"As much as I used to seek out the stock reports."
"Well--I think people who have planned as exactly as you and Mr.
Constantine have planned always banish real principle at the start.
After a time you are punished by having an almost fungous growth of sickly conscience--you don"t want to face the truth of things, yet isolated incidents, sentimental memories, certain sights and definite statements annoy, haunt, heartbreak you! Still, you have lost your principle, the backbone of the soul, and the fungus-like growth of conscience is such a clumsy imitation--like a paper rose stuck in the ground. Mr. Constantine"s type--your type--is flourishing and multiplying among us, I fear, and such are the wishbone, or sickly conscience, and not the backbone, or sterling principle, of the nation. After all, fortunes alone do not make real gentility--thanks be! But you know as well as I that all the--the Gorgeous Girls and their kind and you and I and the next chap we meet belong to the great majority, and of that we have every right to be proud.
"Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the wholesale to be rea.s.sembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old American stock--which is quite wrong, for their example causes spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end."
"Go on," he said, almost sulkily, as she paused.
"I"ve watched it for thirteen years from the various angles of the working girl with an average amount of brain and disposition. When all is said and done you really have to work before you have earned the right to pa.s.s judgment--work--not read or patronize or take someone else"s statements as final. Do you know how I used to identify the kinds of people that rode in the street cars with me?... From seven until eight there were the Frumps. The majority boasted of white kid boots or someone"s discarded near-electric-seal jacket, plumes in their hats, and an absence of warm woollens. And everyone yawned, between patting thin cheeks with soiled face chamois, "What d"ja do las" night?"
"From eight to nine came the Funnies; and the majority had white kid boots and flimsy silk frocks cut as low as our grandmothers" party gowns, and plumes in their hats and silver vanity cases. Their main topics of conversation were: "He said," and "She said," and "I don"t care if I"m late. I"m going to quit anyway!"
"From nine until noon came the Frills--the wives of modest-salaried men who cannot motor, yet write to out-of-town relatives that they do so.
"And every one of those Frumps, Funnies, and Frills apes the Gorgeous-Girl kind--white kids for shopping, low-cut pumps in January, bizarre coat, chiffon waist disclosing a thin little neck fairly panting for protection, rouged cheeks, and a plume in her hat--and not a cent of savings in the bank!
"Now there"s something wrong when we"ve come to this, and the wrong does not lie with these people but with those they imitate--Gorgeous Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles, slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl--and it"s wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls--and the heathen in Africa--and wonder why golf doesn"t bring your blood pressure down to normal--when your grandfather had such a wonderful const.i.tution at eighty-four! Don"t you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer"s interest on the suddenly acc.u.mulated principle?"
"Keep on," he said in the same surly tone.
"And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs wistfully sniffing at pa.s.sers-by in hopes of finding a permanent friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly being overloaded for the day"s haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers" ads and vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up, gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and twelfth stories--the general chasing after nothing, saving nothing and, saddest of all, the complacent delusion that they have achieved something well worth while--it makes me willing to earn and learn as I do."
"Don"t leave me in the quicksand. What can we do about it?"
"Make that sort of American woman realize that she is more needed in the home and can accomplish more with that as her goal than in any other place in the world. You don"t know all my dreams for the American woman--don"t you think that this Gorgeous Girl parasitical type is a result of the Victorian revolt? Too late for themselves the Victorian matrons said: "Our daughters shall never slave as we have done; they shall be ladies--and have careers, too, bless their hearts." The Victorian matrons were emerging from the unfair conditions of ignorance and drudgery and they could realize only one side of the argument--that all work and no play made Jill quite a stupid girl.
"But we must grasp the other side of the matter--that all play and no work make her simply impossible; that culture and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand. The American woman really is--and must continue to be--the all-round, regular fellow of the feminine world. Then she will not only teach a great and needed truth to her backward European sisters but she will produce a great future race. American women have tried frivolity in nearly every form and they have worked seriously likewise; they have intruded into men"s professions and careers and in cases have beaten men at their own game. They have successfully broken down the narrow prejudice and limitations which the Victorian era tried making immortal under the t.i.tle of sentiment--but after they have had the reward of victory and the knowledge of the game, why not be square, as they really are, and do the part the Great Plan meant them to do? Be women first--let the career take the woman if need be, but always thank the good Lord if it needn"t be."
"And to think you have been working for me," Steve said, softly.
"I know that culture and enjoyment of life may be yoked with so-called drudgery. I know, too, that women are retiring not in defeat but with honour and victory in its truest sense when they step out of business life back to their homes. Nor are they empty-handed like the Victorian matrons; but with the energy of tried and true warriors, the ballot in one hand, the child led by the other, they are in a position to right old wrongs, for they have won new rights. They will be able to put into practice in their homes all they have gleaned from the sojourn in the world; the ill-given service of unfitted menials will disappear, as will waste and nerve-racking detail.
"And love must be the leavener of it all--with all her progress and her ability, trained talents and clever logic, the American woman must not and will not renounce her romance--for it is part of G.o.d"s very promise of immortality."
"How often may I come here?" he begged.
Mary shook her head. "You"ve got me started, as Luke says, and I"m hard to check. But have you never thought that out of all the world the American woman is the only woman who cooks and serves her dinner if it is necessary, adjourns to her parlour afterward and discusses poetry and politics and the latest style hat with her guests? For she has learned how to possess true democracy, not rebellion, courage and not hysterical threats to play the rebel, the slacker.
"And now I"ll make you a cup of coffee. And never let me catch you here again!"
When Luke arrived home he found Steve O"Valley basking in the big chair he was wont to occupy, though it was past ten o"clock and he had antic.i.p.ated questions from Mary as to his tardiness. Instead he found a very rosy-cheeked, almost sunrise-eyed sister who stammered her greeting as the fl.u.s.tered Mr. O"Valley found his hat and the neglected business portfolio and took his leave.
CHAPTER XII
To keep down the rising tide of overweight Beatrice abandoned the occult method of having a good time and turned her interest to new creeds containing continual bogus joy and a denial of the vicarious theory of life. But when she discovered that optimism was no deterrent to the oncoming tide of flesh she began a vigorous course in face bleaching, reducing, ma.s.sage, and electrical treatments, with Trudy playing attentive friend and confidante and secretly chuckling over the Gorgeous Girl"s fast-appearing double chin and her disappearing waistline.
The extensive work of making the house into an Italian villa kept Beatrice from brooding too much over her _embonpoint_. She enjoyed the endless conferences with the decorators, drapers, artists, and who-nots, with Gay"s suave, flattering little self always at her elbow, his tactful remarks about So-and-so being altogether too thin, and the wonderful nutritive value of chocolate.
"Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty," he told Trudy soon after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near.
"She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas Day. Why doesn"t someone tell her to stop?"
Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come; Alice Twill"s idea of a French chateau, however, had blown up unexpectedly.
"Well, why don"t people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses that you wear?"
Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary"s secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit.
It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her.
Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.
It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure--it almost gave her a hold on her, she fancied--for Beatrice sighed with envy at Trudy"s one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for eating candy.
"Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin," she told Steve.
"Yes; but she works and you don"t. You don"t even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator," he continued.
Beatrice looked at him in scorn. "Do I ever please you?"
"You married me," he said, gallantly.
"When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I"m afraid,"
was his reward. "I wish you would study French--you have such a queer education you can"t help having queer ideas. And you can"t always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn"t room for two in the same family."
"Do you know the Bible?" he demanded.
Beatrice giggled.
"There you are! You think I haven"t studied in my own fashion. Well, if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton----"
"It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don"t, Stevuns! Do you know the latest dance from Spain--the _paso-doble_? Of course you don"t. You don"t know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You haven"t read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when they"re mentioned. You won"t play bridge, you can"t sing or make shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you"ve made a fortune--enjoy it!"
Steve was silent. It was not only futile to argue--it was nerve-racking.
Besides, he had found someone else with whom argument was a rare joy and a personal gain--Mary Faithful. At frequent intervals he had won a welcome at the doorway of the little apartment. He almost wished that Beatrice would find it out and row about it, leaving him in peace. He had not yet a.s.sumed unselfish views as to the matter. He was no longer in love with his wife but he was not yet in love with Mary.
Instead he was pa.s.sing through that interlude, whose brevity has made the world doubt its existence, known as platonic friendship.
Platonic friendship does exist but it is like tropical twilight--the one whirlwind second in which brilliant sunshine and blue skies dip down and the stars and the moon dash up--and then the trick is done!
But like the thief who audaciously walks by the house of his victim, Steve was never accused of anything worse than using his leisure time to frequent those low restaurants where they serve everything on a two-inch-thick platter. Which, he had retorted, was a relief from eating turtle steak off green-gla.s.s dinner plates.
The first wedding anniversary was a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms of reproach.
"Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away,"
her father said by way of clumsy consolation. "And he bought you a mighty handsome gift."
"But I have one quite as lovely," Beatrice objected. "It was unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let the police arrest everybody."
She laid aside the gift, a glittering head-dress in the form of platinum Mercury wings set with diamonds, fitting close to the head and giving a decided Brunnhilde effect. "I hate duplicates; I always want something different and novel."