The Great God Success Part 13

Howard?" Mrs. Sidney said, and Miss Trevor drew nearer to hear the answer.

"One of the editorial writers down on the paper and a very clever one--none better. He works hard and is desperately serious and a regular hermit."

"I think he's very handsome--don't you, Marian?"

"I found him interesting," said Miss Trevor.

Howard thought a great deal about Miss Trevor that night, and she was still in his head the next day. "This comes of never seeing women," he said to himself. "The first girl I meet seems the most beautiful I ever saw, and the most intellectual. And, when I think it over, what did she say that was startling?"

Nevertheless he went with Segur the next Sunday to Mrs. Sidney's great house in the upper Avenue overlooking the Park.

"Why do I come here?" he asked himself. "It is a sheer waste of time.

Mrs. Sidney can do me no good, or I her. It must be the hope of seeing Miss Trevor."

When the gaudy and be-powdered flunkey held back the heavy curtains of the salon to announce him and Segur, he saw Miss Trevor on a low chair absently staring into the fire. Yet when he had spoken to Mrs. Sidney and turned toward her she at once stretched out her hand with a slight smile. Some others came in and Howard was free to talk to her. He sat looking at her steadily, admiring her almost perfect profile, delicate yet strong.

"And what have you been doing since I saw you?" Miss Trevor asked.

"Writing little pieces about politics for the paper," replied Howard.

"Politics? I detest it. It is all stealing and calling names, isn't it?

And something dreadful is always going to happen if somebody or other isn't elected, or is elected, to something or other. And then, whether he is or not, nothing happens. I should think the men who have been so excited and angry and alarmed would feel very cheap. But they don't. And the next time they carry on in just the same ridiculous way."

"Politics is like everything else--interesting if you understand what it is all about. But like everything else, you can't understand it without a little study at first. It's a pity women don't take an interest. If they did the men might become more reasonable and sane about it than they are now. But you--what have you been doing?"

"I--oh, industriously superintending the making of my new nets." Marian laughed and Howard was flattered. "And also, well, riding in the Park every morning. But I never do anything interesting. I simply drift."

"That's so much simpler and more satisfactory than thres.h.i.+ng and splas.h.i.+ng about as I do. It seems so fussy and foolish and futile. I wish--that is, sometimes I wish--that I had learned to amuse myself in some less violent and exhausting way."

"Marian--I say, Marian," called Mrs. Sidney. "Has Teddy come down?"

Miss Trevor coloured slightly as she answered: "No, he comes a week Wednesday. He's still hunting."

"Hunting," Howard repeated when Mrs. Sidney was again busy with the others. "Now there is a kind of work that never bothers a man's brains or sets him to worrying. I wish I knew how to amuse myself in some such way."

"You should go about more."

"Go--where?"

"To see people."

"But I do see a great many people. I'm always seeing them--all day long."

"Yes--but that is in a serious way. I mean go where you will be amused--to dinners for instance."

"I don't dare. I can't work at work and also work at play. I must work at one or the other all the time. I can do nothing without a definite object. I can't be just a little interested in anything or anybody.

With me it is no interest at all or else absorption until interest is exhausted."

"Then if you were interested in a woman, let us say, you'd be absorbed until you found out all there was, and then you'd--take to your heels."

"But she might always be new. She might interest me more and more.

Anyhow I fancy that she would weary of me long before I wearied of her.

I think women usually weary first. Men are very monotonous. We are as vain as women, if not vainer, without their capacity for concealing it.

And vanity makes one think he does not need to exert himself to please."

"But why do people usually say that it is the men that are difficult to hold?"

"Because the men hold the women, not through the kind of interest we are talking about, but through another kind--quite different. Women are so lazy and so dependent--dependent upon men for homes, for money, for escort even."

Miss Trevor was flus.h.i.+ng, as if the fire were too hot--at least she moved a little farther away from it. "Your ideal woman would be a shop-girl, I should say from what you've told me."

"Perhaps--in the abstract. I really do think that if I were going to marry, I should look about for a working-girl, a girl that supported herself. How can a man be certain of the love of a woman who is dependent upon him? I should be afraid she was only tolerating me as a labour-saving device."

Miss Trevor laughed. "There certainly is no vanity in that remark," she said. "Now I can't imagine most of the men I know thinking that."

"It's only theory with me. In practice doubtless I should be as self-complacent as any other man."

They left Mrs. Sidney's together and Howard walked down the Avenue with her. It seemed a wonderful afternoon--the air dazzling, intoxicating.

He was filled with the joy of living and was glad this particular tall, slender, distinguished-looking girl was there to make his enjoyment perfect. They were gay with the delight of being young and in health and attractive physically and mentally each to the other. They looked each at the other a great deal, and more and more frankly.

"Am I never to see you again?" he asked as he rang the bell for her.

"I believe Mrs. Carnarvon is going to invite you to dine here Thursday night."

"Thank you," said Howard.

Miss Trevor coloured. But she met his glance boldly and laughed. Howard wondered why her laugh was defiant, almost reckless.

He saw Segur at the club after dinner that same night. "And how do you like Miss Trevor?" Segur began as the whiskey and carbonic were set before them.

"A very attractive girl," said Howard.

"Yes--so a good many men have thought in the last five years. She's marrying Teddy Danvers in the spring, I believe. At any rate it's generally looked on as settled. Teddy's a good deal of a 'chump.'

But he's a decent fellow--good-looking, good-natured, domestic in his tastes, and nothing but money."

Howard was smiling to himself. He understood Miss Trevor's sudden consciousness of the nearness of the fire, her flush when Mrs. Sidney asked about "Teddy," and the recklessness in her parting laugh.

"Well, Teddy's in luck," he said aloud.

"Not so sure of that. She's quite capable of leading him a dance if he bores her. And bore her he will. But that is nothing new. This town is full of it."

"Full of what?"

"Of weary women--weary wives. The men are hobby-riders. They have just one interest and that usually small and dull--stocks or iron or real estate or hunting or automobiles. Our women are not like the English women--stupid, sodden. They are alive, acute. They wish to be interested. Their husbands bore them. So--well, what is the natural temptation to a lazy woman in search of an interest?"

"It's like Paris--like France?"