The Gorgeous Girl Part 9

"A prize," Steve said, proudly. "I don't find a slip-up any place.

I'll be back at two, Miss Faithful, in case any one calls.... How is Bea?" His voice softened noticeably.

Mary slipped away.

"Bea doesn't like one half of her things and the other half are so much better than the apartment that she says they don't show up," her father admitted, drolly. "She is tired to death--so you'll find her at home, my boy, with a box of candy and the latest novel. Belle was talking her head off when I left the house and the girls keep calling her on the telephone for those little three-quarters-of-an-hour h.e.l.lo talks. It seems to me that for rich girls, my daughter and her friends are the busiest, most tired women I ever knew--and yet do the least."

He put on his hat and waited for Steve to open the door.

"I don't pretend to understand them," Steve answered. "Maybe that's why I'm so happy. Bea fusses if the shade of draperies doesn't match her gown, and if Monster has a snarl in her precious hair it is cause for a tragedy. But I just grin and go along and presently she has forgotten all about it."

"I tried to get that young woman helper of yours to help me fix up Bea's things," Constantine complained. "Let's walk to the club--my knees are going stiff on me."

"Well?"

"She looked round the apartment and plain refused to put away another woman's pots and pans. It was just s.p.u.n.k. I don't know that I blame her. So Belle got that low order of animal life----"

"Meaning g.a.y.l.o.r.d?"

"Yes; and now the husband, I understand, of one of your thinnest clad and thinnest brained former clerks. Gay was in his element; he kept the machine working overtime and flattered Belle until he had everything his own way. Yet Beatrice seems quite satisfied with his achievements."

"You must have been hanging round the house this morning."

"I couldn't get down to bra.s.s tacks," he admitted. "You've had her all summer--but you can bet your clothes you wouldn't have had her if I hadn't been willing." He slapped Steve on the shoulder good-naturedly.

Steve nodded briskly. Then he suggested: "Bea has the New York idea rather strong. Has she ever hinted it to you?"

"Don't let that flourish, Steve. Kill it at the start. She knew better than to try to wheedle me into going. I'm smarter than most of the men round these parts but I'd be fleeced properly by the New York band of highbinders if I tried to go among them. And you're not as good at the game as I am. Not----" He paused as if undecided how much would be best to tell Steve. He evidently decided that generalities would be the wisest arguments, so he continued: "Don't wince--it's the truth, and there must be no secrets between us from now on. Besides, you're in love and you can't concentrate absolutely. My best advice to you is to stay home and tend to your knitting.

"You and Bea can go play round New York all you like. Let the New York crowd come to see you and be entertained, they'll be glad to eat your dinners and drink your wine if they don't have to pay for it. We can get away with Hanover but we'd be handcuffed if we tried New York.

When I made a hundred thousand dollars I was tempted to try New York instead of staying here--to make Bea the most gorgeous girl in the metropolis. But horse sense made me pa.s.s it by and stay on my own home diamond. So I've made a good many more hundreds of thousands and, what's to the point, I've kept 'em!"

Here the conversation drifted into more technical business detail with Steve expostulating and contradicting and Constantine frowning at his son-in-law through his bushy eyebrows, admiring him prodigiously all the while.

Beatrice had telephoned Steve's office, to be told that her husband was at lunch and would not be in until two o'clock.

"Have him come to our apartment," she left word, "just as soon as he can. I am just leaving Mr. Constantine's house to go there."

After which she began telling Aunt Belle good-bye.

"Dear me, Bea, what a wonderful hat!" her aunt sighed. "I never saw anything more becoming."

It took ten minutes to admire Bea's costume of rosewood c.r.a.pe and the jewelled-cap effect, somewhat like Juliet's, caught over each ear by a pink satin rose.

"Steve doesn't appreciate anything in the way of costumes," she complained. "He just says: 'Yes, deary, I love you, and anything you wear suits me.' Quite discouraging and so different from the other boys."

"I'd call it very comfortable," suggested her aunt.

"I suppose so--but comfortable things are often tiresome. It is tiresome, too, to see too much of the same person. I was really bored to death in the Yosemite--Steve is so primitive--he wanted to stay there for days and days."

"Steve comes from primitive people," her aunt said, soberly, not realizing her own humour.

"Don't mention it. Didn't he force me to go to Virginia City, the most terrible little ghost world of tumbledown shacks and funny one-eyed, one-suspendered men, and old women smoking pipes and wearing blue sunbonnets! He was actually sentimental and enthusiastic about it all, trying to hunt up old cronies of his grandfather's--I was cross as could be until we came back to Reno. Now Reno is interesting."

She spent the better part of an hour describing the divorcees and their adventures.

"Well, I'm off for home. I think I shall entertain the Red Cross committee first of all. It's only right, I believe"--the dove eyes very serious--"they've been under such terrible strains. I'm going to send a large bundle of clothes for the Armenian Relief, too. Oh, aunty, the whole world seems under a cloud, doesn't it? But I met the funniest woman in Pasadena; she actually teed her golf ball on a valuable Swiss watch her husband had given her! She said her only thrills in life came from making her husband cross."

"Was he--when he found it out?"

"No; she was dreadfully disappointed. He called her a naughty child and bought her another!"

When Beatrice reached the apartment she found Steve standing on the steps looking anxiously up and down the street.

"What's happened?" he asked, half lifting her out of the car.

"Don't! People will see us. I was telling aunty about Reno. Oh, it's so good to be here!" as she came inside her own door. "I hope people will let me alone the rest of the day. I'm just a wreck." She found a box of chocolates and began to eat them.

"A charming-looking wreck, I'll say." He stooped to kiss her.

The rose-coloured gla.s.ses were still attached to Steve's naturally keen eyes. Like many persons he knew a mult.i.tude of facts but was quite ignorant concerning vital issues. He had spent his honeymoon in rapt and unreal fas.h.i.+on. He had realized his boyhood dream of returning to Nevada a rich and respected man with a fairy-princess sort of wife. The deadly anaesthesia of unreality which these get-rich-quick candidates of to-day indulge in at the outset of their struggle still had Steve in its clutch. He had not even stirred from out its influence. He had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish--and he was now about to realize that there is a distinct melancholy in the fact that everyone needs an Aladdin's window to finish. But under the influence of the anaesthesia he had proposed to have an everlasting good time the rest of his life, like the closing words of a fairy tale: "And then the beautiful young princess and the brave young prince, having slain the seven-headed monster, lived happily ever, ever after!"

With this viewpoint, emphasized by the natural conceit of youth, Steve had pa.s.sed his holiday with the Gorgeous Girl.

"What did you want, darling?" he urged.

"To talk to you--I want you to listen to my plan. You are to come with me to New York for the fall opera and all the theatres--oh, along in November. It's terribly dull here. Jill Briggs and her husband and some of the others are going, and we can take rooms at the Astor and all be together and have a wonderful time!"

"I'd rather stay in our own home," he pleaded. "It's such fun to have a real home. We can entertain, you know. Besides, I'm the worker and you are the player, and I don't understand your sort of life any more than you can understand mine. So you must play and let me look on--and love me, that's all I'll ever ask."

"You're a dear," was his reward; "but we'll go to New York?"

"I'll have to take you down and leave you--I'm needed at the office."

"But I'd be the odd one--I'd have to have a partner. Steve, dear, you don't have to grub. When we were engaged you always had time for me."

"Because you had so little for me! And so I always shall have time for you," the anaesthesia causing his decision. "Besides, those were courts.h.i.+p days--and I wasn't quite so sure of you, which is the way of all men." He kissed her hair gently.

She drew away and rearranged a lock. "I don't want a husband who won't play with me."

"We'll fix it all right, don't worry. Now was that all you wanted?"

"I want you to stay home and go driving with me. I want you to call on some people--and look at a new cellaret I'd like to buy. It is expensive, but no one else would have one anywhere near as charming.

I need you this afternoon--you're so calm and strong, and my head aches. I'm always tired."

"Yet you never work," he said, almost unconsciously.

"My dear boy, society is the hardest work in the world. I'm simply dragged to a frazzle by the end of the season. Besides, there is all my war work and my clubs and my charities. And I've just promised to take an advanced course in domestic science."