At the Age of Eve Part 15

When I first discovered this mighty reverence in them for the man who is so kingly to me I felt that they must recognize in him that wonderful _regal_ attribute, which so irresistibly attracted me. But I soon learned, for we were together constantly, that Evelyn fears and dislikes him, and the only time during those weeks of companionship that she displayed the slightest eagerness over anything was when she was urging me to accompany them on some pleasure party, where, unless I should go along with them, they would be left solely to the companionship of her august brother.

"He's so much nicer when you're around," she explained to me one time with a look of pleading candor, when she was insisting that I go to dinner with them that evening. I had received pressing invitations from the three members of the family, but was hesitating on account of Mammy Lou's slogan.

Evelyn is an intensely inane girl, but not bad at heart, and it had not occurred to her that she was saying the wrong thing. Her mother, who is much more acute, came forward with a flurried palliation for Evelyn's thoughtless words. Richard is so dignified that Evelyn has never grown to _know_ him, she explained, with what impressed me as undue haste; he is so much older than she, and has been away from home so much of recent years.

"It doesn't make me think any less of him to know that you are both deadly afraid of him," I smiled to myself as I ran up-stairs to change my dress. "But I am not in the least afraid of him."

His women are not at all like Richard, even in so far as length, breadth and thickness go. The quality in him which results in simply a splendid physique, in them tends toward heaviness, and I have heard from his own lips that he "hates dumpy women." Yet he cares extremely for the handsome appearance which they make in their expensive clothes, and his cold dignity finds a pleased echo in their studied correctness.

Correct they both are, and stylish and _orthodox_, church and clothes being the alpha and omega of their conversation.

They are conventionally polite, whereas he is always superbly courteous; and Mrs. Chalmers can invariably be depended upon to do and say exactly the right thing. Evelyn pa.s.ses muster all right, because she never does or says anything.

While Richard's mother can describe to the turning of a milliner's fold the latest foibles of fashion's fancy, she is complacently old-fashioned in her notions about other things, maintaining the faith in which she was brought up, namely, that all children should be whipped and all husbands watched, while women should say their prayers regularly and see that their corsets suit their figure. She quotes the Bible unendingly and is so morbidly "proper" and ladylike that I am sure she thinks, if she ever thought about it at all, that being burned at the stake was no more than Joan of Arc deserved for being so immodest as to ride cross-saddle before all those fast and loose Frenchmen.

It fell to Cousin Eunice's lot to go shopping with Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn; and to the hair-dressers, and to the thousand and one other places that out-of-town women always feel that they must visit when they are in a city for a little while. I usually fight shy of this phase of getting acquainted, not because, as you may think, that Richard was never along, for he was frequently; but simply because I _hate_ shopping.

One morning, only a little while before they were to go back to Charlotteville, they asked Cousin Eunice to meet them in the city as they had some rather important purchases to make and desired her judgment on the matter. Cousin Eunice has known Richard's family ever since he shot up so suddenly on the political firmament, and she had shopped with them before, so she fortified herself for this occasion by putting on her most comfortable shoes and arranging her hair to stand the strain of a day's long crusade away from a mirror.

I had been invited to lunch with Ann Lisbeth that day, for there had been killed a fatted calf to glorify Alfred's birthday, and I pleaded this engagement when I was politely urged to join, at least for a while, the shopping expedition.

"I wish you would come on in and see that coat I'm worried over,"

Evelyn rather insisted, as I was about to make my adieus at the entrance of one of the big shops, without even glancing at the bewildering array of new fall goods displayed in the windows.

Clearly Evelyn considered my seeming indifference to fashionable apparel a pose, for she continued, looking at me slightly aggrieved: "You evidently must be interested in your own clothes. Richard said last night that you were a feast for an artist."

My face turned a little red, but I meekly followed them on into the place. I might have told her that, while to _her_ clothes were an end, to me they were a means--and no one is ever deeply interested in a mere means. Yet when the end is such a speech as _that_ from such a man as that, it stands one in hand to take a little interest in the means. This brought about the frenzied overhauling of raiment which I inst.i.tuted this morning.

Although it was still warm weather, the autumn stock of furs was already on exhibition, and Evelyn's attention had been particularly attracted by a coat of short, glossy, and very expensive fur. One more sight of the attractive garment decided her.

"Well, I'm certainly glad you've made up your mind," Mrs. Chalmers said, as she opened her shopping-bag and drew out her check-book. She was busily filling out the blank after "Pay to the order of" when she suddenly stopped and looked up at Evelyn.

"I wish I could get this cashed somewhere else," she said in a low voice, "for Richard will criticize our taste unmercifully when he learns that this amount of money has been paid for that coat. He always looks over my returned checks."

"Oh, we'll just tell him that this was the entire amount of our shopping bill at this store," Evelyn answered easily, as if such a deception might be an every-day affair with them. "If he asks me I'll tell him that the coat cost only half of what it did."

"That's true, we can do that," Mrs. Chalmers said, looking relieved and going on with her writing. "But don't you forget to back me up in whatever I tell him."

After she had handed the check to the gratified saleswoman and again given directions about a slight alteration in the set of the collar she turned to Cousin Eunice and said a word or two in explanation.

"Richard is such a critic," she stated rather absently, her eyes fixed on a handsome evening wrap hanging in a case close by; "when he knows we have paid a good deal for our clothes it seems to give him real pleasure to criticize them. He says Evelyn and I will buy anything a shop-girl shows us if she will only flatter us enough. So I am in for doing anything that will keep the peace. I consider it one of the first duties of a Christian."

Her mouth closed primly for a moment after her last sentence, but opened again almost immediately, for her eyes were still fascinated by the beauty of the delicate-colored wrap.

"Mrs. Clayborne, _do_ you think I am too stout for one of those loose cloaks?"

I stood for a moment looking at the group and fingering the handle of my shopping-bag nervously. I was glad that my opinion of the evening wrap was not asked, for I should have given a random answer. I was wondering so many things in so short a s.p.a.ce of time that my brain could not find room for words just then. Of all the different kinds of lies that one meets up with in life it has always seemed to me that the lies women tell about the cost of clothes are the lowest cla.s.s.

What a deplorable lack of understanding must exist between members of a family when such lying is deemed necessary! I imagined mother or me trying to lie to father--about the cost of clothes!

The bewitching evening wrap was brought forth from its case and Mrs.

Chalmers and Evelyn trailed away after the shop-woman to the dressing-room. Cousin Eunice and I sat down to wait for them. She looked at her watch, stifled a yawn, and then turned to me rather hesitatingly.

"I wonder if our friend, Mr. Chalmers, is a domestic tyrant?" she said.

I started, for this phase of the matter had not presented itself to my mind.

"He doesn't seem to be," I answered, with as much nonchalance as I could muster. "Of course every one can see that they both stand in awe of him; but I thought that must be because he is so extraordinarily--clever."

She laughed, then she looked at me more seriously.

"If it were only his cleverness they would not be hypocritical with him. And tyrants _do_ breed hypocrites."

"Not unless there is hypocritical material--to start out with."

"I--don't know! If you loved a tyrant, and desired above everything else to please him, it might mean the ultimate ruin of even _your_ frank character."

"I couldn't love a tyrant," I argued.

"You might not recognize the tyrant in him--until after you had married him," she said.

The same uneasy feeling that again came over me when I discussed his political prospects took possession of me then, and I started to ask her frankly what she had in mind, when Evelyn came up and said that her mother wanted Cousin Eunice to come and see her with the wrap on.

So she pa.s.sed on back to the dressing-room to help decide the momentous question, while Evelyn and I sat there and discussed the good points of the coat she had just bought.

Ann Lisbeth was sweet and wholesome when I met her an hour or two later--an admirable antidote to the disagreeable feeling I had brought away from the shops.

"Alfred doesn't know you're coming," she said with a bright smile, "he'll be so pleased!"

As is usual when the fatted calf is killed for a medicine man he takes that occasion to be an hour late--an emergency case at the last minute, or some one at the office that it took an unreasonable time to get through with. I hardly heard the excuse which Alfred made when he came in, but I knew it was true, whatever it was, and, as Doctor Gordon was not going to be able to come at all, we three went in and gave ourselves up to the joy of the occasion.

I was absently eating everything that was brought to me, and was thinking all the while how perfectly preposterous it was that Richard Chalmers--a man like Richard Chalmers--should have such weak-minded females attached to him; and I had just reached the conclusion that there could never, _never_ be anything like friendship between us, no matter what there might be as an occasion for friendship, when the dessert was brought in, and with it a great, beautiful cake, iced in forget-me-nots.

"Now, don't you think I'm sentimental?" Ann Lisbeth asked with a smile, after we had used up all the adjectives that we had at our command. "You see, I thought maybe Alfred's next birthday might be spent in London, or Vienna, or somewhere far away--and I knew that I was going to have you here to-day, Ann--so I told the woman who made the cake to be sure and use forget-me-nots. So when he thinks of us on his next birthday he will have to remember how much we all love him!"

All of a sudden I had that uncomfortable feeling that comes in my throat sometimes when I don't want it to, and I realized that if something did not happen to divert my mind I should certainly cry.

Ever since his graduation Alfred had been trying to devise means for this course of study abroad, and I had known how much better his practice had been lately, but somehow, I had not thought of his going so far away so _soon_. Suppose Mammy Lou should have gall-stones again!

I wrestled for a moment with that awful lump in my throat; then I spoke, and my voice was natural again.

"Is this sudden 'wanderl.u.s.t' the outcome of collecting all those nickels?" I asked with a laugh.

After we left the table Alfred and I went into the library for a while, and Ann Lisbeth stayed in the dining-room to keep her husband company while he ate, for he had come in just as we were finishing, and declared that he was starved.

"Ann, I have a surprise for you," Alfred said, springing up from the big leather chair into whose depths he had lazily thrown himself a moment before. He sometimes took a short nap after luncheon, when he had been out all the night before, and I had picked up a magazine to amuse myself with in case he deserted me in favor of his siesta.

"A surprise?" He had given me a surprise the last time I spent the day at the Gordons'.