The Squirrel-Cage Part 28

Lydia looked rather dazed at this brisk and matter-of-fact disposing of the matter, and seemed about to make a comment, but the bell rang for card-playing to begin and Mrs. Emery hurried to her table.

Lydia had meant to ask her mother's sympathy about another matter that for the time was occupying her own thoughts, but there was no other opportunity for further speech between them during the card party--Mrs.

Emery devoting herself with her usual competent energy to playing a good game. She played much better bridge than did either of her daughters.

She liked cards, liked to excel and always found easy to accomplish what seemed to her worth doing. Marietta also felt that to avoid being "queer" and "different" one had to play a good hand, but, as she herself confessed, it made her "sick" to give up to it the necessary time and thought. As for Lydia, she got rid of her cards as fast as possible, as if with the deluded hope that when they were all played, she might find time for something else. On the afternoon in question her game was more unscientific than usual. Criticism was deterred from articulate expression by the common feeling in regard to her, a.s.siduously fostered by Flora Burgess' continuous references to her in _Society Notes_ as the coming social ruler of Endbury's smart set. There was as yet, to be sure, no visible indication whatever of such a capacity on Lydia's part, but the printed word--particularly Miss Burgess' printed word--was not to be doubted. Madeleine Hollister, however (now soon to be Madeleine Lowdor), was no respecter of personages, past or future. At the appearance of an especially unexpected and disappointing card from her sister-in-law's hand, she pounced upon her with: "Lydia, what _are_ you thinking about?"

"My washwoman's grandson," burst out Lydia, laying down her cards with a careless negligence, so that everyone could see the contents of her hand. "Oh, Madeleine! I'm so worried about her, and I wish you'd--"

She got no further. Madeleine's shriek of good-natured laughter cut her short like a blow in the face. The other ladies were laughing, too.

"Oh, Lydia! You are the most original, unexpected piece in the world!"

cried her sister-in-law. "You'll be the death of me!" She appealed to the other players at their table: "Did you ever hear anything come out funnier?"

To the players at the next tables, who were looking with vague, reflected smiles at this burst of merriment, she called: "Oh, it's too killing! Lydia Hollister just played a trump on a trick her partner had already taken, and when I asked what in the world she was thinking about--meaning, of course--"

Lydia sat silent, looking at her useless cards during the rest of the narration of her comic speech. She was reflecting rather sadly that she had been very foolish to think, even in a thoughtless impulse, of telling Madeleine the story she had so impetuously begun. After a time it came to her, as a commentary of the little incident, that neither could she get anything from Marietta in the matter. At the end of the party, she and her mother walked together to the street-cars, but she still said nothing of what was in her mind. She would not admit to herself that her mother would receive it as she felt sure Marietta and Madeleine would, but--she dared not risk putting her to the test. It was a period in Lydia's life when she was constantly in fear of tests applied to the people she loved and longed to admire.

During the half-hour's noisy journey out to Bellevue--the unhackneyed name that had been selected for the new and fashionable suburb she inhabited--she had eliminated from this crisis in her mind, one by one, all the people in her circle. Dr. Melton was out of town. Otherwise she would have gone to him at once. Mrs. Sandworth without her brother was a cipher with no figure before it. Her father?--she realized suddenly that it was the first time she had ever thought of going to her father with a perplexity. No; she knew too little about his view of things. She had never talked with him of anything but the happenings of the day. Flora Burgess--devoted Flora? Lydia smiled ruefully as she thought of the att.i.tude Flora Burgess would be sure to take.

It finally came to the point where there was no one left but Paul; and Paul ought not to be worried with domestic questions lest his capacity for business be impaired. She had a deep inculcated sense of the necessity and duty of "doing her share," as the phrase had gone in the various exhortations addressed to her before her marriage. The next few years would be critical ones in Paul's career, and the road must be straight and clear before his feet--the road that led to Success. No one had voiced a doubt that this road was not coincident with all other desirable ones; no one had suggested that the same years would be critical in other directions and would be certain to be terribly and irrevocably determinative of his future relation to his wife.

Lydia, ardently and navely anxious to find something "worth doing,"

therefore had settled on this one definite duty. She had wrestled in a determined silence with the many incompetent and degenerate negresses, with the few impertinent Americans, with the drunken Irish and insolent Swedes, who had filed in and out of her kitchen ever since her marriage. Suburban life was a new thing in Endbury, and "help" could see no advantages in it. She had strained every nerve to make them appear to Paul, as well as to the rest of the world, the opposite of what they were; and to do herself, furtively, when Paul was not there, those of their tasks they refused or neglected. Every effort was concentrated, as in her mother's and sister's households, on keeping a maid presentable to open the door and to wait on the table, rather than to perform the heavier parts of the daily round. Those Lydia could do herself, or she could hire an unpresentable older scrubwoman to do them. She often thought that if she could but employ scrubwomen all the time, the problem would be half solved. But the achievement of each day was, according to Endbury standards, to keep or get somebody into the kitchen who could serve a course dinner, even if the mistress of the house was obliged to prepare it.

She had never dreamed of feeling herself aggrieved, or even surprised, by this curious reverse side to her outward brilliant life. All her married friends went through the same experience. Madeleine, it is true, announced that she was going to make Lowdor import two j.a.panese servants a year, and dismiss them when they began to get American ideas; but Madeleine was quite openly marrying Lowdor for the sake of this and similar advantages. Lydia felt that her own problems were only the usual lot of her kind, and though she was nearly always sick at heart over them, she did not feel justified in complaining--least of all to Paul.

But this present trouble--this was not just a question of help. For the last month they had been floating in the most unexpected lull of the domestic whirlwind. The intelligence office had sent out Ellen--Ellen, the deft-handed cook, the silent, self-effacing, competent servant of every housekeeper's dreams. Her good luck seemed incredible. Ellen was perfection, was middle-aged and settled, never went out in the evenings, kept her kitchen spotlessly clean, trained the rattle-headed second girls who came and went, to be good waitresses and made pastry that moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was plenty of meat, to lyric raptures. The difference she made in Lydia's life was inconceivable. It was as though some burdensome law of nature had been miraculously suspended for her benefit. She gauged her past discomfort by her present comfort.

And yet--

From the first Lydia had had an uneasy feeling in the presence of her new servant, a haunting impression when her back was turned to Ellen that if she could turn quickly enough, she would see her cook with some sinister aspect quite other than the decent, respectful mask she presented to her mistress. The second girl of the present was a fresh-faced, lively young country la.s.s, whom Ellen herself had secured, and whose rosy child's face had been at first innocence itself; but now sometimes Lydia overheard them laughing together, a laughter which gave her the oddest inward revulsion, and when she came into the kitchen quickly she often found them looking at books which were quickly whisked out of sight.

And then, a day or so before, old Mrs. O'Hern, her washwoman, had come directly to her with that revolting revelation of Ellen's influence on her grandson, little Patsy. At the recollection of the old woman's face of embittered anguish, Lydia shuddered. Oh, if she could only tell Paul!

He was so loving and caressing to her--perhaps he would not mind being bothered this once--she did not know what to think of such things--she did not know what to do, which way to turn. She was startled beyond measure at having real moral responsibility put on her.

Perhaps Paul could think of something to do.

He was waiting for her when she entered the house, having come in from an out-of-town trip on an earlier train than he had expected to catch.

He dropped his newspaper and sprang up from his chair to put his arms about her and gloat over her beauty. "You're getting prettier every day of your life, Lydia," he told her, ruffling her soft hair, and kissing her very energetically a great many times. "But pale! I must get some color into your cheeks, Melton says--how's this for a way?"

He seemed to Lydia very boyish and gay and vital. She caught at him eagerly--he had been away from home three days--and clung to him. "Oh, Paul! How much good it does me to have you here, close! You are _so_ much nicer than a room of women playing the same game of cards they began last September!"

Paul shouted with laughter--his pleasant, hearty mirth. "I'm appreciated at my full worth," he cried.

"Oh, how I loathe cards!" cried Lydia, taking off her hat.

"It's better than the talk you'd get from most of the people there, I bet," conjectured Paul, taking up his newspaper again. "Cards are a blessing _that_ way, compared with conversation."

"Oh, dear, I suppose so!" Lydia stopped a moment in the doorway. "But doesn't it seem a pity that you never see anybody but people who'd bore you to death if you didn't stop their mouth with cards?"

"That's the way of the world," remarked Paul comfortably, returning to the news of the day.

The little friendly chat gave Lydia courage for her plan of asking her husband's advice about her perplexity, but, mindful of traditional wisdom, she decided, as she thriftily changed her silk "party dress" for a house-gown of soft wool, that she would wait until the mollifying influence of dinner had time to a.s.sert itself. She wondered fearfully, with a quick throb of her heart, how he would receive her confidence.

When she called him to the table she looked searchingly into his strong, resolute, good-natured face, and then, dropping her eyes, with an indrawn breath, began her usual fruitless endeavors to learn from him a little of what had occupied his day--his long, mysterious day, spent in a world of which he brought back but the scantiest tidings to her.

As usual, to-night he shook his shoulders impatiently at her questioning. "Oh, Lydia darling, don't talk shop! I'm sick and tired of it after three days of nothing else. I want to leave all that behind me when I come home. That's what a home is for!"

Lydia did not openly dissent from this axiom, though she murmured helplessly: "I feel so awfully shut out. It is what you think about most of the time, and I do not know enough about it even to imagine--"

Paul leaned across the table to lay an affectionate hand on his wife's slim fingers. "Count your mercies, my dear. It's all grab, and snap, and cutting somebody's throat before he has a chance to cut yours. It wouldn't please you if you did know anything about it--the business world." He drew a long breath, and went on appreciatively with his cutlet--Lydia had learned something about meats since the year before--"You are a very good provider, little girl; do you know it?"

"Oh, I love to," said Lydia. She added reflectively: "Wouldn't it be nice if things were so I could do the cooking myself and not have to bother with these horrible creatures that are all you can get usually?"

Paul laughed at the fancy. "That's a high ambition for my wife, I must say!"

"We'd have better things to eat even than Ellen gives us," said Lydia pensively. "If I had a little more time to put on it, I could do wonders, I'm sure of it."

"I don't doubt that," said her husband gallantly; "but did you ever know anybody who _was_ her own cook?"

"Well, not except in between times, when they couldn't get anybody else," confessed Lydia. "But lots of people I know who do go through the motions of keeping one would be better off without one. They can't afford it, and--Oh, I wish we were poorer!"

Paul was highly amused by this flight of fancy. "But we're as poor as poverty already," he reminded her.

"We're poor for buying hundred-dollar broadcloth tailor-made suits for me, and cut gla.s.s for the table, but we'd have plenty if I could wear ready-made serge at--"

Paul laughed outright. "Haven't you ever noticed, my dear, that the people who wear ready-made serge are the ones who could really comfortably afford to wear calico wrappers? It goes right up and down the scale that way. Everybody is trying to sing a note above what he can."

"I know it does--but does it _have_ to? Wouldn't it be better if everybody just--why doesn't somebody begin--"

"It's the law of progress, of upward growth," p.r.o.nounced Paul.

Lydia was impressed by the pontifical sound of this, though she ventured faintly: "Well, but does progress always mean broadcloth and cut gla.s.s?"

"_We_ have the wherewithal to cultivate our minds!" said Paul, laughing again. "Weren't the complete works of the American essayists among our wedding presents!" He referred to an old joke between them, at which Lydia laughed loyally, and the talk went on lightly until the meal was over.

As they walked away from the table together Lydia said to herself, "Now--now--" but Paul began to laugh as he told an incident of Madeleine's light-hearted, high-handed tyranny over her elderly fiance, and it seemed impossible for Lydia to bring out her story of mean and ugly tragedy.

As usual the evening was a lively one. Some acquaintances from the "younger married set" of Bellevue dropped in for a game of cards, Madeleine and "old Pete" Lowdor came out to talk over the plans for their new handsome house at the end of the street and at Paul's suggestion Lydia hastily got together a chafing-dish supper for the impromptu party which prolonged itself with much laughter and many friendly wranglings over trumps and "post-mortems" until after midnight.

Paul was in the highest of gay spirits as he stood with his pretty wife on the porch, calling good-nights to his guests disappearing down the starlit driveway. He inhaled the odor of success sweet and strong in his nostrils.

As they looked back into the house, they saw the faithful Ellen clearing away the soiled dishes, her large, white, disease-scarred face impa.s.sive over her immaculate and correct maid's dress.

"Isn't she a treasure!" cried the master of the house. "To sit up to this hour!" He started, "What's that?"

From the shadow of the house a slim lad's figure shambled out into the driveway. As he pa.s.sed the porch where Paul stood, one strong arm protectingly about Lydia, he looked up and the light from the open door struck full on a white, purposeless, vacant smile. The upward glance lost for him the uncertain balance of his wavering feet. He reeled, flung up his arms and pitched with drunken soddenness full length upon the gravel, picking himself up clumsily with a sound of incoherent, weak lament. "Why, it's a drunken man--in _our driveway_!" cried Paul, with proprietary indignation. "Get out of here!" he yelled angrily at the intruder's retreating back. When he turned again to Lydia he saw that one of her lightning-swift changes of mood had swept over her. He was startled at her pale face and burning, horrified eyes, and remembering her condition with apprehension, picked her up bodily and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom, soothing her with rea.s.suring caresses.

There, sitting on the edge of their bed, her loosened hair falling about her white face, holding fast to her husband's hands, Lydia told him at last; hesitating and stumbling because in her blank ignorance she knew no words even to hint at what she feared--she told him who Patsy was, the blue-eyed, fifteen-year-old boy, just over from Ireland, ignorant of the world as a child of five, easily led, easily shamed, by his fear of appearing rustic, into any excess--and then she told him what the boy's grandmother had told her about Ellen. It was a milestone in their married life, her turning to him more intimately than she would have done to her mother, her breaking down the walls of her lifelong maiden's reserve and ignorance. She finished with her face hidden in his breast. What should she do? What _could_ she do?

Paul took her into the closest embrace, kissed her shut eyes in a pa.s.sion of regret that she should have learned the evil in the world, of relieved belittling of the story, Lydia's portentous beginning of which had quite startled him, and of indignation at "Mrs. O'Hern's foul mouth--for you can just be sure, darling Lydia, that it's all nothing but rowings among the servants. Probably Ellen won't let Mrs. O'Hern take her usual weekly perquisite of sugar and tea. Servants are always quarreling and the only way to do is to keep out of their lies about each other and let them fight it out themselves. You never can have any idea of who's telling the truth if you b.u.t.t in and try to straighten it, and the Lord knows that Ellen's too good a cook and too much needed in this family until the new member arrives safely, to hurt her feelings with investigating any of Mrs. O'Hern's yarns. Just you refuse to listen to servants' gossip. If you'd been a little less of a darling, inexperienced school-girl, you'd have cut off such talk at the first words. Just you take my word for it, you dear, you sweetheart, you best of--" he ran on into ardent endearments, forgetting the story himself, blinding and dazzling Lydia with the excitement which always swept her away in those moments when Paul was her pa.s.sionate, youthful lover.