CHAPTER II
There have been rumors that when the serpent in the Garden showed the apple to Eve, that it wasn’t exactly an apple she saw. Some even say the forbidden fruit, as she gazed at it, did what our best movie writers call “dissolved” and slowly faded into a yellow backed bill. And so the damage was done.
At any rate, money or the wishing for it has done a lot to women of all times ever since Eve first had her vision. Marjorie Benton may have fully believed in her own heart that it meant nothing to her, but from the time that Hugh first gave her an idea that his invention with which she had long been familiar might really mean that she could have whatever she wished, and was not a nebulous dream, there subtly grew within her a spirit of discontent which she would have denied—even to herself—but which was nonetheless real.
The bungalow. Somehow it didn’t seem the most desirable of all habitations as she had once thought it. She could so easily use another bathroom; perhaps two. With money, even these things were possible. And a dining room. She seemed quite to forget how wonderful had seemed that kitchen with its small alcove when she and Hugh had planned it from one of those perfect home magazines, she sitting with her head buried on Hugh’s shoulder, he holding her tightly with one hand as he marked out diagrams with the other. The babies! There was so much she wanted for them now, when she came to think of it, and as for what she wanted for them in the future—there seemed no end to the wishes or the castle building.
To do her justice, Marjorie really hadn’t thought much of what sudden fortune might mean to her personally. She wasn’t naturally vain. That is, she had not given herself the first thought. Discontent with her own lot came upon her gradually, and, as might reasonably be expected, she had been brought to realize it through other women. Her first realization was on a day when Mrs. Birmingham and Mrs. Wallace called. Usually Marjorie had accepted these two small town butterflies with a smile of tolerance. This time it was different.
Their talk had been of clothes,—a fairly general topic of conversation with average women. Mrs. Birmingham grew positively eloquent as she described her new fall costume with its garnishings of beaver; of the smart little hat to match; the gloves, shoes; all the little accessories necessary to an outfit to be envied. But then Mrs. Birmingham was telling of her possessions with just this purpose in view. Not to be outdone, Mrs. Wallace drawled:
“Oh, yes, my dear, but you know it is so much easier to be outfitted if one does it near home. Now I’ve had to send to New York for my moleskin stole. Harvey wouldn’t hear of anything else. Seal and the ordinary furs one sees are so common, don’t you think?”
In her usual contented frame of mind, Marjorie would have chuckled at the attempted arrogance. Now she sighed inwardly. Moleskin! And Mrs. Wallace, poor little mouse-haired nonentity, was actually going to have it while she, Marjorie— She showed nothing of her thoughts, though, as she listened, attentive and sweet as usual.
Not till they had gone and she sat curled up with one foot under her on a big floor cushion (a favorite attitude when she wanted to think) did she realize that they had given her food for thought, and that she wanted things! Wanted them!
“I’m frazzled and frayed—almost disreputable!” was her half bitter inward comment. “Why I haven’t had any kind of a new suit in two years, and as for a hat! Well,—” She laughed ruefully as she clambered to her feet and mechanically shook out the cushions that still bore the imprint of Mrs. Birmingham’s none too svelte figure, “I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. I had a new hat once,—some time before Elinor was born.”
Aggrieved as she felt for the moment, Marjorie Benton realized that her lack of finery was not her husband’s fault. He had always wished her to have it, and had urged that she set aside something for herself. But always something had happened to it. Once she had been on the verge of spending it, when Howard had to have his tonsils out; then had come their contribution toward building the new church.
Marjorie groaned. “Just one thing after another—all the time,” she complained, and complaining was something so new Marjorie Benton would not have recognized it in herself. “Oh, if Hugh should do something with that invention! Surely he must!”
And once again with the thought, came in a flood all the day-dreams she had been indulging since he had spoken to her a week and a half ago of his hopes. What would she not do? As she stood between the parted curtains gazing out into the street swept with a scurrying vista of whirling autumn leaves, it was not the brown and gold of fallen leaves she saw, but visions of shop windows in gorgeous colors, gowns of purple and gold and sapphire, and tissues fine as spun cobwebs. All for her. For Marjorie Benton was at least realizing how well her beauty would accord with the vanities of femininity and she knew she wanted them—not as she had thought she had when she had so generously given of her small store, but in the light of the possibility which Hugh’s hopes had opened up to her. All these women in Atwood who had somehow seemed to patronize her, even when they told her how they envied her her happiness. She wanted to show them!
Hardly realizing it, Marjorie Benton found herself a victim of an uneasy restlessness; a rapidly growing discontent. For antidote she plunged deeper than ever into her household duties, busied herself with the babies, did everything, anything, to keep her thoughts from straying. Each night as she heard Hugh’s step on the walk, her heart beat in mad suspense—“Would there be any news to-night?” was the question involuntarily on her lips.
The only answer so far had been Hugh’s sad little negative nod, but there came a night, after he kissed her, when he handed her a letter before he vanished into the bedroom where the children were playing.
Marjorie’s hands were so unsteady she could hardly open it, although Hugh’s demeanor had been such she almost knew what to expect in advance, and therefore the courteous refusal that met her eyes did not surprise her in the least. She brushed away unbidden tears and hastened after him.
“Never mind, dear,” she soothed gently, pulling his head down to kiss him, “you have other firms to hear from yet—we mustn’t let one answer discourage us.”
“Brave little girl,” he answered. “Thinking of me as usual, when I know what that letter meant to you—now wait,” as she started to protest, “let me finish, dear. Don’t you think, sweetheart, that I haven’t noticed a change in you this past week? You haven’t been yourself at all, although you have tried to make believe—and I know it’s been anxiety over my old invention. Why, dear one,” and Hugh Benton gently smoothed his wife’s hair as he soothed her as he would one of the youngsters who were pulling at his coat tails, “if I had known you were going to take it this way—that it would have caused you a moment’s worry, I wouldn’t have told you a thing about it until everything was all settled, and we were millionaires.”
Marjorie caught a sob in her throat as she gazed at Hugh with wide open eyes. So he had noticed that something was wrong. How selfish she had been. A tear trembled on her long lashes as she glanced up at him contritely.
“Oh, Hugh, dear, dearest,” she quavered. “I didn’t think you—I didn’t know—you see—” she clutched his coat sleeve and hid her face in it as little Elinor and Howard danced about shouting with glee, each with the idea of some new game. But mother was only searching for words. They came in a gush, and the little sob that accompanied them made grave for a moment the face of the man she held to so tightly,—a graveness replaced in a moment by an indulgent smile of understanding as she spoke. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about the money so much, d-d-ear, but Mrs. Wallace has a new moleskin stole and Mrs. Birmingham has a be-e-aver co-co-at!”
So it was out. Man fashion Hugh hadn’t thought that Marjorie might want the things so dear to the hearts of other women. She had seemed so different. But he remembered that she was a woman, after all, and it was with a little pang that he realized how little she had really had during the past few years. His lips set in a grim line of determination to change all this as he patted her hair, but his words were as cheery and hearty as always as he whispered:
“There, there, honey, don’t fret! You shall have ’em, too! But right now, don’t you think it would be a good idea to get on the old blue bonnet and let’s take a whirl at the movies? Cheer up all around? Charlie Chaplin and Nazimova—weeps and laughs. What say? Can’t you get Mrs. Clancy to watch the babies?”
And as though the matter were settled, which Marjorie knew it was, Hugh Benton, in his usual abrupt way, resumed his interrupted romp with his son and heir and the little princess of the house of Benton.
Cypress Avenue was the rather imposing name that the dwellers on that thoroughfare in Atwood chose to use in referring to their place of residence. Why Cypress, though, was a question that was bound to present itself to the casual visitor. There were maple trees in plenty, a few dogwoods and scattered shrubs of nondescript nomenclature that grew without regard to any scheme of city gardening either inside or outside the flagged sidewalks at their own sweet will. But cypresses—stay! Yes, there was a cypress if one chose to go that far to look for it,—away out at the end of the street at the entrance to the Forest Home Cemetery, beyond the more pretentious homes of brick and concrete that housed such aristocracy as the Birminghams and the Wallaces. Mr. Birmingham was president of the Atwood Bank, and Edgar Wallace made sufficient as the town’s chief merchant to clothe his wife in moleskin. On Cypress Avenue, too, lived the Moultons, the Carvers, the Hopewells, coal and wood, hardware and grain barons and baronesses of their own small world. It was something to live on Cypress Avenue, and the Bentons, in building their shingle bungalow had felt a glow of pride in taking their place with the elect of their chosen place of residence. They were farther downtown, though, within such a short distance of Depot Avenue, the main street and business district, that they could easily see the lights of the Princess, the movie theater, flash on each night, and could tell to a nicety the time of night by seeing when Oscar Merriman, the depot agent and telegrapher, turned out the electrics preparatory to closing up and going to his own home far across the railroad tracks in Sandy Hill.
That the farmers coming and going from the outlying districts chose to speak of Depot Avenue as the main road, and of Cypress Avenue as the short cut, in no wise disturbed the residents of that avenue. They were quite assured that their chief residential street compared most favorably with that of any street in any town the size of Atwood.
Shaded as it was, and lighted with the new lights in their opalescent globes recently installed by the city fathers—and brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, too,—it was a foregone conclusion that Cypress Avenue should be the favorite strolling place for Atwoodites on such nights as strolling was possible. So when Hugh and Marjorie Benton closed their front gate and started toward Depot Avenue and the movie lights, they did not particularly remark the numbers of people who passed and stopped them to pass laughing comments of the events of the day. With the thoughts of money she had been harboring, and the newly arisen desire for a change, Marjorie Benton realized with something of a pang that such a change as her day dreams had led her to desire would mean a forfeiting of all this jolly camaraderie. She was not altogether sure that she really wanted it, after all. But as they turned into the principal street and the few lights in front of the main stores greeted her, her mind flew hastily to the vision of New York and its Great White Way as she remembered it on one of her few visits to the city. Yes, that was what she wanted—must have!
So interested was she in her own thoughts, that she did not notice the unusual quietness of the husband who walked beside her, his brows drawn into a furrow, his lips compressed with determination as he glanced once or twice at his pretty young wife, apparently noticing for the first time that Marjorie’s hat wasn’t in the least like that of Mrs. Rolfe who had just passed them with a cheery good evening; that Marjorie’s gloves were undeniably mended; that in spite of the jauntiness with which she wore it, her little blue velvet coat was badly worn about the seams.
It was with a start that Marjorie Benton brought herself back to Atwood to recognize that a small car had stopped at the curb beside them. Someone was calling to her.
“You must be thinking of something very pleasant—and far away,” came the staccato voice of Mrs. Birmingham, as she leaned out of the car and shook her hand admonishingly at Marjorie. “I’ve called you three times.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Marjorie was earnestly apologetic. “I was thinking——”
Little Mr. Birmingham’s snappy laugh broke in to cover her confusion. “Don’t do it, my dear,” he advised. “Bad for your pretty head. Now Matilda, here, she never thinks—and look at her——”
“James William!” Mrs. Birmingham brought all the hauteur she could command in reprimand of her spouse. Then, ignoring him, she turned to the Bentons and there was a purr in her voice as she went on:
“I only stopped you, Marjorie, dear, to see if you would not promise me—positively promise—to be one of the hostesses at the Dilemma Club’s reception next Friday. We’ve seen so little of you recently—everyone is asking why you are keeping so to yourself, and—oh, I know what you’re going to say,” raising her gray gloved hand protestingly as Marjorie started to speak, “—the babies, and all that, but you should not neglect your social duties so—other women have babies, too, and we need you, you know. You’re our prize ‘cultured lady,’ remember, and besides you’re much better off than so many women who never neglect the club. You have your incomparable Mrs. Clancy who will always come when you call her, but how you’re able to manage it when it is so hard for anyone to get servants,—now my second girl who has only been with me a week was telling me only to-day that she couldn’t stay, and——”
Mr. Birmingham’s sniff was loudly audible.
“Second chief cook and bottle washer,” he commented, “and twenty-fourth you’ve tried to have stay and wear a confounded white cap. Hmmph! What a woman needs of two girls to wait on her beats me, eh, Benton?”
Though she flushed angrily, Mrs. Birmingham’s control was admirable as she added, before Marjorie could voice a reply: “Then that’s settled. You’ll come—I can depend on you——”
Marjorie’s thoughts were aghast as she thought of her one all-too-worn best gown, the impossibility of wearing it,—and the still greater impossibility of getting another.
“Why, really, I—I can’t say right now—” Marjorie stammered, and she was conscious of the hot flood that crimsoned her face.
“Certainly she will go!” Hugh Benton broke in in his decided way. His single glance into the knowing depths of Mrs. Birmingham’s small gray eyes had decided him. He felt the slight twinge as his wife nipped his arm in remonstrance, but his lips were still set in that firm line of determination that had first come to him when he had learned that Marjorie wanted more than he had been able to give her. He would make good for Marjorie, and this should be a beginning.
“But dear, I——”
He cut her remonstrance short.
“If it’s a new gown that’s bothering you,” he said bluntly, “then you can order one to-morrow,—from New York. You know,” and he looked squarely at Mrs. Birmingham as she lifted politely inquiring eyebrows, “my wife has been going out so little, that she has not paid the attention to frills that are usual with women, I believe.”
“Splendid!” enthused the banker’s wife, but there was a queer half smile on Birmingham’s thin lips that told of his glee that his Matilda had received one quietus to her patronizing. “Then we won’t keep you any longer. Sorry we haven’t the big car with us,” she drawled. “But it’s a beautiful night for a stroll, isn’t it?”
“We’re going to the movies,” remarked Marjorie, in the tone she might have employed at announcing an opera opening. “They’re having two splendid pictures to-night—why don’t you come with us?”
Mrs. Birmingham stifled a well-assumed yawn. “Oh, the movies,” she said languidly. “They bore me to extinction. I’m dreadfully spoiled, I’m afraid. In New York when I’m with my sister (you know I spent three months there the last time) we went to the theater almost every night. Theaters make the movies seem so—er—banal, don’t you think?”
“Hmmph!” once more remarked the snappy little banker, in a tone that led one to believe it was his favorite expression, or, rather, explosion. “Theatres every night—brother-in-law with a pull that got free tickets for everything where they couldn’t sell seats—made you forget you once wanted to dress your hair and roll your eyes like Theda Bara, didn’t they, eh, Matilda? Well, I like the movies—wish I could be going with you, folks, but we got to be getting along. Good luck!” His hand went toward the starter, but the hand of Mrs. Birmingham stayed him for a last word.
“Oh, I almost forgot, Marjorie, my dear,” she called, as Hugh and Marjorie turned toward the lights of Depot Avenue, “my sister sent me a lot of things yesterday—some new books and so on—and I know you’re just crazy about reading, so I’m going to send some of them over to you for you to read and tell me about. I always get so much more benefit out of a book when someone who is interested tells me about it. You will, there’s a dear?”
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Birmingham,” Marjorie began, and she was almost startled by the abrupt way in which Hugh hurried her along, her thanks half expressed.
“Patronizing old frump!” he fumed. “Well, that’s the last of it—no more!”
Marjorie laughed at his intensity.
“Oh, what harm, Hugh, dear?” she defended, and the humorous light that he knew and loved so well chased away the half wistfulness of the last few hours. “She likes it and it doesn’t do me any harm. But,” and she dimpled as she looked up at her tall husband and gleefully squeezed his arm, “did you notice she didn’t have on the beaver coat?”
“Plenty of cat, though,” and Hugh’s frown did not lighten as his hand slipped into his trousers pocket and he laid his money down on the cashier’s window in front of the gay little movie theater.
In shaded Cypress Avenue the Birminghams’ small car whirled along. Its occupants were silent—for a few moments. Mrs. Birmingham broke that silence.
“James William Birmingham,” she declared (he was always “James William” instead of “Jimmie” when Mrs. Birmingham had anything of great importance to say), “you have hurt my feelings!”
The banker snorted. “Then you know how it feels.”
“And in front of the Bentons, of all people!” She was on the verge of tears, but Mr. Birmingham believed in letting a lesson sink in.
“Well, what’s wrong with them?”
“N-nothing, nothing at all,” was the impatient reply. “But, oh, you know how it is as well as I do. Marjorie Benton is just perfect in most people’s eyes, and if anything is wanted, don’t they go and ask her instead of coming to me, the banker’s wife? All I have is clothes and theaters and things, and if you think I’m not going to make her feel that I’m superior in some ways, then you’re all wrong. Marjorie Benton hasn’t had a new thing in years. I’ve got to get even with her someway, or she’d be thinking she was better than I am, or than anyone. All of us pity her, though, because she’s so shabby.”
Louder than at any time previously James William Birmingham exploded his “Hmmph!”
“Hmmph! Pity all you like, but it’ll be wasted, I can tell you. Unless I miss my guess, the Bentons ’ll soon be richer than anyone in this little old town, just as she’s already the brightest and prettiest little woman here, and he’s the finest man I know. Wish I had money enough to back him myself.”
“Wonderful invention, indeed!” Matilda Birmingham was disdainful. “That old rubber stamp thing! Why, we’ve been hearing about it for ages, and I for one, don’t believe it will ever amount to anything.”
“All you know about it.” The banker had the closing word. “Well, you just chew over this—if it wasn’t for a lot of little old inventions like that women like you would be finding a lot more to do keeping house and making a home instead of gadding and talking about their new clothes to someone who hasn’t got ’em!”
• • • • •
Mrs. Clancy, the dependable, was dozing in the kitchen when Hugh and Marjorie returned from their outing. But she had not forgotten to put out on the little table the bit of supper that she knew Hugh and Marjorie liked on such occasions. Marjorie’s smile was different from her usual one, though, as she recalled how often she and Hugh had sat down at their own little table thus, and over and over had reminded each other how much better it was than any restaurant, how much luckier they were than most people. To-night, somehow—well, she wasn’t so sure.
“Not a whimper out of the blessed lambs,” the old serving woman assured Marjorie’s eagerness about her babies. “Oi’ve caught forty winks, too, and—” She stopped in the careful tying of her bonnet strings, to dig deep into a pocket, bringing out a crumpled telegram. “Now, and if Oi didn’t almost forget the bit letter Tim Smith’s bye Jerry brought.”
Marjorie’s heart lost a beat.
“A telegram!” she cried. “Why, who can it be——”
Already Hugh had torn it open, and it was with a light of gladness in his eyes and a flourish as of laying at her feet the wealth of the world, that he handed it to his wife.
“We’ve won, dearest,—I’m sure of it. See it is from the biggest of all the firms I’ve wanted to interest.”
In a daze Marjorie gazed at the few typed words as though they held magic. She was but dimly aware of her mechanical good-night to the good-hearted Irishwoman who made it possible for such little pleasures as she and Hugh had to-night enjoyed. There was entrancement; the words danced in letters of gold before her eyes.
ATWOOD, N. Y.
MEETING WITH DIRECTORS ARRANGED FOR TEN THIRTY, SEPT. 23. EVERYTHING FAVORABLE TO DATE.
TEMPLETON, BAIRD & CO.
“Dearest!” At last she found voice. “How perfectly wonderful! Oh, I knew you would make me proud of you!” She flew to him and her arms reached up to cling about his neck. The man’s eyes, too, were dim, but there was in them that which showed he knew now he must not fail,—that he must do all this woman he loved and who loved him believed him capable of. His arms folded about her tenderly. With a sudden thought, though, she drew away a bit to glance once more at the crumpled yellow sheet that meant so much. “Why dear!” she gasped wonderingly, “it’s right away, too! Did you notice? This meeting is for to-morrow!”
Hugh Benton nodded.
“Yes, sweetheart. And I’ve been thinking while you’ve been dreaming and waking up to realities. I’ll take the morning train—I’ll telephone Mr. Birmingham—and I can be back at mid-night. You can get Mrs. Clancy to come over and stay with you.”
Marjorie drew back reproachfully.
“Mrs. Clancy! Oh, Hugh, dear! How can you think I could have anybody about when I’ll have so much to think of—so much to plan——”
Hugh smiled a bit ruefully.
“Seemed to me lately you’d already been planning a lot—got new ones to make?” he asked, half teasingly.
“Hundreds, thousands, millions of them,” declared Marjorie, sweeping her hands in a gesture to include the world. “Oh, I won’t be lonely—you can be sure of that. But,” and her eyes roved toward the table with its untouched food and the coffee pot simmering on the stove, “here we are forgetting to eat. It must be serious. Sit down dear, and let’s plan it all out. I’m going to get the chocolate cake. This isn’t to be an ordinary feast, you know!”
Hugh Benton’s eyes were somber as he watched his wife, her face flushed to a deep wild rose, her eyes shining like stars, as she flew to arrange their belated supper. His thoughts were far off.
“I wonder,” he murmured, as he closely followed her movements, his chin cupped in one hand, his elbow resting on the table with its embroidered doilies, Marjorie’s own handiwork, “I wonder if it is really what she wants. But I’ve got to do it—I must make good—I will!”