The Gorgeous Girl Part 16

He almost dreaded seeing Mary lest she show she considered the gift improper despite her delightful little note of thanks. This demeanour, however, was of short duration. They became their real selves before the morning pa.s.sed, the medium being the question of keeping John Gager, an old clerk pressed into service during the war period and now superfluous.

"Are you going to let him go?" Mary reproached Steve.

"I think so; he's a doddering nuisance they tell me."

"But he's old and he has always served so faithfully. I don't think it's right to send him away now. He does do what is expected of him."

Mary's vacation had somewhat dimmed her business sagacity.

"I suppose; but we'll be doddering idiots some day, too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried along indefinitely."

"It's the first time I have ever asked you to do such a thing," she insisted, fearlessly. "To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile s.h.i.+rts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don't turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can't tell him, and can't you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds the dismissal slip?"

Steve's resolutions faded like mist before the sun. He found himself saying: "You ought to be a little sister to the poor. I guess we'll keep Gager for a while. He doesn't smoke cigarettes all day and try to lie about it. How did you like those books?" he added, boyishly.

Mary laid a finger on her lips. "Sh-h-h. It's business. But I did like them--so would you."

"I'd read them if I had an easy-chair and some homemade bread and tea.

Do you know what I had to do for my Christmas Day?"

"Please--I'd rather not----"

"I must tell someone, and ask if I'm all wrong about it," he said, half humorously, half in earnest. "I told my father-in-law in part and it struck him as a huge joke. He purpled with laughing and said: 'Gad, she'll always have her way!'" Steve was thinking out loud. He was realizing that Constantine was not even conscious he had raised his daughter to be a rebel doll and he, apparently an honourable citizen, encouraged and upheld her in her doctrine.

"Well, what did you have to do?" Mary asked in spite of herself.

"I had to officiate at Monster's Christmas tree, which was in the boudoir, laden with the treasures of the four corners. I presented a diamond-studded gold purse and a sable cape to my wife and received a diamond-studded cigar knife--I have two others--and a mink-lined coat in return. I was dragged to a half-dozen different houses to deliver presents and collect the same, and witness the tragedy of Bea's receiving a vanity case she had given someone else two years before and which had evidently been going the rounds. It was a bit disconcerting to have it turn up.

"I had a ponderous seven-course dinner at Mr. Constantine's, during which I had to kiss Aunt Belle under the mistletoe and pretend to be elated, hear several yards of grand opera torn off on the new talking machine in its nine-hundred-dollar Chinese case, take my father-in-law to the club, return to find Trudy and Gay having a Yuletide word with my wife. Trudy brought a concoction of purple chiffon, jet beads, and exploded hen which was ent.i.tled a breakfast jacket, and in return she drew down a pair of silver candlesticks.

"After that we dressed in all our grandeur for the fancy-dress ball at Colonel Tatlock's, Beatrice as Juliet and I as the young and das.h.i.+ng Romeo! s.h.i.+vering in our finery we drove to the Tatlock's to make fools of ourselves until three A. M. and s.h.i.+ver home again with aching heads and a handful of damaged cotillion favours. About the same sort of thing happened on New Year's." He laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound, inviting a response.

Beatrice dashed in, to Mary's relief, to bestow--over a week late--a Christmas present of perfume and a black-silk waist.

"Mr. O'Valley has explained how rushed I have been with my cla.s.ses,"

she began, prettily, "but I have thought of you in all your sorrow. I lost my dear mother when I was too young to remember her, still it means a bond between us.... Oh, you are not wearing black? Dear me, that's too bad.... Well, you may have to go to somebody's funeral where you feel you want to wear it--a black waist is always useful."

She managed to carry Steve off to look at a set of pink gla.s.s sherbet cups she was to give her father for his birthday, and Mary was conscious of a certain pity for the Gorgeous Girl--prompted not so much by her present state of affairs as her inevitable future.

The last of January Steve was called away on a business trip through the Middle West. Beatrice had no desire to go with him; she said she simply could not conceive of having a good time in Indiana and Illinois, and what was the sense in bearing with him in his misery?

But she was quite willing Steve should stay away as long as he was needed by business entanglements. In fact, Beatrice now betrayed a certain driving quality in trying to make him feel that as their honeymoon was ended and everyone had entertained for them it was high time Steve must retire from social life to a degree, and outdo her own father in the making of a vast fortune. She seldom begged him to ride with her or come home to luncheon to fritter away the best part of the afternoon in a pursuit of silver-pheasant ornaments for the dinner table. That phase of her selfishness was at an end. It was when Steve demanded the luxury of merely staying at home with no chattering peac.o.c.ks of women and asinine, half-tipsy men playing with each other until early morning that Beatrice refused her consent.

She did not wish any personal domestic life, Steve decided after several experiences along these lines. She could not see the pleasure in a Sunday afternoon hike; walking to see a sunset was absurd! All very well to be whisked by at twenty miles an hour and give a careless nod at the setting golden sphere, but to trudge through wintry roads and up an icy hill and stand, frozen and f.a.gged, weighted down by sweaters, to----Dear me, Steve really needed to see a doctor! Perhaps he had better start to play golf with papa!

Meals tete-a-tete caused her spirits to droop, and she soon fell into the habit of waiting until Steve was away or having her luncheon in her room. She was seldom up for breakfast, and when he protested against this hotel-like custom she would say: "I don't expect you to appreciate my viewpoint and my wishes, but at least be well-bred enough to tolerate them!"

He was on the point of reminding her that his viewpoint and wishes were treated only with argument and ridicule--but as usual he refrained. Silence on the part of one who knows he is in the right yet chooses apparently to yield the point in question is a significant milestone on the road of separation. An argument with Beatrice meant one of two outcomes: A violent scene of temper and overwrought nerves with tears as the conquering slacker's weapon or a long, sulky period of tenseness which made him take refuge in his office and his club.

He wondered sometimes how it was he had never before realized the true worth of his wife, how he had been so madly infatuated and adoring of her slightest whim during the years of earning his fortune and the brief period of their formal engagement. Almost reluctantly the anaesthesia of unreality and distorted values was disappearing, leaving Steve with but one conclusion: That it had been his own conceited fault, and therefore he deserved scant pity from either himself or the world at large.

Mark Constantine, whose activities lessened each month, due to ill health, began prowling about Steve's office at unexpected hours, cornering him for prosy talks and conferences, under which Steve writhed in helpless surrender. Since he realized the true meaning of his marriage he began placing the blame on the culprit--Beatrice's father. As he did so he wondered if it was possible that Constantine did not realize the havoc he had wrought. His wealth and Steve's speedily acc.u.mulated fortune via hides and government razors suddenly seemed stupid, inane; and he no longer felt a sense of pride at what he had accomplished. He never wanted to hear details of Constantine's more gradual and bitter rise in the world; there was certain to be slimy spots of which Steve in his new frame of mind could no longer approve. He was weary of hearing about money, just as his good sense caused him to be weary of socialistic prattling and absurd pleas for Bolshevism. It seemed to him that the dollar standard was the paramount means both magnate and socialist used to value inanimate and animate objects. He longed for a new unit of measure.

He was keen on business trips. At least he could have the freedom of his hotel and could roam about without being pointed out as the Gorgeous Girl's husband, the lucky young dog and so on. Neither would he be dragged from this house to that to sit on impossible futurist chairs while young things of thirty-nine clad in belladonna plasters and jet sequins gathered about to tell him what perfectly wonderful times their cla.s.s in cosmic consciousness was having.

Mary Faithful was keen to have him go. She dreaded any furthering of the personal understanding between them. When one has become master of a heartache and thoroughly demonstrated that mastery it is not sensible to let it verge toward a heart throb, even if one is positive of the ability to change it back at will into the hopeless ache. It is like unhandcuffing a prisoner and saying: "Sprint a bit, I can catch up to you."

On the other hand, Beatrice had any number of activities to take up her time. Her period of being a romantic parasite--the world called it a sweet bride--was ended. She was now bent on becoming as mad and ruthless a b.u.t.terfly as there ever was, and to the accomplishment of her aim she did not purpose to stint herself in any way. She still drew her own allowance from her father and accepted extra checks for extra things necessary for her welfare and popularity.

More than once Steve counted the monthly expenditures, with the same result--Beatrice was living on her father's income quite as much as on his own. Her position was not unlike that of people who say to their prosperous neighbours possessing a motor car: "We'll furnish the lunch and the gasolene, and you take us to the picnic grounds!" Constantine still owned the figurative motor car, or the substantial end of Beatrice's expenses, while Steve furnished the lunch and the gasolene, trying to delude himself that he was supporting his wife. Beatrice's clothes were beyond his income, for he was not yet a millionaire.

Neither could he afford the affairs which she gave, with favours of jewellery; nor the trips here and there in private cars.

Furnis.h.i.+ng the lunch and gasolene and perhaps a possible tire or so does not give one the sense of owners.h.i.+p that having the motor car gives; nor was it Steve's notion of being the possessor of a home. He spoke to Beatrice about it, only to be kissed affectionately and scolded prettily by way of answer; or else to have those eternal omnipresent tears reproach him for being cross "when papa wants me to have things and he has no one else in the world to spend all his money on."

After a few attempts he gave it up but resolved to make his fortune equal to his father-in-law's, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible--he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl--but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on the exchange he had played copy cat and gone mincing into the hide-and-leather business, using Constantine's good will as his stepping stone. The same was true of the stock bought in the razor factory; he had merely paid for the stock; he did not know the steps of progress necessary to the business.

This time he would prove his own merit, he would not take Constantine into his confidence. Unknown to any one save Mary, Steve selected a new-style talking machine to promote. He knew as much about talking machines as Beatrice knew about cooking a square meal. But Steve had lost his clear-headedness and he thought, as do most get-rich-quick men, that, possessed of the Midas touch, he could come in contact with nothing but gold.

He began backing the inventor and looking round for a factory site. He sought it away from Hanover, for he wanted it to be a complete surprise. He begrudged his father-in-law's knowing anything of it. He went into the enterprise rather heavily--but it did not worry him, for he was quite sure he possessed the luck eternal, and he must support his own wife. Side speculating was the only way he thought it possible to do so.

Meanwhile, Beatrice found Trudy to be both a good foil and a dangerous enemy, one who was not to be ridiculed or set aside. Trudy had never stopped working since the day Beatrice climbed the rear stairs of the Graystone and had been bullied into buying the vanis.h.i.+ng cream.

Beatrice scarcely knew the various steps which Trudy had climbed in a figurative sense, dragging Gay after her, grumbling and sneering but quite willing to be dragged.

"You see, aunty," she explained one stormy February afternoon while they were having a permanent wave put in their hair, "Trudy is so obliging and useful, and I'm sorry for her. She tries to do so many nice things for me that I never have a chance to become offended. I've tried! But she just won't break away. And I like to tease Steve by knowing her, Steve is such a bear when he doesn't like people. Rude is a mild term. He particularly hates Gay. Now Gay is quite a dear and he always played nicely with me. I should hate to lose him--so how can I offend his wife; particularly when she takes so well with older men?"

Aunt Belle sniffed. "Men old enough to be her father--you'd think they would appreciate mellowed love instead of a selfish little chicken."

The beauty doctor, who had spent the greater share of the day at the Constantine house, suppressed a smile and stored up the remark for her next customer.

"Oh, I don't know," Beatrice murmured as she consulted a hand gla.s.s.

"I am beginning to wish I had married a man about papa's age. It would have been much jollier in some ways. Steve is so strenuous and rude. A cave man is fun to be engaged to and keep a record about in your chapbook--but when you marry him it is a different matter. I remember how thrilled and enthusiastic about Steve I used to be when he was working for papa and living in a hall bedroom. I knew he adored me yet had to keep his place, and I used to dream about him and wonder if he really would keep his word and make a fortune so he could marry me.

But now he has done it----" She shrugged her shoulders.

"I wouldn't be too disappointed. Elderly men usually have wheel chairs and diets after a little, and you'd feel it your duty to play nurse."

"Oh, it's far better to be disappointed in one's husband than one's friends," Beatrice agreed. "I know that. For you can manage to see very little of your husband; but your friends--deary me, they your very existence."

"Does Trudy ever mention the days she worked in Steve's office?"

"Yes. Clever little thing, she knows enough to admit it prettily every now and then, so there is nothing to badger her about. She has even trained Gay to talk of it occasionally. She has done wonders for him; one of the clubmen is backing him to go into the interior-decorating business. Of course he will make good because everyone will feel morally obliged to go there. So the Vondeplosshes on the strength of this have moved to the Touraine, a different sort of apartment house, I a.s.sure you. They are entertaining, if you please; everyone asks them everywhere. Gay is painting garlands of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers in panels for Jill's boudoir. I think I'll have the same thing done in mine."

"Gay is painting them?"

"Oh, no. Some limp artist who could never get the commission for himself. Gay stands about in a natty blue-serge effect and takes the credit and the check. What's new?"--turning to the beauty doctor. "I'm as dull as the Dead Sea."

Miss Flinks informed them of a labour revolt in the West.

"Horrid creatures, always wanting more! Well, they won't get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something really important, Miss Flinks."

Retrieving her error the beauty doctor whispered a scandal concerning the newly married Teddy Markhams, who had had such a violent quarrel the week before that Mrs. Teddy had pushed the piano halfway out the window and police had rushed to the scene thinking it might be another bomb explosion.