Van Cleve and His Friends
CHAPTER XXII
BUSINESS WOMEN
AFTER a year or so of Nova Scotia, the Van Cleve family moved to Salem, Massachusetts, as we heard through Miss Gilbert, who was always more likely to know something of them and their whereabouts than any one else. But since that time we have rather lost sight of Van Cleve’s people; they have never come back here, and their various flights and settlings have been too distant, and uncertain to be easily followed. The last news was that they were in Pasadena, and Evelyn was engaged to a Mr. Heffelbauer, ‘ a son of the millionnaire prune-man,’ as some one told me. It may be true, for in American Backgrounds, the magazine of house decoration, I came across quite by accident the other day a half-tone of a charming garden in the Italian style,— pools, marble benches, dark, pointed fir trees and all the rest of it, — labeled, ‘Formal garden at Idlewild, the estate of W. D. Heffelbauer, San José, Calif. Prune orchard in the distance. Photograph from a painting by Miss E. Lucas.’ So, I say, there may be something in that rumor.
And I will confess it has occurred to me once or twice to wonder whether a millionaire in the family might not help Van Cleve out a little, and to hope that the prospective Mrs. Heffelbauer’s papa-in-law will be liberal with his prune money. To be sure, Van does n’t need help much nowadays; they say he makes a great, deal more than a comfortable living out of the realestate business he went into after the National Loan failure. He borrowed money for the venture, and opened an oflice over the Central Building and Loan Association, with which organization he had been connected a long while. Its members stood by him stanchly, in spite of the ugly gossip going about; the small clients whom he had gathered during his term at the bank stuck to him, and he gradually gained others; nevertheless, he must have had a gloomy time of it for the first few years. Heavens, how he worked! What nights he spent awake, what days of effort and anxiety! Outwardly, he gave no sign of it; he had the temperament for such a struggle, and in a sense it agreed with him.
I have heard him say with a laugh that in t he worst of his pinches he never worried half so much over holding any job, or making both ends meet, as he did the very first time he went to work, a lad of eighteen, at the shoe fact ory in St. Louis, and used to go up, trembling, for his pay envelope every Saturday nighl, in deadly fear of hearing that he was to be ‘laid off.’ ‘I got the place during a rush season they were having, with the understanding that if competent and satisfactory I was to be taken on regularly,’ he explained; ‘“competent and satisfactory!” My job was sticking black silk labels, with the firm’s name on ’em in gilt letters, in the insides of the shoes, and I was n’t so green but that I knew they could get fifty boys to do that whenever they needed them — that’s what was on my mind. And I thought, the family were headed straight for the poorhouse if it was n’t for me and my eight dollars a week!’ He laughed again, but to a discerning listener, the story was not all funny; and where would his family have been by now but for Van Cleve, one could not help questioning.
It seemed strange to Van Cleve afterwards, when the irretrievable had happened, that he had never suspected, scarcely even troubled himself to ask, at the time of the family’s removal from Pass Christian to Halifax, whence had come the money for the journey, which he himself had refused to supply them. He understood that Evelyn had sold some pictures; well and good! He had received the news with a surprise not entirely complimentary to the artist; but had made no further inquiry. It was not until a year and a half later, in the summer of 1901, that he found out the truth. Nineteen hundred and one turned out a fateful year for Van: Mr. O’Rourke gave up his place among the bank directors at last, having indeed been called to another, some six feet underground in Spring Grove Cemetery, so that the poor old man never knew the disgrace that was to come upon their management, or mismanagement; and Mr. Kendrick, who was even at that time cloudily dissatisfied and uneasy over the conduct of affairs, took his seat. The hot weather came on; Van Cleve took Mrs. Gilbert and Bob on east to the Vermont sanatorium, and himself extended the trip to visit his family, who were by this time getting ready for the Salem move.
It had been almost, three years, but Van found them not much changed. His grandmother looked a good deal older, and clung to him rather pathetically; his aunt and cousin were as slender, brilliant, and emphatic as ever; Major Stanton had a new story, a tensely dramatic one, beginning, ‘When I was with Sherman on his famous march to the sea, of which you may have heard—’and reciting how he had ‘taken a detail’ on a scouting expedition, and found a dozen people starved to death in a Negro cabin where they had taken refuge, the women in ball-dresses with jewels on their necks, and on every face a set smile ghastly to behold! The Major did n’t invent this grisly tale, either, though his telling of it could hardly be surpassed. You may find it in Napier’s History of the Peninsular War any day you choose to look. Van Cleve listened to it with due appreciation; he recalled his boyish agonies of shame and fear of ridicule with amusement nowadays.
As for the rest of the family, they were sincerely delighted to see him. Though they had gone off and left him without scruple, though they had had more than one disagreement with him, and had often complained to one another of his harshness and obstinacy, about the impossibility of reasoning with him, and his brutal way of ‘saying things,’ they were nevertheless very fond and proud of Van Cleve. They had long ago forgiven the Pass Christian grievance, being always generousspirited and ready to let bygones be bygones. And, besides, the impract icability of Halifax as a place of residence, and the extreme desirableness of Salem now occupied them fully. Van Cleve heard them leniently, for once.
‘ It might not be a bad plan,’ he said; ‘this place seems to be all right, but I’d be better satisfied if you were a little nearer me, so I could reach you quickly in case some trouble came up. It takes too long on the road coming here.’
‘Oh, Van, you have so much judgment!’ said his aunt, devoutly; ‘ I knew if we could get that splendid clear head of yours to work, you would get right to the bottom of—of everything at once. Our only problem is getting to Salem. You know how we hate to ask you for another cent after all you’re constantly doing.' Tears came into her eyes, as she gazed at him; it was quite true; they did hate to ask him for money — or thought they did.
‘That’s all right,’said Van briefly; ‘it’s possible that I can’t give you all you need, but you might begin and save a little — don’t stint yourselves, just save what you can, you know — every month from now until your lease runs out. Then with that, and what I can spare, you may be able to make out. Sold anything lately, Evelyn? ’
‘Oh, this isn’t any place for pictures, Van/ the artist explained with energy. ‘That’s one very strong reason for our getting away. I really don’t think we ought to stay any longer than we can possibly help; we can get somebody to take over the lease, you know, so we won’t lose anything that way. It’s business, you know, with me, Van. I’m simply buried here.’
‘ What’s the matter? Are n’t the people here up in art, and all that? Can’t you get them interested? I thought it could hardly be a worse place than Pass Christian, and you did pretty well there.’
Evelyn and her mother begah together: ‘Oh, mercy, don’t talk about Pass Christian! It was horrid. There was nobody there but a great drove of common rich people that did n’t care for anything but money, and did n’t know any more about art than they did about geometry. I dare say their houses were full of Rogers statuary and prize chromos. The only way to sell them pictures would have been by the yard or the pound. It was n’t even worth while to show them my pictures; they would have been pearls before swine,’ Evelyn finished contemptuously.
‘Well, who bought them, then? You did sell some,’ Van Cleve asked. He was used to their teacup-tempests of disapproval and denunciation, their violent likes and dislikes, and seldom gave himself the trouble of looking for a cause; but this promised to be interesting. ‘Some of the swine must have known a pearl when they saw it,’ he said, restraining a certain inclination to laugh.
Evelyn saw it, however, and flushed angrily.
‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking, but other people appreciate my work, people who have seen a great deal more, and know more about art than you do; Mr. Gebhardt, for instance!’
‘That’s so, he bought one when he was down there. He showed it to me out at the house,I remember; I thought it was pretty good,’ said Van Cleve, cordially. ‘ Who took the others? You seem to have a good many left still.’ He glanced about at the walls, which, in fact were as well covered as ever.
‘Mr. Gebhardt,’ said Evelyn, with a shade less confidence than before; and this time Van Cleve was openly astonished.
‘What? All? The whole four or five hundred dollars’ worth, I mean? Thunderation!’ he ejaculated; and paused with a puzzled face. ‘It’s funny he never said a word to me about them. He only showed me that one.’ And now he looked at the three women, sudden suspicion growing in his quick, light, eyes. ‘How many pictures did he take, Evie?”
Everybody again began talking at once.
‘ Why, it was four — he took — that is, there were four of them, Van. But you don’t quite understand —at least, you don’t seem quite to have understood —’
‘I did n’t want them to do it, Van Cleve; I knew you would n’t like it; but they would, anyhow,’ his grandmo I her cried.
‘You see, if — it was n’t a sale exactly — ’
‘Well, Mr. Gebhardt can have them whenever he sends. It’s the same thing —’
Van Cleve silenced them with a gesture. ‘One at a time,’ he said with a voice and expression so like the late lamented Joshua that his grandmother gasped. ‘I want to know what you’ve been doing. Aunt Myra, will you please tell me? I said, one at a time, Evie. Now Aunt Myra, will you go ahead?’
‘Van Cleve, you know if was when we wanted to come here, and we could n’t bear to worry you after you said you — you could n’t let us move again, and we thought we’d have to stay there in that horrible place forever, and oh, Van, you can’t have any idea how terrible it was! We could n’t stand it. It was killing us all. We bad every one of us been down with coast fever, and the colored servants were so lazy and dirty and disgusting; just think, the last one I had went off and left the muffin-pans stuck away in the back of the closet with some of the batter in them! And the doctor said we were all the kind of constitutions that would never get acclimated, never. Van Cleve, we were just desperate —’
Mrs. Lucas had to stop for breath; Van Cleve waited patiently; he had no doubt of presently getting to the truth, for they were truthful and upright women.
‘So I wrote to Mr. Gebhardt. You know he had told us over and over again that very time when he was t here, and bought Moonlight on the Bayou, that he would do anything in the world to help you, financially, or any way, and wished he could have the chance. So I wrote him just how it was: that you could n’t afford to move us, and we did n’t want to be any more of a drain on you, when you were trying so hard to get ahead. Only it was a case of life and death, and we must do something, for a little more of Pass Christian would finish us all. And I told him that Evelyn had four pictures that she would let him have for five hundred dollars; she considers them her best work, and you know, Van, they have been exhibited and wonderfully spoken of by the finest critics in the country. I enclosed the newspaper clippings so l hat ho could see for himself,’ said Airs. Lucas, impressively.; ‘I wanted him to know he would be getting a bargain, that it was n’t just talk on my part —’ I begged you not to do it— I said Van Cleve would n’t like it,’ reiterated the old lady.
‘Well, no, I don’t like that sort of thing,’ Van said, temperately; ‘but I suppose there’s no harm in it, since all artists do it, I’m fold. I would n’t like Mr. Gebhardt to think that I was putting you up to it, that’s all. He might, you know. How ewer, it can’t be helped now,’lie meditatively rubbed his chin. ‘Did he take them at that price?’
‘No, he did n’t take them at all — oh, Van Cleve, he was perfectly lovely, he is the dearest man!’ cried Evelyn. ‘He wrote back a beautiful letter and said that he would be proud to own any pictures from the same brush as his beautiful Moonlight on the Bayou; but he did n’t want to take advantage of me that way; and that he had often thought what a pleasure it must be to do something toward helping struggling talent, because genius always did have to struggle, no matter how great it was, and I was no exception to that rule; and if I would accept it, he—’
‘He’d give you the money, but you could keep the pictures, is that it?’
‘Yes, but he put it in the sweetest, most delicate way. We could n’t refuse flat, Van, it wmuld have been horrid; so Mamma wrote.’
‘I wrote and told him how much we appreciated his noble, generous offer, and how we hoped he would n’t think us ungrateful, if we considered it as a loan, not a gift,’ said Mrs. Lucas, eagerly. ‘I told him we would keep the pictures since he wanted us to, but as far as we were concerned they would be security for his money, and he could have them at any time. And he wrote back and said that was perfectly satisfactory. So you see it was nothing but an ordinary business transaction after all, and you must n’t worry about it, you dear boy; we would n’t be so hateful and selfish as to do anything that would cause you one minute’s worry.'
Van Cleve sat silent, rubbing his chin, while all the women gazed at him a little apprehensively; not indeed that they were in the least anxiety about the wisdom and righteousness of their own recent course, but it was sometimes so difficult to bring Van Cleve to their point of view; with all his splendid, manly qualities he was often so stubborn and unreasonable! However, instead of scolding or arguing, he dismissed the matter with an extraordinary speech, a speech which had no apparent relation to anything he or any of them had said hitherto.
‘I guess the laugh’s on me!’ were his words, uttered with that semi-humorous dryness which they resented without knowing why; and he addressed Mrs. Van Cleve with a startlingly abrupt change of subject. ’Oh, Grandma, tell me again about that time when Grandpa would n’t buy you that carpet you wanted, will you?’
CHAPTER XXIII
ANOTHER BUSINESS WOMAN
The Vermont sanatorium did so much for Bob Gilbert that, in less than a year he came back looking, to be sure, not fully restored or as if he ever would reach normal health and st rength again, but much better than anybody had expected, fleshier, his color tolerably good and cough almost gone; and he himself, as usual, unquenchable sanguine. ’Oh, yes, the symptoms were tubercular,’ he would acknowledge with a fine air of superiority and detachment; ’the doctors all told me so. In old times you’d have felt as if your death-warrant had been signed, and would have made your will and laid right down. I believe people died of pure fright as much as of the disease. It’s different, now; we know so much more about treatment and — and all that. I took it in time, and it never got any real hold on me. Of course they keep telling me to be careful; but I expect to keep even with it, and eventually to get it under. I’ve always been lucky about that—coming out even, you know,or a little better.’ And with his laugh, which always ended in a little choke, Robert would change the subject. He never spoke about his health at all unless directly questioned.
He want ed to get something to do at once, and talked very eagerly and insistently about ‘getting back into harness’; perhaps he was governed as much by a subtle anxiety to have his theories about his renewed health confirmed even to himself, as by any real motive of ambition or industry, for he was not naturally ambitious or industrious. But now he sought work feverishly, canvassing his friends, haunting offices and salesrooms, attacking all sorts of unlikely people, offering himself for positions he could no more have filled than that of Secretary of State. In fact, it would have been hard to name one for which Bob was qualified, he had had so little training, either business or professional; and his friends were sorely put to it for terms in which to recommend him. For the sake of the family every one did hiss best for Bob; but bad luck — or what he considered bail luck — dogged him unswervingly.
For a while he held some sort of small clerk’s position with the Antarctic Ice Company, a business enterprise which had collapsed recently, and was being run by a receiver (Stuart Nicholson, the same Mr. Nicholson who was at that time so attentive to Lorrie Gilbert). Bob may have been doing well enough — nobody knew — but anyhow the receivership presently ended, the company got on its legs again, and in the changes of its reorganization, they let Robert go. After that, Van Kendrick bestirred himself and found several small jobs of collecting for Bob to do —an absurd effort, really, for if there was a thing on earth for which Bob had not even a vestige of taste or capacity it was running around after other people to make them pay their debts. The idea of that shiftless, easygoing fellow harrying other delinquents as shiftless and easy-going as himself was ludicrous; they could make him believe any cock-and-bull story, or work on his sympathies until he would be ready to empty his own pockets to save theirs! At the end of six months, having conclusively demonstrated how not to do collecting, Bob was out of employment once more. And about this time, it began to be rumored that he was drinking again.
I cannot now recall all his other attempts and failures, or follow his alternate backslidings and rehabilitations. One met him from time to time, now shabby and run down, now clean and confident, now idle for months, and again working with a hectic energy, full of excitement and enthusiasm, always thin and coughing, yet somehow never seeming to be much worse. It went on for five years; people were constantly prophesying his decline and death and wondering how the family could bear to watch the process, or telling one another with pitying indignation that it was hard to say which must be the more painful and humiliating spectacle for his father and mother and poor Lorrie: Bob on one of his sprees, or Bob sober and half-alive with one lung gone, trying unsuccessfully to support himself in ways the average bright boy of sixteen would disdain. The last place he had was at the Hotel Preston, the big new hotel put up by the Preston estate in 1907. It is a handsome establishment in the most approved hotel style, with canopies of glass and wrought-iron over the entrances, and half a dozen elegant little shops along the front, where persons of sufficient affluence may buy candies, ‘gents’ furnishings,’ and rich blue brocade corsets. Within there is a rotunda with frescoes and a musicians’ gallery; and many resplendent rooms upstairs occupied mostly by New York tailors and milliners on tour with displays of their goods. Robert was in the small booth near the lesser door for ladies, in charge of the supply of cheap umbrellas which the management benevolently hires out to people who have been caught unprotected in a shower. I saw him there myself when I darted into the Preston in the middle of a storm one day.
There he was, in the hotel uniform and buttons, like the bell-boys, handing out umbrellas, taking the names on little pasteboard checks and putting away the money, with quite a long line of hurried and impatient customers before him whom he served briskly, civilly, and without confusion. We recognized each other at the same instant; and his manners were better than mine, for whereas I stopped short, and hesitated, feeling sickeningly sorry and ashamed, Bob kept a perfectly placid face and matter-of-fact air, nodded with his nice smile, and went on dispensing umbrellas until it came to my turn, as if that were one of the most worthy and suitable of occupations for an educated man, thirty-five years old, and born and bred a gentleman.
‘ You did n’t get wet, I hope. I never saw anything like the sudden way that rain came up,’ he said when I reached his counter. He looked about as usual, with a high color and large, brilliant, hollow eyes; and he did not smell at all of whiskey.
I do not know why I should have been so unhappily embarrassed. I tried to speak naturally.
‘I did n’t know you were here, Bob.’
‘Well, of course you would n’t be likely to. You don’t come in very often, I expect; nobody ever knows much about the hotels in their own town. I’ve been here two months,’ he said simply. ‘This is a nice one. You have to leave a dollar, you know.'
I could think of nothing more to say, so got the money out in silence and watched him put my name down, lingering in a wretched uncertainty. ‘Why, you’re left-handed, aren’t you?’ I said at last, idiotically, as he tried t he umbrella to see if it was in good order, and passed it over.
‘Eh? Why no, not naturally. I’ve been learning to use that arm, on account of having some trouble with my right here recently,’ he explained indifferently; ‘some kind of neuralgia or neuritis or something.’
The right lung was the one that was gone — or going —undoubtedly; I might have guessed it, and refrained from questions, if I had not been so flustered. After this maladroit effort, I stammered out some sort, of good-bye and was about to retreat thankfully; but the bad quarter of an hour was not yet ended. Before I could move, a lady stepped out of the azure corset-shop which opened on this corridor near at hand, turned towards the door, saw the rain, and turned back quickly. She walked up to the umbrella booth. She was dressed in a beautiful dark blue linen suit, that fitted with incomparablesnugness over a figure of smooth, unyielding, accurate curves surpassing those of the whale-boned and pompadour-ribboned dummies we could sec through the plate-glass doors behind her; her fawn-colored hair was arranged like theirs in regular, petrified waves, glossy with brill iantinc, under a neat, stiff hat with dark blue quills and ribbons smartly applied. She came up to the stand, and the light struck full on her face, and I would have known her in a thousand. ‘Can I get an umb—?’ she began; and broke short off, staring. It was Paula Jameson — Gilbert — whatever she called herself — Bob’s divorced wife; all three of us stood a moment dumb.
I do not know what I should have done — what would have been the proper and humane thing to do, that is: run away as if I were afraid of being caught, with them, or stay as if I wanted to see what they were going to do? Actually I contrived to do neither; it all happened too quickly. Paula —she seemed merely surprised, not at all disconcerted — recovered almost at once, and knew me and called me by name; and she said, ‘Why, hello, Bob!’ and put out her hand to him, too!
He took it automatically, and said, ‘How do you do?’ looking at her helplessly. Paula kept on talking, not to relieve the situation, for it was plain she herself felt no awkwardness about it, but as it would seem out of the fulness of her heart! She asked both of us if the folks were well? She inquired after several other people. She said warmly, ‘Well, this little old burg has waked up at last, has n’t it? Look at the new sky-scrapers! And let me tell you there are n’t many hotels in this part of the country that have got anything on this one. If they’d only get a bunch of porters with caps and uniforms and numbers down at the Grand Cent ral to grab your grip when you get off the train, why, the town’d be right up to date!’ And she laughed, showing all her teeth, which were as pretty and white and flawless as ever, and a tiny crease in one cheek that used to be a dimple years ago.
She was astonishing. I believe the woman was glad to get back here, glad to see us, glad to talk to us. Let me give no false impression; Paula’s hailfellow-well-met manner was not in the least brazen or self-assertive; one sensed a kind of good feeling in her very lack of feeling. She could not be a gentlewoman, or even look like one; but for all her teetering high heels, and her tortured waist, and her carefully madeup complexion, and the breezy assurance of her address, she was absolutely respectable. Her respectability clothed her visibly, like her blue linen suit;; she had t he air of being armed and bucklered against the world and the wiles of men, supplied with an arsenal of morals, and ready to open fire at the slightest hostile demonstration.
I edged away at last, and was escaping, but Paula interrupted her eager chatter — she was actually asking Bob what that friend of his, Mr. Kendrick, was doing, and whether he and Lorrie had made a match of it yet! — to run after me. ’Oh, do you have to go? Can’t you stay a minute? It’s raining cats and dogs still,’ she said, and seized my arm confidentially; ‘can’t you just come upstairs, and let me show you our display? I know you’ll like it, and I’d love to show you. The things are awfully pretty, and t he very latest wrinkles — right straight from Paree, you know, the swellest ever. Oh, say, do come! Our prices are n’t sky-high, either, but anyway you don’t have to buy anything, you know; I’d just love to have you see ’em. Say, can’t, you? Well, all right, then, but I’m going to be here for three days, so you’ll come in some other time, won’t you? Did n’t you get one of our cards? Well if that ain’t the limit! I know you must have been down on our list; we get all the names out of Who’s Who. Here, take this one. And say, mention me to your friends, will you? I expect some of them remember me, anyhow. This is the first time I ’ve ever made Cincinnati on a trip, and I’d like to work up a trade here for the firm.’
The leaflet she pressed on me was handsomely engraved at the top with a crest, the head of a Roman emperor (to all appearances) enclosed in a wreath, and underneath in minute lettering: ‘L. Bloch, 325 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.’ Farther down it announced in flourishing script that M. Levi Bloch of Paris, Vienna, and New York, desired to call my attention to the display of samples from his ateliers which would be on view at the Hotel Preston, Parlors A and B, the 24th, 25th, 26th. Corsets, Brassieres, Garters, Silk Stockings, Woven and Piece Silk Combinations, etcetera. Exclusive agents for La Sylphide Empire girdle. Expert fitters would be in attendance, and their representative, Mme. Clarice, would give my order her personal supervision.
‘I wish you’d come up; you might look around while you’re waiting for the rain 1o hold up, anyhow, could n’t you?’ said Paula, nudging me towards the elevator. ‘Say, come on!’ And shrewdly keeping a firm grip on my arm, she turned and called a familiar good-bye to Bob, over her shoulder. ’See you later!' He did not answer; indeed, he had hardly spoken at all throughout the incident.
Paula piloted me, unresisting, yet inwardly amazed at the feebleness of my compliance, upstairs and to Parlors A and B, where, in fad, there was a sumptuous parade of Corsets, Brassières, Combinations, and all the rest of it. She had a couple of mannequins there, good-looking young women, all Marcel waves and glittering fingernails, who surveyed me with the extraordinary deferential patronage of their kind; and I noticed that Paula herself exhibited that manner to perfection as she guided me about. She put it on like a glove for the benefit of her underlings, holding up one garment after another, and murmuring prices in confidence; and blarneyed me into buying an expensive harness of skyblue moire, lace, and silver buckles, which I have never had on from that day to this, in a style no Parisian saleswoman could have bettered. It was inconceivable that ’that little Paula Jameson’ could have developed into so able and distinguished a personage as Madame Clarice, but such was the fact! And in a moment when we were alone, I had the hardihood to ask her a question or two about the process.
She was not in the least offended; I think she took my curiosity and surprise rather as a compliment! ’Why, I just kind of fell into it.,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in it now for four years. I had to do something, you know. After Momma died — that was in nineteen-two — no, three — I’ve lost count, but it was along there some time — well, after she died, I found we just did n’t have anything left. We’d lived it all up. Momma did n’t know much, and she did n’t raise me to know much, either. — Very well, Ongriette, you can go to your luncheon now, and right afterwards I want you to take those garters up to show the lady in 217 that, was in this morning. Tell her we can match any color of corset or silk lawngerie she selects; it’s so chick to have every! hing underneath match.’ And as the girl departed, Paula, who had momentarily resumed her saleswoman’s elegance of deportment, turned to me, relaxing again.
' We’d simply lived everything clean up. Momma never did have much head-piece, you know,’ she explained impartially. ‘She’d got to be in poor health, and it was a good thing she died when she did; she’d have been an awful drag on me. I could n’t have taken care of her and made a living for both of us, too. As it was, she died and never knew a thing about it. But my, you have n’t any idea what a time I had afterwards! Why, I had to sell some jewelry to bury her with. Hey? Why, we were in N’Yawk. I went and got a room in one of those perfectly punk boarding-houses down near Washington Square. You have n’t any idea what a time I had! I did n’t know what to do, and anyway there was n’t a thing I could do — not even sewing or cooking. If I had n’t had luck, I bet I’d have been scrubbing floors this minute. First I thought of going on the stage; but pretty soon I saw that was n’t any good. You can hang around the theatrical agencies and offices, and hang around ’em, and hang around ’em, till your feet drop off, and you’ll never get a look-in, unless you’ve a friend with a pull. You know the kind of friend I mean.’ She paused significantly, and I nodded.
‘Well, I was n’t that kind,’ Madame Clarice went on, a certain hardness settling about her still lovely mouth. ‘Of course I could have—!’ She shrugged. ‘But what’s the use? I just felt as if I was good and done with men. When they come around me now, I just tell ’em all nix on that talk. It don’t go with me. I’ve seen too much. I don’t want anything more to do with any man, except in a business way, of course. I must say that when a man’s got his head set on business, he’s, generally speaking, a perfect gentleman. Well, as I was telling you, there I was in N’Yawk, in a hall-bedroom, you know, without a cent and scared to death every time I heard the landlady coming upstairs. Then one day I had an idea. I got it from something I heard a girl say in one of the dramaticbureau places I’d been going to. She was a chorus-girl, I guess — looked it, anyhow; and I heard her telling the man that she ’d been in a coat-and-suit model job over on Sixth Avenue, ever since the “June Roses" show broke up.
‘That interested me, because I always have wanted to know what they did in between times, haven’t you? That’s where I got my idea, too. I just thought, “ Why should n’t I be a coatand-suit model? They get good money, and nothing to do but stand around and be looked at. And I’ve got enough better figure than that chorus-girl.” So one clay I put on my things and started out.
‘Well, it was n’t so easy as I thought, but I finally did land a job with a ladies’ tailor named Blitz on Thirtysecond, near Broadway. His headwoman was sick, and they took me just to fill in while she was away. What he wanted was more of a saleslady to show the things and sort of jolly people along, than a model. It was n’t a real swell place like they have on the Avenue — like this one, you know — ’ And here Paula sent around a glance of proud satisfaction which was, on the whole, rather agreeable to see. She got up and rearranged a negligé of opalescent-tinted crêpe and silver embroidery, so that it would show to better advantage, laid carelessly over one of the gilded Empire chairs of Parlor A; eyed the effect a second, with her head on one side, touched the folds here and there, and returned to her chair and narrative.
‘Of course I was pretty green at first, but by the time I’d been there six weeks, I could see I was making good with Blitz. He was business clear through: kept tab on your sales, and got every ounce of work you held out of you. However, the head lady came back one day, and she had n’t been in the place a half hour before I knew it would presently be here’s-your-hatwhat’s-your-hurry for me. Mad! And jealous! Whee! And the worst of it was she was too good herself for Blitz to get rid of her. Smart as a st eel trap, you know, sell you the whole stock without your knowing it; just hypnotized you into buying. I learned a good deal watching her. My, I’ve often thought how mad it. would have made her to know I was getting a line on all her ways, and seeing where I could improve on ’em! When it came to looks,
I had the biggest kind of a lead over her, and I guess that’s one of the things that made her sorest . I was more refined style, you know, and that’s very hard to get always; you don’t see a real refined one every day.
‘However, by that time, I’d made some acquaintances in the trade; so when I left Blitz, I did n’t have any trouble at all scarcely. I went right over to the Lawngerie Department at Altman’s. But I hadn’t been there any time at all before a man I’d met that was in passementerie and fine trimmings came to me and says, “Look here, what you doing here? This ain’t any place for you.” “Well,” I says, “what I’m doing is getting my little fifteen a week. Any place where I can make that is the place for me, according to the way I figure it.” He just laughed. He says, “Fifteen! Why, you’re too good for that. Now I ’ve got a friend,” he says, “with the Maison Bloch, name of Sweeny; he’s their head man there, and he’s looking for somebody like you. You can put it all over any saleslady he’s got. Just look at your form for one thing; form’s everything in the corset trade. Tell ’em you wear the La Délice or the Cleo or the X.Y.Z., or any old style you choose, and they look at your form and fall for it every time. Now I want to take you around and introduce you to Sweeny.” Of course I knew that meant I was to throw Sweeny’s trade his way all I could, but I’d just as lief. He had a first-class line of goods, and one good turn deserves another, don’t it? So we went over to see Sweeny, and sure enough, did n’t he engage me right off! Only thing he said to me was: “Say, you got to can that name. You don’t want to be Mrs. Anybody—you’ve got to be Madame Something, or just a single name like Louise or Charlotte or Adelaide; that’s the nifty thing to do.” So we decided on Madame Clarice. I think it sounds swell, don’t you? Madame Clarice.’
I expressed due admiration; and we sat silent a moment, Paula thoughtfully moving and replacing the charming little sachet-bags, jabots, and odds and ends spread on the table near her.
‘It’s been easy for you ever since, I suppose?’ said I, at length.
‘Yes, oh yes. Well, of course, I’ve got to keep on the job every minute; believe me, I work. But I have n’t had any trouble; I’ve gone right along. I make two trips a year, South in winter —Palm Beach, and all the resorts, you know — and North in summer. It’s funny I never happened to come here before, but I believe the management have got a notion it is n’t a likely place. Anyway, they never put it in my route. You don’t know how queer it seemed to-day — same old town, but everything different!’
She was silent, playing with the trifles, and then spoke abruptly: ‘Bob Gilbert looks awfully, don’t he? I don’t believe he’ll live long.’
She said this with an air of detached and impersonal observation startling to witness. Whatever their experiences together had been, it was evident that Paula cherished no resentment, no feeling of any kind, about her ex-husband. She regarded him with an amiable indifference. While I was still sitting in a wordless confusion, she added with much more earnestness, ‘Lorrie has n’t ever got married, he said. I wonder why. Do you suppose it’s because of her having been engaged to — to —?’
‘To that Mr. Cortwright, that was killed in the Spanish War?' I supplied, seeing her hesitate; ‘why, yes, that’s what everybody thinks.’
‘ I thought sure she’d marry Mr. Kendrick,’ said Paula, gazing into space with a meditative frown. She caught sight of herself in a mirror, and gave a sound of consternation. ’My, I’ve got into such a bad habit of frowning that way! Ain’t it awful? I’ll have my forehead full of wrinkles if I don’t look out.’ She rubbed her finger-tips across it anxiously.
Some customers coming in just then, this was the end of the interview; and I did not see Madame Clarice again, although she invited me very urgently, and kissed me at parting! It was to be feared that she had diagnosed Bob’s case accurately; for going to the Preston next day to turn over the umbrella, I encountered a stylishly trim young woman at the booth in his place. And in answer to my inquiry she told me that the regular clerk had been taken sick yesterday afternoon and had to be sent home.
‘I guess he’s pretty bad off. They had the house doctor to fix him up, and he took him out to where he lives in a cab. I heard ’em say he had a hemorrhage, or was going to have one,’ she said.
(To be concluded.)