CHAPTER VIII
The day of Mrs. Faithful"s funeral was the day that Beatrice O"Valley had arranged to introduce Trudy Vondeplosshe to her bridge club, the members of which were keen to see Gay"s wife in order to prove whether or not Bea"s report concerning her was correct--that she was a clever young person quite capable of taking care of both her own and Gay"s futures.
Beatrice particularly looked forward to the afternoon. Introducing Trudy served as an attraction, and besides the hostess had telephoned her that she had just received a box of Russian sweetmeats made by a refugee who was starting life anew in New York, and two barrels of china, each barrel containing but three plates and each plate being valued at six hundred dollars. Furthermore, Beatrice was wearing an afternoon costume that would demand no small share of attention, and there was the additional joy of dazzling Trudy by her tapestry-lined winter car. So when Steve reminded her in a matter-of-fact way that the funeral services for Mrs. Faithful were to be at three she stared in amazement.
"My dear boy, I am very sorry your secretary"s muzzy has died--but I cannot change my plans. I accepted for both Trudy Vondeplosshe and myself more than a week ago."
Steve wondered if he had heard correctly. "You don"t imagine for an instant that Trudy will not go? She boarded there; they did everything for her."
Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. "She was phoning me before lunch and is all agog with excitement. Poor little thing, it means a lot for her. She will be ready at three and I am to call for her."
"I don"t think she understands the funeral is to-day. I know she is heartless and shallow, but even she would scarcely omit such a duty."
Beatrice gave a long sigh. "Dear me, you ought to have been an evangelist. I can"t understand why you suddenly become punctilious and altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and wonder if I would marry you--you never cared who was dead or what happened as long as you were secure."
"Quite true. But I have made a fortune and married you, and it is time for other things."
"You are welcome to them," she said, quite enjoying the argument.
"Besides, I sent my card with the flowers."
"It isn"t the same as going yourself, it is your duty to go, Bea. The girl has taken the brunt of business while we played and she has only the reward of a salary. Her mother has died, which means that her home is gone. I call it thick to choose a bridge party instead of paying a humane debt."
"Why am I dragged into it? She isn"t working for me! Papa never asked me to go when any of his people had relatives who died. I don"t think he ever went himself unless there was a claim to be adjusted."
"I shouldn"t ask it if it were any one else--but Mary Faithful is different."
"You are quite ardent in your defence of her. Be sensible, Steve.
What does it matter whether I go or don"t go? I think it quite enough if you appear. Now if she were in need of actual money----"
"Oh, certainly!" he said, bitterly. "That would give you the chance to play off Lady Bountiful, drive up in state with your check book and accept figurative kisses on the hand! But when a plain American business girl who has served me more loyally than she has herself loses her mother you won"t be a few moments late at a bridge party in order to pay her the respect employers should pay their employees. I don"t blame Trudy--I expect nothing of her--but I do blame you."
"So my plans are to be set aside----?"
"Plans!" he interrupted. "If someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about all your plans amount to."
Beatrice"s eyes had grown slanting, shining with rage. "I wish you would remember you are speaking to your wife and not to an employee. I would not go to that funeral now if it meant--if it meant a divorce."
She pushed her chair back from the table--they were at luncheon--and stood up indignantly.
Looking at her in her gay light chiffon with its traceries of gold Steve wondered vaguely whether or not he had been wrong in selecting his goal, whether he would ever be able really to understand this Gorgeous Girl now that she belonged to him, or would discover that there was nothing much to understand about her, that it could all be summed up in the statement that her father by denying her a chance at development had stunted the growth of her ability and her character into raggle-taggle weeds of self-indulgence and willful temper.
"I shall not ask you to go with me," he knew he answered. It is quite as terrifying to find that one"s goal has been wrongly chosen and ethically unsound as to find a boyhood dream merging into gorgeous reality.
Beatrice swept out of the room. Steve made an elaborate pretense of finishing his meal. Then he went into the drawing room in search of a newspaper. He came upon Beatrice sitting on a floor cushion, feeding Monster some bonbons.
"Have you been at her house?" she said, curiosity overcoming the pique.
"Yes. Where is that paper? I dropped it in this chair when I came in for luncheon."
"I had it taken away. I abominate newspapers in a drawing room--or muddy shoes," she added, looking at his own. "What did she say? What sort of a house is it?"
Steve stared at her in bewilderment. "What the devil difference does it make to you?" he demanded, roughly.
She gave a little scream. "Don"t you dare say such things to me." Then she began to cry very prettily in a singsong, high-pitched voice.
"Monster--n.o.body loves us--n.o.body loves us--we can"t have a merry Christmas after all."
"I shan"t be home for dinner," Steve added more politely. "Miss Faithful"s absence just now makes things quite rushed--I"ll work until late."
Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor.
"Oh, you are trying to punish me!"--pretending mock horror. "Stevuns dear, don"t mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to understand. And I"ll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads....
No? You won"t let me fib? Horrid old thing--come and kiss me!... Ah, you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale tables--and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don"t let the old funeral frazzle you!"
Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether his intuitive impression was correct--that Beatrice was not the sort of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the matter.
Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend, for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back and forth this same pathway twice a day.
Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any of the customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told him. The old house had not a.s.sumed a funereal air. There were flowers on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had ever been in life.
Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing incessantly.
He was thinking about Mary Faithful"s pleasant manner, the atmosphere of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with pa.s.sing interest.
Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers, the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there, distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was, to have such a sister.
Mary was about Beatrice"s age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a mult.i.tude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.
The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of an excuse. He wanted to talk to her--not of business but of life, of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss Trudy"s slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!
The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers approached and halted before the cashier"s cage. Steve began watching them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of the _High Blood Pressure Weekly_ lay at one side. What attracted Steve was the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife!
Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock with gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Though it was December the toothpick point of a white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice"s general appearance. She had the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become owner of half a whitefish or so.
Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a counterpart of Beatrice O"Valley was making change at Sullivan"s Fish Market--but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of Beatrice O"Valley dressed and rouged--and acted very often--in such a fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen sought industriously to imitate them.
Luke showed his grief in the normal manner of any half-grown, true-blue lad, singularly thoughtful of his sister"s wishes, and mentioning everyone and everything except their mother and her death.
"We won"t give up having a home," Mary told him the night of the funeral; "we"ll move into a smaller place so I can take care of it."
"I guess I"ll work pretty hard at school," was all he answered.
"Of course you will. I"m proud of you now, and if you work and show you deserve it I"ll help you through college."
Luke shook his head. "Takes too long before I could get to earning real money. You ought to have it easy pretty soon."
"I love my work. Besides, you will live your own life, and so you must grow up and love someone and marry her. I can"t depend on any one but myself," she added, a little bitterly.
Luke stared into the fire. Perhaps this tousle-haired, freckle-faced boy surmised his sister"s love-story. If so no one--least of all his sister--should ever hear of the facts from his lips.