powerful
family--only-the-father-drank-you-see variety--the sort taking the
fastest and most expensive steamer to Europe and bringing shame
upon the name of American traveller after arriving. Gaylord had been
the adored and only son, and his adored and older sister had managed
to marry fairly well before the crash came and debts surrounded the
entire Vondeplosshe estate.

He was small and frail, a trifle bow-legged to be exact, with pale and
perpetually weeping eyes, a crooked little nose with an incipient
moustache doing its best to hide a thick upper lip. His forehead
sloped back like a cat's, and his scanty, sandy hair was brushed into
a shining pompadour, while white eyelashes gave an uncanny expression
to his face. Abortive lumps of flesh stuck on at careless intervals
sufficed for ears, and his scrawny neck with its absurdly correct
collar and wild necktie seemed like an old, old man's when he dresses
for his golden-wedding anniversary. Everything about Gaylord seemed
old, exhausted, quite ineffectual. His mother had never tired boasting
that Gaylord had had mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, St.
Vitus dance, double pneumonia, and typhoid, had broken three ribs, his
left arm, his right leg, and his nose--all before reaching the age of
sixteen. And yet she raised him!

Coupled with this and the fact of his father's failure people were
lenient to him.

"He's Vondeplosshe's boy," they said; so they gave him a position or a
loan or a letter of introduction, and thought at the same time what a
splendid thing it was Vondeplosshe was out of it instead of having to
stand by and see his son make a complete foozle. For some time Gaylord
had been scampering up and down the gauntlet of sympathy, and as long
as he could borrow more money in Hanover than he could possibly earn
he refused to go to work.

Originally he would have been almost as rich as the Gorgeous Girl
herself, but as it was he was poor as Trudy Burrows, only Trudy was a
nobody, her family being a dark and uncertain quantity in the wilds of
Michigan.

Whereas Gaylord was Vondeplosshe and he could--and did--saunter past a
red-brick mansion and remark pensively: "I was born in the room over
the large bay window; the one next to it was my nursery--a dear old
spot. Rather tough, old dear, to have to stand outside!" Or: "Father
was a charter member of the club, so they carry me along without dues.
Decent of them, isn't it? Father was a prince among men, robbed right
and left, y'know--always the way when a gentleman tries to be in
business. Some say it was Constantine himself who did the worst of it.
Of course never repeat it, will you? It takes a man with Steve
O'Valley's coarseness to forge ahead."

His wobbly, rickety little body always wore the most startling of
costumes. A green paddock coat, well padded, a yellow walking stick in
the thin fingers, a rakish hat, patent-leather boots, striped suits,
silk shirts with handkerchiefs to match, a gold cigarette case, and a
watch chain like a woman's, were a few of Gaylord's daily requisites.
He lived at a club called The Hunters of Arcadia, where he paid an
occasional stipend and gambled regularly, sometimes winning. He also
promoted things in half-dishonest, half-idiotic fashion, undertaking
to bring on opera singers for a concert, sometimes realizing a decent
sum and sometimes going behind only to be rescued by an old family
friend.

Gaylord was always keen on dinner invitations. And because he was a
son of Vondeplosshe the same family friends endured his conceited
twaddle and his knock-kneed, wicked little self, and sighed with
relief when he went away. It would be so much easier to send these
dethroned sons of rich men a supply of groceries and an order for
coal!

Besides these lines of activity Gaylord wrote society items for the
paper, and as he knew everyone and everything about them he was worth
a stipend to the editor. He was considered a divine dancer by the
buds, and counted as a cutey by widows. But his standing among
creditors was: If he offered a check for the entire amount or a dollar
on account, pass up the check!

Steve had destroyed several IOU's with Gaylord's name attached for the
sole reason that Gay had been a playmate of Beatrice's and she rather
favoured him.

"He is so convenient," she had defended. "You can always call him up
at the last minute if someone has disappointed for cards or dinner,
and he is never busy. He can shop with you as well as a woman, lunch
with you, dance with you--and he does know the proper way to handle
small silver. Besides, he loves Monster." Monster was Bea's
pound-and-a-half spaniel, which barked her wonder at the silken
beauty of Beatrice's boudoir.

So Gaylord travelled his own peculiar gait, with his married sister
occasionally sending him checks; as busy as a kitten with a ball of
yarn in making everyone tolerate though loathing him. When he visited
Steve's office in the first flush of Steve's success, to ask the
thousandth favour from him, and spied Trudy Burrows in all her
lemon-kid booted, pink-chiffon waisted, red-haired loveliness--as
virile and bewitching as any one Gaylord's pale little mind could
picture--he proved himself a "true democrat," as he boasted at the
club, and offered her his hand in marriage in short order.

Having just despaired of winning a moneyed bride Gaylord chose
Truletta, reasoning that if she were a little nobody it would give
him the whiphand over her, since she would feel that to marry a
Vondeplosshe was no small triumph. Besides, a chic red-haired wife
who knew how to make the most of nothing and to smile, showing
thirty-two pearly teeth as cleverly as any dental ad, would not be a
bad asset among his men friends. Had the Vondeplosshe fortunes
remained intact and Gay met Trudy he would still have pressed his
attentions upon her, though they might not have taken the form of an
offer of marriage. Trudy's virile, magnetic personality would have
commanded this weakling's attention and admiration at any time and
in any circumstances--which is the way of things.

Very wisely Trudy kept the engagement somewhat of a secret. She
estimated that by being seen with Gay she might meet a not impoverished
and real man; and Gay--who still hoped for an heiress to fall madly in
love with him--was willing to let the matter be a mere understanding.
So this oversubscribed flirt and this underendowed young gentleman had
been waiting for nearly two years for something to live on in order
to be married or else two new affinities in order that they might
part amicably.

They did not speak until they were in the café, where it looked well
for Gaylord to be attentive and Trudy gracious.

Under the mask of a smile Trudy began: "I'm cross. You were gambling
again--yes, you were! Never mind how I know. I know!... I'll have
macaroni, ripe olives, and a cream puff."

"The same," Gay said, mournfully; adding: "Well, deary, I have to
live!"

"Why not work? I do. You sponge along and waste everyone's time. I'm
not getting any younger, and it's pretty rough to be in an office with
horrid people ordering you round--to have to hear all about Beatrice
Constantine and her wonderful wedding. I'm as good as she is--yet I'll
not be asked, and you will be."

"Of course I am. I'm her oldest playmate," he said, proudly.

Trudy's temper jumped the stockade. "So, you paste jewel, you'll go
mincing into church and see her married and dance with everyone
afterward; and I'll sit in the office licking postage stamps while you
kiss the bride! I'm better looking than she is; and if you are good
enough to go to that wedding so am I!"

"Why, Trudy," he began, in a bewildered fashion, "don't make a
scene."

"No use making a scene in a fifty-cent café," she told him, bitterly,
"but I'm plenty good looking enough to have a real man buy me a real
dinner with a taxi and wine and violets as extras. Don't think you are
doing me a big favour by being engaged to me."

"Oh, you're a great little girl," he said, nervously; "and it's all
going to come out right. It does rile me to think of your working for
Steve. Never mind, my ship will come in and then we'll show them
all."

"I'm twenty-three and you're twenty-six, and my eyes ache when I work
steadily. I'll have to wear glasses in another year--but I'll wash
clothes before I'll do it!"

"When it gets that bad we'll be married," he said, seriously.

The humour passed over Trudy's head. "Married on what?" She was her
prettiest when angry and she stirred in Gaylord's one-cylinder brain a
resolve to play fairy-godfather husband and somehow deliver a fortune
at her feet.

"I can't live at your club," she continued; "and your sister is
jealous of her husband and wouldn't want me round. We couldn't live
with the Faithfuls; Mary's a nice girl but I can't go their quiet
ways. I only stay because it's cheap. I owe more than two hundred
dollars right now."

Gaylord was sympathetic. "I owe more than that," he admitted; "but I'm
going to have some concerts and there'll be good horse races
soon--sure things, you know. You'll see, little girl. What would you
say if I showed you a real bank account?"

"I wouldn't waste time talking. I'd marry you." Her good humour was
returning. "Honest, Gay, do you think you might draw down some kale?"

Like all her kind she had an absurd trust in any one who was paying
her attention. With a different type of man Trudy would have been
beaten, courageously had the gentleman arrested, and then interfered
when the judge was directing him to the penitentiary.

"I wish you wouldn't talk that way. When we are married and you meet
my friends you'll have to brush up on a lot of things."

"I guess I'll manage to be understood," she retorted; "and when we are
married maybe you can get my job so as to support your wife!"

The orchestra began playing a new rag, and Trudy and Gay immediately
left their chairs to be the first couple on the floor. They were
prouder of their dancing than of each other.

After several dances they became optimistic over the future and
finished their dinner with the understanding that at the first
possible moment they would be married and Trudy was to be a
hard-working little bride causing her husband's men friends to be nice
to the Vondeplosshes, while husband would persuade the Gorgeous Girl
to be nice to his wife.

They decided, too, that Mary Faithful was clever and good--but queer.

That Steve O'Valley would discover that a self-made man could not
marry an heiress and make a go of it as well as a man of an
aristocratic family could marry an adorable red-haired young lady and
elevate her to his position.

That Trudy was far more beautiful than Beatrice Constantine, and as
one lived only once in this world--why not always strive for a good
time?

Whereat they had a farewell dance and moved on to the moving-picture
world, where they held hands and stared vapidly at the films,
repairing to a cafeteria on a side street for a lunch, and then to
the Faithful parlour. Mary had gone to church, Luke had boy friends in
to discuss a summer camp, and his mother snored mildly on the
dining-room sofa.

They took possession of the front parlour, and the enlarged crayons of
the Faithful ancestors bore witness that for more than two hours these
young people giggled over the comic supplement, debated as to the
private life of the movie stars, tried new dance steps, and then
planned how to get everything for nothing and, having done so, not to
share their spoils.

"A perfectly lovely time!" Trudy said, glibly, as she kissed Gay
good-night.

"Perfectly lovely!" he echoed, politely. "Don't work too hard
to-morrow, Babseley, will you? And do nothing rash until you see me."

"Call me up to-morrow at eight, Bubseley," she giggled. The pet names
were of Gay's choice.

So Bubseley tottered down the walk while Babseley turned out the
lights and retired to her room with a bag of candy and a paprika-brand
of novel. At midnight she tossed it aside and with self-pity prepared
to go to sleep.

"And I'll have to go to work to-morrow," she sighed, planning her next
silk dress as she did up the Titian hair in curlers.




CHAPTER III


WHEN the world was considerably younger it dressed children in
imitation of its adults--those awful headdresses and heavy stays, long
skirts to trip up tender little feet, and jewelled collars to make
tiny necks ache. Now that the world "is growing evil and the time is
waxing late" the grown-ups have turned the tables and they dress like
the children--witness thereof to be found in the costume of Aunt Belle
Todd, Mark Constantine's sister, who had shared her brother's fortunes
ever since his wife had been presented with the marble monument.

Like all women who have ceased having birthdays Aunt Belle had not
ceased struggling. She still had hopes of a financier who would carry
her off in a storm of warmed-over romance to a castle in Kansas. Her
first husband was Thomas Todd, the carpenter, chiefly distinguished
for falling off a three-story building on which he was working and
never harming a hair of his head; also for singing first bass in the
village quartet. Aunt Belle had slightly recoloured her past since she
had lived with her brother. The account of Mr. Todd's singing in the
quartet was made to resemble a brilliant début in grand opera which
was abandoned because of Aunt Belle's dislike of stage life and its
temptations, while his rolling off the three-story building was never
alluded to except when Mark Constantine wished to tease.

She was a short, plump person with permanently jet-black hair and
twinkling eyes. Prepared to forgo all else save elegance, she had
brought up her gorgeous niece with the idea that it was never possible
to have too much luxury. Seated in the Gorgeous Girl's dressing room
she now presented excellent proof that the world was growing very old
indeed, for her plump self was squeezed into a short purple affair
made like a pinafore, her high-heeled bronze slippers causing her to
totter like a mandarin's wife; and strings of coral beads and a gold
lorgnette rose and fell with rhythmic motion as she sighed very
properly over her niece's marriage.

"It will never be the same, darling," she was saying, glancing in
a mirror to see if the light showed the rouge boundaries too
clearly--"never quite the same. You'll understand when your daughter
marries--for you have been just as dear as one."

Beatrice, who was busy inspecting some newly arrived lingerie, did not
glance up as she answered: "Don't be silly. You know it's a relief.
You can sit back and rest from now on--until I'm divorced," she added
with a smile.

"How can you even say such a thing?"

Beatrice tossed the filmy creamy silk somethings or other away and
delivered herself of her mind. "Alice Twill was divorced before she
married this specimen; so was Coralie Minter; and Harold Atwater; and
both the Deralto girls were divorced, and their mother, too. And Jill
Briggs is considering it, and I'm sure I don't blame her. Everyone
seems to think a divorce quite the proper caper when things grow dull.
You may as well have all the fun you can. Steve wants me to have
everything I fancy, and I'm sure he'd never deny me a divorce."

"You are marrying a splendid, self-made young man who adores you and
who is making money every day in the week. No girl is to be more
envied--you have had a wonderful ten years of being a 'Gorgeous Girl,'
as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the
bride of a wonderful man--neither too early nor too late an age. I
cannot really grieve--when I realize how happy you are going to be,
and yet----"

"Don't work so hard, aunty," Bea said, easily. "Of course Steve's a
wonderful old dear and all that--I wish I had asked him for the moon.
I do believe he'd have gotten an option on it." She laughed and
reached over to a bonbon dish to rummage for a favourite flavour. She
selected a fat, deadly looking affair, only to bite into it and
discover her mistake. She tossed it on the floor so that Monster could
creep out of her silk-lined basket and devour the remains.

"If you call natural feelings of a mother and an aunt 'working hard' I
am at a loss----" her aunt began with attempted indignation.

"Oh, I don't call anything anything; I'm dead and almost buried." She
looked at her small self in the pier glass. "Think of all I have to go
through with before it is over and we are on our way west. Here it is
half-past twelve and I've not eaten breakfast really. I'm so tired of
presents and bored with clothes that I cannot acknowledge another
thing or decide anything. I think weddings are a frightful ordeal. Did
you know the women on my war-relief committee presented me with a
silver jewel box? Lovely of them, wasn't it? But I deserve it--after
slaving all last winter. My bronchitis was just because I sold tags
for them during that rainy weather."

"No, I haven't seen it. But I am glad you decided on a church
wedding--there is such a difference between a wedding and just a
marriage."

Beatrice shoved the box of lingerie away. "Those are all wrong, so
back they go; and I can't help it if that woman does need money, I
told her I wanted a full inch-and-a-half beading and she has put this
crochet edge all round everywhere. I shan't accept a single piece!"

Whereupon she sat down at her dressing table and rang for her maid.
Madame Pompadour herself had no lovelier boudoir than Beatrice. It was
replete with rose-coloured taffeta curtains, padded sky-blue silk
walls with garlands of appliquéd flowers. Lace frills covered every
possible object; the ivory furniture was emphasized by smart rose
upholstery, and the dressing table itself fairly dazzled one by the
array of gold-topped bottles and gold-backed brushes.

Johanna, the maid, began brushing the sunshiny hair, the Gorgeous Girl
stamping her feet as snarls asserted themselves.

"Two more days before the wedding," she complained. "There's the Twill
luncheon to-day and a bridge and tea at Marion Kavanaugh's--I hate
her, too. She gave me the most atrocious Chinese idol. I'm going to
tell her I have no proper place for it, that it deserves to be alone
in a room in order to have it properly appreciated." She laughed at
herself. "So I'll leave it for papa. The apartment won't hold but just
so much--it's a tiny affair." She laughed again, the apartment having
only eleven rooms and a profusion of iron grille work at all the
windows. "But it's a wonderful way to start--in an apartment--it is
such a good excuse for not dragging in all the terrible wedding
presents. I can leave everything I like with papa because he never
minds anything as long as he has old slippers and plenty of mince pie.
After a year or so I'm going to have a wonderful house copied after
one I saw in Italy. By then they will all have forgotten what they
gave me and I can furnish it so we won't have to go about wearing
blinders.... The blue dress, Jody, that's right."

"And what is it to-night?" her aunt asked, meekly.

"The Farmsworth dinner; and to-morrow another luncheon and the garden
party at the club. Then the dinner here, rehearsal; and Wednesday,
thank heaven, it will be all ended!"

Johanna helped fasten the king's-blue satin with seed-pearl trimmings
and place a trig black hat atilt on the yellow hair.

"The ermine scarf, please."

The Gorgeous Girl was slipping matronly looking rings on her fingers
and adding an extra dab of powder. She took another chocolate, hugged
Monster, gave orders about sending back the lingerie, remarked that
she must send her photograph to the society editor for the next day's
edition, and she thought the one taken in her Red Cross outfit would
be the sweetest; and then kissing the tip of her aunt's right ear she
sailed downstairs and into the closed car to be whirled to Alice
Twill's house, a duplicate of the Gorgeous Girl's. There she was
enthusiastically embraced and there followed a mutual admiration as to
gowns, make-ups, and jewellery, and a mutual sympathy as to being
desperately tired and busy.

"My dear, I haven't had time to breath--it's perfectly awful! I'll
have to drop out of things next winter. Steve will never allow me to
be so overburdened. I can't sleep unless I take a powder and I can't
have any enthusiasm in the morning unless I have oodles of black
coffee. Of course one has had to do serious work--thank heavens the
war is over!--but you can't give up all the good times.... What a
lovely centre piece! And those cunning little gilt suitcases for
favours! A really truly gold veil pin in each one? You love! Oh, let's
have a cocktail before any one comes in. It does pick me up
wonderfully.... Thanks.... Yes, I had breakfast in bed--some coffee
and gluten crackers was all, and aunty had to stay in my room half the
morning trying to be pensive about my wedding! No, Markham didn't make
my travelling suit half as well as he did Peggy Brewster's. I shall
never go near him again.... And did you hear that Jill found her
diamond pendant in her cold cream jar, so it wasn't a burglar at all!

"Yes, Gaylord Vondeplosshe is going to be an usher.... Well, what else
could I do at the last moment? Wasn't it absurd for a grown man like
Fred Jennings to go have the mumps? Gay knows everyone and I'm sure he
is quite harmless.... Oh, Steve is well and terribly busy, you know.
He is giving me the most wonderful present. Papa hasn't given me his
yet and I'm dying to know what it is, he always gives me such
wonderful things, too.... There's the bell. I do hope it isn't Lois
Taylor, because she always wants people to sign petitions and appear
in court. It is Lois Taylor! Why didn't you leave word to have all
petitions checked with wraps?" Giggles. "Good heavens, what a fright
of a hat. Well, are you ready to go down?"

Five hours later Beatrice was being dressed for the evening's frolic,
dipping into the bonbon box for a stray maple cream, and complaining
of her headache. At this juncture her father tiptoed clumsily into her
room and laid a white velvet jewel case on her dressing table,
standing back to watch her open it.

"You dear----" she began in stereotyped, high-pitched tones as
she pressed the spring. "You duck!" she added a trifle more
enthusiastically, viewing the bowknot of gems in the form of a
pin--a design of diamonds four inches wide with a centre stone of
pigeon's-blood ruby. "You couldn't have pleased me more"--trying it
against her dressing gown. "See, Jody, isn't this wonderful? I
must kiss you." She rustled over to her father and brushed her
lips across his cheek, rustling back again to tell Jody that she
must try the neck coil again--it was entirely too loose.

"I guess Steve can't go any better than that," her father said,
balancing himself on his toes and, in so doing, rumpling the rug.

He was a tall, heavily built man with harsh features and gray hair,
the numerous signs of a self-made man who is satisfied with his own
achievements. He had often told his sister: "Bea can be the lady of
the family. I'm willing to set back and pay for it. It'd never do for
me to start buying antiques or quoting poetry. I can wear a dress suit
without disgracing Bea, and make an after-dinner speech if they let me
talk about the stockyards. But when it comes to musicals and monocles
I ask to be counted out. I had to work too hard the first half of my
life to be able to play the last half of it. I wasn't born in cold
storage and baptized with cracked ice the way these rich men's sons
are. I've shown this city that a farmer's boy can own the best in the
layout and have his girl be the most gorgeous of the crew--barring
none!

"This is a joy," Beatrice was saying, rapidly, her small face wrinkled
with displeasure.

She wished her father would go away because she wanted to think of a
hundred details of the next forty-eight hours and her nerves were
giving warning that their limit of endurance was near at hand. This
big, awkward man who was so harsh a task-master to the world and so
abject a slave to her own useless little self annoyed her. He offended
in an even deeper sense--he did not interest her. Things which did not
interest her were met with grave displeasure. Religion did not
interest her; neither did Steve O'Valley's business--her head ached
whenever he ventured to explain it. She never had to listen to
anything to which she did not wish to listen; the only rule imposed
upon her was that of becoming the most gorgeous girl in Hanover, and
this rule she had obeyed.

"Tired?" he asked, timidly.

"Dead. It's terrible, papa. I don't know how I'll stay bucked up. I
want to burst out crying every time a bell rings or any one speaks to
me.... Oh, Jody, your fingers are all thumbs! Please try it again."

"It looks nice," her father ventured, indicating the puff of gold
hair.

Beatrice did not answer; she sighed and had Johanna proceed.

"The Harkin detectives will watch the presents," her father ventured
again. "There are some more packages downstairs."

"I'm tired of presents; I want to be through unwrapping crystal vases
and gold-lined fruit dishes and silly book ends and having to write
notes of thanks when I hate the gifts. My mind seems quivering little
wires that won't let me have a moment's rest." She took another piece
of candy.

"When I married your mother," her father remarked, softly, evidently
forgetting Johanna's presence, "we walked to a minister's house in
Gardenville about five miles south of here. Your mother was working
for a farmer's wife and she didn't say she was going to be married.
She was afraid they might try talking her out of it--you know how
women do." He looked round the elegant little room. "I was getting ten
dollars a week--that seemed big money in those days. I rented two
rooms in the rear cottage of a house on Ontario Street--it's torn down
now. And I bought some second-hand stuff to furnish it."

He paced up and down; he had a habit of so doing since he was always
whisked about in his motor car and he feared growing stiff if he did
not exercise.

"But your mother liked the rooms--and the things. I remember I bought
a combination chair and stepladder for a dollar and it didn't work."
He gave a chuckle. "It stayed in a sort of betwixt and between
position, about one third stepladder and about two thirds chair, and
that worried me a lot. A dollar meant a good deal then. But your
mother knew what to do with it, she used it for kindling wood and said
we'd charge it up to experience. Yes, sir, we walked to the
minister's--she wore a blue-print dress with a little pink sprig in
it, and a sort of a bonnet." His hand made an awkward descriptive
gesture.

"The minister was mighty nice--he took us into his garden and let
your mother pick a bunch of roses, and then he hitched up his horse
and buggy and drove us back to the farmer's house. The farmer's wife
cried a little when we told her; she liked your mother. She gave us a
crock of butter and some jam. While your mother packed her little
trunk--it wasn't any bigger than one of your hatboxes--I went out and
stood at the gate. I kept thinking, 'By jingo, I'm a married man! Mr.
and Mrs. Mark Constantine.' And I felt sort of afraid--and almost
ashamed. It frightened me because I knew it was two to feed instead of
one, and I wondered if I'd done wrong to take Hannah away from the
farmer's wife when I was only getting ten dollars a week.

"Well, when she came out of the door she looked as pretty as you'll
look in all your stuff, and she came right up to me and said, game as
a pebble, 'Mark, we're man and wife and we'll never be sorry, will we?
And when you're rich and I'm old we will stay just as loving!' I
didn't feel sorry or frightened any more--not once. Not until you came
and they told me she had gone on. Then I felt mighty sorry--and
frightened. She looked so tired when I saw her then--so tired."

He paused, staring at his sunken gardens as seen from Beatrice's
windows. Some men lazily raked new-cut grass and a peacock preened
itself by the sundial. The glass conservatory showed signs of
activity. The florists were at work for the coming event. Then he
looked at his daughter, who waited with polite restraint until his
reverie was ended.

"I've given you all she would have had," he said, as if in debate with
himself that this was the last rebuttal against possible criticism.

Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too,
and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh
eyes.

"Daddy," she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, "do you think
she'd have wanted me to have all--all this?"

"Why wouldn't she?" he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always
treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe.

"I don't know--only I sometimes do almost think--would you suspect it?
When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending
over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on
it--and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it--and how I
waste and spend--and shed a great many tears--well, I wonder if it is
quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!" Then she threw her
arms round him. "Steve won't believe that I've been serious, will he?
Now, daddy dear, please go 'way and let me dress, for I'm 'way late."

She kissed him almost patronizingly and he tiptoed out of her room,
rather glad to get into his own domain--the majestic library with its
partially arranged wedding gifts.

"We're doing ourselves proud," he remarked to his sister, who had been
rearranging them.

"What I told Beatrice this morning. Only she is all nerves. She can't
enjoy anything--it will be a relief to me, Mark, as well as a loss,
when it is over."

Her brother viewed her with a quizzical expression. Like the rest of
the world his sister never fooled him. But like all supermen there was
one human being in whom all his trust was centred, and who very often
thus brought about his defeat. In his case, as with Steve O'Valley, it
chanced to be Beatrice.

Regarding her both men--merciless with their associates and dubbed as
fish-blooded coroners by their enemies--were like gullible children
following a lovely and willful Pied Piperess. But Mark's sister with
her vanities and fibs irritated and amused him by turns. Perhaps he
resented her sharing this material triumph instead of the tired-faced
woman in the churchyard.

"Do you remember the time you did the beadwork for the head
carpenter's wife and when she paid you for it you spent the dollar for
liquid rouge? Todd was so mad he wouldn't speak for a week," he
chuckled, unkindly.

"Don't say such things! Think how it would embarrass Bea. Of course I
don't remember. Neither do you."

"Oh, don't I? What's the harm recalling old times? I remember when you
tried to make Todd a winter overcoat and he said it looked most as
good as a deep-sea diver's outfit. My Hannah nearly died a-laughing."

Fortunately Steve appeared, flourishing Beatrice's corsage by way of a
greeting.

"Aha, the conquerer comes. My dear lad, your lady love has just ousted
me from her room, she'll be down presently. Belle, Steve and I are
going into the den to smoke."

"I'm trying to look as amiable as possible, but I wish fuss and
feathers were not the mode." Steve smiled his sweetest at Aunt Belle
and then took Constantine's arm. "The cave-man style of clubbing
one's chosen into unconsciousness and strolling at leisure through the
jungle with her wasn't half bad. By the way, I did sell the Allandale
man to-day, and the razor-factory stock is going to boom instead of
flatten out--I'm sure of it."

He lit a cigarette and threw himself into an easy-chair. Constantine
selected a cigar and trimmed its end, watching Steve as he did so.

"You've come on about as well as they ever do," he remarked,
unexpectedly. "None of these rich young dogs could have matched you.
Seen the presents?"

"Scads of 'em. Awful stuff. I don't know what half of it is for. Bea
is going to hand you most of it. The apartment is to be a thing of
beauty and she won't hear of taking the offerings along."

"How is the shop?"

"Splendid--Mary Faithful will manage it quite as well as I do. I shall
hear from her daily, you'll stroll over that way, and I can manage to
keep my left little finger on the wheel."

"Mary's a good sort," Constantine mused. "Sorry I ever let her go over
to your shebang. What's her family like?"

"Don't know. Never thought about 'em. Her kid brother works round the
place after school. Guess Mary's the man of the family."

"How much do you pay her?"

"Forty a week."

"Cheap enough. A man would draw down seventy and demand an assistant.
I never had any luck with women secretaries--they all wanted to marry
me," he admitted, grimly.

"Mary's not that sort. Business is her life. If she were a man I'd
have a rival. I'm going to give her fifty a week from now on; she's
giving up her vacation to stay on the job."

"Don't spoil her."

"No danger. I've promised Beatrice to really learn to play bridge," he
changed the conversation.

"Accept my sympathy----" Constantine began and then Beatrice in a
lovely Bohemian rainbow dinner gown came stealing in to stand before
them and complain of her headache and admire her corsage and let Steve
wrap her in her cape and half carry her to the limousine.

"I shan't see you a moment until we're married," he began, mournfully.
"I've been most awfully neglected. But as you are going to be all mine
I can't complain. You're prettier than ever, Bea.... Love me?...
Lots?... Whole lots? You don't say it the way I want you to," laughing
at his own nonsense.

"I'll scream it and a crowd can gather to bear witness." She dimpled
prettily and nibbled at a rose leaf. "It's all like a fairy
tale--everyone says so, and lots of the girls would like to be
marrying you on Wednesday."

"Tell them I belong to the Gorgeous Girl until six men are walking
quietly beside me and assisting me to a permanent resting place. Even
then I'll belong to her," he added.

"Your nose is so handsome," she said, wistfully, recalling her own.

"Talking of noses! Bea, sometimes it's terrible to realize that my
ambitions have become true. To dream and work without ceasing and
without much caring what you do until your dream merges into
reality--it makes even a six-footer as hysterical as a schoolgirl."

"You're intense," she said, soberly. "Jill says you'd make a wonderful
actor."

Steve looked annoyed. "Those scatterbrained time wasters--don't listen
to them. Let's find our real selves--you and I; be worth while. Now
that I've made my fortune I want to spend it in a right fashion--I
want to be interested in things, not just dollars and cents. Help me,
dearest. You know about such things; you've never had the ugliness of
poverty bruise the very soul of you."

"You mean having a good time--and parties----" she began.

"No; books, music; studying human conditions. I want to study the slow
healing of industrial wounds and determine the best treatment for
them. I have made the real me go 'way, 'way off somewheres for a long
time until I won my pile of gold that helped me capture the girl I
loved. Now it is done the real me wants to come back and stay."

"Oh, I see," she said, vaguely. "Of course there are tiny things to
brush up on--greeting people, and you mustn't be so in earnest at
dinner parties and contradict and thump your fist. It isn't good
form."

"When whippersnappers like Gaylord Vondeplosshe----"

"Sh-h-h! Gay's a dear. He is accepted every place."

"We're nearly there, tough luck! One kiss, please; no one can see. Say
you care, then everything else must true up."

The wedding took place at high noon in church, with the bishop and two
curates to officiate. There was a vested choir singing "The Voice That
Breathed O'er Eden"; a thousand dollars' worth of flowers; six
bridesmaids in pastel frocks and picture hats, shepherdess' staffs,
and baskets of lilies of the valley; a matron of honour, flower girls,
ushers; a best man, a papa, an aunty in black satin with a large
section of an ostrich farm for her hat--and a bridegroom.

After the wedding came the breakfast at the Constantine house.
Though certain guests murmured that it was a trifle too ultra like
the house itself, which was half a medieval castle and half the
makings of a village fire department, it was generally considered a
success. Nothing was left undone. The bride left the church amid the
ringing of chimes; her health was drunk, and she slipped up to the
rose-taffeta-adorned boudoir to exchange her ivory satin for a
trim suit of emerald green. Everyone wished on the platinum circlet
of diamonds and there was the conventional throwing of the bouquet,
the rush through the back of the grounds to the hired taxi, the
screams of disappointment at the escape--and Mr. and Mrs. O'Valley
were en route on their honeymoon.

It remained for the detectives to guard the presents, the society
reporters to discover new adjectives of superlative praise, and the
guests to drink up the champagne and say: "Wonderful." "Must have cost
thousands." "Handsome couple. Couldn't have happened in any other
country but America." "War fortune." "Oh, yes, no doubt of it--hides
and razors turned the trick." "Well, how long do you think it is going
to last?"

The office forces of the O'Valley and Constantine companies had been
excused so as to be present at the ceremony. But Mary Faithful and
Trudy Burrows had not availed themselves of the opportunity. Womanly
rebellion and heartache suddenly blotted out Mary's emotionless scheme
of action. Besides, there was a valid excuse of waiting to catch an
important long-distance call. With Trudy it was mere envy causing her
to say over and over: "See Gay, the ragged little beggar, walk up the
aisle with one of those rich girls and never glance at me--just
because he's a Vondeplosshe? And me have to sit beside Nellie Lunk,
who'll cry when the organ plays and wear that ridiculous bathtub of a
hat? Never! I won't go unless I can walk up the aisle with Gay. Wait
until I see him to-night; I'll make it very pleasant."

Life seemed rather empty for Trudy as she sat in the deserted offices
pretending to add figures and trying to hum gayly. Even the box of
wedding cake laid on her desk--it was laid on everyone's desk--brought
forth no smile or intention of dreaming over it. Was she to spend her
days earning fifteen dollars a week in this feudal baron's employ?
Tears marred the intensive cultivation on her rouged cheeks as she
looked out the window to see the office force being brought back from
the church in trucks.

"Like cattle--peasants--all because of money. A war profiteer, that's
what he was. And she isn't anything at all except that she has her
father's money." She glanced toward Mary's closed door. "Poor Mary,"
she thought; "she cares! I don't--that makes it easier. Well, he could
have done worse than to take Mary," tossing her head as she tried to
create the impression of indifference now that the employees were
coming back to their desks.

For there was a forked road for Trudy as well as for Mary Faithful.
Women are no longer compelled to accept the one unending pathway of
domesticity. Trudy's forked road resolved itself into either marriage
with Gay as a stepping stone to marriage with someone else, or a smart
shop with society women and actresses as patrons, being able to live
at a hotel and do as she wished, inventing a neat little past of
escaping from a Turkish harem or being the widow of an English officer
who died serving his country. Trudy was not without resources, in her
own estimation, and whether she married Gay or achieved the shop was a
toss-up. Like the rest of the world she considered herself capable of
doing both!

Hearing the scuffle of feet Mary opened the door and forced herself to
ask about the wedding. Presently the excitement died down and the
round of mechanical drudgery took its place. An hour later someone
knocked at an inner door which led to steep side stairs connecting
with a side street entrance. Wondering who it was Mary opened it, to
find Steve, very flushed and handsome, a flower in his buttonhole yet
no hint of rice about him.

"Sh-h-h! Not a word out loud! I want to escape. Mrs. O'Valley is
waiting round the corner in a cab. I forgot the long-distance
call--the one we expected yesterday."

"It came while everyone was at the church. I stayed here in case it
did. They will pay your price, so I closed the deal."

"Hurrah for Mary Faithful! But I wish you could have been there. It
was like a picture. I never saw her look so lovely. Well, that's
settled. Wire me at Chicago. I think that's everything. Oh, you're to
have fifty a week from now on. What man isn't generous on his wedding
day? Good-bye, Miss Head of Affairs." A moment later he was climbing
down the rickety flight of stairs.

For a long time Mary sat watching the hands of her desk clock slowly
proceed round the dial. Someone knocked at the door and she said to
come in, but her voice sounded faint and far away.

Fifty dollars a week--generous on his wedding day! She ought to be
very glad; it meant she could save more and have an occasional treat
for Luke. It was good to think that women had forked roads these days.
How terrible if she were left in the shelter of a home to mourn
unchecked. Besides, she was guarding his business; that was a great
comfort. The Gorgeous Girl was sharing him with Mary Faithful--would
always share him. That was a comfort, too.

After the errand boy left, Mary tried to write a letter but she found
herself going into the washroom off Steve's office and without warning
weakly burying her face in an old working coat he had left behind. She
had just made a great many dollars for him which he would spend on the
Gorgeous Girl; she would make many more during the long summer while
she stayed at the post and was Miss Head of Affairs. She had laid her
woman's hopes on the altar of commerce because of Steve O'Valley, and
he rewarded her with a ten-dollar-a-week raise since a man was always
generous on his wedding day.

Yet there was a distinct satisfaction in the heartache and the
responsibility, even in the irony of the ten-dollar-a-week advance.
Life might be hard--but it was not empty! She was glad to be in the
deserted office replete with his belongings and breathing of his
personality. She was glad to be an acknowledged Miss Head of Affairs.

"You'd miss even a heartache if it was all you had," she whispered to
herself from within the folds of Steve's office coat.




CHAPTER IV


During the summer the O'Valley Leather Company discovered that Mary
Faithful made quite as efficient a manager as Steve O'Valley himself.
Nor did she neglect any of a multitude of petty details--such as the
amount of ice needed for the water cooler, the judicious issue of
office supplies; the innovation of a rest-room for girls metamorphosed
out of a hitherto dingy storeroom; the eradication of friction between
two ancient bookkeepers who had come to regard the universe as against
them. Even the janitor's feelings were appeased by a few kind words
and a crossing of his palm with silver when Mary decided to houseclean
before Steve's return.

It is impossible for a business woman not to have feminine notions.
They stray into her routine existence like blades of pale grass
persistently shooting up between the cracks of paving blocks. Quite
frilly curtains adorned Mary's office windows, fresh flowers were kept
in a fragile vase, a marble bust of Dante guarded the filing cabinet,
and despite the general cleaning she used a special little silk duster
for her own knicknacks. On a table was a very simple tea service with
a brass samovar for days when the luncheon hour proved too stormy for
an outside excursion.

Sharing Steve with the Gorgeous Girl, Mary had decided to clean his
business home just as the Gorgeous Girl would have the apartment set
in spick-and-span order. It was during the general upsetting with
brooms, mops, paint pots, and what not, while Mary good-naturedly
tried to work at a standing desk, that Mark Constantine dropped in
unexpectedly.

"Gad!" he began, characteristically. "Thought I'd find you in your
cool and hospitable office inviting me to have a siesta." He mopped
his face with a huge silk handkerchief.

"Try it in a few days and we will be quite shipshape." Mary wheeled up
a chair for him. "Anything I can do for you?"

He sank down with relief; his fast-accumulating flesh made him awkward
and fond of lopping down at unexpected intervals. He glanced up at
this amazing young woman, crisp and cool in her blue muslin dress, the
tiny gold watch in a black silk guard being her only ornament. His
brows drew into what appeared to be a forbidding frown; he really
liked Mary, with her steady eyes somehow suggesting eternity and her
funny freckled nose destroying any such notion.

"How are you getting on?" was all he said.

"Splendidly. We expect Mr. O'Valley a week from Monday--but of course
you know that yourself."

"Gad," Constantine repeated.

"And how is Mr. Constantine?" Mary asked, almost graciously.

"In the hands of my enemy," he protested. "Bea left a hundred and one
things to be seen to. My sister has sprained her ankle and is out of
the running. It's the apartment that causes the trouble--Bea has sent
letter after letter telling what she wants us to do. I thought
everything was all set before she went away but--here!" He drew out
violet notepaper and handed it over. "Sorry to bother you, but when
that girl gets home and settled I hope she'll be able to tend to her
own affairs and leave us in peace. I guess you understand how women
are about settling a new house."

Reluctantly Mary deciphered the slanting, curlicue handwriting, which
said in part:

  Now, papa dear, I'm terribly worried about the painted Chinese
  wall panels for the little salon. They are likely to be the wrong
  design. Jill has written that hers were. So please get the man to
  give you a guarantee that he will correct any mistakes. I want you
  to go to Brayton's and get white-and-gold jars that will look well
  in the dining room--Brayton knows my tastes. Besides this, he is
  to have two rose pots of old Wheldon ware for me--they will
  contain electrically lighted flowers--like old-fashioned bouquets.
  I wish you and aunty would drive out to the arts-and-crafts shop
  and bid on the red lacquer cabinet and the French clock that is in
  stock; I am sure no one has bought them. I could not decide
  whether I wanted them or not until now, and I must have them. They
  will tone in beautifully with the rugs.

Mary turned the page:

  Also, Aunt Belle has not answered my letter asking her to order
  the monogrammed stationery--four sizes, please, ashes of roses
  shade and lined with gold tissue. I also told Aunt Belle to see
  about relining my mink cape and muff. I shall wish to wear it very
  early in the season, and I want something in a smart striped
  effect with a pleated frill for the muff. And the little house for
  Monster completely slipped my mind--Aunt Belle knows about
  it--with a wind-harp sort of thing at one side and funny pictures
  painted on the outside. I have changed my mind about the colour
  scheme for the breakfast nook--I am going to have light gray,
  almost a silver, and I would like some good pewter things.

  It seems to me I shall never be rested. Steve wants to see every
  sunrise and explore every trail. We have met quite nice people and
  the dancing at the hotels is lovely. Oh, yes, if you need any help
  I know Miss Faithful will be glad to help, and Gaylord has ripping
  ideas.

  Loads of love to you, dear papa. Your own

                                                                BEA.

Mary returned the letter without comment.

"Will you help me?" Constantine demanded almost piteously. "Belle's
out of the running, you know."

"I'm cleaning my own house," Mary began, looking at the surrounding
disorder, "but I can run up to the apartment with you and see what
must be done; though it seems to me----"

"Seems to you what, young woman?"

"--that your daughter would prefer to do these at her leisure--they
are so personal."

Constantine moved uneasily in his chair. "I guess women don't like to
do things these days"--rather disgruntled in general--"but she might
as well have asked an African medicine man as to ask me. What do I
know about red lacquered cabinets and relining fur capes? I just pay
for them."

Mary smiled. Something about his gruff, merciless personality had
always attracted her. She had sometimes suspected that the day would
come when she would be sorry for him--just why she did not know. She
had watched him from afar during the period of being his assistant
bookkeeper, and now, having risen with the fortunes of Steve O'Valley,
she faced him on an almost equal footing--another queer quirk of
American commerce.

She realized that his tense race after wealth had been in a sense
his strange manner of grieving for his wife. But his absolute
concentration along one line resulted in a lack of wisdom concerning
all other lines. Though he could figure to the fraction of a dollar
how to beat the game, play big-fish-swallow-little-fish and get
away with it, he had no more judgment as to his daughter's absurd
self than Monster, who had gone on the honeymoon wrapped in a new
silken blanket. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, as Mary
had decided during her early days of running errands for nervous
modistes who boxed her ears one moment and gave her a silk remnant
the next. Neither can a man put all his powers of action into one
channel, blinding himself to all else in the world, and expect to
emerge well balanced and normal in his judgments.

As Mary agreed to help Constantine out of his débris of French clocks
and pewter for the breakfast room she began to feel sorry for him even
if he was a business pirate--for he had paid an extremely high price
for the privilege of being made a fool of by his own child.

He escorted her to the limousine and they whirled up to the apartment
house, where in all the gray stone, iron grille work, hall-boy
elegance there now resided three couples of the Gorgeous Girl type,
and where Bea's apartment awaited her coming, the former tenants
having been forced to vacate in time to have the place completely
redone.

"I wouldn't ask Gaylord if I had to do it myself," Constantine said,
brushing by the maid who opened the door. "There is a young man we
could easily spare. If he ever gets as good a job as painting spots on
rocking-horses I'll eat my hat."

Mary was surveying the room. "Where--where do we go to from here?" she
faltered.

Constantine sank into a large chair, shaking his head. "Damned if I
know," he panted. "Look at that truck!"--pointing to piles of wedding
gifts.

Mary walked the length of the drawing room. It had black velvet panels
and a tan carpet with angora rugs spread at perilous intervals; there
was a flowered-silk chaise-longue, bright yellow damask furniture, and
an Italian-Renaissance screen before the marble fireplace.

Opening out of this was a salon--this was where the Chinese panels
were to find a haven--and already cream-and-gold furniture had been
placed at artistic angles with blue velvet hangings for an abrupt
contrast. There was a multitude of books bound in dove-coloured ooze;
cut glass, crystal, silver candelabra sprinkled throughout. Men were
working on fluted white satin window drapes, and Mary glanced toward
the dining room to view the antique mahogany and sparkle of plate.
Someone was fitting more hangings in the den, and a woman was
disputing with her co-worker as to the best place for the goldfish
globe and the co-worker was telling her that Monster's house was to
occupy the room--yes, Monster, the O'Valley dog--a pound and a half,
he weighed, and was subject to pneumonia. Here they began to laugh,
and someone else, knowing of Constantine's presence, discreetly closed
the door.

Flushing, Mary returned to the drawing room and standing before
Constantine's chair she said swiftly: "I'm afraid I cannot help you,
sir. I'm not this sort. I shouldn't be able to please. Besides, it is
robbing your daughter of a great joy--and a wonderful duty, if you
don't mind my saying it--this arranging of her own home. We have no
right to do it for her."

"She's asked us to do it," spluttered the big man.

"Then you will have to ask her to excuse me."

Mary was almost stern. It seemed quite enough to have to stay at her
post all summer, run the business and houseclean the office for his
return, without being expected to come into the Gorgeous Girl's realm
and do likewise. In this new atmosphere she began to feel old and
plain, quite impossible! The yellow damask furniture, the rugs, the
silver and gold and lovely extravagances seemed laughing at her and
suggesting: "Go back to your filing cabinet and your old-maid silk
dusting cloths, to your rest-rooms for girls, and to your arguments
with city salesmen. You have no more right here than she will ever
have in your office."

When Constantine would have argued further she threw back her head
defiantly, saying: "Someone explains the difference between men and
women by the fact that men swear and women scream, which is true as
far as it goes. But in these days you often find a screaming gentleman
and a profane lady--and there's a howdy-do! You can't ask the profane
lady--no matter if she is a right-hand business man--to come fix
pretties. You better write your daughter what I've said, and if you
don't mind I'd like to get back to the office."

Constantine rose, frowning down at her with an expression that would
have frightened a good many women stauncher than Mary Faithful. For
she had mentioned to him what no one, not even his sluggish
conscience, had ever hinted at--his daughter's duty.

But all he said was: "Profane ladies and screaming gentlemen. Well,
I've put a screaming-gentleman tag on Gaylord Vondeplosshe--but what
about yourself? Where are you attempting to classify?"

"Me? I'll be damned if I help you out," she laughed up at him as she
moved toward the door.

Chuckling, yet defeated, Constantine admitted her triumph and sent her
back to the office in the limousine.

At that identical moment Gaylord, alias the screaming gentleman, had
been summoned to Aunt Belle's bedside. For Beatrice believed in having
two strings to her bow and she had written her aunt a second deluge of
complaints and requests. Bemoaning the sprained ankle--and the
probable regaining of three pounds which had been laboriously massaged
away--Aunt Belle had called for Gaylord's sympathy and support.

While Mary, rather perturbed yet unshaken in her convictions, returned
to the office and Constantine had decided his blood pressure could not
stand any traipsing round after folderols, Gaylord was eagerly taking
notes and saying pretty nothings to the doleful Mrs. Todd, who relied
utterly on his artistic judgment and promptness of action.

Whereupon Gaylord proudly rolled out of the Constantine gates in a
motor car bearing Constantine's monogram, and by late afternoon he had
come to a most satisfactory understanding with decorators and antique
dealers--an understanding which led to an increase in the prices
Beatrice was to pay and the splitting of the profits between one
Gaylord Vondeplosshe and the tradesmen.

"A supper!" Mark Constantine demanded crisply that same evening,
merely groaning when his sister told him that Gaylord had undertaken
all the errands and was such a dear boy. "And send it up to my
room--ham, biscuits, pie, and iced coffee, and I'm not at home if the
lord mayor calls."

He departed to the plainest room in the mansion and turned on an
electric fan to keep him company. He sat watching the lawn men at
their work, wondering what he was to do with this barn of a place.
Beatrice had told him forcibly that she was not going to live in it.
Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself
when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and
luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered,
the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable
slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he
read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor
moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early
endeavour--of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the
reverie he would tell himself with a flash of honesty, "Gad, it might
as well have happened to some other fellow--for all the good it does
you." Nothing seemed real to Constantine except his check book and his
wife's monument.

It was still to dawn upon him that his daughter partly despised him.
He had always said that no one loved him but his child, and that no
one but his child mattered so far as he was concerned. Since
Beatrice's marriage he had become restless, wretched, desperately
lonesome; he found himself missing Steve quite as much as he missed
Beatrice. Their letters were unsatisfactory since they were chiefly
concerned with things--endless things that they coveted or had bought
or wanted in readiness for their return. As he sat watching the lawn
men gossip he knitted his black brows and wondered if he ought to sell
the mansion and be done with it. Then it occurred to him that
grandchildren playing on the velvety lawn would make it quite worth
while. With a thrill of anticipation he began to plan for his
grandchildren and to wonder if they, too, would be eternally concerned
with things.

As he recalled Mary's defiance he chuckled. "A ten-dollar-a-week raise
was cheap for such a woman," he thought.

Meantime, Trudy informed the Faithful family at supper: "Gay has
telephoned that he is coming to-night. Were you going to use the
parlour, Mary?" A mere formality always observed for no reason at
all.

"No, I'm going to water the garden. It's as dry as Sahara."

Luke groaned.

"Don't make Luke help you. He's stoop-shouldered enough from study
without making him carry sprinkling cans," Mrs. Faithful objected.

"Nonsense! It's good for him, and he will be through in an hour."

"Too late for the first movie show," expostulated Luke.

"A world tragedy," his sister answered.

"I wanted to go to-night," her mother insisted. "It's a lovely story.
Mrs. Bowen was in to tell me about it--all about a Russian war bride.
They built a whole town and burnt it up at the end of the story. I
guess it cost half a million--and there's fighting in it, too."

"All right, go and take Luke. But I don't think the movies are as good
for him as working in a garden."

"You never want me to have pleasure. Home all day with only memories
of the dead for company, and then you come in as cross as a witch,
ready to stick your nose in a book or go dig in the mud! Excuse me,
Trudy, but a body has to speak out sometimes. Your father to the
life--reading and grubbing with plants. Oh, mother's proud of you,
Mary, but if you would only get yourself up a little smarter and go
out with young people you'd soon enough want Luke to go out, too! I
don't pretend to know what your judgment toward your poor old mother
would be!"

Mary's day had included a dispute with a firm's London representative,
the Constantine incident, a session at the dentist's as a noon-recess
attraction, housecleaning the office, and two mutually contradictory
wires from Steve. She laid her knife and fork down with a defiant
little clatter.

"I can't burn the candle at both ends. I work all day and I have to
relax when I leave the office. If my form of a good time is to read or
set out primroses it is nothing to cry thief for, is it? I want you to
go out, mother, as you very well know. And you are welcome to fill the
house with company. Only if I'm to do a man's work and earn his wage I
must claim my spare time for myself."

"Now listen here, dear," interposed Trudy, who took Mary's part when
it came to a real argument, "don't get peeved. Let me buy your next
dress and show you how to dance. You'll be surprised what a difference
it will make. You'll get so you just hate ever to think of work."

"Splendid! Who will pay the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?"
Mary thought of the wedding presents carelessly stacked about
Beatrice's apartment. One pile of them, as she measured expenses,
would have paid the aforementioned gentlemen for a year or more.

"Now you've got her going," Luke objected. "Say, Trudy, you don't kill
yourself tearing off any work at the shop!"

"Luke," began his mother, "be a gentleman. Dear me, I wish I hadn't
said a word. To think of my children in business! Why, Luke ought to
be attending a private school and going to little cotillion parties
like my brothers did; and Mary in her own home." She pressed her
napkin to her eyes.

"I admit Mary carries me along on the pay roll--I'm Mary's foolishness,"
Trudy said, easily. "Mary's a good scout even if she does keep us
stepping. She has to fall down once in a while, and she fell hard when
she hired me and took me in as a boarder."

Mary flushed. "I try to make you do your share," she began, "and----"

"I ought to pay more board," Trudy giggled at her own audacity. "But I
won't. You're too decent to make me. You know I'm such a funny fool
I'd go jump in the river if I got blue or things went wrong, and you
like me well enough to not want that. Don't worry about our Mary, Mrs.
Faithful. Just let her manage Luke and he won't wander from her apron
strings like he will if you and I keep him in tow."

Luke made a low bow, scraping his chair back from the table. "I'll go
ahead and get reserved seats and mother can come when she's ready," he
proposed.

Mrs. Faithful beamed with triumph. "That's my son! Get them far enough
back, the pictures blur if I'm too close."

"I'll do the dishes," Mary said, briefly. "Go and get ready."

"I'd wipe them only Gay is coming so early," Trudy explained, glibly.

"I'd rather be alone." Mary was piling up the pots and pans.

"Now, deary, if you don't feel right about mother's going," her mother
resumed a little later as she poked her head into the kitchen, "just
say so. But I certainly want to see that town burnt up; and besides,
it's teaching Luke history. Dear me, your hair is dull. Why don't you
try that stuff Trudy uses?"

"Because I'm not Trudy. Good-bye."

"You're all nerves again. I'd certainly let someone else do the
work."

"I need a vacation."

"That means you want to get away from us. Well, I try to keep the home
together. Leave that coffeepot just as it is, I'll want a drop when I
get back." Waddling out the door Mrs. Faithful left Mary to assault
the dishes and long for Steve's return.

"I wonder why the great plan did not make it possible for all folks to
like their relatives?" she asked herself as she finally hung the tea
towels on the line; "or their star boarder?"

Then she became engrossed in the way the newly set out plants had
taken root. Bending over the flower beds she was hardly conscious that
darkness had fallen over the earth--a heavenly, summer-cool darkness
with veiled stars prophetic of a blessed shower. She repaired to the
porch swing to dream her dreams of fluffs and frills, arrange a dream
house and live therein. It should be quite unlike the Gorgeous Girl's
apartment--but a roomy, sprawling affair with old furniture that was
used and loved and shabby, well-read books, carefully chosen pictures,
dull rugs, and oddly shaped lamps, a shaggy old dog to lie before the
open fireplace and be patted occasionally, fat blue jugs of Ragged
Robin roses at frequent intervals. Perhaps there would be a baby's toy
left somewhere along the stairway leading to the nursery. When one has
the cool of a summer's night, a porch screened with roses and a
comfortable swing, what does it matter if there are unlikable persons
and china-shop apartment houses?

Had Mary known what was taking place in the front parlour it would not
have jarred her from her dreams. For Gaylord, resplendent in ice-cream
flannels, and Trudy, wearing an unpaid-for black-satin dress with red
collar and cuffs, were both busier than the proverbial beaver planning
their wedding. It was to be an informal and unexpected little affair,
being the direct result of the Gorgeous Girl's demands as to settling
her household.

"You've no idea how jolly easy it was, Babseley. There was a dressing
case I know Bea will keep--it brought me a cool hundred commission--it
had just come in. I plunged and bought two altar scarfs she can use
for her reading stand--she likes such things, besides all the
bona-fide orders. I've been working for fair--and I've made over a
thousand dollars."

Trudy kissed Bubseley between his pale little eyes. "You Lamb! Sure
you won't have to give it back or that they will tell?"

"Of course not! They'd give their own selves away. That's the way such
things are always done, y'know. I've an idea that I'll go in seriously
for the business by and by. I don't feel any compunction; I'm entitled
to every cent of it; in fact, I call it cheap for Bea at a thousand."

"But will they really pay you?" Trudy was skeptical. It seemed such a
prodigious amount for buying a few trifles.

"The Constantine credit is like the Bank of England. I'll have my
money and we'll make our getaway before Bea arrives in town."

"Why?" Trudy did not approve of this. The contrast between her
marriage and the Gorgeous Girl's wedding rankled.

Gay hesitated. "I want to go to New York and see concert managers and
father's friends," he evaded. "Then we'll visit my sister in
Connecticut as long as she'll have us. And when we come back--well,
you'll--you'll know the smart ways better."

He was a trifle afraid of Trudy and he did not know how best to advise
her that her slips in speech and manners would be more easily remedied
by setting her an example of the correct thing than by staying in
Hanover and leading a cat-and-dog life, getting nowhere at all.

Trudy kissed him again. "Hurrah for the eternal frolic!" she said,
adding: "But we'll know Beatrice and Steve socially, won't we?"

"Of course!" he said, in helpless concession.

His one-cylinder little brain had not yet reckoned with Trudy's
determination to conquer the social arena. He knew he must have her to
help him; his efforts with creditors were failing sadly of late.
Besides, he admired her tremendously; he felt like a rake and a deuce
of a chap when they went out together, and he relied on her
vivacity--Pep had been his pet name for her before he originated
Babseley--to carry him through. It really would be quite an easy
matter to live on nothing a year until something turned up. The graft
from Beatrice was the open sesame, however, and the Gorgeous Girl
would never suspect the truth.

"Keep right on working hard," Trudy said, fondly, as they kissed each
other good-night. "I'll tell Mary to-morrow. I want to leave my big
trunk here because we might want to stay here for a few days when we
come back."

"Never!"--masterfully pointing his cane at the moon. "My wife is going
to have her own apartment. One of father's friends has built several
apartment houses and he'll be sure to let me in."

"Are we dreaming?" Trudy asked, thinking of how indebted she was to
Beatrice O'Valley, yet how she envied and hated her.

"No, Babseley, I'll phone you to-morrow and come down. If you see me
flying about in a machine don't be surprised; I'm to use their big car
as much as I like. But it would be a little thick to have us seen
together--just yet."

"I'll see that the whole social set gets a draft from me that will
open their eyes," Trudy promised, loath to have him go.

"If old man Constantine knew I drew that money down!" Gay chuckled
with delight. "When his favourite after-dinner story is to tell
how Steve O'Valley lay on his stomach and watched goats for an
education."

"I'd hate to have my finger between his teeth when he learns the
truth," Trudy prompted.

She spent half the night taking inventory of her wardrobe, her debts,
and her personal charms, practising airs and graces before her mirror
and calculating how long the thousand would last them. All the world
was before her, to Trudy's way of thinking. She would be Mrs. Gaylord
Vondeplosshe, and with Gay's name and her brain--well, to give Trudy's
own sentiments, they would soon be able to carry the whole show in
their grip and use the baggage cars to bring back the profits!




CHAPTER V


Gaylord's sudden marriage and departure for New York caused no small
comment. In the Faithful family Mary and Luke stood against Mrs.
Faithful, who declared with meaning emphasis that some girls had more
sense than others and it was better to marry and make a mistake the
first time than to remain an old maid. With Trudy's style and high
spirits she was going to carry Gaylord into the front ranks without
any effort. Luke described the event by saying that a bad pair of
disturbers had teamed for life, and relied upon Mary to take up the
burden of the proof.

"Don't mourn so, mother. I'm a happy old maid," she insisted when the
comments grew too numerous for her peace of mind. "Trudy was not the
sort to blush unseen, and it's a relief not to have to cover up her
mistakes at the office. Everything will be serene once more. As for
Gay's future--I suppose he is likely to bring home anything from a
mousetrap to a diamond tiara. I don't pretend to understand his
ways."

"Of course it isn't like Mrs. O'Valley's wedding," her mother resumed,
with a resonant sniffle. "You have been so used to hearing about her
ways that poor little Trudy seems cheap. Perhaps your mother and
brother and the little home seem so, too. But we can't all be Gorgeous
Girls, and I think Trudy was right to take Gaylord when he had the
money for a ring and a license."

"He had more than that," Mary ruminated. "People don't walk to New
York."

"Did he win it on a horse race?" Luke had an eye to the future.

"Maybe his father's friends helped him," Mrs. Faithful added.

"Can't prove anything by me." Mary shook her head.

Neither Trudy nor Gaylord knew that all Beatrice's bills were sent to
Mary to discount, and Mary, not without a certain shrewdness, had her
own ideas on the matter. But it amused more than it annoyed her. Gay
might as well have a few hundred to spend in getting a wife and
caretaker as tradesmen whose weakness it was to swell their profits
beyond all respectability.

"I wonder where they will live." Mrs. Faithful found the subject
entirely too fascinating to let alone.

"Not here," her daughter assured her. "And if you'd only say yes I
could get such a sunny, pretty flat where the work would be worlds
easier."

"Leave my home? Never! It would be like uprooting an oak forest. Time
for that when I am dead and gone." The double chin quivered with
indignation. "I don't see why Trudy and Gay won't come here and take
the two front rooms. They'd be company for me."

She approved of Trudy's views of life as much as she disapproved and
was rather afraid of this young woman who wanted to bustle her into
trim house dresses instead of the eternal wrappers.

"I kept Trudy only because she needed work--and a home," Mary said,
frankly; "and because you wanted her. But my salary does nicely for
us. Besides, it would be a bad influence for Luke to have such a
person as Gay about. We must make a man out of Luke."

"Don't go upsetting him. He eats his three good meals a day and always
acts like a little gentleman. You'll nag at him until he runs away
like my brother Amos did."

"Better run away from us than run over us," Mary argued; "but there is
no need of planning for Trudy's return. Their home will be in a good
part of the city, if it consists in merely hanging onto a lamp-post.
You don't realize that Gay is a bankrupt snob and married Trudy only
because he could play off cad behind his pretty wife's skirts. Men
will like Trudy and the women ridicule and snub her until she finds
she has a real use for her claws. Up to now she has only halfway kept
them sharpened. In a few years you will find Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord
Vondeplosshe in Hanover society with capital letters, hobnobbing with
Beatrice O'Valley and her set and somehow managing to exist in
elegance. Don't ask how they will do it--but they will. However, they
would never consider starting from our house. That would be getting
off on a sprained ankle."

Mrs. Faithful gulped the rest of her coffee. "No one has any use for
me because I haven't money. Our parlour was good enough for them to do
their courting in, and if they don't come and see me real often I'll
write Trudy a letter and tell her some good plain facts!"

"Be sure to say we all think Gay's mother must have been awful fond of
children to have raised him," Luke suggested from the offing.

Mary tossed a sofa pillow at him and disappeared. She could have
electrified her mother by telling her that Steve was to return that
morning, that the office was prepared to welcome him back, and that
Mrs. O'Valley would be anchored at the telephone to get into
communication with her dearest and best of friends.

As she walked to the street car she reproached herself for not having
told the news. It was a tiny thing to tell a woman whose horizon was
bounded by coffee pots, spotted wrappers, and inane movies.

"You're mean in spots," Mary told herself. "You know how it would have
pleased her."

She sometimes felt a maternal compassion for this helpless dear with
her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether
her father had not had the same attitude during the years of nagging
reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home
that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve's return, even
bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to be placed on his
desk.

"After all, she's mother," Mary thought, rounding the corner leading
to the office building, "and like most of us she does the best she
can!"

She tried to maintain a calm demeanour in the office as she answered
inquiries and opened the mail. But all the time she kept glancing at
her desk clock. Half-past nine--of course he would be late--surely he
must come by ten. She wished she had flung maidenly discretion to the
winds and worn the white silk sport blouse she had just bought. But
she had made herself dress in a crumpled waist of nondescript type.
The floral piece on Steve's long-deserted desk made her keep glancing
up to smile at its almost funeral magnificence.

She answered a telephone call. Yes, Mr. O'Valley was expected--undoubtedly
he would wish to reserve a plate for the Chamber of Commerce
luncheon--unless they heard to the contrary they could do so. ... Oh, it
was to include the wives and so on. Then reserve places for Mr. and
Mrs. O'Valley. She hung up the receiver abruptly and went to making
memoranda.

Even if she demanded and would receive a share of Steve's time and
attention it would be the thankless, almost bitter portion--such as
reserving plates for Mr. and Mrs. O'Valley or O.K.ing Mrs. O'Valley's
bills. Still it was hers, awarded to her because of keenness of brain
and faithfulness of action. Steve needed her as much as he needed to
come home to his miniature palace to watch the Gorgeous Girl display
her latest creation, to be able to take the Gorgeous Girl fast in his
arms and say: "You are mine--mine--mine!" very likely punctuating the
words with kisses. Yet he must return each day to Mary Faithful and
say: "You are my right-hand man; I need you."

"A penny for your thoughts." Steve O'Valley was standing beside her.
"You look as if work agreed with you. Say something nice now--that a
long holiday has improved me!"

She managed to put a shaking hand into his, wondering if she betrayed
her thoughts. Being as tall as Steve she was able to look at him, not
up at him; and there they stood--the handsome, reckless man with just
a suggestion of nervous tension in his Irish blue eyes, and the plain
young woman in a rumpled linen blouse.

"Ah--so I don't please," he bantered. "Well, tell us all about it.
I've a thousand questions--my father-in-law says you are the only
thing I have that he covets. How about that?" He led the way into his
office, Mary following.

Then he fell upon his mountain of mail and memoranda, demands for this
charity and that patriotic subscription, and Mary began a careful
explanation of affairs and they sat talking and arguing until the
general superintendent looked in to suggest that the shop might like
to have Mr. O'Valley say hello.

"It's nearly eleven," Steve exclaimed, "and we haven't begun to say a
tenth of all there is to discuss. See the funeral piece, Hodges? Why
didn't you label it 'Rest in pieces' and be done with it, eh? I shall
now appear to make a formal speech." Here he cut a rosebud from the
big wreath and handed it gravely to Mary; he cut a second one and
fastened it in his own buttonhole. "Lead me out, Hodges. I'm a bit
unsteady--been playing too long."

Mary stood in the doorway, one hand caressing the little rose. That
Beatrice should have had the flower was her first thought. Then it
occurred to her that Beatrice would have all the flowers at the formal
affairs to be given the bridal couple, besides sitting opposite Steve
at his own table. She no longer felt that she had stolen the rose or
usurped attention. There was a clapping of hands and the usual
laughter which accompanies listening to any generous proprietor's
speech, a trifle forced perhaps but very jolly sounding. Then Steve
returned to his office to become engrossed in conversation with Mary
until Mark Constantine dropped in to bowl him off to the club for
luncheon.

"She's kept things humming, hasn't she?" Constantine asked, sinking
into the nearest chair.

"A prize," Steve said, proudly. "I don't find a slip-up any place.
I'll be back at two, Miss Faithful, in case any one calls.... How is
Bea?" His voice softened noticeably.

Mary slipped away.

"Bea doesn't like one half of her things and the other half are so
much better than the apartment that she says they don't show up," her
father admitted, drolly. "She is tired to death--so you'll find her at
home, my boy, with a box of candy and the latest novel. Belle was
talking her head off when I left the house and the girls keep calling
her on the telephone for those little three-quarters-of-an-hour hello
talks. It seems to me that for rich girls, my daughter and her friends
are the busiest, most tired women I ever knew--and yet do the least."
He put on his hat and waited for Steve to open the door.

"I don't pretend to understand them," Steve answered. "Maybe that's
why I'm so happy. Bea fusses if the shade of draperies doesn't match
her gown, and if Monster has a snarl in her precious hair it is cause
for a tragedy. But I just grin and go along and presently she has
forgotten all about it."

"I tried to get that young woman helper of yours to help me fix up
Bea's things," Constantine complained. "Let's walk to the club--my
knees are going stiff on me."

"Well?"

"She looked round the apartment and plain refused to put away another
woman's pots and pans. It was just spunk. I don't know that I blame
her. So Belle got that low order of animal life----"

"Meaning Gaylord?"

"Yes; and now the husband, I understand, of one of your thinnest clad
and thinnest brained former clerks. Gay was in his element; he kept
the machine working overtime and flattered Belle until he had
everything his own way. Yet Beatrice seems quite satisfied with his
achievements."

"You must have been hanging round the house this morning."

"I couldn't get down to brass tacks," he admitted. "You've had her
all summer--but you can bet your clothes you wouldn't have had her
if I hadn't been willing." He slapped Steve on the shoulder
good-naturedly.

Steve nodded briskly. Then he suggested: "Bea has the New York idea
rather strong. Has she ever hinted it to you?"

"Don't let that flourish, Steve. Kill it at the start. She knew better
than to try to wheedle me into going. I'm smarter than most of the men
round these parts but I'd be fleeced properly by the New York band of
highbinders if I tried to go among them. And you're not as good at the
game as I am. Not----" He paused as if undecided how much would be
best to tell Steve. He evidently decided that generalities would be
the wisest arguments, so he continued: "Don't wince--it's the truth,
and there must be no secrets between us from now on. Besides, you're
in love and you can't concentrate absolutely. My best advice to you is
to stay home and tend to your knitting.

"You and Bea can go play round New York all you like. Let the New York
crowd come to see you and be entertained, they'll be glad to eat your
dinners and drink your wine if they don't have to pay for it. We can
get away with Hanover but we'd be handcuffed if we tried New York.
When I made a hundred thousand dollars I was tempted to try New York
instead of staying here--to make Bea the most gorgeous girl in the
metropolis. But horse sense made me pass it by and stay on my own home
diamond. So I've made a good many more hundreds of thousands and,
what's to the point, I've kept 'em!"

Here the conversation drifted into more technical business detail with
Steve expostulating and contradicting and Constantine frowning at his
son-in-law through his bushy eyebrows, admiring him prodigiously all
the while.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Beatrice had telephoned Steve's office, to be told that her husband
was at lunch and would not be in until two o'clock.

"Have him come to our apartment," she left word, "just as soon as he
can. I am just leaving Mr. Constantine's house to go there."

After which she began telling Aunt Belle good-bye.

"Dear me, Bea, what a wonderful hat!" her aunt sighed. "I never saw
anything more becoming."

It took ten minutes to admire Bea's costume of rosewood crape and the
jewelled-cap effect, somewhat like Juliet's, caught over each ear by a
pink satin rose.

"Steve doesn't appreciate anything in the way of costumes," she
complained. "He just says: 'Yes, deary, I love you, and anything you
wear suits me.' Quite discouraging and so different from the other
boys."

"I'd call it very comfortable," suggested her aunt.

"I suppose so--but comfortable things are often tiresome. It is
tiresome, too, to see too much of the same person. I was really bored
to death in the Yosemite--Steve is so primitive--he wanted to stay
there for days and days."

"Steve comes from primitive people," her aunt said, soberly, not
realizing her own humour.

"Don't mention it. Didn't he force me to go to Virginia City, the most
terrible little ghost world of tumbledown shacks and funny one-eyed,
one-suspendered men, and old women smoking pipes and wearing blue
sunbonnets! He was actually sentimental and enthusiastic about it all,
trying to hunt up old cronies of his grandfather's--I was cross as
could be until we came back to Reno. Now Reno is interesting."

She spent the better part of an hour describing the divorcees and
their adventures.

"Well, I'm off for home. I think I shall entertain the Red Cross
committee first of all. It's only right, I believe"--the dove eyes
very serious--"they've been under such terrible strains. I'm going to
send a large bundle of clothes for the Armenian Relief, too. Oh,
aunty, the whole world seems under a cloud, doesn't it? But I met the
funniest woman in Pasadena; she actually teed her golf ball on a
valuable Swiss watch her husband had given her! She said her only
thrills in life came from making her husband cross."

"Was he--when he found it out?"

"No; she was dreadfully disappointed. He called her a naughty child
and bought her another!"

When Beatrice reached the apartment she found Steve standing on the
steps looking anxiously up and down the street.

"What's happened?" he asked, half lifting her out of the car.

"Don't! People will see us. I was telling aunty about Reno. Oh, it's
so good to be here!" as she came inside her own door. "I hope people
will let me alone the rest of the day. I'm just a wreck." She found a
box of chocolates and began to eat them.

"A charming-looking wreck, I'll say." He stooped to kiss her.

The rose-coloured glasses were still attached to Steve's naturally
keen eyes. Like many persons he knew a multitude of facts but was
quite ignorant concerning vital issues. He had spent his honeymoon in
rapt and unreal fashion. He had realized his boyhood dream of
returning to Nevada a rich and respected man with a fairy-princess
sort of wife. The deadly anaesthesia of unreality which these
get-rich-quick candidates of to-day indulge in at the outset of their
struggle still had Steve in its clutch. He had not even stirred from
out its influence. He had accomplished what he had set out to
accomplish--and he was now about to realize that there is a distinct
melancholy in the fact that everyone needs an Aladdin's window to
finish. But under the influence of the anæsthesia he had proposed to
have an everlasting good time the rest of his life, like the closing
words of a fairy tale: "And then the beautiful young princess and the
brave young prince, having slain the seven-headed monster, lived
happily ever, ever after!"

With this viewpoint, emphasized by the natural conceit of youth, Steve
had passed his holiday with the Gorgeous Girl.

"What did you want, darling?" he urged.

"To talk to you--I want you to listen to my plan. You are to come with
me to New York for the fall opera and all the theatres--oh, along in
November. It's terribly dull here. Jill Briggs and her husband and
some of the others are going, and we can take rooms at the Astor and
all be together and have a wonderful time!"

"I'd rather stay in our own home," he pleaded. "It's such fun to have
a real home. We can entertain, you know. Besides, I'm the worker and
you are the player, and I don't understand your sort of life any more
than you can understand mine. So you must play and let me look on--and
love me, that's all I'll ever ask."

"You're a dear," was his reward; "but we'll go to New York?"

"I'll have to take you down and leave you--I'm needed at the office."

"But I'd be the odd one--I'd have to have a partner. Steve, dear, you
don't have to grub. When we were engaged you always had time for me."

"Because you had so little for me! And so I always shall have time for
you," the anæsthesia causing his decision. "Besides, those were
courtship days--and I wasn't quite so sure of you, which is the way of
all men." He kissed her hair gently.

She drew away and rearranged a lock. "I don't want a husband who won't
play with me."

"We'll fix it all right, don't worry. Now was that all you wanted?"

"I want you to stay home and go driving with me. I want you to call on
some people--and look at a new cellaret I'd like to buy. It is
expensive, but no one else would have one anywhere near as charming.
I need you this afternoon--you're so calm and strong, and my head
aches. I'm always tired."

"Yet you never work," he said, almost unconsciously.

"My dear boy, society is the hardest work in the world. I'm simply
dragged to a frazzle by the end of the season. Besides, there is all
my war work and my clubs and my charities. And I've just promised to
take an advanced course in domestic science."

"I see," Steve said, meekly.

"I think it is the duty of rich women to know all about frying things
as well as eating them," she said, as she took a third caramel.

"Quite true. Having money isn't always keeping it"

"Oh, papa has loads of money--enough for all of us," she remarked,
easily. "It isn't that. I'd never cook if I were poor, anyway; that
would be the last thing I'd ever dream of doing. It's fun to go to the
domestic-science class as long as all my set go. Well--will you be a
nice angel-man and stay home to amuse your fractious wife?"

"I'll call Miss Faithful on the phone and say I'm going to play
hooky," he consented. "By the way, you must come down to the office
and say hello to her when you get the time."

Beatrice kissed him. "Must I? I hate offices. Besides, Gaylord has
married your prettiest clerk, and there will be no one to play with me
except my husband."

"Funny thing--that marriage," Steve commented. "If it was any one but
Gay I'd send condolences for loading the office nuisance onto him."

"Wasn't she any use at all?" she asked, curiously.

"None--always having a headache and being excused for the day. That
was the only thing I ever questioned in Mary Faithful--why she engaged
Trudy and took her into her own home as a boarder."

"Oh, so Mary isn't perfection? Don't be too hard on the other girl.
I'd be quite as useless if I ever had to work. I'd do just the
same--have as many headaches as the firm would stand for, and marry
the first man who asked me."

"But think of marrying Gay!"

"Poor old Gay--his father was a dear, and he is terribly well behaved.
Besides, see how obliging he is. Your Miss Faithful refused to help me
out, and Gay ran his legs off to get everything I wanted. I'll never
be rude to Gay as long as he amuses me."

"That's the thing that leads them all, isn't it, princess?"




CHAPTER VI


After the first round of excessively formal entertainments for Mr. and
Mrs. O'Valley, Steve found a mental hunger suddenly asserting itself.
It was as if a farm hand were asked to subsist upon a diet of weak tea
and wafers.

In the first place, no masculine mind can quite admit the superiority
of a feminine mind when it concerns handling said masculine mind's
business affairs. Though Steve insisted that Mary had done quite as
well as he would have done, he told himself secretly that he must get
down to hard work and go over the letters and memoranda which had
developed during his absence.

With quiet amusement Mary had agreed to the investigation, watching
him prowl among the files with the same tolerant attitude she would
have entertained toward Luke had he insisted that he could run the
household more efficiently than a mere sister.

"Poor tired boy," she used to think when Steve would come into the
office with a fagged look on his handsome face and new lines steadily
growing across his forehead. "You don't realize yet--you haven't begun
to realize."

And Steve, trying to catch up with work and plan for the future, to
respond graciously to every civic call made upon him, would find
himself enmeshed in a desperate combination of Beatrice's dismay over
the cut of her new coat, her delight at the latest scandal, her
headaches, the special order for glacé chestnuts he must not forget,
the demand that he come home for luncheon just because she wanted him
to talk to, the New York trip looming ahead with Bea coaxing him to
stay the entire time and let business slide along as it would. All the
while the anæsthesia of unreality was lessening in its effect now that
he had attained his goal.

The rapt adoration he felt for his wife was in a sense a rather subtle
form of egotism he felt for himself. The Gorgeous Girl or rather any
Gorgeous Girl personified his starved dreams and frantic ambitions. He
had turned his face toward such a goal for so many tense years,
goading himself on and breathing in the anæsthesia of indifference and
unreality to all else about him that having obtained it he now paused
exhausted and about to make many disconcerting discoveries. Had the
Gorgeous Girl had hair as black as his own or a nose such as Mary
Faithful's she would have still been his goal, symbol of his aims.

Having finished the long battle Steve now felt an urge to begin to
battle for something else besides wealth and social position. He felt
ill at ease in Beatrice's salon and among her friends, who all seemed
particularly inane and ridiculous, who were all just as busy and tired
and nervous as Beatrice was for some strange reason, and who
considered it middle class not to smoke and common to show any natural
sentiment or emotion. He soon found it was quite the thing to display
the temperament of an oyster when any vital issue was discussed or any
play, for example, had a scene of deep and inspiring words. A queer
little smirk or titter was the proper applause, but one must wax
enthusiastic and superlative over a clever burglary, a new-style
dance, a chafing-dish concoction, or, a risqué story retold in
drawing-room language.

Before his marriage Beatrice had always been terribly rushed and he
had had more time in which to work and glow with pride at the nearing
of his goal. She kept him at arm's length very cleverly anchored with
the two-carat engagement ring and Steve had to fight for time and
plead for an audience. It fired his imagination, making him twice as
keen for the final capture.

But when two persons live in the same apartment, notwithstanding the
eleven rooms and so on, a monotony of existence pervades even the
grandeur of velvet-panelled walls. There are the inevitable three
meals a day to be gone through with--five meals if tea and a supper
party are counted. There are the same ever-rising questions as to the
cook's honesty and the chauffeur's graft in the matter of buying, new
tires. There are just so many persons who have to be wined and dined
and who revenge themselves by doing likewise to their former host; the
everlasting exchanging of courtesies and pleasantries--all the dull,
decent habits of ultra living.

Steve found his small store of possessions huddled into a corner, his
pet slippers and gown graciously bestowed upon a passing panhandler,
and he was obliged to don a very correct gray "shroud," as he named it
in thankless terms, and to put his cigar and cigar ashes into
something having the earmarks of an Etruscan coal scuttle, though
Beatrice said it was a priceless antique Gay had bought for a song!
There were many times when Steve would have liked to roam about his
house in plebeian shirt sleeves, eat a plain steak and French-fried
potatoes with a hunk of homemade pie as a finish, and spend the
evening in that harmless, disorderly fashion known to men of doing
nothing but stroll about smoking, playing semi-popular records,
reading the papers, and very likely having another hunk of pie at
bedtime.

Besides all this there were the topics of the day to discuss. During
his courtship love was an all-absorbing topic. There were many
questions that Beatrice asked that required intricate and tiring
answers. During the first six weeks of living at the apartment Steve
realized a telling difference between men and women is that a woman
demands a specific case--you must rush special incidents to back up
any theory you may advance--whereas men, for the most part, are
content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they
feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as
Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that
man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since
men are as easily conquered by maudlin sympathy as by fear.

When a yellow-haired child with dove-coloured eyes manages to squeeze
out a tear and at the same moment depart in wrath to her room and
lock the doors, refusing to answer--the trouble being why in
heaven's name must a pound-and-a-half spaniel called Monster, nothing
but a flea-bearing dust mop, do nothing but sit and yap for
chocolates?--what man is going to dare do otherwise than suppress
a little profanity and then go and whisper apologies at the keyhole?

After several uncomfortable weeks of this sort of mental chaos Steve
determined to do what many business men do--particularly the sort
starting life in an orphan asylum and ending by having residence pipe
organs and Russian wolfhounds frolicking at their heels--to bury
himself in his work and defend his seclusion by never refusing to
write a check for his wife. When he finally reached this decision he
was conscious of a strange joy.

Everything was a trifle too perfect to suit Steve. The entire effect
was that of the well-set stage of a society drama. Beatrice was too
correctly gowned and coiffured, always upstage if any one was about,
her high-pitched, thin voice saying superlative nothings upon the
slightest provocation; or else she was dissolving into tears and
tantrums if no one was about.

Steve could not grasp the wherefore of having such stress laid upon
the exact position of a floor cushion or the colour scheme for a
bridge luncheon--he would have so rejoiced in really mediocre table
service, in less precision as to the various angles of the shades or
the unrumpled condition of the rugs. He had not the oasis Mark
Constantine had provided for himself when he kept his room of
old-fashioned trappings apart from the rest of the mansion.

Steve needed such a room. He planned almost guiltily upon building a
shack in the woods whither he could run when things became too
impossible for his peace of mind. If he could convince his wife that a
thing was smart or different from everything else its success and
welcome in their house were assured. But an apple pie, a smelly pipe,
a maidless dinner table, or a disorderly den had never been considered
smart in Beatrice's estimation, and Steve never attempted trying to
change her point of view.

Beatrice wondered, during moments of seriousness, how it was that this
handsome cave man of hers rebelled so constantly against the beauty
and correctness of the apartment and yet never really disgraced her as
her own father would have done. It gave her added admiration for Steve
though she felt it would be a mistake to tell him so. She did not
believe in letting her husband see that she was too much in love with
him.

Despite his growls and protests about this and that, and his ignorance
as to the things in life Beatrice counted paramount, Steve adapted
himself to the new environment with a certain poise that astonished
everyone. The old saying "Every Basque a noble" rang true in this
descendant of a dark-haired, romantic young woman whom his grandfather
had married. There was blood in Steve which Beatrice might have envied
had she been aware of it. But Steve was in ignorance, and very
willingly so, regarding his ancestors. There had merely been "my
folks"--which began and ended the matter.

Still it was the thoroughbred strain which the Basque woman had given
her grandson that enabled Steve to be master of his house even if he
knew very little of what it was all about. It was fortunate for his
peace of mind--and pocketbook--that Beatrice had accepted the general
rumour of a goat-tending ancestry and pried no further. Had she ever
glimpsed the genealogy tables of the Benefacio family, from which
Steve descended, she would have had the best time of all; coats of
arms and family crests and mottoes would have been the vogue; a trip
to the Pyrenees would have followed; mantillas and rebozos would have
crowded her wardrobe, and Steve would have been forced to learn
Spanish and cultivate a troubadourish air.

Moreover, the Gorgeous Girl was not willing that her husband be buried
in business. She could not have so good a time without him--besides,
it was meet that he acquired polish. Her father was a different
matter; everyone knew his ways and would be as likely to try to change
the gruff, harsh-featured man as to try surveying Gibraltar with a
penny ruler. Now Beatrice had married Steve because cave men were
rather the mode, cave men who were wonderfully successful and had no
hampering relatives. Besides, her father favoured Steve and he would
not have been amiable had he been forced to accept a son-in-law of
whom he did not approve. Mark Constantine had never learned
graciousness of the heart, nor had his child.

So Beatrice proceeded to badger Steve whenever he pleaded business,
with the result that she kept dropping in at his office, sometimes
bringing friends, coaxing him to close his desk and come and play for
the rest of the day. Sometimes she would peek in at Mary Faithful's
office and baby talk--for Steve's edification--something like this:

"Ise a naughty dirl--I is--want somebody to play wif me--want to be
amoosed. Do oo care? Nice, busy lady--big brain."

Often she would bring a gift for Mary in her surface generous
fashion--a box of candy or a little silk handkerchief. She pitied Mary
as all butterflies pity all ants, and she little knew that as soon as
she had departed Mary would open the window to let fresh air drive out
distracting perfume, and would look at the useless trifle on her desk
with scornful amusement.

Before the New York trip Steve took refuge in his first deliberate lie
to his wife. He had lied to himself throughout his courtship but was
most innocent of the offence.

"If Mrs. O'Valley telephones or calls please say I have gone out to
the stockyards," he told Mary. "And will you lend me your office for
the afternoon? I'm so rushed I must be alone where I can work without
interruption."

Mary gathered up her papers. "I'll keep you under cover." She was
smiling.

"What's the joke?"

"I was thinking of how very busy idle people always are and of how
much time busy people always manage to make for the idle people's
demands."

He did not answer until he had collected his work materials. Then he
said: "I should like to know just what these idle people do with
themselves but I shall never have the time to find out." He vanished
into Mary's office, banging the door.

Beatrice telephoned that afternoon, only to be given her husband's
message.

"I'll drive out to the stockyards and get him," she proposed.

"He went with some men and I don't believe I'd try it if I were you,"
Mary floundered.

"I see. Well, have him call me up as soon as he comes in. It is very
important."

When Steve reached home that night he found Beatrice in a well-developed
pout.

"Didn't you get my message?" she demanded, sharply.

"Just as I was leaving the office. I looked in there on--on my way
back. I saw no use in telephoning then. What is it, dear?"

"It's too late now. You have ruined my day."

"Sorry. What is too late?"

"I wanted you to go to Amityville with me; there is a wonderful
astrologer there who casts life horoscopes. He predicted this whole
war and the Bolsheviki and bombs and everything, and I wanted him to
do ours. Alice Twill says he is positively uncanny."

Steve shook his head. "No long-haired cocoanut throwers for mine," he
said, briefly, unfolding his paper.

"But I wanted you to go."

"Well, I do not approve of such things; they are a waste of time and
money."

"I have my own money," she informed him, curtly.

Steve laid aside the paper. "I have known that for some time."

"Besides, it is rude to refuse to call me when I have asked you to do
so. It makes me ridiculous in the eyes of your employees."

Recalling the shift of offices Steve suppressed a smile. "It was
nothing important, Bea, and I am mighty busy. Your father never had
time to play; he worked a great deal harder than I have worked."

"I can't help that. You must not expect me to be a little stay-at-home.
You knew that before we were even engaged. Besides, I'm no child----"

"No, but you act like one." He spoke almost before he thought. "You
are a woman nearly twenty-six years old, yet you haven't the poise of
girls eighteen that I have known. Still, they were farm or working
girls. I've sometimes wondered what it is that makes you and your
friends always seem so childish and naïve--at times. Aren't you ever
going to grow up--any of you?"

"Do you want a pack of old women?" she demanded. "How can you find
fault with my friends? You seem to forget how splendidly they have
treated you."

A cave man must be muzzled, handcuffed, and Under the anæsthetic of
unreality and indifference to be a satisfactory husband for a modern
Gorgeous Girl.

"Why shouldn't they treat me splendidly? I have never robbed or
maltreated any of them. Tell me something. It is time we talked
seriously. We can't exist on the cream-puff kind of conversation. What
in the world has your way of going through these finishing schools
done for you?"

The dove-coloured eyes flickered angrily. "I had a terribly good
time," she began. "Besides, it's the proper thing--girls don't come
out at twenty and marry off and let that be the end of it. You really
have a much better time now if you wait until you are twenty-five, and
then you somehow have learned how to be a girl for an indefinite
period. As for the finishing school in America--well, we had a
wonderful sorority."

"I've met college women who were clear-headed persons deserving the
best and usually attaining it--but I've never taken a microscope to
the sort of women playing the game from the froth end. I'm wondering
what your ideas were."

"You visited me--you met my friends--my chaperons--you wrote me each
day."

"I was in love and busy making my fortune. I was as shy as a
backwoods product--you know that--and afraid you would be carried off
by someone else before I could come up to the sum your father demanded
of me. I have nothing but a hazy idea as to a great many girls of all
sorts and sizes--and mostly you."

"Well, we had wonderful lectures and things; and I had a wonderful
crush on some of the younger teachers--that is a great deal of fun."

"Crushes?"

"You must have crushes unless you're a nobody--and there's nothing so
much a lark. You select your crush and then you rush her. I had a
darling teacher, she is doing war work in Paris now. She was a doll. I
adored her the moment I saw her and I sent her presents and left
flowers in her room, orchids on Sundays, until she made me stop. One
day a whole lot of us who had been rushing her clipped off locks of
our hair and fastened them in little gauze bags and we strung a doll
clothes line across her room and pinned the little bags on it and left
a note for her saying: 'Your scalp line!'"

"What did that amount to?"

"Oh, it was fun. And I had another crush right after that one. Then
some of the classes were interesting. I liked psychology best of all
because you could fake the answers and cram for exams more easily.
Math. and history require facts. There was one perfectly thrilling
experience with fish. You know fish distinguish colours, one from the
other, and are guided by colour sense rather than a sense of smell. We
had red sticks and green sticks and blue sticks in a tank of fish, and
for days we put the fish food on the green sticks and the fish would
swim right over to get it, and then we put it on the red sticks and
they still swam over to the green sticks and waited round--so it was
recognizing colour and not the food. And a lot of things like that."

Steve laughed. "I hope the fish wised up in time."

Beatrice looked at him disapprovingly. "If you had gone to college it
might have made a great difference," she said.

"Possibly," he admitted; "but I'll let the rest of the boys wait on
the fishes. Did you go to domestic science this morning?"

"Yes, it was omelet. Mine was like leather. The gas stove makes my
head ache. But we are going to have a Roman pageant to close the
season--all about a Roman matron, and that will be lots of fun."

"You eat too much candy; that is what makes your head ache," he
corrected.

She pretended not to hear him. "It is time to dress."

"Don't say there's a party to-night," he begged.

"Of course there is, and you know it. The Homers are giving a dinner
for their daughter. Everyone is to wear their costumes wrong side out.
Isn't that clever? I laid out a white linen suit for you; it will look
so well turned inside out; and I am going to wear an organdie that has
a wonderful satin lining. There is no reason why we must be frumps."

"I'd rather stay home and play cribbage," Steve said, almost
wistfully. "There's a rain creeping up. Let's not go!"

"I hate staying home when it is raining." Beatrice went into her room
to try the effect of a sash wrong side out. "It is so dull in a big
drawing room when there are just two people," she added, as Steve
appeared in the doorway.

"Two people make a home," he found himself answering.

The Gorgeous Girl glanced at him briefly, during which instant she
seemed quite twenty-six years old and the spoiled daughter of a rich
man, the childish, senseless part of her had vanished. "Would you
please take Monster into the kitchen for her supper?" she asked,
almost insolently.

So the owner of the O'Valley Leather Works found his solace in tucking
the pound-and-a-half spaniel under his arm and trying to convince
himself that he was all wrong and a self-made man must keep a watch on
himself lest he become a boor!

                  *       *       *       *       *

The day the O'Valleys left for New York in company with three other
couples Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord Vondeplosshe arrived in Hanover, having
visited until their welcome was not alone worn out but impossible ever
to be replaced. A social item in the evening paper stated that they
had taken an apartment at the Graystone and would be at home to their
friends--whoever they might be.

If Gay's club and his friends had determined merely to be polite and
not welcome his wife, Trudy had determined that they would not only
welcome her but insist upon being helpful to them; as for her former
associates--they would be treated to a curt bow. This, however, did
not include the Faithfuls. Mary was not to be ignored, nor did Trudy
wish to ignore her. All the good that was in Trudy responded to Mary's
goodness. She never tried to be to Mary--no one did more than once.
Nor did she try to flatter her. She was truly sorry for Mary's
colourless life, truly grieved that Mary would not consent to shape
her eyebrows. But she respected her, and it was to Mary's house that
Mrs. Vondeplosshe repaired shortly after her arrival.

It was quite true that Beatrice Constantine would have developed much
as Trudy had were the pampered person compelled to earn her living,
and, like Trudy, too, would have married a half portion, bankrupt
snob. As Trudy dashed into the Faithful living room, kissing Mary and
her mother and shaking a finger at Luke, Mary thought what a splendid
imitation she was of Beatrice returning from her honeymoon.

"As pretty as a picture," Mrs. Faithful declared, quite chirked up by
the bridal atmosphere. "How do you do it, Trudy? And why didn't you
write us something besides postals? They always seem like printed
handbills to me."

"Especially mine," Luke protested. "One of Sing Sing with the line: 'I
am thinking of you.'"

Trudy giggled. "I didn't have a minute and I bought postals in flocks.
Oh, I adore New York! I'm wild to live there. I nearly passed away in
New England, but of course we had to stay as long as they would have
us."

She looked at herself in a mirror, conscious of Mary's amused
expression. She wore a painfully bright blue tailored suit--she had
made the skirt herself and hunted up a Harlem tailor to do the
jacket--round-toed, white leather shoes stitched with bright blue,
white silk stockings, an aviatrix cap of blue suéde, and a white fox
fur purchased at half price at a fire sale.

"I haven't any new jewellery except my wedding ring," she mourned. "I
expected Gay's sister to give me one of her mother's diamond
earrings--I think she might have. They are lovely stones--but she
never made a move that way--she's horrid. As soon as I can afford to
be independent I shall cut her, for she did her best to politely ask
us to leave."

"You were there several weeks, weren't you?" Mary ventured.

"Yes--I grew tame. I learned a lot from her--I was pretty crude in
some ways." Which was true. Trudy was quite as well-bred looking, at
first glance, as the Gorgeous Girl. "It is always better to get your
experience where the neighbours aren't watching. I didn't lose a
minute. If I never did an honest day's work for Steve O'Valley I
worked like a steam engine learning how to be a real lady, the sort
Gay tried to marry but couldn't!"

"As if you weren't a little lady at all times," Mrs. Faithful added.

"Of course we are stony broke but Gay's brother-in-law just had to
loan us some money in order to have us go. They gave us fifty dollars
for a wedding present. Well, it was better than nothing. Gay has
talked to a lot of concert managers and he's going to have some
wonderful attractions next season. People have never taken Gaylord
seriously; he really has had to discover himself, and he is----"

"Are you practising small talk on me?" Mary asked.

"You've said it," Trudy admitted. "That last is the way I'm going to
talk about Gaylord to his friends. I'll make him a success if he will
only mind me. Just think--I'll be calling on Beatrice O'Valley before
long! She will have to know me because Gay helped furnish her
apartment and was one of her ushers. It will mean everything for us to
know her--and I'm never going to appear at all down and out, either.
People never take you seriously if you seem to need money. Debt can't
frighten me. I was raised on it. All I need is Gay's family reputation
and my own hair and teeth and I'll breeze in before any of the other
entries. I came to ask if you won't come to see where I live?" She
smiled her prettiest. "Gay is at his club and we can talk. It was
quite a bomb in the enemies' camp when he married--people just can't
dun a married man like they do a bachelor."

"I'll come next week." Mary tried putting off the evil day.

"No--now. I want your advice--and to show you my clothes."

"You will have clothes, Trudy, when you don't have food."

"You have to these days--no good time unless you do."

She kissed Mrs. Faithful and promised to have them all up for dinner.
Then she tucked her arm in Mary's and pranced down the street with
her, talking at top speed of how horrid it was that they had to walk
and not drive in a cab like Beatrice, and concluding with a
dissertation on Gaylord's mean disposition.

"I'm not mean, Mary, unless I want to accomplish something--but
Gaylord is mean on general principle. He sulks and tells silly lies
when you come to really know him. Oh, I'm not madly in love--but we
can get along without throwing things. It's better than marrying a
clod-hopper who couldn't show me anything better than his mother's
green-plush parlour."

"Doesn't it seem hard to have to pretend to love him?"

"No, he's so stupid," said the debonair Mrs. Vondeplosshe as she
brought Mary up before the entrance of the Graystone, a cheap
apartment house with a marble entrance that extended only a quarter of
the way up; from there on ordinary wood and marbleized paper finished
the deed. The Vondeplosshes had a rear apartment. Their windows looked
upon ash cans and delivery entrances, the front apartments with their
bulging bay windows being twenty-five dollars a month more rent. As it
was, they were paying forty-five, and very lucky to have the chance to
pay it.

Trudy unlocked the door with a flourish. All that Trudy had considered
as really essential to the making of a home was a phonograph and a
pier glass; the rest was simple--rent a furnished place and wear out
someone else's things. The bandbox of a place with four cell-like
rooms was by turns pitiful and amusing to Mary Faithful.

"We are just starting from here," Trudy reminded her as she watched
the gray eyes flicker with humour or narrow with displeasure. "Wait
and see--we'll soon be living neighbour to the O'Valleys. Besides,
there is such an advantage in being married. You don't have to worry
for fear you'll be an----"

"Old maid," finished Mary. "Out with it! You can't frighten me. I hope
you and Gay never try changing your minds at the same time, for it
would be a squeeze."

She selected a fragile gilt chair in the tiny living room with its
imitation fireplace and row of painted imitation books in the little
bookcase. This was in case the tenants had no books of their
own--which the Vondeplosshes had not. If they possessed a library they
could easily remove the painted board and give it to the janitor for
safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather
chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations
of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered
dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought
as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the
bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy
walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered up the last-mentioned article
with smart-looking cretonne and near-ivory toilet articles. There was
even a pathetic little wardrobe trunk they had bought for $28.75 in
New York, and Trudy had painstakingly soaked off old European hotel
labels she had found on one of Gay's father's satchels and repasted
them on the trunk to give the impression of travel and money.

The kitchen was nothing but a dark hole with a rusty range and
nondescript pots and pans. "Being in the kitchen gets me nothing, so
why bother about it?" Trudy explained, hardly opening the door. "We
have no halls or furnace to care for, and an apartment house sounds so
well when you give an address. I wish we could have afforded a front
one; it will be hard to have people climbing through the back halls. I
have put in a good supply of canned soups and vegetables and powdered
puddings, and we can save a lot on our food. We'll be invited out,
too, and when we eat at home I can get a meal in a few minutes and
I'll make Gay wash the dishes. Besides, I have a wonderful recipe for
vanishing cream that his sister bought in Paris, and I'm going to have
a little business myself, making it to supply to a few select
customers as a favour. I'll sell small jars for a dollar and large
ones for three, and I can make liquid face powder, too. Oh, we won't
starve. And if you could wait for the money I know I owe you----"

"Call it a wedding present," Mary said, briefly.

"You lamb!"

Trudy fell on her neck and was in the throes of explaining how
grateful she was and how she had an evening dress modelled after one
of Gay's sister's, which cost seven hundred dollars before the war,
when Gay appeared--very debonair and optimistic in his checked suit,
velours hat, and toothpick-toed tan shoes, and his pale little eyes
were quite animated as he kissed Trudy and dutifully shook hands with
Mary, explaining that the Hunters of Arcadia had just offered him a
clerical position at the club, ordering supplies and making out bills
and so on--because he was married, very likely. It would pay forty a
month and his lunches.

"And only take up your mornings! You can slip extra sandwiches in your
pockets for me, deary. I'll give you a rubber-pocketed vest for a
Christmas present," Trudy exclaimed. "Oh, say everything in front of
Mary--she knows what we really are!"

At which Mary fled, with the general after impression of pale, wicked
eyes and a checked suit and a dashing, red-haired young matron with a
can opener always on hand, and the fact that the Vondeplosshes were
going to lay siege to the O'Valleys as soon as possible.

Mary decided that it was a great privilege to be a profane lady
concealing a heartache compared to other alternatives. At least
heartaches were quite real.




CHAPTER VII


It was almost Christmas week before the realization of Trudy's
ambition to have Beatrice call upon her as the wife of Gaylord
Vondeplosshe instead of an unimportant employee of her own husband.
Trudy counted upon Beatrice to help her far more than Gaylord dared to
hope.

"Bea is like all her sort," he warned Trudy when the point of
Beatrice's having to invite the Vondeplosshes for dinner was close at
hand; "she is crazy about herself and her money. She would cheat for
ten cents and then turn right round and buy a thousand-dollar dress
without questioning the price."

Which was true. Beatrice had never had to acquire any sense of values
regarding either money or character. By turns she was penurious and
lavish, suspecting a maid of stealing a sheet of notepaper and then
writing a handsome check for a charity in which she had only a passing
interest. She would send her soiled finery to relief committees, and
when someone told her that satin slippers and torn chiffon frocks were
not practical she would say in injured astonishment: "Sell them and
use the money. I never have practical clothes."

If a maid pleased her Beatrice pampered her until she became
overbearing, and there would be a scene in which the maid would be
told to pack her things and depart without any prospect of a
reference; and someone else would be rushed into her place, only to
have the same experience. Beatrice was like most indulged and
superfluously rich women, both unreasonable and foolishly lenient in
her demands. She had no schedule, no routine, no rules either for
herself or others. She had been denied the chance of developing and
discovering her own limitations and abilities. She expected her maids
and her friends to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours out of
the twenty-four, she would not accept an excuse of being unfitted by
illness for some task or of not knowing how to do any intricate,
unheard-of thing which suddenly it occurred to her must be done.

When a servant would plead her case Beatrice always told her that for
days at a time she left her alone in her beautiful home with nothing
to do but keep it clean and eat up all her food and very likely give
parties and use her talking machine and piano--which was quite
true--and that she must consider this when she was asked to stay on
duty until three or four o'clock in the morning or be up at five
o'clock with an elaborate breakfast for Beatrice and her friends just
returning from a fancy-dress ball.

On a sunny day she often sent the maids driving in her car, and if a
blizzard came up she was certain to ask them to walk downtown to match
yarn for her, not even offering car fare. She would borrow small sums
and stamps from them and deliberately forget to pay them back, at the
same time giving her cook a forty-dollar hat because it made her own
self look too old. She had never had any one but herself to rely upon
for discipline, and whenever she wanted anything she had merely to ask
for it. When anything displeased her it was removed without question.

American business men do not always toil until they are middle-aged
for the reward of being made a fool by a chorus girl or an adventuress.
That belongs to yellow-backed penny-dreadfuls and Sunday supplement
tales of breach-of-promise suits. More often the daughter of the
business man is both the victim and the vampire of his own shortsighted
neglectfulness. The business man expresses it as "working like a slave
to give her the best in the land." And sometimes, as in the case of
Steve O'Valley, it is his own wife instead of a blonde soul mate who
lures him to destruction in six installments.

When Beatrice first knew of Gaylord's return she was inclined to
pay no attention to his wife, despite her remarks to Steve. Then
Gaylord telephoned, and she had him up for afternoon tea, during
which he told her all about it. He was very diplomatic in his
undertaking. He pictured Trudy as a diamond in the rough, and in
subtle, careful fashion gave Beatrice to understand that just as
she had married a diamond in the rough--with a Virginia City
grandfather and a Basque grandmother and the champion record of
goat tending--so he, too, had been democratic enough to put aside
precedent and marry a charming, unspoiled little person with both
beauty and ability, and certainly he was to be congratulated since
he had been married for love alone, Truletta knowing full well his
unfortunate and straitened circumstances.... Yes, her people lived
in Michigan but were uncongenial. Still, there was good blood in
the family only it was a long ways back, probably as far back as
the age of spear fighting, and he relied upon Beatrice, his old
playmate, to sympathize with and uphold his course.

Secretly annoyed that the tables had been so skillfully turned, yet
not willing to admit it to this bullying morsel, Beatrice was obliged
to say she would call upon his wife and ask them for dinner the
following week.

Gaylord fairly floated home, to find Trudy remodelling a dress, scraps
of fur and shreds of satin on the floor.

"Babseley, she's coming to call to-morrow!" he said, joyfully, hanging
up his velours hat and straddling a little gilt chair.

"Really? I wish we had a better place. I feel at a disadvantage. If it
were a man I wouldn't mind, I could act humble and brave--that sort of
dope. But it never goes with a woman; you have to bully a rich woman,
and I'm wondering if I can."

"I did," he said, his pale eyes twinkling with delight. "It was easy,
too. I dragged in O'Valley's orphan-asylum days and all, and how we
both married diamonds in the rough. Woof, how she squirmed!" He rose
and went to the absurd little buffet, pouring out two glasses of "red
ink" and gulping down one of them. "I wish I had O'Valley's money; I'd
put away a houseful of this stuff. I'm going to dig up a few bottles
at the club--in case of illness." Trudy did not want her glass, so he
drank that as well.

"You take too much of that stuff," Trudy warned, gathering up her
débris; "and when you have taken too much you talk too much."

Gaylord rewarded her by consuming a third glass. "Shall we eat out?"

She shook her head. "Too expensive. There's no need for it now. I
bought some potato salad and I have canned pineapple and sugar
cookies."

She dumped her work into a basket and flew round the dining room until
she summoned Gaylord to join her in a meal laid out on the corner of a
dingy luncheon table.

The wine dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away
by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record
on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent
meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what she
should wear for the O'Valley dinner party and Gaylord figured how much
money he needed before he would dare try buying an automobile, and
they finished the evening by attending the nine-o'clock movie
performance and buying fifteen cents' worth of lemon ice and two
sponge cakes to bring home as a pièce de resistance.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Beatrice found herself amused instead of annoyed as she climbed the
stairs to the Vondeplosshe residence. At Trudy's request Gay had
discreetly consented to be absent. He had pretty well picked up the
threads of his various enterprises and what with his club duties, his
second-rate concerts, his gambling, and commissions from antique
dealers, he managed to put in what he termed a full day. So he swung
out of the house early in the afternoon to buy himself a new winter
outfit, wondering if Trudy would row when she discovered the fact.

Gaylord's theory of married life was "What's mine is my own, and
what's yours is mine." He relied on Trudy to mend his clothes and make
his neckties, keep house and manage with a laundress a half day a
week, yet always be as well dressed and pretty as when she had slacked
in the office and boarded without cares at Mary's house. She must
always seem happy and proud of her husband and have her old pep--being
on the lookout for a way to make their fortunes. She must also remain
as young looking as ever and always be at his beck and call. Gaylord
was rapidly developing into an impossible little bully, the usual
result of an impoverished snob who manages to become a barnacle-like
fixture on someone a trifle more foolish yet better of nature than
himself.

Had he been less aristocratic of family and stronger of brawn he
would have beaten Trudy if she displeased him. As it was, after the
first flush of romance passed, he began to sneer at her in private
when she made mistakes in the ways of the smart set into which Gaylord
had been born, and when she protested he only sneered the louder. He
felt Trudy should be eternally grateful to him. Trudy found herself
bewildered, hurt--yet unable to combat his contemptible little laughs
and sneers. Trudy was shallow and she knew not the meaning of the
word "ideal," but for the most part she was rather amiable and
unless she had a certain goal to attain she wished everyone about
her to be happy and content. As she had married Gaylord only as a
stepping-stone she was fair enough to remind herself of this fact
when unpleasant developments occurred. As long as he was useful to
her she was not going to seize upon pin-pricks and try to make them
into actual wounds.

She decided to wear her one decent tea gown when Beatrice called,
pleading a bad headache as an excuse for its appearance. She knew the
tea gown was an excellent French model, a hand-me-down from Gay's
sister, and her nimble fingers had cleaned and mended the trailing
pink-silk loveliness until it would make quite a satisfactory first
impression.

She cleaned the apartment, recklessly bought cut flowers, bonbons, and
two fashion magazines to give an impression of plenty. She even set
old golf clubs and motor togs in the tiny hall, and she timed
Beatrice's arrival so as to put the one grand-opera record on the
talking machine just as she was coming up the stairs.

Then she ran to the door in pretty confusion, to say spiritedly: "Oh,
Mrs. O'Valley, so good of you. I'm ever so happy to have you. I'm
afraid it isn't proper to be wearing this old tea gown but I had a bad
headache this morning and I stayed in bed until nearly luncheon, then
I slipped into the first thing handy.... Oh, no. Only a nervous
headache. We took too long a motor trip yesterday, the sun was so
bright.... No, indeed; you do not make my headache worse. It's better
right this minute.... Now please don't laugh at our little place.
Can't you play you're a doll and this is the house you were supposed
to live in? I do--I find myself laughing every time I really take time
to stand back and look at the rooms.... Put your coat here. Such a
charming one, the skins are so exquisitely matched. I do so want to
talk to you."

She had such an honest, innocent expression that Beatrice found
herself won over to the cause. Trudy understood Beatrice at first
sight; she knew how to proceed without blundering.

"Sit here, Mrs. Steve, for I can't call you Mrs. O'Valley with Gay
singing the praises of Bea and Beatrice and the Gorgeous Girl."

"Then--er--call me Beatrice," she found herself saying.

"How wonderful! But only on condition that I am Trudy to you. How
pleased Gay is going to be! He adores you. You have no idea of how
much he talks about you and approves all you do and say. I used to be
a teeny weeny bit jealous of you when I was a poor little nobody." She
passed the chocolates, nodding graciously as Beatrice selected the
largest one in the box.

Trudy chattered ahead: "I was glancing through these fashion books
this afternoon to get an idea for an afternoon dress. Of course I
can't have wonderful things like you have"--looking with envy at the
Gorgeous Girl's black-velvet costume--"still, I don't mind. When one
is happy mere things do not matter, do they--Beatrice?"

Beatrice hesitated. Then she fortified herself by another bonbon. This
strange girl was both interesting and dangerous. Certainly she was not
to be snubbed or ridiculed. Vaguely Beatrice tried to analyze her
hostess, but as she had never been called upon to judge human nature
she was sluggish in even trying to exercise her faculties.

In China fathers have their daughters' feet bound and make them sleep
away from the house so their moans will not disturb the family. In
America fathers often repress their daughters' self-sufficiency and
intellect by bonds of self-indulgence, and when the daughters realize
that a stockade of dollars is a most flimsy fortress in the world
against the experiences which come to every man and woman the American
girls are the mental complement of their physically tortured Chinese
cousins--hopeless and without redress.

"You have made this place look well," Beatrice said, presently, "It is
a perfect tinder box. Papa knows the man who built it."

Trudy flushed. "We are merely trying out love in a cliffette," she
said, sweetly, "instead of the old-style cottage. We can't expect
anything like your apartment. We have that prospect to look forward
to. Besides, we have the advantage of knowing just who our real
friends are," she added, smiling her prettiest.

Beatrice disposed of another chocolate. She told herself she was being
placed in an awkward position. She had occasion to keep thinking so
every moment of her visit, for Trudy hastened to add that she had
never liked office work and yet Mr. O'Valley had been so good to her,
and wasn't it splendid that America was a country where one had a
chance and could rise to whatsoever place one deserved; and when one
thought of Beatrice's own dear papa and handsome husband, well, it was
all quite inspiring and wonderful--until Beatrice was as uncomfortable
about Steve's goat tending and her father's marital selection of a
farmer's hired girl as Trudy really was of the apartment and her
second-hand frock.

Trudy lost no time in introducing the magic vanishing-cream and liquid
face power, and before the call ended Beatrice had ordered five
dollars' worth of each and some for Aunt Belle, and she had offered to
take Trudy to her bridge club some time soon.

As the door closed Trudy sank back in her chair, informing the
imitation fireplace joyously: "It was almost too easy; I didn't have
to work as hard as I really wanted to." Wearily she dragged off her
tea gown for a bungalow apron and then prepared a supper of
delicatessen baked beans and instantaneous pudding for her lord and
master.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The dinner with the O'Valleys was equally fruitful of results.
Despite Steve's protests that he did not wish to know Gay and that
Trudy was impossible he was forced to listen to their inane jokes
and absurd flatteries and to look at Trudy in her taupe chiffon with
exclamatory strands of burnt ostrich, and watch her deft fashion
of handling his wife, realizing that people with one-cylinder
brains and smart-looking, redheaded wives usually get by with things!

After their guests had departed Steve began brusquely: "Do you
like'em?"

"No; I told you before that they amused me. She is fun, and poor Gay
is a dear."

"Are you going to have them round all the time? That woman's laugh
gets on my nerves, and I want him shot at sunrise. They can't talk
about anything but the movies and jazz dancing and clothes."

"What do you want them to talk about? Don't pace up and down like a
wild beast." Beatrice came up and stood before him to prevent his
turning the corner.

He looked down at her without answering. She was clad in shimmering
white loveliness cut along the same medieval lines as the gown another
Beatrice had worn when Dante first saw her walking by the Arno; her
hair was very sunshiny and fragrant and her dove-coloured eyes most
appealing.

He burst out laughing at his own protest. "Am I a bear? Come and kiss
me. If you like them or they amuse you just tote 'em about, darling.
Only can't you manage to do it while I am out of town? They do fleck
me on the raw."

"Hermit--beast," she dimpled and shook her finger at him.

"I just want you," he said, simply; "or else people who can do
something besides spend money or sponge round for it."

"Sometimes you frighten me--you sound booky."

"I'm not; I want real things, Bea. I feel hungry for plain people."

"You have them all day long in your office and your shops; I should
think when you come home you'd welcome a good time."

"Our definitions differ. Anyhow, I'm not going to find fault with your
friends. I've nothing against them except that they are time
wasters."

"Trudy boarded at your wonderful Miss Faithful's house."

"In spite of Mary's common sense, and not because of it."

"You think a great deal of that girl, don't you?" she asked, patting
his sleeve.

"She deserves a great deal of credit; she has worked since she was
thirteen, and she is as true-blue as they come."

"Do you think she will ever marry and leave you?" she asked, laying
the sunshiny head on his arm.

"I never want her to; I'd feel like buying off any prospective
bridegroom."

"That's not fair." Her hand stole up to pat his cheek. "She has the
right to be happy--as we are, Steve!"

He stared at her in all her lovely uselessness. "You funny little
wife," he whispered--"fighting over losing a postage stamp one
minute and buying a new motor car the next; going to luncheon with
the washed of Hanover and spending the afternoon with Trudy; making
fun of Mary Faithful's shirt waists and then pleading for her woman's
happiness.... Beatrice, you've never had half a chance!"

                  *       *       *       *       *

The next afternoon Mary and Luke Faithful were summoned home. Later in
the day Steve received word that their mother had succumbed to a
violent heart attack. He found himself feeling concerned and truly
sorry, wondering if Mary had any one to see to things and relieve her
of the responsibility. Then he wondered if this death would cause a
dormant affection to become active love as often happens, causing him
to lose his right-hand man. He reproached himself for knowing so
little of her private life. When he went into her deserted office to
find a letter it seemed distinctly lonesome. It was hard to realize
how suddenly things happen and how easily the world at large becomes
accustomed to radical changes. Already a snub-nosed little clerk was
taking up a collection for the flowers.

For the first time in years Steve felt depressed and weary. The
anaesthesia was losing its power.

Within the coming week as vital a mental change was to come to Steve
as the death of Mrs. Faithful was to cause in Mary's life. And as
Mary, to all purposes, would resume her business routine with not a
hint of the change, so would Steve fail to betray the mental
revolution that was to take place in his hitherto ambitious and
obedient brain.

Briefly what was to happen was this--after visiting Mary in her home
and after seeing the Gorgeous Girl during a test of one's abilities,
Steve was to realize that there are two kinds of person in the world:
Those who make brittle, detailed plans, and those who have but a
steadfast purpose. His wife belonged to the former class and Mary to
the latter, which he was to discover was his choice at all times!




CHAPTER VIII


The day of Mrs. Faithful's funeral was the day that Beatrice O'Valley
had arranged to introduce Trudy Vondeplosshe to her bridge club, the
members of which were keen to see Gay's wife in order to prove whether
or not Bea's report concerning her was correct--that she was a clever
young person quite capable of taking care of both her own and Gay's
futures.

Beatrice particularly looked forward to the afternoon. Introducing
Trudy served as an attraction, and besides the hostess had telephoned
her that she had just received a box of Russian sweetmeats made by a
refugee who was starting life anew in New York, and two barrels of
china, each barrel containing but three plates and each plate being
valued at six hundred dollars. Furthermore, Beatrice was wearing an
afternoon costume that would demand no small share of attention, and
there was the additional joy of dazzling Trudy by her tapestry-lined
winter car. So when Steve reminded her in a matter-of-fact way that
the funeral services for Mrs. Faithful were to be at three she stared
in amazement.

"My dear boy, I am very sorry your secretary's muzzy has died--but I
cannot change my plans. I accepted for both Trudy Vondeplosshe and
myself more than a week ago."

Steve wondered if he had heard correctly. "You don't imagine for an
instant that Trudy will not go? She boarded there; they did
everything for her."

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. "She was phoning me before lunch and
is all agog with excitement. Poor little thing, it means a lot for
her. She will be ready at three and I am to call for her."

"I don't think she understands the funeral is to-day. I know she is
heartless and shallow, but even she would scarcely omit such a duty."

Beatrice gave a long sigh. "Dear me, you ought to have been an
evangelist. I can't understand why you suddenly become punctilious and
altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and
wonder if I would marry you--you never cared who was dead or what
happened as long as you were secure."

"Quite true. But I have made a fortune and married you, and it is time
for other things."

"You are welcome to them," she said, quite enjoying the argument.
"Besides, I sent my card with the flowers."

"It isn't the same as going yourself, it is your duty to go, Bea. The
girl has taken the brunt of business while we played and she has only
the reward of a salary. Her mother has died, which means that her home
is gone. I call it thick to choose a bridge party instead of paying a
humane debt."

"Why am I dragged into it? She isn't working for me! Papa never asked
me to go when any of his people had relatives who died. I don't think
he ever went himself unless there was a claim to be adjusted."

"I shouldn't ask it if it were any one else--but Mary Faithful is
different."

"You are quite ardent in your defence of her. Be sensible, Steve.
What does it matter whether I go or don't go? I think it quite enough
if you appear. Now if she were in need of actual money----"

"Oh, certainly!" he said, bitterly. "That would give you the chance to
play off Lady Bountiful, drive up in state with your check book and
accept figurative kisses on the hand! But when a plain American
business girl who has served me more loyally than she has herself
loses her mother you won't be a few moments late at a bridge party in
order to pay her the respect employers should pay their employees. I
don't blame Trudy--I expect nothing of her--but I do blame you."

"So my plans are to be set aside----?"

"Plans!" he interrupted. "If someone else were to tell you that they
had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very
afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that
you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your
original hostess as well. That is about all your plans amount to."

Beatrice's eyes had grown slanting, shining with rage. "I wish you
would remember you are speaking to your wife and not to an employee. I
would not go to that funeral now if it meant--if it meant a divorce."
She pushed her chair back from the table--they were at luncheon--and
stood up indignantly.

Looking at her in her gay light chiffon with its traceries of gold
Steve wondered vaguely whether or not he had been wrong in selecting
his goal, whether he would ever be able really to understand this
Gorgeous Girl now that she belonged to him, or would discover that
there was nothing much to understand about her, that it could all be
summed up in the statement that her father by denying her a chance at
development had stunted the growth of her ability and her character
into raggle-taggle weeds of self-indulgence and willful temper.

"I shall not ask you to go with me," he knew he answered. It is quite
as terrifying to find that one's goal has been wrongly chosen and
ethically unsound as to find a boyhood dream merging into gorgeous
reality.

Beatrice swept out of the room. Steve made an elaborate pretense of
finishing his meal. Then he went into the drawing room in search of a
newspaper. He came upon Beatrice sitting on a floor cushion, feeding
Monster some bonbons.

"Have you been at her house?" she said, curiosity overcoming the
pique.

"Yes. Where is that paper? I dropped it in this chair when I came in
for luncheon."

"I had it taken away. I abominate newspapers in a drawing room--or
muddy shoes," she added, looking at his own. "What did she say? What
sort of a house is it?"

Steve stared at her in bewilderment. "What the devil difference does
it make to you?" he demanded, roughly.

She gave a little scream. "Don't you dare say such things to me." Then
she began to cry very prettily in a singsong, high-pitched voice.
"Monster--nobody loves us--nobody loves us--we can't have a merry
Christmas after all."

"I shan't be home for dinner," Steve added more politely. "Miss
Faithful's absence just now makes things quite rushed--I'll work until
late."

Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor.
"Oh, you are trying to punish me!"--pretending mock horror. "Stevuns
dear, don't mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to
understand. And I'll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding
for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads....
No? You won't let me fib? Horrid old thing--come and kiss me!... Ah,
you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy
shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale
tables--and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was
ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous
Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don't let the old funeral frazzle
you!"

Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too
seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether
his intuitive impression was correct--that Beatrice was not the sort
of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the
matter.

Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from
creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose
chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step
majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend,
for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car
through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back
and forth this same pathway twice a day.

Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of
eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any
of the customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told
him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers
on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the
face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had
ever been in life.

Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back
through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved
a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if
he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour
instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing
incessantly.

He was thinking about Mary Faithful's pleasant manner, the atmosphere
of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or
gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to
the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted
any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and
she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment
later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with
passing interest.

Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly
woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa
and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The
fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers,
the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there,
distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe
had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was,
to have such a sister.

Mary was about Beatrice's age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her
own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a
multitude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all
the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.

The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the
following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of
an excuse. He wanted to talk to her--not of business but of life,
of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help
her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help
him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with
him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss
Trudy's slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon
arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian
sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon
frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!

The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers
approached and halted before the cashier's cage. Steve began watching
them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding
behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting
slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of the
_High Blood Pressure Weekly_ lay at one side. What attracted Steve was
the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife!
Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock
with gold trimmings. Though it was December the toothpick point of a
white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian
necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier
was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice's general appearance. She had
the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her
eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the
customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she
spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become
owner of half a whitefish or so.

Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a
counterpart of Beatrice O'Valley was making change at Sullivan's Fish
Market--but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of
Beatrice O'Valley dressed and rouged--and acted very often--in such a
fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen
sought industriously to imitate them.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Luke showed his grief 

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