_ CHAPTER X
After Gay left, Trudy put on her things and trudged over to Mary's house. Gay had driven off in the car and she was glad he had. Like Steve the day of the funeral, she did not wish to drive but to have the nervous outlet of walking.
Trudy was seldom angry. But when she found Mary in the old library, the same true-blue, good-looking thing with just a little coldness of manner as Trudy tried to enthuse over her, Trudy felt ashamed. And she was angry far more often than she was ashamed.
"Where is Luke?" she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa. "Oh, Mary mine, you don't know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk--really talk to someone."
"Luke is at basketball----" Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears. "Why, what is it?" as Trudy sobbed the harsh, long sobs of a tormented and frail mind.
"You ought to hate me--selfish, insincere hypocrite--cheat--liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren't worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven't had the right things to eat." She sat up and began smoothing her injured flounces.
"You're so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes. You can't live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited--not enough sleep--and always that eternal upstage pose!"
"Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I'm all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does." She began a detailed recital of woes.
"Why not leave him?" Mary asked as there came a pause.
"Without any one else to marry?" Trudy's eyes were wide open in surprise.
"Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?"
"I couldn't go to work again."
"I thought you worked rather hard right now."
"That's different. I'm working to have a good time. And I'm a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn't happy."
Mary knew she was flushing. "Tell me some more about yourself."
But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. "Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn't there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay's place! I don't think Steve flirts with any one; he isn't that sort. He's so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice's father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can't see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a butterfly--I'm a fraud--and you're just an old dear!
"Yes, I am a fraud," she said, with sudden honesty. "I wouldn't come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don't know why, Mary dear; it's not as horrid as it sounds. I think it's because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I'd be the better woman for it in meeting my problems."
It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable--causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.
"You're growing up, that's all. And I'm not good--not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard--terribly hard about something? I've never told any one before. I can't really tell what it is!"
"Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!"
Mary came over to the sofa and sat beside Trudy, holding the white, cold hands laden with foolish rings. "I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing--and I've made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes and jealous dreams.... You see, I'm quite human."
Trudy drew her hands away. She had caused Mary to confirm her suspicions, and she was sorry she had done so. The better part of her knew that she had been admitted into the very sanctuary of the girl's soul, and that the worst part of her, which usually dominated, was not worthy to be trusted with such a secret. She wished Mary had not said the words--since it changed everything and made a singularly pleasing weapon to use against Beatrice O'Valley should occasion rise. Mary was good--and it was safer to slander a good person than a bad one because there was less chance of a come-back. As she tried to make herself forget what she had just heard she knew that in the heat of anger or to gain some material goal she would use this effectual weapon without thinking and without remorse.
"Oh, my poor girl!" was all she said; and Mary, believing that Trudy so reverenced her secret that she was not going to stab it with clumsy words, kissed her and very practically set about getting a lunch.
Trudy went home taking some biscuit and half a cake with her, and by the time she reached the Touraine she was in a cheerful frame of mind once more. The relief of confession, the home food, and the knowledge of Mary's secret had buoyed her up past caring for or considering Gay.
To her surprise Gay was at home, jubilant and repentant. He had won at pool and had also consumed some 1879 Burgundy, which conspired to make him adore his red-haired wife and tell her that he had quite deserved and enjoyed having his face smacked.
The pool money in her safe keeping, visions of a new hat to wear at the next luncheon caused Trudy to equal his elation. Together they ate up Mary's biscuits and cake and talked about Beatrice's remodelling the Constantine mansion at the cost of many thousands.
"We could almost retire," Trudy suggested; "but I'm afraid Steve will never give his consent."
"Don't worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress."
In March, just as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness.
Though Constantine worried in his peculiar way because Steve did not rush down to Florida to play with the rest of the snapping turtles Beatrice had about her heels he did not succeed in getting anything but a logical explanation as to a business rush from his son-in-law. More and more Steve was being saddled with Constantine's end of the game as well as his own--and he did not know how to proceed with the double responsibility. So Constantine went to Florida alone, to find his daughter revelling in new frocks and flirtations, both of which she temporarily sidetracked while she made her father give his consent to having the house done over after the manner of a Frascati villa.
"Gad," commented her father, during the heat of the argument, "I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?"
"He doesn't care what I do," she hastened to assure him. "Of course he will--he ought to--I'm paying for it. He'll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice's will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I'm going to signal them to begin."
"Well, don't touch my room or I'll burn down the whole plant," her father warned. "And if I were you I'd tell Steve first--it's only right."
"But it's my money," she insisted.
"Yes, yes, I know--but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn't agreed on beforehand."
"Dear old papa." She kissed him graciously by way of dismissal.
So Steve received the letter announcing the plans a few days later. It was a semi-patronizing, semi-affectionate letter with a great many underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days of kingdom come.
As he finished it Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to pay for this transformation.
"If my wife insists, go ahead--but don't move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I'm not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure class, and I'm too old to be kidded into thinking I'm one of them now. But I did make a mistake," he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell--"I thought the world owed me more than a living--that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant in time."
Gay's one-cylinder brain did not follow the intricacies of the statement. He merely thought of Steve in more than usually profane terms--and concluded that Beatrice was paying the bill. _