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 un happy for a while. The only thing I can't quite for give is that Bill but that comes later on.
There had been very little doing all spring. Every body 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 drear ier spring.
"Although," Carrie Smith said with truth, "the knitting's rather good for us. No woman can en joy 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 any thing worth while, was apt to be too expensive.
But to go back.
We sat and knitted and yawned, and the hus bands put on dressing gowns and ambled up the hill and round to the shower baths in the basement. 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 service able, 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 masseuse."
"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 inter ested in us. We manage their houses and bring up their children. That's all."
As Carrie was the only one who had any chil dren, 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; nobody'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.
"He was a dear. Sometimes I think he was the most generous soul in the world. I cannot imagine his fussing about a necklace, or sulking for hours over a bit of innocent pleasure like my playing a game of pool after a lot of sleepyheads had gone to bed."
"What time did you and Bill go upstairs?"
"Something after two. We got tired of playing and sat out here and talked. I knew you wouldn't mind, Clara. You've got too much sense. Surely a woman ought to be allowed friends, even if she is married."
"Oh, friends!" I retorted. "If she's going to keep her husband a friend she's got her hands full. Cer tainly I'm not jealous of you and Bill, Carrie. But it's not friends most of us want, if you're after the truth. We want passionate but perfectly respecta ble, commandment-keeping lovers!"
Carrie laughed, but her colour died down.
"How silly you are!" she said, and got up. "May be we'd like to feel that we're not clear out of the game, but that's all. We're a little tired of being taken for granted. I don't want a lover; I want amusement, and if I'd married Harry Delaney I'd have had it."
"If you'd married him he would have been down there at the pool, showing off like a goldfish in a bowl, the same as the others."
"He would not. He can't swim," said Carrie, and sauntered away. Somehow I got the impression that she had been sounding me, and had got what she wanted. She looked very handsome that night, and wore the necklace. Someone commented on it at dinner, and Wallie glared across at it.
"It isn't paid for," he said, "and as far as I can see, it never will be."
Of course, even among old friends, that was going rather far.
Well, the usual thing happened after dinner. The men smoked and argued, and we sat on the terrace and yawned. When they did come out it was to say that golf and swimming had made them sleepy, and Jim Elliott went asleep in his chair. Carrie said very little, except once to lean over and ask me if I remembered the name of the man Alice Warrington had thrown over for Ted. When I told her she settled back into silence again.
The next morning all the husbands were up early and off to the club for a Sunday's golfing. At ten o'clock a note came in on my breakfast tray from Carrie.
"Slip on something and come to my room," it said.
When I got there Ida and Alice Warringtoh were there already, and Carrie was sitting up in bed, with the same spots of colour I'd seen before. I curled up on the bed with my hands round my knees.
"Go to it, Carrie," I said. "If it's church, it's too late. If it's a picnic, it looks like rain."
"Close the door, Ida," said Carrie. "Girls, I'm getting pretty tired of this."
"Of what?"
"Of dragging the matrimonial ball and chain wherever I go, and having to hear it clank and swear and sulk, and all the rest. I'm tired, and so are all of you. Only I'm more honest."
"It's all rather a mess," Ida said languidly. "But divorce is a mess too. And, anyhow, what's the use of changing? Just as one gets to know a man's pet stories, and needn't pretend to laugh at them any more, why take on a new bunch of stones or habits?"
"The truth is," said Carrie, ignoring her, "that they have all the good times. They don't have to look pretty. Their clothes last forever. And they're utterly selfish socially. You girls know how much they dance with the married women when there are any debutantes about."
We knew.
"The thing to do," said Carrie, "is to bring them back to a sense of obligation. They've got us. We stay put. They take us to parties and get up a table of bridge for us, and go off to a corner with a chit just out of school, or dance through three handker chiefs and two collars, and grumble at paying our bridge losses. Or else they stay at home, and nothing short of a high explosive would get them out of their chairs."
"Destructive criticism," said Alice Warrington, "never gets anywhere. We agree with you. There's no discussion. Are you recommending the high explosive?"
"I am," said Carrie calmly. "I propose to wake them up, and to have a good time doing it."
Well, as it turned out, it was I who wakened them up,
and nobody had a very good time about it.
"There's just one man a husband is always jealous of," Carrie went on, and her eyes were slitted as usual. "That's the man his wife could have married and didn't."
I expect I coloured, for Bill has always been in sanely jealous of Roger Waite, although honestly I never really cared for Roger. We used to have good times together, of course. You know.
Carrie's plan came out by degrees.
"It will serve two purposes," she said. "It will bring the men to a sense of responsibility, and stop this silly nonsense about bills and all that sort of thing. And it will be rather fun. It's a sin to drop old friends. Does Wallie drop his? Not so you could notice it. Every time I'm out of town he lives at Grace Barnabee's."
Carrie had asked us all to spend the next week end with her, but the husbands were going to New York for the polo game and she had called the party off. But now it was on again.
"Do you girls remember the house party I had when Wallie was in Cuba, before we were engaged? We had a gorgeous time. I'm going to repeat it. It's silly to say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Of course it does, if one doesn't use lightning rods. Peter Arundel for Alice, and Roger for you, Clara. Ida, you were in Europe, but we'll let you in. Who'll you have?" "Only one?" asked Ida. "Only one."
Ida chose Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie wrote the notes right there in bed, with a pillow for a desk, and got ink on my best linen sheets.
"I'm sorry I never thought of it before," she said. "The house party is bound to be fun, and if it turns out well we'll do it regularly. I'll ask in a few people for dancing Saturday night, but we'll keep Sunday for ourselves. We'll have a deliciously sen timental day."
She sat back and threw out her arms. "Good Lord," she said, "I'm just ripe for a bit of sentiment. I want about forty-eight hours with out bills or butlers or bridge. I'm going to send my diamond necklace to a safe deposit, and get out my debutante pearls, and have the wave washed out of my hair, and fill in the necks of one or two gowns. I warn you fairly, there won't be a cigarette for any of you."
When I left them they were already talking clothes, and Carrie had a hand glass and was looking at herself intently in it.
"I've changed, of course," she sighed. "One can't have two children and not show the wear and tear of maternity. I could take off five pounds by going on a milk diet. I think I will."
She went on the diet at luncheon that day, and Wallie told her that if she would cut out heavy din ners and wine her stomach would be her friend, not her enemy. She glanced at me, but I ignored her. Somehow I was feeling blue.
The week-end had not been a success, and the girls had not been slow to tell me about it. The very eagerness with which they planned for the next week told me what a failure I'd had. Even then the idea of getting even somehow with Carrie was in the back of my mind.
The men did some trap shooting that afternoon, and during dinner Jim started a discussion about put ting women on a clothes allowance and making them keep within it.
"I can systematise my business," he said, "but I can't systematise my home. I'm spending more now than I'm getting out of the mill."
Wallie Smith came up to scratch about that time by saying that his mother raised him with the assis tance of a nursemaid, and no governess and trained nurse nonsense.
"That is why I insist on a trained nurse and a governess," said Carrie coldly, and took another sip of milk.
They went home that night, and Bill, having seen them into the motors, came up on the terrace.
"Bully party, old dear," he said enthusiastically. "Have 'em often, won't you?"
He sat down near me and put a hand over mine. All at once I was sorry I'd accepted Carrie's invitation. Not that there would be any harm in seeing Roger again, but because Bill wouldn't like it. The touch of his warm hand on mine, the quiet of the early summer night after the noise that had gone before, the scent of the honeysuckle over the pergola, all combined to soften me.
"I'm glad you had a good time, Bill," I said after a little silence. "I'm afraid the girls didn't enjoy it much. You men were either golfing or swimming or shooting, and there wasn't much to do but talk."
Bill said nothing. I thought he might be resent ful, and I was in a softened mood.
"I didn't really mind your staying downstairs the other night with Carrie," I said. "Bill, do smell the honeysuckle. Doesn't it remind you of the night you asked me to marry you?"
Still Bill said nothing. I leaned over anci looked at him. As usual he was asleep.
About the middle of the week Roger Waite called me up. We did not often meet two or three times in the winter at a ball, or once in a season at a din ner. Ida Elliott always said he avoided me because it hurt him to see me. We had been rather sentimen tal. He would dance once with me, saying very little, and go away as soon as he decently could directly the dance was over. Sometimes I had thought that it pleased him to fancy himself still in love with me, and it's perfectly true that he showed no signs of marrying. It was rather the thing for the debutan tes to go crazy about Roger. He had an air of knowing such a lot and keeping it from them.
"Why don't you keep him around^" Ida asked me once. "He's so ornamental. I'm not strong for tame cats, but I wouldn't mind Roger on the hearth rug myself."
But up to this time I'd never really wanted any body on the hearthrug but Bill. If I do say it, I was a perfectly contented wife until the time Carrie Smith made her historic effort to revive the past. "Let sleeping dogs lie" is my motto now and tame cats too.
Well, Roger called me up, and there was the little thrill in his voice that I used to think he kept for me. I know better now.
"What's this about going out to Carrie Smith's?" he said over the phone.
"That's all," I replied. "You're invited and I'm going."
"O!" said Roger. And waited a moment. Then:
"I was going on to the polo," he said, "but of course What's wrong with Bill and polo?' 3
"He's going."
"Oh!" said Roger. "Well, then, I think I'll go to Carrie's. It sounds too good to be true you, and no scowling husband in the offing!"
"It's it's rather a long time since you and I had a real talk."
"Too long," said Roger. "Too long by about three years."
That afternoon he sent me a great box of flowers. My conscience was troubling me rather, so I sent them down to the dinner table. Whatever happened I was not going to lie about them.
But Bill only frowned.
"I've just paid a florist's bill of two hundred dol lars," he grumbled. "Cut out the American beau ties, old dear."
It was not his tone that made me angry. It was his calm assumption that I had bought the things. As if no one would think of sending me flowers!
"If you would stop sending orchids to silly debutantes when they come out," I snapped, "there would be no such florist's bills."
One way or another Bill got on my nerves that week. He brought Wallie Smith home one night to dinner, and Wallie got on my nerves too. I could remember, when Wallie and Carrie were engaged and we were just married, how he used to come and talk us black in the face about Carrie.
"How's Carrie, Wallie?" I said during the soup.
"She's all right," he replied, and changed the subject. But later in the evening, while Bill was walking on the lawn with a cigar, he broke out for fair.
"Carrie's on a milk diet," he said apropos of nothing. "If she stays on it another week I'm going to Colorado. She's positively brutal, and she hasn't ordered a real dinner for anybody for a week."
"Really!" I said.
He got up and towered over me.
"Look here, Clara," he said; "you're a sensible woman. Am I fat? Am I bald? Am I a doddering arid toothless venerable? To hear Carrie this past few days you'd think I need to wear overshoes when I go out in the grass."
I rather started, because I'd been looking at Bill at that minute and wondering if he was getting his feet wet. He had only pumps on.
"I
t isn't only that she's brutal," he said, "she has soft moments when she mothers me. Confound it, I don't want to be mothered! She's taken off eight pounds," he went on gloomily. "And that isn't the worst." He lowered his voice. "I found her crying over some old letters the other day. She isn't happy, Clara. You know she could have married a lot of fellows. She was the most popular girl I ever knew/'
Well, I'd known Carrie longer than he had, and of course a lot of men used to hang round her house because there was always something to do. But I'd never known that such a lot of them made love to Carrie or wanted to marry her. She was clever enough to hesitate over Wallie, but, believe me, she knew she had him cinched before she ran any risk. However:
"I'm sure you've tried to make her happy," I said. "But of course she was awfully popular."
I'm not so very keen about Carrie, but the way I felt that week, when it was a question between a hus band and a wife, I was for the wife. "Of course," I said as Bill came within hearing distance, "it's not easy, when one's had a lot of attention, to settle down to one man, especially if the man is consider ably older and and settled."
That was a wrong move, as it turned out. For Bill, who never says much, got quieter than ever, and announced, just before he went to bed, that he'd given up the polo game. I was furious. I'd had one or two simple little frocks run up for Carrie's party, and by the greatest sort of luck I'd happened on a piece of flowered lawn almost exactly like one Roger used to be crazy about.
For twenty-four hours things hung in the balance. Bill has a hideous way of doing what he says he'll do. Roger had sent more flowers not roses this time, but mignonette and valley lilies, with a few white orchids. It looked rather bridey. It would have been too maddening to have Bill queer the whole thing at the last minute.
But I fixed things at bridge one night by saying that I thought married people were always better off for short separations, and that I was never so fond of Bill as when he'd been away for a few days.
"Polo for me!" said Bill.
And I went out during my dummy hand and tele phoned Carrie.
I hope I have been clear about the way the thing began. I feel that my situation should be explained. For one thing, all sorts of silly stones are going round, and it is stupid of people to think they can not ask Roger and me to the same dinners. If Bill would only act like a Christian, and not roar the moment his name is mentioned, there would be a chance for the thing to die out. But you know what Bill is.
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 406
