Affinities and Other Stories Part 15

"I'm d.a.m.nably poor, Kit," he said.

For reply I slid my hand into his coat pocket. He melted quite suddenly after that, and put his arms round me. I knew I was being a fool but I was idiotically happy.

"Henry," I said, "do you know that verse in the Bible, that as a partridge sits on eggs and fails to hatch them, so too the person who gets riches without deserving them?"

He held me off and looked at me as if he suspected my sanity. Then he kissed me.

V

Mother has never really forgiven me. It put her in so awfully wrong, of course. For she called up the newspapers, and said that if they received a report that I had eloped with Mr. Russell Hill, they were please to deny it.

Of course they sent reporters everywhere at once. And they traced me to the station. About the time mother was reading the headlines "Society Bud and Well-Known Clubman Elope," and wiring Madge, she got Henry's telegram.

She thinks I threw away the chance of a lifetime. But since the day before yesterday I've been wondering. I was going over Henry's old suits, getting them ready to be cleaned and pressed. We have to be very economical. And in a pocket I came across this letter:

"DEAR BOY: We have decided on the eleven-o'clock train. For the love of Mike don't miss meeting it! And after thinking it over carefully, you're right. When I go to see after the luggage will be the best time.

"Yours,

"RUSSELL."

CLARA'S LITTLE ESCAPADE

"The plain truth is," said Carrie Smith, "that, no matter how happy two people may be together, the time comes when they are bored to death with each other."

n.o.body said anything. It was true and we knew it. Ida Elliott put down the scarf she was knitting for the Belgians and looked down over the hill to where a lot of husbands were playing in the swimming pool.

"It isn't just a matter of being bored, you know, Carrie," she said. "A good many of us have made mistakes." Then she sighed. Ida is not really unhappy, but she likes to think she is.

None of the rest made any comment. But one or two of the other girls put down their knitting and looked out over the hills.

"I hope you don't mind my saying it, Clara," Carrie said, turning to me; "but it's a mistake to have a week-end party like this. Last night when I played pool with your Bill after the rest of you had gone upstairs, Wallie refused to speak to me when I went to bed. He's still sulking."

I am not sensitive; but when they everyone turned on me and said it was a beautiful party, but why, in heaven's name, had I asked only husbands and not one extra man, it made me a trifle hot.

"As most of us see our husbands only during week-ends," I said tartly, "I should think this sort of family reunion would be good for us."

Carrie sniffed.

"See them!" she snapped. "They've been a part of the landscape since we came, and that's all. Either they're in the pool, or playing clock golf, or making caricatures of themselves on the tennis court. A good photograph would be as comforting, and wouldn't sulk."

Well, the whole thing really started from that. I made up my mind, somehow or other, to even up with them. I'd planned a really nice party, and even if they were bored they might have had the politeness to conceal it.

Even now, badly as things turned out, I maintain that the idea was a good one. I had a bad time, I'll admit that. But the rest of them were pretty unhappy for a while. The only thing I can't quite forgive is that Bill--but that comes later on.

There had been very little doing all spring. Everybody was poor, and laying up extra motors, and trying to side-step appeals for Eastern relief, and hiding dressmakers' bills. There were hardly any dividends at all, and what with the styles completely changing from wide skirts to narrow ones, so that not a thing from last year would do, and the men talking nothing but retrenchment and staying at the table hours after every dinner party, fighting the war over again, while we sat and knitted, I never remember a drearier spring.

"Although," Carrie Smith said with truth, "the knitting's rather good for us. No woman can enjoy a cigarette and knit at the same time."

The craze for dancing was dying away, too, and nothing came along to take its place. The debutantes were playing tennis, but no woman over twenty-two should ever play tennis, so most of us were out of that.

Anyhow it's violent. And bridge, for anything worth while, was apt to be too expensive.

But to go back.

We sat and knitted and yawned, and the husbands put on dressing gowns and ambled up the hill and round to the shower baths in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I looked at Bill. Bill is my husband and I'm fond of Bill. But there are times when he gets on my nerves. He has a faded old bathrobe that saw him through college and his honeymoon, and that he still refuses to part with, and he had it on.

It was rather short, and Bill's legs, though serviceable, are not beautiful.

He waved his hand to me.

"If you'd do a little of that sort of thing, Clara," he called, "you wouldn't need to have the fat rubbed off you by an expensive ma.s.seuse."

"Quite a typical husbandly speech!" said Carrie Smith.

"Do they ever think of anything but exercise and expense?"

Well, the men bathed and dressed and had whisky-and-sodas, and came out patronisingly and joined us at tea on the terrace. But inside of ten minutes they were in a group round the ball news and the financial page of the evening papers, and we were alone again.

Carrie Smith came over and sat down beside me, with her eyes narrowed to a slit.

"I didn't want to hurt your feelings, Clara," she said, "but you see what I mean. They're not interested in us. We manage their houses and bring up their children. That's all."

As Carrie was the only one who had any children, and as they were being reared by a trained nurse and a governess, and the baby yelled like an Apache if Carrie went near him, her air of virtue was rather out of place. However:

"What would you recommend?" I asked wearily. "They're all alike, aren't they?"

"Not all." Her eyes were still narrowed. And at that moment Wallie Smith came over and threw an envelope into her lap.

"It came to the office by mistake," he said grimly. "What made you have your necklace reset when I'm practically bankrupt?"

"I bought hardly any new stones," she flashed at him. "Anyhow, I intend to be decently clothed. Tear it up; n.o.body's paying any bills."

He stalked away, and Carrie looked at me.

"No," she said slowly, "they are not all alike. Thank heaven there are a few men who don't hoist the dollar mark as a flag. Clara, do you remember Harry Delaney?"

I looked at Carrie.

A little spot of red had come into each of her cheeks, and her eyes, mere slits by now, were fixed on the far-away hills.

She and Harry had been engaged years ago, and she threw him over because of his jealous nature. But she seemed to have forgotten that.

"Of course," I said, rather startled.