_ 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 a 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 cafe 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 passee." 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 Cafe--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 cafe, 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 cafe," 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. _