Ladies Must Live.
by Alice Duer Miller.
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year"s Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable people in New York were out of town.
Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in people were concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability very much as the douser"s hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring. When she crossed the room to speak to some woman after dinner, whatever that woman"s social position might formerly have been, you could be sure that at present she was on the upward wing. When Mrs. Ussher discovered extraordinary qualities of mind and sympathy in some hitherto impossible man, you might be certain it was time to begin to book him in advance.
Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more power over the situation than the barometer has over the weather. She merely was able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching social success.
She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her sudden and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual attraction. The fact that for years her friends had been the small group of the momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no explanation. So simple was her creed that she believed people were fashionable for the same reason that they were her friends, because "they were so nice."
During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to these friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized over the financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends; she sat up till the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl; during the height of their careers she organized plots for their a.s.sistance; and even when their stars were plainly on the decline, she would often ask them to lunch, if she happened to be alone.
Many people, we know, are p.r.o.ne to make friends with the rich and great.
Mrs. Ussher"s genius consisted in having made friends with them before they were either. When you hurried to her with some account of a newly discovered treasure--a beauty or a conversable young man--she would always say: "Oh, yes, I crossed with her two years ago," or "Isn"t he a dear?--he was once in Jack"s office." The strange thing was these statements were always true; the subjects of them confessed with tears that "dear Mrs. Ussher" or "darling Laura" was the kindest friend they had ever had.
Her house party was therefore likely to be notable.
First, there was of course Mrs. Almar--of course without her husband.
There is only one thing, or perhaps two, to be said for Nancy Almar--that she was very handsome and that she was not a hypocrite, no more than a pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard with his cutla.s.s in his teeth.
Mrs. Almar"s cutla.s.s was always in her teeth, when it was not in somebody"s vitals.
She had smooth, jet-black hair, done close to her pretty head, a clear white-and-vermilion complexion, and a good figure, not too tall. She said little, but everything she did say, she most poignantly meant. If, while you were talking to her, she suddenly cried out: "Ah, that"s really good!" there was no doubt you had had the good fortune to amuse her; while if she yawned and left you in the midst of a sentence there was no question that she was bored.
She hated her husband--not for the conventional reason that she had married him. She hated him because he was a hypocrite, because he was always placating and temporizing.
For instance, he had said to her as she was about to start for the Usshers":
"I hope you"ll explain to them why I could not come."
There had never been the least question of Mr. Almar"s coming, and she turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:
"You mean that I would not have gone if you had?"
He did not seem annoyed.
"No," he said, "that I"m called South on business."
"I shan"t tell them that," she said, slowly wrapping her furs about her throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, "but I"ll tell them you say so, if you like."
She was as good as her word--she usually was.
When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without the slightest change of expression:
"Would any one like to hear Roland"s explanation of why he is not with us?"
"Had it anything to do with his not being asked?" said a pale young man; and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to ascertain how his remark had succeeded.
So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact, though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she made no secret of the fact.
"Not asked, Mr. Wickham!" she said. "I a.s.sume my husband is asked wherever I am," and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint smile: "One"s husband is always asked, isn"t he?"
"Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come," said another speaker.
This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was blond and some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that she was the beauty of the hour.
She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the truth of the observation that a married woman"s greatest charm is her husband, he is also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs.
Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the unmarried.
She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the party was understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had discovered a cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from a technical college, had invented a process in the manufacture of rubber that had brought him a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs.
Almar admired.
Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a good-looking young man.
In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the little public that really mattered, the lists were set. n.o.body present, except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously ignorant of the world in which he was moving, doubted for one moment that Miss Fenimer had resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that is, he turned out to be actually as per the recommendations of Mrs. Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs.
Almar intended that he should be hers.
Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical Nancy was her friend, too.
Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson, her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man--exactly the type you would like to see your rival marry. Hickson had motored out with his sister, and had received some excellent counsel on the way.
"Now, Ned," she had said, "don"t cut your own throat by being an adoring foil. Don"t let Christine grind your face in the dust, just to show this new man that she can do it."
"You don"t do Christine justice," he had answered, "if you think she would do that."
His sister did not reply. She thought it would have been doing the girl injustice to suppose that she would do anything else.
They were still sitting about the tea-table at a quarter to seven, when Christine and Mrs. Almar rose simultaneously. It was almost time for the arrival of Riatt, and neither had any fancy for meeting him save at her best--in all the panoply of evening dress.
"We"re not dining till a quarter past eight, my dears," said Mrs. Ussher.
Both ladies thought they would lie down before dinner. And here chance took a hand. Riatt"s train was late, whereas Christine"s clock was fast.
And so it happened that she came downstairs just as he was coming up.
There had been no one to greet him. He was told by the butler that Mrs.
Ussher was dressing, that dinner would be in fifteen minutes; he started to bound up the stairs, following the footman with his bags, when suddenly looking up the broad flight he saw a blond vision in white and pearls coming slowly down. He hoped that his lower jaw hadn"t fallen, but she really was extraordinarily beautiful; and he could not help slowing down a little. She stopped, with her hand on the banisters, like Louise of Prussia.
"Oh, you"re Mr. Riatt," she said, very gently. "You know you"re most awfully late."
"I wish," he said, "that I were wise enough to be able to say: "Oh, you"re Miss ----""
"I might be a Mrs."
"Oh, I hope not," he answered. "Are you?"