The Squirrel-Cage Part 19

Emery with dignity. She turned her criticism of her doctor into a compliment to her brother's widow by adding, "Whatever he would do without Julia to look after him, I'm sure none of us can imagine."

"He is a very original character," said Miss Burgess, discriminatingly.

Madeleine dismissed the subject with a compendious, "He's the most killingly, screamingly funny little man that ever lived!"

"Now, _ladies_," implored Madame Boyle, "one more row--not solid--just a soupcon--"

CHAPTER XIV

MID-SEASON NERVES

"If I should wait and read my paper here instead of on the cars, do you suppose Lydia would be up before I left?" asked the Judge as he put his napkin in the ring and pushed away from the breakfast table.

Mrs. Emery looked up, smiling, from a letter, "'Of course such a great favorite as Miss Emery,'" she read aloud, "'will be hard to secure, but both the Governor and I feel that our party wouldn't be complete without her. We're expecting a number of other Endbury young people.' And do you know who writes that?" she asked triumphantly of her husband.

"How should I?" answered the Judge reasonably.

"Mrs. Ex-Governor Mallory, to be sure. It's their annual St. Valentine's day house-party at their old family estate in Union County."

The Judge got up, laughing. "Old family estate," he mocked.

"They are one of the oldest and best families in this State," cried his wife.

"The Governor's an old blackguard," said her husband tolerantly.

"The Mallorys--the Hollisters--Lydia is certainly," began Mrs. Emery, complacently.

Lydia's father laughed again. "Oh, with you and Flora Burgess as manager and press agent--! You haven't answered my question about whether if I waited and--"

"No, she wouldn't," said Mrs. Emery decisively. "After dancing so late nights, I want her to sleep every minute she's not wanted somewhere. _I_ have the responsibility of looking after her health, you know. I hope she'll sleep now till just time to get up and dress for Marietta's lunch-party at one o'clock."

The father of the family frowned. "Is Marietta giving another lunch-party for Lydia? They can't afford to do so much. Marietta's--"

"This is a great chance for Marietta--poor girl! she hasn't many such chances--Lydia's carrying everything before her so, I mean."

"How does Marietta get into the game?" asked her father obtusely.

Mrs. Emery hesitated a scarcely perceptible instant, a hesitation apparently illuminating to her husband. He laughed again, the tolerant, indifferent laugh he had for his women-folks' goings-on. "She thinks she can go up as the tail to Lydia's kite, does she? She'd better not be too sure. If I don't miss my guess, Paul'll have a word or two to say about carrying extra weight. Gos.h.!.+ Marietta's a fool some ways for a woman that has her brains."

He stated this opinion with a detached, impersonal irresponsibility, and began to prepare himself for the plunge into the damp cold of the Endbury January. His wife preserved a dignified silence, and in the middle of a sentence of his later talk, which had again turned on his grievance about never seeing Lydia, she got up, went into the hall, and began to use the telephone for her morning shopping. Her conversation gave the impression that she was ordering veal cutlets, maidenhair ferns, wax floor-polish, chiffon ruching, and closed carriages, from one and the same invisible interlocutor, who seemed impartially unable to supply any of these needs without rather testy exhortation. Mrs. Emery was one of the women who are always well served by "tradespeople," as she now called them, "and a good reason why," she was wont to explain with self-gratulatory grimness.

The Judge waited, one hand on the door-k.n.o.b, squaring his jaw over his m.u.f.fler, and listening with a darkening face to the interminable succession of purchases. After a time he released the door-k.n.o.b, loosened his m.u.f.fler, and sat down heavily, his eyes fixed on his wife's back.

After an interval, Mrs. Emery paused in the act of ringing up another number, looked over her shoulder, saw him there and inquired uneasily, "What are you waiting for? You'll catch cold with all your things on.

Isn't Dr. Melton always telling you to be careful?"

She felt a vague resentment at his being there "after hours," as she might have put it, so definitely had long usage accustomed her to a sense of solitary proprietors.h.i.+p of the house except at certain fixed and not very frequent periods. She almost felt that he was eavesdropping while she "ran her own business." There was also his remark about Marietta and kites, unatoned for as yet. She had not forgotten that she "owed him one," as Madeleine Hollister light-heartedly phrased the connubial balanced relations.h.i.+p which had come under her irreverent and keen observation. A c.u.mulative sharpness from all these causes was in her voice as she remarked, "Didn't I tell you that Lydia--"

Judge Emery's voice in answer was as sharp as her own. "Look-y here, Susan, I bet you've ordered fifty dollars' worth of stuff since you stood there."

"Well, what if I have?" She was up in arms in an instant against his breaking a long-standing treaty between them--a treaty not tacit, but frequently and definitely stated.

They regulated their relations on a sound business basis, they were wont to say of themselves, the natural one, the right one. The husband earned the money, the wife saw that it was spent to the best advantage, and neither needed to bother his head or dissipate his energies about the other's end of the matter. They had found it meant less friction, they said; fewer occasions for differences of opinion. Once, when they had been urging this system upon their son George, then about to marry, Dr.

Melton had made the suggestion that there would be still fewer differences of opinion if married people agreed never to see each other after the ceremony in the church. There would be no friction at all with that system, he added. It was one of his preposterous speeches which had become a family joke with the Emerys.

"Well, what if I have?" Mrs. Emery advanced defiantly upon her husband, with this remark repeated.

Judge Emery shared a well-known domestic peculiarity with other estimable and otherwise courageous men. He retreated precipitately before the energy of his wife's counter-attack, only saying sulkily, to conceal from himself the fact of his retreat, "Well, we're not millionaires, you know."

"Did I ever think we were?" she said, smiling inwardly at his change of front. "If you stand right up to men, they'll give in," she often counseled other matrons. She began to look up another number in the telephone book.

"If you order fifty dollars' worth every morning, besides--"

"Three-four-four--Weston," remarked his wife to the telephone. To her husband she said conclusively, "I thought we were agreed to make Lydia's first season everything it ought to be. And isn't she being worth it?

There hasn't a girl come out in Endbury in _years_ that's been so popular, or had so much--" She jerked her head around to the telephone--"Three-four-four--Weston? Is this Mr. Schmidt? I want Mr.

Schmidt himself. Tell him Mrs. Emery--"

The Judge broke in, with the air of launching the most startling of arguments, "Well, my salary won't stand it; that's sure! If this keeps up I'll have to resign from the bench and go into practice again."

His wife looked at him without surprise. "Well, I've often thought that might be a very good thing." She added, with good-humored impatience, "Oh, go along, Nathaniel. You know it's just one of your bilious attacks, and you will catch cold sitting there with all your--Mr.

Schmidt, I want to complain about the man who dished up the ice-cream at my last reception. I am going to give another one next week, and I want a different--"

"I won't be back to lunch," said her husband. The door slammed.

As he turned into the front walk it opened after him, and his wife called after him, "I'm going to give a dinner party for Lydia's girl friends here this evening, so you'd better get your dinner down-town or at the Meltons'. I'll telephone Julia that--"

The Judge stopped, disappointment, almost dismay, on his face. "I'm going to keep track from now on," he called angrily, "of just how often I catch a glimpse of Lydia. I bet it won't be five minutes a week."

Mrs. Emery evidently did not catch what he said, and as evidently considered it of no consequence that she did not. She nodded indifferently and, drawing in her head, shut the door.

At the end of the next week the Judge announced that he had put down every time he and Lydia had been in a room together, and it amounted to just forty-five minutes, all told. Lydia, a dazzling vision in white and gold, had come downstairs on her way to a dance, and because Paul, who was to be her escort, was a little late, she told her father that now was his time for a "visit." This question of "visiting" had grown to be quite a joke. Judge Emery clutched eagerly at anything in the nature of an understanding or common interest between them.

"Oh, I don't know you well enough to visit with you," he now said laughingly, "but I'll look at you long enough so I'll recognize you the next time I meet you on the street-car."

Lydia sat down on his knee, lightly, so as not to crumple her gauzy draperies, and looked at her father with the whimsical expression that became her face so well. "I'm paying you back," she said gayly. "I remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder why you came all the way out here to eat your meals. It seemed so much easier for you to get them near your office. Honest, I did."

"Ah, that was when I was still struggling to get my toes into a crack in the wall and climb up. I didn't have time for you then. And you're very ungrateful to bring it up against me, for all I was doing was to wear my nose clear off on the grindstone so's to be able to buy you such pretty trash as this." He stroked the girl's s.h.i.+mmering draperies, not thinking of what he was saying, smiling at her, delighted with her beauty, with her nearness to him, with this brief s.n.a.t.c.h of intimate talk.

"Ungrateful--yourself! What am I doing but wearing my nose off on the grindstone--Dr. Melton threatens nervous prostration every day--so's to show off your pretty trash to the best advantage. _I_ haven't any time to bother with _you_ now!" she mocked him laughingly, her hands on his shoulders.

"Well, that sounds like a bargain," he admitted, leaning back in his chair; "I suppose I've got to be satisfied if you are. _Are_ you satisfied?" he asked with a sudden seriousness. "How do you like Paul, now you know him better?"

Lydia flushed, and looked away in a tremulous confusion. "Why, when I'm with him I can't think of another thing in the world," she confessed in a low, ardent tone.

"Ah, well, then that's all right," said the Judge comfortably.