Margaret went upstairs with a burning heart, cast her bills haphazard on her own desk, and flung herself, dry-eyed and furious, on the bed.
She was far too angry to think, but lay there for perhaps twenty minutes with her brain whirling. Finally rising, she brushed up her hair, straightened her collar, and, full of tremendous resolves, stepped into her little sitting room, to find Mrs. Carr-Boldt in the big chair, serenely eyeing her.
"I"m so sorry I spoke so, Peggy," said her employer, generously. "But the truth is, I am not myself when--when Mr. Carr-Boldt--" The little hesitating appeal in her voice completely disarmed Margaret. In the end the little episode cemented the rapidly growing friendship between the two women, Mrs. Carr-Boldt seeming to enjoy the relief of speaking rather freely of what was the one real trial in her life.
"My husband has always had too much money," she said, in her positive way. "At one time we were afraid that he would absolutely ruin his health by this--habit of his. His physician and I took him around the world,--I left Victoria, just a baby, with mother,--and for too years he was never out of my sight. It has never been so bad since. You know yourself how reliable he usually is," she finished cheerfully, "unless some of the other men get hold of him!"
As the months went on Margaret came to admire her employer more and more. There was not an indolent impulse in Mrs. Carr-Boldt"s entire composition. Smooth-haired, fresh-skinned, in spotless linen, she began the day at eight o"clock, full of energy and interest. She had daily sessions with butler and house-keeper, shopped with Margaret and the children, walked about her greenhouse or her country garden with her skirts pinned up, and had tulips potted and stone work continued.
She was prominent in several clubs, a famous dinner-giver, she took a personal interest in all her servants, loved to settle their quarrels and have three or four of them up on the carpet at once, tearful and explanatory. Margaret kept for her a list of some two hundred friends, whose birthdays were to be marked with carefully selected gifts. She pleased Mrs. Carr-Boldt by her open amazement at the latter"s vitality. The girl observed that her employer could not visit any inst.i.tution without making a few vigorous suggestions as she went about, she accompanied her cheques to the organized charities--and her charity flowed only through absolutely reliable channels--with little friendly, advisory letters. She liked the democratic att.i.tude for herself,--even while promptly snubbing any such tendency in children or friends;--and told Margaret that she only used her coat of arms on house linen, stationery, and livery, because her husband and mother liked it. "It"s of course rather nice to realize that one comes from one of the oldest of the Colonial families," she would say. "The Carterets of Maryland, you know.--But it"s all such bosh!"
And she urged Margaret to claim her own right to family honors: "You"re a Quincy, my dear! Don"t let that woman intimidate you,--she didn"t remember that her grandfather was a captain until her husband made his money. And where the family portraits came from I don"t know, but I think there"s a man on Fourth Avenue who does "em!" she would say, or, "I know all about Lilly Reynolds, Peggy. Her father was as rich as she says, and I daresay the crest is theirs. But ask her what her maternal grandmother did for a living, if you want to shut her up!" Other people she would condemn with a mere whispered "Coal!" or "Patent bath-tubs!" behind her fan, and it pleased her to tell people that her treasure of a secretary had the finest blood in the world in her veins. Margaret was much admired, and Margaret was her discovery, and she liked to emphasize her find.
Mrs. Carr-Boldt"s mother, a tremulous, pompous old lady, unwittingly aided the impression by taking an immense fancy to Margaret, and by telling her few intimates and the older women among her daughter"s friends that the girl was a perfect little thoroughbred. When the Carr-Boldts filled their house with the reckless and noisy company they occasionally affected, Mrs. Carteret would say majestically to Margaret:--
"You and I have nothing in common with this riff-raff, my dear!"
Summer came, and Margaret headed a happy letter "Bar Harbor." Two months later all Weston knew that Margaret Paget was going abroad for a year with those rich people, and had written her mother from the Lusitania. Letters from London, from Germany, from Holland, from Russia, followed. "We are going to put the girls at school in Switzerland, and (ahem!) winter on the Riviera, and then Rome for Holy Week!" she wrote.
She was presently home again, chattering French and German to amuse her father, teaching Becky a little Italian song to match her little Italian costume.
"It"s wonderful to me how you get along with all these rich people, Mark," said her mother, admiringly, during Margaret"s home visit. Mrs.
Paget was watering the dejected-looking side garden with a straggling length of hose; Margaret and Julie sh.e.l.ling peas on the side steps.
Margaret laughed, coloring a little.
"Why, we"re just as good as they are, Mother!"
Mrs. Paget drenched a dried little dump of carnations.
"We"re as good," she admitted; "but we"re not as rich, or as travelled,--we haven"t the same ideas; we belong to a different cla.s.s."
"Oh, no, we don"t, Mother," Margaret said quickly. "Who are the Carr Boldts, except for their money? Why, Mrs. Carteret,--for all her family!--isn"t half the aristocrat Grandma was! And you--you could be a Daughter of The Officers of the Revolution, Mother!"
"Why, Mark, I never heard that!" her mother protested, cleaning the sprinkler with a hairpin.
"Mother!" Julie said eagerly. "Great-grandfather Quincy!"
"Oh, Grandpa," said Mrs. Paget. "Yes, Grandpa was a paymaster. He was on Governor Hanc.o.c.k"s staff. They used to call him "Major." But Mark--"
she turned off the water, holding her skirts away from the combination of mud and dust underfoot, "that"s a very silly way to talk, dear! Money does make a difference; it does no good to go back into the past and say that this one was a judge and that one a major; we must live our lives where we are!"
Margaret had not lost a wholesome respect for her mother"s opinion in the two years she had been away, but she had lived in a very different world, and was full of new ideas.
"Mother, do you mean to tell me that if you and Dad hadn"t had a perfect pack of children, and moved so much, and if Dad--say--had been in that oil deal that he said he wished he had the money for, and we still lived in the brick house, that you wouldn"t be in every way the equal of Mrs. Carr-Boldt?"
"If you mean as far as money goes, Mark,--no. We might have been well to-do as country people go, I suppose--"
"Exactly!" said Margaret; "and you would have been as well off as dozens of the people who are going about in society this minute! It"s the merest chance that we aren"t rich. Just for instance: father"s father had twelve children, didn"t he?--and left them--how much was it?--about three thousand dollars apiece--"
"And a G.o.dsend it was, too," said her mother, reflectively.
"But suppose Dad had been the only child, Mother," Margaret persisted, "he would have had--"
"He would have had the whole thirty-six thousand dollars, I suppose, Mark."
"Or more," said Margaret, "for Grandfather Paget was presumably spending money on them all the time."
"Well, but, Mark--" said Mrs. Paget, laughing as at the vagaries of a small child, "Father Paget did have twelve children--and Daddy and I eight--" she sighed, as always, at the thought of the little son who was gone,--"and there you are! You can"t get away from that, dear."
Margaret did not answer. But she thought to herself that very few people held Mother"s views of this subject.
Mrs. Carr-Boldt"s friends, for example, did not accept increasing cares in this resigned fashion; their lives were ideally pleasant and harmonious without the complicated responsibilities of large families.
They drifted from season to season without care, always free, always gay, always irreproachably gowned. In winter there were daily meetings, for shopping, for luncheon, bridge or tea; summer was filled with a score of country visits. There were motor-trips for week-ends, dinners, theatre, and the opera to fill the evenings, German or singing lessons, manicure, ma.s.seuse, and dressmaker to crowd the morning hours all the year round. Margaret learned from these exquisite, fragrant creatures the art of being perpetually fresh and charming, learned their methods of caring for their own beauty, learned to love rare toilet waters and powders, fine embroidered linen and silk stockings. There was no particular strain upon her wardrobe now, nor upon her purse; she could be as dainty as she liked. She listened to the conversations that went on about her,--sometimes critical or unconvinced; more often admiring; and as she listened she found slowly but certainly her own viewpoint. She was not mercenary.
She would not marry a man just for his money, she decided, but just as certainly she would not marry a man who could not give her a comfortable establishment, a position in society.
The man seemed in no hurry to appear; as a matter of fact, the men whom Margaret met were openly anxious to evade marriage, even with the wealthy girls of their own set. Margaret was not concerned; she was too happy to miss the love-making element; the men she saw were not of a type to inspire a sensible busy, happy, girl with any very deep feeling. And it was with generous and perfect satisfaction that she presently had news of Julie"s happy engagement. Julie was to marry a young and popular doctor, the only child of one of Weston"s most prominent families. The little sister"s letter bubbled joyously with news.
"Harry"s father is going to build us a little house on the big place, the darling," wrote Julie; "and we will stay with them until it is done. But in five years Harry says we will have a real honeymoon, in Europe! Think of going to Europe as a married woman! Mark, I wish you could see my ring; it is a beauty, but don"t tell Mother I was silly enough to write about it!"
Margaret delightedly selected a little collection of things for Julie"s trousseau. A pair of silk stockings, a scarf she never had worn, a lace petticoat, pink silk for a waist. Mrs. Carr-Boldt, coming in in the midst of these preparations, insisted upon adding so many other things, from trunks and closets, that Margaret was speechless with delight. Scarves, cobwebby silks in uncut lengths, embroidered lingerie still in the tissue paper of Paris shops, parasols, gloves, and lengths of lace,--she piled all of them into Margaret"s arms.
Julie"s trousseau was consequently quite the most beautiful Weston had ever seen; and the little sister"s cloudless joy made the fortnight Margaret spent at home at the time of the wedding a very happy one. It was a time of rush and flurry, laughter and tears, of roses, and girls in white gowns. But some ten days before the wedding, Julie and Margaret happened to be alone for a peaceful hour over their sewing, and fell to talking seriously.
"You see, our house will be small," said Julie; "but I don"t care--we don"t intend to stay in Weston all our lives. Don"t breathe this to any one, Mark, but if Harry does as well as he"s doing now for two years, we"ll rent the little house, and we"re going to Baltimore for a year for a special course. Then--you know he"s devoted to Dr. McKim, he always calls him "the chief,"--then he thinks maybe McKim will work him into his practice,--he"s getting old, you know, and that means New York!"
"Oh, Ju,--really!"
"I don"t see why not," Julie said, dimpling. "Harry"s crazy to do it.
He says he doesn"t propose to live and die in Weston. McKim could throw any amount of hospital practice his way, to begin with. And you know Harry"ll have something,--and the house will rent. I"m crazy,"
said Julie, enthusiastically, "to take one of those lovely old apartments on Washington Square, and meet a few nice people, you know, and really make something of my life!"
"Mrs. Carr-Boldt and I will spin down for you every few days,"
Margaret said, falling readily in with the plan. "I"m glad you"re not going to simply get into a rut the way some of the other girls have,--cooking and babies and nothing else!" she said.
"I think that"s an awful mistake," Julie said placidly. "Starting in right is so important. I don"t want to be a mere drudge like Ethel or Louise--they may like it. I don"t! Of course, this isn"t a matter to talk of," she went on, coloring a little. "I"d never breathe this to Mother! But it"s perfectly absurd to pretend that girls don"t discuss these things. I"ve talked to Betty and Louise--we all talk about it, you know. And Louise says they haven"t had one free second since Buddy came. She can"t keep one maid, and she says the idea of two maids eating their three meals a day, whether she"s home or not, makes her perfectly sick! Some one"s got to be with him every single second, even now, when he"s four,--to see that he doesn"t fall off something, or put things in his mouth. And as Louise says--it means no more week end trips; you can"t go visiting over night, you can"t even go for a day"s drive or a day on the beach, without extra clothes for the baby, a mosquito-net and an umbrella for the baby--milk packed in ice for the baby--somebody trying to get the baby to take his nap--it"s awful!
It would end our Baltimore plan, and that means New York, and New York means everything to Harry and me!" finished Julie, contentedly, flattening a finished bit of embroidery on her knee, and regarding it complacently.
"Well, I think you"re right," Margaret approved. "Things are different now from what they were in Mother"s day."
"And look at Mother," Julie said. "One long slavery! Life"s too short to wear yourself out that way!"
Mrs. Paget"s sunny cheerfulness was sadly shaken when the actual moment of parting with the exquisite, rose-hatted, gray-frocked Julie came; her face worked pitifully in its effort to smile; her tall figure, awkward in an ill-made unbecoming new silk, seemed to droop tenderly over the little clinging wife. Margaret, stirred by the sight of tears on her mother"s face, stood with an arm about her, when the bride and groom drove away in the afternoon sunshine.
"I"m going to stay with you until she gets back!" she reminded her mother.
"And you know you"ve always said you wanted the girls to marry, Mother," urged Mr. Paget. Rebecca felt this a felicitous moment to ask if she and the boys could have the rest of the ice-cream.
"Divide it evenly," said Mrs. Paget, wiping her eyes and smiling.
"Yes, I know, Daddy dear, I"m an ungrateful woman! I suppose your turn will come next, Mark, and then I don"t know what I will do!"
CHAPTER IV