University of Virginia Library

3. III

THE brother and sister dined alone. Clayton was finding his club a more comfortable place than his home, in those days of his wife's disillusionment and hesitation about the future. Many weak creatures are curiously armed for the unequal conflict of existence — some with fleetness of foot, some with a pole-cat weapon of malignance, some with porcupine quills, some with a 'possumlike instinct for “playing dead.” Of these last was Fitzhugh. He knew when to be silent, when to keep out of the way, when to “sit tight” and wait. His wife had discovered that he was a fool — that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other single factor for the success of his splendid pose of the thorough gentleman. Yet she did not realize what an utter fool he was, so clever had he been in the use of the art of discreet silence. Norman suspected him, but could not believe a human being capable of such fathomless vacuity as he found whenever he tried to explore his brother-in-law's brain.

After dinner Norman took Ursula to the opera, to join the Seldins, and after the first act went to Josephine, who had come with only a deaf old aunt.

Josephine loved music, and to hear an opera from a box one must be alone. Norman entered as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor — the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob — wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste and worshiper of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman had the fast-dyed snobbishness of his family and friends. He knew that caste was silly, that such displays as this vulgar flaunting of jewels and costly dresses were in atrocious bad taste. But it is one thing to know, another thing to feel; and his feeling was delight in the spectacle, pride in his own high rank in the aristocracy.

His eyes rested with radiant pleasure on the girl he was to marry. And she was indeed a person to appeal to the passion of pride. Simply and most expensively dressed in pearl satin, with only a little jewelry, she sat in the front of her parterre box, a queen by right of her father's wealth, her family's position, her own beauty. She was a large woman — tall, a big frame but not ungainly. She had brilliant dark eyes, a small proud head set upon shoulders that were

slenderly young now and, even when they should became matronly, would still be beautiful. She had good teeth, an exquisite smile, the gentle good humor of those who, comfortable themselves, would not have the slightest objection to all others being equally so. Because she laughed appreciatively and repeated amusingly she had great reputation for wit. Because she industriously picked up from men a plausible smatter of small talk about politics, religion, art and the like, she was renowned as clever verging on profound. And she believed herself both witty and wise — as do thousands, male and female, with far less excuse.

She had selected Norman for the same reason that he had selected her; each recognized the other as the “grand prize.” Pity is not nearly so close kin to love as is the feeling that the other person satisfies to the uttermost all one's pet vanities. It would have been next door to impossible for two people so well matched not to find themselves drawn to each other and filled with sympathy and the sense of comradeship, so far as there can be comradeship where two are driving luxuriously along the way of life, with not a serious cause for worry. People without half the general fitness of these two for each other have gone through to the end, regarding themselves and regarded as the most devoted of lovers. Indeed, they were lovers. Only one of those savage tests, to which in all probability they would never be exposed, would or could reveal just how much, or

how little, that vague, variable word lovers meant when applied to them.

As their eyes met, into each pair leaped the fine, exalted light of pride in possession. “This wonderful woman is mine!” his eyes said. And her eyes answered, “And you — you most wonderful of men — you are mine!” It always gave each of them a thrill like intoxication to meet, after a day's separation. All the joy of their dazzling good fortune burst upon them afresh.

“I'll venture you haven't thought of me the whole day,” said she as he dropped to the chair behind her.

It was a remark she often made — to give him the opportunity to say, “I've thought of little else, I'm sorry to say — I, who have a career to look after.” He made the usual answer, and they smiled happily at each other. “And you?” he said.

“Oh, I? What else has a woman to think about?”

Her statement was as true as his was false. He was indeed all she had to think about — all worth wasting the effort of thought upon. But he — though he did not realize it — had thought of her only in the incidental way in which an ambition-possessed man must force himself to think of a woman. The best of his mind was commandeered to his career. An amiable but shakily founded theory that it was “our” career enabled him to say without sense of lying that his chief thought had been she.

“How those men down town would poke fun at

you,” said she, “if they knew you had me with you all the time, right beside you.”

This amused him. “Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down.”

“Sometimes I wish I really were with you — working with you — helping you. You have girls — a girl — to be your secretary — or whatever you call it — don't you?”

“You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something pathetic about every girl who has to make her own living.”

“Pathetic!” protested Miss Burroughs. “Not at all. I think it's fine.”

“You wouldn't say that if you had tried it.”

“Indeed, I should,” she declared with spirit. “You men are entirely too soft about women. You don't realize how strong they are. And, of course, women don't resist the temptation to use their sex when they see how easy it is to fool men that way. The sad thing about it is that the woman who gets along by using her sex and by appealing to the soft-heartedness of men never learns to rely on herself. She's likely to come to grief sooner or later.”

“There's truth in all that,” said Norman. “Enough to make it dangerously unjust. There's so much lying done about getting on that it's no wonder those who've never tried to do for themselves get a wholly false notion

of the situation. It is hard — bitterly hard — for a man to get on. Most men don't. Most men? All but a mere handful. And if those who do get on were to tell the truth — the whole truth — about how they succeeded — well, it'd not make a pleasant story.”

“But you've got on,” retorted the girl.

“So I have. And how?” Norman smiled with humorous cynicism. “I'll never tell — not all — only the parts that sound well. And those parts are the least important. However, let's not talk about that. What I set out to say was that, while it's hard for a man to make a decent living — unless he has luck — and harder still — much harder — for him to rise to independence — — ”

“It wasn't so dreadfully hard for you,” interrupted Josephine, looking at him with proud admiration. “But then, you had a wonderful brain.”

“That wasn't what did it,” replied he. “And, in spite of all my advantages — friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the beginnings — in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the work. Of course, I had to work, but I like that. No, it was the — the maneuvering, let's call it — the hardening process.”

“You!” she exclaimed.

“Everyone who succeeds — in active life. You don't understand the system, dear. It's a cutthroat game. It isn't at all what the successful hypocrites describe in their talks to young men!” He laughed. “If I

had followed the `guides to success,' I'd not be here. Oh, yes, I've made terrible sacrifices, but — ” his look at her made her thrill with exaltation — “it was worth doing. . . . I understand and sympathize with those who scorn to succeed. But I'm glad I happened not to be born with their temperament, at least not with enough of it to keep me down.”

“You're too hard on yourself, too generous to the failures.”

“Oh, I don't mean the men who were too lazy to do the work or too cowardly to dare the — the unpleasant things. And I'm not hard with myself — only frank. But we were talking of the women. Poor things, what chance have they got? You scorn them for using their sex. Wait till you're drowning, dear, before you criticise another for what he does to save himself when he's sinking for the last time. I used everything I had in making my fight. If I could have got on better or quicker by the aid of my sex, I'd have used that.”

“Don't say those things, Fred,” cried Josephine, smiling but half in earnest.

“Why not? Aren't you glad I'm here?”

She gave him a long look of passionate love and lowered her eyes.

“At whatever cost?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “But I'm sure you exaggerate.”

“I've done nothing you wouldn't approve of — or

find excuses for. But that's because you — I — all of us in this class — and in most other classes — have been trained to false ideas — no, to perverted ideas — to a system of morality that's twisted to suit the demands of practical life. On Sundays we go to a magnificent church to hear an expensive preacher and choir, go in expensive dress and in carriages, and we never laugh at ourselves. Yet we are going in the name of One who was born in a stable and who said that we must give everything to the poor, and so on.”

“But I don't see what we could do about it — ” she said hesitatingly.

“We couldn't do anything. Only — don't you see my point? — the difference between theory and practice? Personally, I've no objection — no strong objection — to the practice. All I object to is the lying and faking about it, to make it seem to fit the theory. But we were talking of women — women who work.”

“I've no doubt you're right,” admitted she. “I suppose they aren't to blame for using their sex. I ought to be ashamed of myself, to sneer at them.”

“As a matter of fact, their sex does few of them any good. The reverse. You see, an attractive woman — one who's attractive as a woman — can skirmish round and find some one to support her. But most of the working women — those who keep on at it — don't find the man. They're not attractive, not even at the start. After they've been at it a few years and lose the little

bloom they ever had — why, they've got to take their chances at the game, precisely like a man. Only, they're handicapped by always hoping that they'll be able to quit and become married women. I'd like to see how men would behave if they could find or could imagine any alternative to `root hog or die.' ”

“What's the matter with you this evening, Fred? I never saw you in such a bitter mood.”

“We never happened to get on this subject before.”

“Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail.”

“And I still scoff at them — most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence — petty self-indulgence — that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you.”

“What a mood! Something must have happened.”

“Perhaps,” said he reflectively. “Possibly that girl set me off.”

“What girl?”

“The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon.

Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had. She was tall yet she wasn't. She seemed thin, and when you looked again, you saw that she was really only slender, and beautifully shaped throughout.”

Miss Burroughs laughed. “She must have been attractive.”

“Not in the least. Absolutely without charm — and so homely — no, not homely — commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank — pale, lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became — amazingly different. Not the same thing every time, but different things.”

Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to make the mistake — rather, to commit the breach of tact and courtesy — involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman. Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office machinery — and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly understood the look in her eyes — the strained effort to keep the telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of inward agitation.

“I'm very much interested,” said she.

“Yes, she was a curiosity,” said he carelessly.

“Has she been there — long?” inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.

“Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember.”

He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:

“She's your secretary now?”

“Merely a general office typewriter.”

The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage — apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the “curiosity.” He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous — it was ridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl — the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation — how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class — or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line — yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class — It was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world — a knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity,

it was offense to his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.

When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act. They were again alone — the deaf old aunt did not count. At once Josephine began upon the same subject. With studied indifference — how amusing for a woman of her inexperience to try to fool a man of his experience! — she said:

“Tell me some more about that typewriter girl. Women who work always interest me.”

“She wouldn't,” said Norman. The subject had been driven clean out of his mind, and he didn't wish to return to it. “Some day they will venture to make judicious long cuts in Wagner's operas, and then they'll be interesting. It always amuses me, this reverence of little people for the great ones — as if a great man were always great. No — he is always great. But often it's in a dull way. And the dull parts ought to be skipped.”

“I don't like the opera this evening,” said she. “What you said a while ago has set me to thinking. Is that girl a lady?”

“She works,” laughed he.

“But she might have been a lady.”

“I'm sure I don't know.”

“Don't you know anything about her?”

“Except that she's trustworthy — and insignificant and not too good at her business.”

“I shouldn't think you could afford to keep incompetent people,” said the girl shrewdly.

“Perhaps they won't keep her,” parried Norman gracefully. “The head clerk looks after those things.”

“He probably likes her.”

“No,” said Norman, too indifferent to be cautious. “She has no `gentlemen friends.' ”

“How do you know that?” said the girl, and she could not keep a certain sharpness out of her voice.

“Tetlow, the head clerk, told me. I asked him a few questions about her. I had some confidential work to do and didn't want to trust her without being sure.”

He saw that she was now prey to her jealous suspicion. He was uncertain whether to be amused or irritated. She had to pause long and with visible effort collect herself before venturing:

“Oh, she does confidential work for you? I thought you said she was incompetent.”

He, the expert cross-examiner, had to admire her skill at that high science and art. “I felt sorry for her,” he said. “She seemed such a forlorn little creature.”

She laughed with a constrained attempt at raillery. “I never should have suspected you of such weakness. To give confidential things to a forlorn little incompetent, out of pity.”

He was irritated, distinctly. The whole thing was preposterous. It reminded him of feats of his own before a jury. By clever questioning, Josephine had made about as trifling an incident as could be imagined take on really quite imposing proportions. There was annoyance in his smile as he said:

“Shall I send her up to see you? You might find it amusing, and maybe you could do something for her.”

Josephine debated. “Yes,” she finally said. “I wish you would send her — ” with a little sarcasm — “if you can spare her for an hour or so.”

“Don't make it longer than that,” laughed he. “Everything will stop while she's gone.”

It pleased him, in a way, this discovery that Josephine had such a common, commonplace weakness as jealousy. But it also took away something from his high esteem for her — an esteem born of the lover's idealizings; for, while he was not of the kind of men who are on their knees before women, he did have a deep respect for Josephine, incarnation of all the material things that dazzled him — a respect with something of the reverential in it, and something of awe — more than he would have admitted to himself. To-day, as of old, the image-makers are as sincere worshipers as visit the shrines. In our prostrations and genuflections in the temple we do not discriminate against the idols we ourselves have manufactured; on the contrary, them we worship with peculiar gusto. Norman knew his gods were frauds,

that their divine qualities were of the earth earthy. But he served them, and what most appealed to him in Josephine was that she incorporated about all their divine qualities.

He and his sister went home together. Her first remark in the auto was: “What were you and Josie quarreling about?”

“Quarreling?” inquired he in honest surprise.

“I looked at her through my glasses and saw that the was all upset — and you, too.”

“This is too ridiculous,” cried he.

“She looked — jealous.”

“Nonsense! What an imagination you have!”

“I saw what I saw,” Ursula maintained. “Well, I suppose she has heard something — something recent. I thought you had sworn off, Fred. But I might have known.”

Norman was angry. He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter how strong the temptation.

“It's a good idea, to make her jealous,” pursued his sister. “Nothing like jealousy to stimulate interest.”

“Josephine is not that sort of woman.”

“You know better. All women are that sort. All men, too. Of course, some men and women grow angry

and go away when they get jealous while others stick closer. So one has to be judicious.”

“Josephine and I understand each other far too well for such pettiness.”

“Try her. No, you needn't. You have.”

“Didn't I tell you — — ”

“Then what was she questioning you about?”

“Just to show you how wrong you were, I'll tell you. She was asking me about a poor little girl down at the office — one she wants to help.”

Ursula laughed. “To help out of your office, I guess. I thought you'd lived long enough, Fred, to learn that no woman trusts any man about any woman. Who is this `poor little girl'?”

“I don't even know her name. One of the typewriters.”

“What made Josephine jealous of her?”

“Haven't I told you Josephine was not — — ”

“But I saw. Who is this girl? — pretty?”

Norman pretended to stifle a yawn. “Josephine bored me half to death talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so much about so little.”

“Is there something up between you and the girl?” teased Ursula.

“Now, that's an outrage!” cried Norman. “She's got nothing but her reputation, poor child. Do leave her that.”

“Is she very young?”

“How should I know?”

“Youth is a charm in itself.”

“What sort of rot is this!” exclaimed he. “Do you think I'd drop down to anything of that kind — in any circumstances? A little working girl — and in my own office?”

“Why do you heat so, Fred?” teased the sister. “Really, I don't wonder Josephine was torn up.”

An auto almost ran into them — one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle — and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was uncertain whether he remembered aright.

Said Ursula, as they entered the house, “A girl working in the office with a man has a magnificent chance at him. It's lucky for the men that women don't know their business, but are amateurs and too stuck on themselves to set and bait their traps properly. Is that girl trying to get round you?”

“What possesses everybody to-night!” cried Norman. “I tell you the girl 's as uninteresting a specimen as you could find.”

“Then why are you so interested in her?” teased the sister.

Norman shrugged his shoulders, laughed with his normal easy good humor and went to his own floor.

On top of the pile of letters beside his plate, next morning, lay a note from Josephine:

“Don't forget your promise about that girl, dear. I've an hour before lunch, and could see her then. I was out of humor last night. I'm very penitent this morning. Please forgive me. Maybe I can do something for her.

“JOSEPHINE.”

Norman read with amused eyes. “Well!” soliloquized he, “I'm not likely to forget that poor little creature again. What a fuss about nothing!”