The Gorgeous Girl Part 24

"Are you ever bored?"

"Only enough to be fas.h.i.+onable. You see I have to live Gay's life and career and my own at the same time." Instinctively Trudy knew this caused envy in her hostess's heart for a mult.i.tude of reasons. "Gay never amounted to anything until we were married"--she paused for this to take full effect--"and I enjoy playing the game. I have grown fond of makes.h.i.+fts and make-believes and hedging, bluffing, stalling, jumping mental hurdles--it's fun--it keeps you alive and never weighing more than a hundred and ten pounds."

Trudy rose to go. She was a _chic_ little vixen in a fantastic costume of black velvet with a jacket of blush pink. No one but Trudy could have worn such a thing--a semi-d.i.c.k-Whittington effect--and have gotten away with it. Though she was physically very tired from sewing late the night before, and mal-nourished because she was too indolent to bother to cook, Trudy looked quite fit for a long stretch of hard running.

"Why don't you diet seriously?" she purred. "It's only right for your true friends to tell you. The double chin is permanent, I'm afraid."

She shook her shapely little head, to Beatrice's inward rage.

As Beatrice sat looking up at this impertinent little person she suddenly became angered to think she had ever bothered with an ex-office girl or permitted g.a.y.l.o.r.d to coax her into being nice to his wife. And if this impossible person could bring g.a.y.l.o.r.d into the ranks of prosperity in a short time, making everyone accept her, what couldn't she, Beatrice O'Valley, do with Gay if she tried--seriously tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew g.a.y.l.o.r.d too well; he suddenly a.s.sumed the figurative form of a goal, as she had once a.s.sumed to Steve--a play pastime--in the true sense. A real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman, not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have a property doll all one's own, different from the impersonal, harmless herd of boys and poets, a really innocent pastime if you considered it in the eyes of man-written law. What a lark--to switch Gay from this cheap, red-haired little woman, dominate his life, suddenly a.s.sert her starved abilities, and make him become far greater than anything Trudy had ever been able to do! It would cause such a jolly row and excitement and pep everyone up. Pet and flatter him and show Trudy that after all she had only been an incompetent clerk in Steve's office!

"Perhaps I will diet," was all she said, smiling sweetly. "And tell Gay he must come see me to-morrow. I have a plan that I want to tell him--and no one else. Besides, there is a flaw in the last pair of candlesticks he bought for me."

Trudy realized perfectly well that sweetness from the lips of an obese lady, after one has a.s.sured her of the arrival of a double chin, always augurs ill for everyone.

Originally Trudy had determined to use g.a.y.l.o.r.d as a stepping-stone, a rather satisfactory first husband. But since Beatrice's commission to do the villa and the stream of like orders from the new-rich who were trying to unload their war fortunes before they were caught at it, Trudy had grown content and even keen about g.a.y.l.o.r.d in an impersonal sense. She felt that she could not better herself if he continued to do as well as he had the last few months, and that she would continue to do her share of hill-climbing indefinitely. In other words, having won g.a.y.l.o.r.d in the remnant department, Trudy decided to keep him and make him answer the purpose of paying her board bill.

Besides, though she admitted it only to Mary, she felt anything but well. The more money g.a.y.l.o.r.d made the more he spent on himself, and he seemed to expect Trudy to manage out of the ozone, yet to appear as the indulged wife of her enterprising young husband. It never ended--the eternal searching for bargains; dyeing clothes and mending, cleaning, and pressing; living on delicatessen food; sitting up nights to help out with the work, often doing odds and ends of sewing, and appearing the next afternoon in the customer's house to admire the effect of the new drapery and tell of the bright-eyed Italian woman who had done the work.

Trudy saw little of Mary. Her better self made her stay aloof lest she win from her friend other details to add to her already safeguarded secret. And she never attempted to amuse Steve. She fought shy of him when he was about, wisely limiting herself to shy nods and smiles and occasionally a very meek compliment, which he usually pretended not to hear.

As she walked home from the villa--Gay had the roadster--she told herself that she must watch out or Beatrice would attempt to spoil Gay to the extent of making him wish to be rid of his wife. She realized that Gay was extremely scornful and careless of her. Having married her and satisfied his one-cylinder brain that he was a deuce of a chap and a democratic rake in marrying this das.h.i.+ng n.o.body g.a.y.l.o.r.d turned bully and permitted Trudy to take the cares of the family on her shoulders. He was now enjoying the fruits of her industry with a fair credit rating, very different from formerly, a bank account of which Trudy knew nothing, and the congenial work of p.u.s.s.yfooting about boudoirs and guzzling tea while perched on Beatrice's blue-satin gondolas.

He no longer needed Trudy. He could see now that to be single-handed once more, but with his new standing and profession, would be a most satisfactory state of affairs. In fact, if Trudy would only fall in love with a travelling man and decamp--what a chap he would soon rise to be! For a broken heart is often a man's strongest a.s.set and a woman's gravest suspicion. Trudy, however, gave him no hope in this direction. She hung about her fireplace contrary to her former plans concerning it. She really put in an eighteen-hour day as both slavey and sylph, and seemed filled with everlasting patience and jazz.

Coming into the Touraine apartment Trudy found g.a.y.l.o.r.d showing old prints to some woman customers and advising as to the smartness of having them framed and used in sun parlours or any intriguing little nook. Trudy was _de trop_--she was prettier than the prospective customers, but in their eyes she had only a Winter-Garden personality--and Gay frowned his welcome.

Had Trudy not come in Gay would have served c.o.c.ktails of his own making, which would cause them to order the prints at fabulous prices; and then sat in the dusk talking about the occult and the popularity of Persian p.u.s.s.y cats and how to make pear-and-cottage-cheese salad and serve it on cabbage leaves, which was quite the mode. It never does for an interior decorator, particularly if specializing in boudoirs, to have a wife, g.a.y.l.o.r.d decided as his customers patronized Trudy and departed, g.a.y.l.o.r.d seeing them to their car and standing bareheaded to wave his bejewelled hand as they whirled round the corner.

He then returned to give Trudy his unbia.s.sed opinion. "I thought you were going to stay away until evening," he said. "You spoiled the sale."

"Did I? What were you about to do--play soul mate if they'd take the old things? I'm the one who found those prints in a second-hand store and had sense enough to buy the lot. I'm the one who found the remnants of cretonne you paste them on--and told you to charge ten dollars each--and I'm the one who sits out in the little back room and pastes them on, too!"

She threw her purse down with an angry gesture.

"You are the crudest thing," he said.

"I slapped you once for calling me a crude little fool--and the next time you try it I'll do better than that!" She was unable to control her temper. "If you think being a bachelor and languis.h.i.+ng in this place would keep you afloat you're mistaken. It's me--I'm the one that buys the bargains and runs the sewing machine half the night, sends out the bills and wheedles the salesmen into looking at you--to say nothing of doing the housekeeping, and keeping every good-looking woman afraid of me, yet polite. Why, if you were alone any real business man could come in here and start a shop and put you behind the bench overnight. You're nothing! You never were. You lived on a dead man's reputation until you married me, and now you're living on a redheaded girl's nerve. I'll scold as shrilly as I like. If the neighbours hear, all the better!"

Trudy had lost control of herself. Besides, she was very tired. "Who told you to wear gray-velvet smocks in your drawing-room shop and to have soft ties poured down softer collars? You look a hundred per cent, better than when you hopped round in a check suit that gave you a gameboard appearance. I did that. If I'd ever worked for O'Valley as I have for you, thinking I'd get a good time out of it somehow, I'd have had Mary Faithful on the run."

She did not add the rest of her ideas--that Beatrice O'Valley, not contented with her store of possessions and avenues of interests, contemplated playing property doll with this half-portion little sn.o.b who stood before her in his ridiculous smock costume, half afraid and half sneering.

The interview concluded with Trudy's going to the kitchen for some kind of a supper and Gay's driving off post haste to see Beatrice.

When Steve returned from his hurried two-day trip he asked Beatrice if she realized the amount of money she was spending.

"Why should I?" she answered, aggrievedly. Steve looked unusually handsome this afternoon, and seemed to fit into the antique chair; and, in contrast to her contemplated property doll, Beatrice felt amiable and willing to play for favour. "I haven't asked you for one quarter of it."

"That's the trouble--your father has gone on paying your bills, and you don't seem to realize I am not an enormously rich man--and never will be, abnormal business conditions having ceased. We are back where we started, so to speak, and I don't look for a time of unheralded prosperity for some days to come. I was figuring up while I was away, in detail; and here are the results." He handed her a memorandum. "You see? I earn a splendid living and I have a neat nest egg not to be despised. But I have no Italian-villa income. Your father has, so you came back to your father to take his money and I am merely a necessary accessory to the entire ensemble." His voice was bitter.

"Oh, no, Stevuns!" She was quite the romantic parasite as she came and knelt beside him in coaxing att.i.tude. "Why, papa wishes me to have everything I want. He would be terribly worried if he thought I had to do without a single shoe b.u.t.ton!"

"But must all the shoe b.u.t.tons be of gold?" Steve interpolated.

She paid no attention to him. "I'm papa's only heir--the money is all mine, anyway, and it always has been. You know how simple papa's tastes are."

"Like my own--like those of all busy people who are doing things. We haven't time to pamper ourselves."

"Someone has to buy up the tras.h.!.+ And you ought to thank us rich darlings of the G.o.ds for existing at all--we make you look so respectable by contrast." She waited for his answer.

He rose and went over to the carved mantel, standing so he could look down the long room crowded with luxuries.

"But this place isn't the home of an American man and his wife. It's a show place--bought with your father's money! And I've failed. I'm not supporting my wife. Good heavens, if I were I'd have to be cracking safes every week-end to do it. I can't make any more money than I am making--and stay at large--and you cannot go on living off your father and being my wife. I won't have it! I won't be that kind of a failure!"

"What shall I do with the money, throw it to the birds?" Her head began to ache, as it always did when a serious conversation was at hand.

"Wait until it is yours and then spend it on something for the good--not the delight--of someone else, or of a great many other people. Be my wife--let me take care of you," he begged, earnestly.

Beatrice hesitated. "I couldn't," was her final answer. "I couldn't manage with the allowance you give me--don't worry, dearest, there's no reason at all that we shouldn't have as good a time as there is.

Papa wants us to."

"Don't you see what I'm trying to get at?" he insisted. "Won't you try to see? Just try--put yourself in my place, make yourself think with my viewpoint as a starting place. Suppose you had been a dreamer of a boy with a pirate's daring and a poet's unreal delusions, and you combined the two to produce a fortune, a fortune everyone marvelled at, the lucky turn of the wheel. Suppose you used that fortune with the same daring and fancy, loving someone with all your heart, to make money in a regular business and under the guidance of a well-trained merchant like your father--and then you married the person you loved and saw her deliberately belittle your manhood by going to her father's house to live, spending her father's money, and leaving you quite alone and without the joyous and needed responsibility of supporting your wife. Now what would you do?"

"I'd start right in spending my own money for things I wanted," she decided, glibly.

"But suppose you did not want things--cluttery, everlasting things, glaring, upholstered, painted, carved, what not--lugged from the four corners of the earth, not harmonizing with your own aims or interests? Suppose you wanted to create an individual and representative home and take care of it and the guardian angel who presided therein--then what would you do?"

"Oh--you mean you want another style of house? Then let's buy a country tract--and I promise to let you build and furnish just as you wish. That's a bully idea, dear, to have an abrupt contrast to this house--old-English manor type would be wonderful!"

The dinner gong brought a merciful release. Beatrice danced through the archway throwing him a kiss as the rest of her decision.

It was at this identical moment that Steve concluded it was too late for his wife ever to develop anything more than a double chin or so.

CHAPTER XVI

During Beatrice's house party, at which twenty or so equally Gorgeous Girls and their husbands were quartered in the Villa Rosa, while a string orchestra danced them further along the road toward nervous prostration each night, a fire ignited in the offices of the O'Valley Leather Company.

Steve's office and Mary's adjoining room were damaged by water rather than by the slight blaze itself and during an enforced recess from work both Mary and Steve found that a fire in an office building may cause a loss of time from routine yet be a great personal boon.

The day following the accident, Steve having been summoned at midnight to view the flames, Mary came to the office to try to rescue the files and sweep aside the debris.

"Nothing is really hurt, but they always mess things up," Steve said, coming to the doorway to hold up a precious record book. "See this? I wonder why they always leave such a lot of stuff to clear away. Now the whole extent of damage is the destroying of that rickety side stairway that is never used and could have been done away with long ago. Some boys, playing c.r.a.ps and smoking, left the makings of the fire and before it touched these rooms there was water poured into the whole plant. As a consequence, we have a three-day vacation and instead of having the side stairs torn down I'm in line for a chunk of insurance."