Chapter XII

"Dick, you make me tired with all this talk of yours on economy, anyhow!" Gloria reopened the subject on the way home. "All you do is preach to me that we're too poor to afford a maid, or a machine, or a few decent clothes! ... And then you turn right 'round and buy a thousand dollars' worth of telephone stock that means absolutely nothing in my life! ... What I want to know is how you could afford to do it if we're as poor as you say we are?"

Dick walked on in silence for several minutes.

"As a matter of fact, I couldn't afford to do it. I nearly broke my neck trying to pay for that stock," he said at last. "I borrowed part of the money from Dad. And you know I had to sell my roadster to buy you your car..."

"That's right, rub it in! Make me feel like a selfish pig!" Gloria interrupted, "just because I want a car like every other woman in town, your own precious mother included! ... I swear I'll never ride in the thing! You can send it back..."

She stood still in the street and began to cry.

"I don't believe I deserve this outburst from you, Gloria," Dick said. "In fact, I know I don't. And if you want to stand here and cry ... go ahead and do it! I'm going home...."

But he didn't move. Gloria knew he wouldn't.

She went on crying. Then she felt Dick's arms around her. She put her head down on his shoulder.

"You're so mean to me," she sobbed. They walked on.

"I'm so sorry you think so, sweetheart," Dick said quietly. "I suppose I shouldn't worry you about money matters, but I've been running behind lately.... Gosh, I hadn't figured on married life being as expensive as it is! ... I wonder how people get along who have two or three children to feed and clothe...."

"Well, that's one thing you needn't worry about ... babies," Gloria said, "because we aren't going to have any, ever!"

"Not ever?" Dick asked gravely. His hand tightened on her arm. "What's the big idea? Don't you really want children, Gloria? ... Why, you'd be the sweetest little mother in the world! ... Why, sure, you want babies, honey!"

In the darkness Gloria's eyes were hard, her lips set stubbornly.

"Don't kid yourself!" she said firmly. "Children are the very last things in the world that I want, Dick."

"You'll feel differently about it later on ... in a year or two," he assured her. "Every woman wants a family."

"I never will!" Gloria told herself, as they turned into their own street.

Aloud she said, "Let's run out to the garage and see that my car is safe and all right before we go into the house, will you?"

She could hardly wait for Dick to open the garage doors and switch on the light. Gloria walked all around the little blue car with its burnished brass trimmings shining in the electric light.

"Oh, you cute thing! I never thought I'd own anything like you!" she cried, patting the mudguards with her little gloved hands, lovingly.

By the end of the week Gloria had learned to drive the car. She went Christmas shopping in it, bringing it home loaded with beribboned packages.

"You'll just perfectly kill me, Dick, when the bills come in!" Gloria said one morning. "So don't buy me a Christmas present ... just pay my bills instead, like a good sport! They aren't so awfully big."

But when the bills came in the first week in January, they were very big ... much larger than Gloria had expected. She was sure that the stores had made a mistake in them, somewhere.

She went over them again and again, with the same result. She owed exactly six hundred dollars ... two hundred of it for Christmas gifts! Gloria kept the bills in the top drawer of her desk for two days.

On the third day she screwed up her courage to show them to Dick.

She would take them to him at his office.

Miss Briggs would be there, of course. And Dick couldn't scold and rave about the bills in front of Miss Briggs!

... Gloria dressed herself with great care. On the way downtown she stopped at the florist's and bought an orchid for her coat.

The windshield mirror told her that she was looking unusually lovely.

It would be much harder for Dick to quarrel with a beautiful wife who had run up $600 worth of bills than with a plain unattractive one...

It was nice to be beautiful. It made things so much simpler!

There was no one at Miss Briggs' desk in Dick's outer office.

From the inner room came the sound of voices.

Gloria sat down in Miss Briggs' swivel chair to wait.

The office was warm. After a while Gloria took off her coat, and then her hat. The tight crown had left a red band on her forehead. She rubbed it gently with her finger tips....

"—and I told him that Mother and I could take care of the two older children. But I guess it's going to be too much for Mother. She's not so very well."

Miss Briggs' voice!

And what was she talking about? ... Gloria listened.

Silence for a long moment. Then Dick's voice.

"Would it help you any if I gave you a little raise ... say about five dollars more a week?" he was saying. "Then you could hire a woman to help your mother out with the children."

"Of course, it would help ... but I think you're paying me all I'm worth now, Mr. Gregory," Miss Briggs' soft voice answered. Her shadow appeared on the frosted glass pane of the door between the two offices.

Gloria rose. She gathered her bills in one hand and opened the door.

Miss Briggs nodded at her, and slipped out.

"Hello, there, Rikky-Tikky-Tavy!" Gloria greeted Dick cheerfully. She perched herself on the corner of Dick's desk. "You'll pardon me for breaking in on your interesting conversation with Miss Briggs ... but I got tired waiting while she vamped some more salary from you!"

"Hush!" Dick said. He walked over and tried the handle of the door to see that it was shut tight. "She'll hear you."

"It's a good thing I caught you in this generous mood," Gloria went on with sarcasm in her voice, "because I'm calling on money matters, myself!"

She laid the bills down on Dick's desk. He didn't touch them.

"I want to explain to you about Miss Briggs," he said, taking both of his wife's hands in his. "A month or two ago her sister died, leaving three little children ... and an invalid husband. Miss Briggs and her mother took two of the children to bring up. And Miss Briggs finds they can't do it on her present salary.... She's a good woman, Gloria ... a fine woman!"

Gloria laughed. She tossed back her bright hair.

"All homely women are good," she said. "It's only the pretty ones like May Seymour and me who run up bills and gad all day, and worry their husbands into an early grave, isn't it? ... I know that's what you're thinking, so I'll say it for you!"

Dick picked up the bills.

"Gadzooks!" he exclaimed. "Six hundred smackers!"

He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out his check book.

"Take a look at the stubs in that!" he said abruptly. "They'll give you an idea of what we're spending!"

Gloria flung the little book down on the desk.

"Why should I look at your old check book?" she asked, hotly. "Your job is to support me ... not to everlastingly tell me that you can't!..."

Two bright spots of color burned like danger signals in her cheeks.

"Other women's husbands buy them things they want!" she stormed. "Are they so much smarter than you? Why is it that their wives can have clothes and things without fighting for them the way I have to? And then you give that Briggs woman a big raise the minute she asks you for it! ... Oh, what's the use talking about it? There are the bills! And you'll have to pay them, that's all!"

Gloria flung herself out of the office, slamming the door behind her so that its glass pane rattled. She picked up her coat and hat from Miss Briggs' desk, without so much as a look at her.

Outside in the corridor Gloria stopped and put them on. When she got into her car, she adjusted her hat before the windshield mirror. The orchid on her coat was wilted. Viciously Gloria threw it down into the gutter.

... She drove straight through the town out into the bare open country. Ahead of her on the lonely road a man was walking, head down against the high wind.

As Gloria approached she saw that it was Stan Wayburn. She put on the brakes. The car slowed to a standstill, just abreast of Stan. He looked up.

Gloria opened the door of her car.

"Well, of all things! To find you here just when I need you most! Get in!" she cried.

"Why do you have need of me, just now?" Stan asked when the car was under way again ... slowly, this time.

Gloria laughed gayly.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered, "unless it's that you're always a sort of mental cocktail to me ... you pick me up."

"You picked me up, just now," Stan parried.

"I did. I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. I was feeling blue.... But tell me, what were you doing, rambling around the country all by yourself?" the girl asked..

Stan's hand in its suede glove came down on the wheel over hers.

"I was thinking of some one whom I loved ... and lost," he said.

"It was your own fault that you lost her ... that is, if you mean me," Gloria answered. She could feel her heart thumping in her breast.

"You knew I was mad about you a year ago, and that I'd have married you like a shot ... if you'd asked me," she went on with difficulty. "But you didn't ask me."

"I know," Stan's voice was very low. "But that doesn't make it any easier for me now.... It's impossible for me to realize that you're another man's wife!"

He turned in his seat and took the other man's wife in his arms.... The little blue car slid to a standstill at the side of the lonely road.

Gloria closed her eyes. There was a new feeling in her. It was like being flooded with sweet, warm sunshine ... on this wintry day. She felt, she thought, the way a flower must feel the moment it bursts into bloom.

"Kiss me," she said. "I love you, Stan."

Wayburn kissed her....

An automobile whizzed by on the pavement. But Gloria didn't hear it.

The world for her, at that moment, was bounded by the rough fabric of Stan's coat, as it brushed her cheek ... by the hard ring of his arms that held her close.

"If he loves me the way I love him, he'll want me to leave Dick," she thought to herself.

But did Stan want her to leave Dick?

Did he care for her as she did for him?

Did he want her forever ... or for just the passing moment's thrill? ... Gloria wondered.

She never had been sure of Wayburn as she had been sure of Dick. She never had trusted him.... And yet there was no one else in the world who was thrilling to her as Stanley Wayburn was thrilling!

"Here comes a car, Russet. We'd better drive on," Stan said suddenly in a matter-of-fact voice. "There's a farmhouse along here on this road where we can stop for some tea ... if you'd like it."

Gloria straightened her hat, and started the car.

"I would," she said with a briskness that matched his own. "I had no lunch and I'm famished."

The farmhouse was a low-eaved brown one. A copper kettle hung beside its green front door.

Within they sat at a little table before an open fire.

The plump blond woman who kept the tea-house bustled about in the kitchen that could be seen through the open doorway. Presently there was a smell of browning toast, and of fragrant tea.

Stan leaned across the table. He pulled Gloria's doeskin gloves off, and held her cold hands in his.

He said nothing. He seemed only to want to look at her. His eyes were eager as if he were filling them with her beauty ... so that he could remember it, afterward.

Gloria knew that she was pretty that day. The wind had made her eyes and cheeks glow. And moreover she was wearing her new clothes ... the clothes she had bought with Dick's money so that she should be beautiful for Stan's eyes!

"I'm a bad wife," she said in an undertone. "I've no business to be here with you, Stanley, when I've a husband of my own."

Wayburn laughed a little. He pressed her hands, so that it seemed that the little bones in them would snap.

"Don't talk about husbands. Let's not waste our time when we're together talking about anything but you ... and me," he said. "Do you know that your hair is the nicest color ... like beech leaves with the sun on 'em?"

"And what color is Myra Gail's hair?" Gloria asked bitterly.

"Don't remember!" Stan answered glibly. "You're a jealous little cat, aren't you, Russet?"

Gloria frowned.

"I am. I admit it," she said. "You quite spoiled my dinner the other night when I saw you in that restaurant with that Chotek woman!"

Stan mused.

"Sonya Chotek, a very capable actress," he commented. "She's had a most interesting career. She was imprisoned in Russia for a year at the beginning of the war...."

"I wish she were there, now!" Gloria cried. "I wish they'd never freed her!"

"They didn't free her. She escaped," Stanley went on, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Then she went to France...."

"Oh, will you be still about her! I don't want to know anything about the women you're in love with ... or have been in love with!" Gloria cried.

The farm woman brought in their tea.

"Cream?" Gloria asked.

"No, thanks."

"Sugar?"

"One lump, please."

"I love to pour your tea," Gloria said when the woman had again disappeared into the kitchen. "I love to do little homey things for you."

Wayburn took one of her hands again.

"Pretending that we're married, you and I?" he asked.

Gloria nodded. She couldn't trust her voice.

"It would be nice." Stan's tone was flat.

Gloria knew that he didn't mean it. And yet, somehow, she hoped with all her soul that he did mean it!

They finished their tea and toast. And the farm woman laid the bill on the table.

Gloria took out her tiny mirror and powder box and dusted her nose. She buttoned her fur coat close about her neck, and drew on her gloves.

Stan leaned across the table.

"I'm in a deuce of a fix," he said in a low tone. "I've forgotten my bill-folder. I must have left it on my dresser at the hotel.... Will you lend me a couple of dollars to pay the check?"

"Why, of course," Gloria replied eagerly.

In her new beaded bag was a five-dollar bill that Dick had given her to buy gasoline, that morning. She passed it across the table to Stanley.

When the change came Stanley absently stuffed it into his trousers pocket.

"When he gets back to the hotel, and discovers that he forgot to give me my change, he'll have a fit," Gloria laughed to herself.

Outside the clear afternoon light had faded a little. The fields lay brown and barren under the bleak sky.

Gloria felt a little melancholy as she turned her car toward the city. She hated the thought of leaving Stan ... of going home to Dick, and the dull evening.

"Isn't this matinée day?" Gloria asked. "Why, of course it is! ... Why aren't you at the theater giving the matinée girls a thrill?"

"The company's gone blooey," Wayburn said. "It disbanded last Saturday. That's what amused me so back there when you were raving about Sonya Chotek. She left town Sunday. I'll probably never see her again."

Gloria laughed.

"And Myra Gail leaves for Europe soon ... she and her husband!" she said. "So that both of my deadly rivals will be gone ... and I'll have you all to myself!"

"Will you like that?" Stanley asked. "I thought all women enjoyed being jealous."

"Enjoy being jealous!" Gloria repeated.

It seemed to her at the moment that the thing she would most enjoy in the world would be to know that Stanley Wayburn was blind when it came to seeing other women ... to know that she would never have to be jealous of him again!

"Get over on your side of the road ... a car's trying to pass us!" Stanley said, looking back over his shoulder. Gloria nosed in toward the right-hand side of the road.

In the car was a woman, alone. She looked sharply into Gloria's car, as she passed it.

Mother Gregory!

Gloria almost ran the car off the road into the muddy ditch beside it, as her eyes met those of Dick's mother.

"Hot bozo!" she cried. Dismay was in her voice.

"What's the matter now?" Stan asked.

"Oh, nothing much ... except that that was my husband's mother who passed us just now in that car!" Gloria answered.

"Did she see you? Are you sure?" Stan asked.

Gloria laughed mirthlessly.

"I'll say she saw me! And you, too! She looked daggers at us both! ... Oh, what will I do?"

Stanley pondered.

"Tell the truth," he suggested. "After all, what did we do that was wrong? ... You happened to meet me out on this road. You didn't know I was here. It was just a chance meeting ... tell your husband all about it the minute you get home."