Jewel Weed Part 30

d.i.c.k shrank back a little. To him love--the desire for marriage--was hardly a thing to be touched by outside hands. He wished Lena would not tear down the veils of reticence so ruthlessly.

"Lena, she did not want me at all. Be reasonable."

"Well, then, you took me just because you couldn't get her, did you?

Everything she does and wears is perfection. And there's nothing about me that's right!" Lena had now come to the point of angry tears.

"There's one thing about you that's right; and that's my arms, sweetheart." d.i.c.k spoke st.u.r.dily in spite of trepidation, for this was a new experience to him. "You know I love you, Lena, I did not mean to hurt you. I thought only that you were a sweet little inexperienced woman, and that you would welcome any hints from your husband's worldly wisdom. Come, don't turn into an Undine, dear, and get the carriage all wet,"--for his wife was now sobbing on his shoulder.

"You've told me lots of times that I was perfect," she cried. "I don't see why you want to change me now. You're so inconsistent, d.i.c.k."

"I wish that I could make up for my brutality," said d.i.c.k. "How can I, Lena? I feel like the fellow that threw a catsup bottle at his wife's head at the breakfast-table and then felt so badly when he saw the nasty stuff trickling down her pretty curls that he brought her home a pair of diamond earrings for dinner."

"What a horrid vulgar story!" exclaimed Lena.

"Isn't it?" d.i.c.k rejoined. "But vulgar things are frequently true, as we learn with sorrow. Lena, can't we believe that our marriage certificate had an affection insurance policy given with it? Don't let us indulge in little quarrels. As you say, they are vulgar. I want love to be not only a rich solid pudding full of plums, but I want it to have a meringue on top."

As he hoped, this made Lena laugh, and she pulled out her over-scented handkerchief to wipe her eyes. d.i.c.k shut his lips tightly, grown too wise to speak.

CHAPTER XVI

LENA'S FRIENDS

Lena sat one morning behind the coffee-urn so self-absorbed and smiling that d.i.c.k wondered.

"Mrs. Percival," he remonstrated, "you have a husband at this end of the table. Have you forgotten it? What are you thinking about?"

"d.i.c.k, I believe I have found a friend--a real friend," Lena jerked out.

"A good many of them, I should say. Who is this fortunate person?"

"Mrs. Appleton."

"Mrs. Appleton!" d.i.c.k gulped at his coffee and stared at his wife in some perplexity. "Isn't she a--well, for one thing, a good deal older than you?"

"She'll be all the better guide," Lena retorted with one of her demure pouts. "You know she invited me to join the cla.s.s she has gotten up for Swami Ram Juna. You needn't grin in that horrid way, d.i.c.k. I shall be so wise very soon that you'll be afraid of me."

"Heaven forbid, you dear little inspirer of awe."

"At any rate, she's taken the greatest fancy to me, and I to her. She came here yesterday in the pouring rain, and we spent a long afternoon talking together. We feel the same way about everything. She says that with my beauty, I ought to make a great hit, and she's going to give a big reception in my honor. Of course, with her experience, she can be a great help to me."

"I see." d.i.c.k forgot his breakfast entirely, and meditated.

"What is Mr. Appleton like?" Lena persisted.

"He has enough money to make me pale my ineffectual fires, and he adds to that the personality of the great American desert. But I suspect his wife is so wholly satisfied with the golden glow that the latter fact has never penetrated to her consciousness. I think Mrs. Appleton has not yet recovered from her astonishment at finding herself wedded to profusion. It appears to delight her afresh from day to day."

"You can be very nasty about people when you choose." Lena's tone was unmistakably vexed.

"Frankly, Lena, I do not like Mrs. Appleton or her att.i.tude toward life.

She is the kind of woman who refuses to take the simplest thing simply, the kind that thinks subscription dances and clubs and private cars and family tombs were invented chiefly to show our exclusiveness."

"Well, what are they for?"

d.i.c.k laughed. "Most of them to get all the fun there is in things, I should say; and the tombs, to show that love holds even after death."

"I like her, anyway," said Lena. "I like her better than the stuck-up kind of women." The words sound bald. Lena's lips made them seem humorous. It was so easy to avoid disapprobation just by that little smile and whimsical twist of the mouth.

"And whom do you mean by that!"

"You know whom I mean," Lena answered defiantly. "And I consider Mrs.

Appleton a great deal more of a society woman than Mrs. Lenox. At any rate she goes a great deal more. And she does not neglect her church duties or her charities, either. She has told me things that she is doing."

"I should say she does not neglect them," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed d.i.c.k. "She has the art so to regild them that even philanthropy and religion become mere appendages to society. Does Mrs. Lenox belong to Ram Juna's cla.s.s, Lena?"

"No. Mrs. Appleton asked her, but she wrote that though she was interested in oriental thought, she, personally, found it more satisfactory to get it by reading. Now wasn't that sn.o.bby, d.i.c.k?"

"Is it sn.o.bbish to choose what really suits you, instead of following a craze like a sheep woman?"

But Lena shut her lips tightly. If she had not will, she had obstinacy.

She could be resolute in behalf of her realities, luxury, beauty and self. From the moment when Mrs. Appleton first dawned on her horizon, she had recognized her ideal. Here was a woman who was at once showy, fas.h.i.+onable and virtuous. The things that Mrs. Lenox took for granted or ignored were to her matters of absorbing importance. She magnified the office of every detail of social conduct and every minutia of society's "functions". It was worth while to spend a week of soul-fatiguing labor in order that a tea should be just right; and her preparations were not made in silence, but with an amount of discussion and red-tape that filled every crevice of life. She had learned the art of so cramming the days with trifles that there was no room for the big things and she could conveniently forget them.

Mrs. Appleton seemed to recognize in Lena the same curious mingling of deep-down barbaric egotism and love of display, with the longing to be civilizedly correct. The two were drawn together.

"I like her," said Lena positively.

"I'm sorry," d.i.c.k said gently. "I can't say that I do, and I should be glad if you could find your friends among those I love and respect."

"You needn't try to dictate my friends.h.i.+ps," said Lena sharply.

"I did not think of dictating, sweetheart. But when we love each other, we naturally long for sympathy in all things." d.i.c.k was making a brave effort.

But there was little use in making this appeal to Lena, to whom love was but a beneficent masculine idiosyncrasy. d.i.c.k glanced at her and at his watch.

"I must be off," he said. "I have an engagement to meet Preston and plan out our campaign."

"Ours!"

"I'm going to run for alderman of this ward," d.i.c.k laughed as Lena flushed. "Don't you approve?"

"How can you be interested in running for alderman?" she asked. "It is such a mean little ambition. I wish you would try for something big. It would be grand to have you a senator, so that we could go to Was.h.i.+ngton.

I should love to be in all the gaieties and meet all the distinguished people."

"Why, sweetheart, you don't suppose I care for the great name of city father, do you?" d.i.c.k answered laughing. "That's only the end of a lever. I do care immensely to be one of those who will clean up this city and keep it clean. Perhaps, if we do these near-by things, the big ones will come, by and by."