Chapter XXXI

That night Gloria lay in bed thinking over what she had told Dick about Wayburn.

She had told him the truth. But not the whole truth! Far from it!

She had not told him that Wayburn had kissed her dozens of times.

She had not told him that the reason she had struck Wayburn that day in her car was not because he had tried to make love to her ... but because she was afraid of his love-making; when he had been drinking!

Above all, she had not told him that she had given Wayburn $200 of Dick's own money! Money that he would probably never pay back!

Ten days later, when Gloria left the hospital, her own little blue car stood at the curb waiting for her. It looked as good as new.

Gloria shuddered when she saw it.

"I don't know whether I have nerve enough to ride home in it or not!" she said shakily to Dick.

"Sure you have. Hop in," Dick encouraged her. "Your nerves are jumpy. You'll be all right pretty soon. Doc Seymour wants me to go away for a long rest. We'll go together, you and I. We both need it."

He started the car.

"Perhaps Mother'll go along with us," Dick said, as the car rolled slowly along. "She looks pretty seedy after that operation of hers."

"Just you dare to ask your mother to go anywhere with us!" Gloria's eyes flashed. "I'd rather stay in this town all my life than go anywhere with your mother!"

Dick tried to change the subject.

"We may not go anywhere ourselves," he said. "We've spent so much money on doctors and nurses and hospitals this month that we won't have much left to go gadding around the country, I guess. Your hospital bill was $225. I just paid it."

"Oh, sure, tell me what my bill was! Rub it in!" Gloria cried. "Why don't you talk about the money you paid Mrs. O'Hara and Doc Seymour for your own sickness! I get tired hearing about all my expenses!"

Again the sickening thought came to her that Dick would soon find out about the $200 she had borrowed from him ... through Miss Briggs.

"Hasn't the gardener started work on the back yard?" she asked in surprise as they drove into the garage.

"No. He came here with a whole raft of rose bushes that you'd ordered," Dick answered. "But I sent him away. We can't afford to fix up the yard just now."

He helped her out of the little car.

It was sunset. The long shadows of the new-leaved trees lay across the grass. The lilies-of-the-valley were in bloom along the fence.

A delicious odor of broiling steak came from the open door of the kitchen where Ranghild was getting supper.

"Home's pretty nice, isn't it?" Dick asked. "It's a pretty good place to be after all. Isn't it, Littlest?"

"Gloria raised her eyebrows.

"I guess so," she said shortly.

They went in.

Ranghild opened the door for them. There was a broad smile on her fresh-cheeked face.

Everything was quite as usual.

After dinner Dick picked up the paper and sat down in his armchair to read. In a few minutes he was sound asleep.

The clock in the hall ticked off the leaden minutes.

Eight o'clock! ... The end of the day for the Gregorys.

For some people it was the peak of all the twenty-four hours!

For some people eight o'clock meant brilliant restaurants, streets filled with rushing taxicabs and cheerful crowds, theaters with their doors wide....

Theaters!

The thought of them brought Stanley Wayburn into Gloria's mind.

Where had he gone?

Where was he now ... at this very minute?

Suddenly Gloria put her head down on the table before her and cried as if her heart would break.

Dick stirred, woke, lifted his head.

"What's the matter, honey?" he asked, yawning. "What are you crying about?"

Gloria raised her tear-stained face.

"My arm aches," she said. "And I'm lonesome."

"Lonesome?" Dick repeated. "Why should you be lonesome right here in your own house with me?"

Gloria sniffed.

"You!" she cried. "You aren't here when you're asleep! Why don't you stay awake and talk to me?"

Dick laughed good-naturedly. He pulled his lacquer smoking-stand up beside his chair, and filled his pipe. It was a little short-stemmed brier pipe that smelled like a bonfire of autumn leaves.

He puffed for a while in silence.

"Do you want me to tell you what ails you, Gloria?" he asked at last. "What makes you so restless and unhappy?"

There was a troubled look in Gloria's eyes. She turned her wedding ring round and round on her finger nervously.

"Tell me," she said.

"Well ... you're out of a job," Dick answered her.

"Oh, I might have known that was what you were going to say," Gloria snapped. "You think work is the answer to everything!"

Dick took his pipe out of his mouth. "It is," he said.

"Marriage is a job like everything else," he went on. "But you won't work at it. You'd be happy enough if you got up every morning and made the coffee and got breakfast. You wouldn't have so much time to cry about being lonesome if you had to dust the house every day. You'd have something to look forward to if you were sitting there making a little baby dress this minute.... You haven't anything to do! That's all that's wrong with you, honey."

He tapped the tobacco from his pipe into an ash-tray and rose.

"Think it over," he said.

Gloria tossed her head.

"You've got me all wrong, smarty," she cried. "It isn't dusting I need to make me happy. It's dancing!"

Dick laughed.

"Jazz baby!" he said. "Tied up to a nine-o'clock husband!"

"Well, it's no joke ... you needn't laugh!" Gloria answered him hotly. "I hate to stick around the house like this every night, slowly dying of dry-rot. I want some fun, some parties! ... If this is married life, I hate it. So there!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Gloria," Dick said soberly. "But I don't see how I can help you out...."

He crossed the room to the bookcases and brought her a thick, shabby volume. It was Flaubert's "Madame Bovary."

"Here's a story of another woman who hated married life," he said. "Read it. There's a lesson in it for you, Gloria."

Gloria took the book and hurled it across the room.

"I don't want to read about life. I want to live it!" she cried. "You Sunday-school prig, you!"

Without another look or word Dick went out of the room.

After a few minutes Gloria could hear the thud of his shoes on the floor of his room upstairs as he threw them down. Then came the sound of his window being raised.

... The hall clock struck nine.

"Ye gods!" Gloria wailed to herself. "What a life! Is this what I'm going to do every night for the next fifty years? Sit here, alone, waiting for the clock to strike?"

She hadn't noticed before how deadly dull these evenings with Dick could be.

She was sure Dick didn't think they were dull.

The mere fact that he was in the same room with her satisfied him. He often said so.

There was no doubt about it.... Dick adored her.

But she didn't want to be adored in that good, quiet way of his. She wanted to be thrilled—to be swept off her feet!

Gloria's thoughts swung back to Stanley Wayburn.

Little flames seemed to prickle in her cheeks as she thought of the battle they had had that day when she had wrecked her automobile.

Stan had been rather too thrilling that day! ... She had been afraid of his hot kisses that seared her cheeks ... of his hands pinning her arms down to her sides.

Yes, she was glad that she had struck him! He had gone too far.... But it would be nice to see him again, all the same.

She missed him, terribly!

Gloria sighed as she stood up. Her foot was asleep. She went painfully around the room, snapping off the lights.

She lay awake, tossing on her pillow, until midnight ... thinking of Stanley Wayburn.

The next morning Gloria started out to walk to her mother's house.

But on the way she changed her mind.

She would go to see May Seymour instead! May was always cheery and peppy. And Gloria felt that she was badly in need of both cheer and pep.

She found May in the kitchen washing her little chow dog, Mah Jong.

May's hair was wound up in curlers. She was in a pink crêpe kimono and her face was shiny with traces of cold cream. She looked anything but pretty.

"Hello," she greeted Gloria. "Look at me, breaking all the rules of 'How to hold a husband'! This is the way I hang around the house most of the time ... looking like the witch of Endor! And John sees me this way and he goes right on loving me just as much as if I were a raving beauty. Can you beat it?"

"You cannot," Gloria answered, seating herself on one corner of the kitchen table. "But don't take too many chances, May. Men don't stay in love forever with wives who run around the house in curl papers and cold cream. They all fall for a pretty face."

May rolled the struggling, yipping Mah Jong in a towel before she replied.

"No," she said then. "You're all wrong, Gloria Gregory! When a man really cares about you he loves you just as much when you're ugly and blue and have a cold in the head ... as he does when you're wearing a marcel-wave, a pound of makeup and your vampiest clothes! ... That's the way John cares about me. He likes me, not my looks."

"I can't agree with you," Gloria remarked.

"Now there's Jim," said May, with her head on one side. "Jim can't see a girl for trees unless she looks like a movie queen.... Speaking of Jim reminds me of something else. Have you been asked to the party Mrs. Wing is having this afternoon?"

"N-no," Gloria faltered.

"Looks as if she was giving us the hinky-dink, doesn't it?" May asked. "Does she know you've been skipping around with Wayburn?"

"No," Gloria began. Then she stopped. She remembered that she had been out walking with Wayburn one day when they had met Mrs. Wing.

"Yes, she's seen me with Stan," she said.

"And she started the story that you were out riding with Wayburn the day you ran your car into the ditch!" May burst out excitedly. "I'll bet she's put you in the same class with me and Jim.... She thinks I'm terrible. She doesn't even speak to me when we meet on the street any more. She hands me the ice-tongs right!"

She scrambled up from the floor.

"I tell you what, Gloria! We'll throw a party ourselves!" she cried. "I'll get some of the old gang together for this afternoon! Eh, wot?"

"Fair enough! Let's do it!" Gloria was delighted. "I'm starved for a party!"

May sat down at the telephone in Dr. John's study.

Gloria took Mah Jong into the living-room where a wood fire was burning in the grate. She rubbed the little beast until he was dry and fluffy. The minute she set him down on the floor he scurried away to find May.

He was at her heels when she came into the room.

"I couldn't round up very many people," she said disconsolately. "I guess most of the girls are going to Mrs. Wing's party. But I got Ann Somers. And Jim is going to bring out a couple of boys from his office. Awfully nice fellows. I told them all to come for lunch.... Will you run over to the delicatessen and get some cold meat and a couple of pies while I get dressed and set the table?"

The delicatessen was a mile away. And when Gloria returned May's "party" was under way.

Ann Somers was making cinnamon toast in the kitchen. She was a shy little widow with mouse-colored hair and big gray eyes. She was very popular with men. She let them all make love to her and then she cried about it afterward. Apparently it made a great hit with them.

Jim Carewe called her "the red lily."

"Ann, you're some kid," he was saying to her when Gloria came into the kitchen. "You know doggoned well that you're not going to marry Ted Sawyer. Why don't you tell him so, instead of letting him dangle in the wind?"

Ann went on buttering her toast. She hadn't seen Gloria come into the kitchen.

"Well, I've got to have some one to take me around ... since you won't, Jim," she answered softly. "Ted does as well as any one."

Gloria coughed and cleared her throat.

"The nasty little cat!" she said to herself. "I'll bet she's trying to land Jim because of his money. In the meantime she's keeping this Ted hanging around in case Jim doesn't bite! Why can't Jim see through her?"

What fools men were to let women pull the wool over their eyes the way they did! Gloria felt like shaking Jim Carewe as she watched him pat Ann Somers' shoulder.

She banged her packages down on the kitchen table and went into the living-room.

May was dancing the Texas Tommy for Ted Sawyer and Jim Collins, the two nice young salesmen from Jim's office.

Presently Jim came in with a tray of "horse's necks."

"Ann says lunch is ready," he said. "Isn't this a good party, boys?"

Every one but Gloria seemed to think it was a good party. She couldn't dance because of her bandaged arm and shoulder. She didn't want her horse's neck or her cigarette. She felt "blue" somehow.

At four o'clock she went upstairs and got her hat.

"Good-by," she said to May, as she and Jim danced past the living-room door where she was standing. "Just let me sneak away without saying 'good-by' to the others. They won't miss me."

"Whatsa matter?" May asked. "Lost your pep or don't you like my party?"

May stopped dancing and shoved Carewe down into an armchair.

"Park yourself there for a minute, Jim!" she said. "I want to talk to Gloria."

She came out into the hall, closing the doors behind her as she came. She sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and looked up at Gloria with puzzled eyes.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?" she asked. "I've noticed that you've been singing the blues to yourself, all day. You haven't had a bit of a good time, have you?"

Gloria shook her head.

"No," she confessed, "I haven't. I feel awfully 'blah,' somehow or other, to-day."

"You're worrying about that sap, Wayburn," May said with sudden bluntness. "And you're a fool to do it! I've had his number ever since the night of your party when he made such a fuss over Myra Gail. He's some sheik.... At least, he kids himself that he is!"

Gloria looked intently at her fingernails.

"Stan's left town," she said at last. "So don't worry about him and me any more.... And I don't know what's the matter with me, May. Honestly."

But she did know.

She was terribly lonely without Wayburn.

"What's the use of pretending?" she asked herself on the way home through the streets, warm and sunny in the late afternoon quiet. "I'm homesick for Stan. That's what's the matter with me. That's all that's wrong with me."

Wayburn had filled her idle days with interest, for months past.

When there was nothing else on hand, he was always ready to go for a drive or a hike with her. He always had a new dance to teach her ... or the latest New York hit to sing to her.

He had a ready laugh, and a wealth of funny stories. He was amusing. Gloria had always called him her "one-man show."

Now that he was gone, time hung heavily on her hands. She didn't know what to do with herself all day long.

"I'm lost without Stan. That's about the size of it," she told herself, as she turned the corner of her own street.

The mother of the Donberg twins was just ahead of her, followed by her lovely offspring on roller skates.

Across the street two of the neighbors stood gossiping on the driveway between their houses. Gloria looked at them, curiously.

They seemed happy and contented in their placid, deep-bosomed maturity ... those two women.

"But I wonder if they really are," Gloria asked herself. "Or are they sick and tired of married life, like I am?"

She quickened her steps and caught up with Mrs. Donberg.

"Hello, there," said the twins' mother. "It's nice to see you around home again. I tried to get to the hospital to see you, but the twins were both sick in bed with bronchitis, and I never poked my nose outside the house for two weeks!"

She sighed. "It's just one thing after another for a woman, isn't it?" she asked. "Now it's the spring sewing, and then the canning season will be here, and after that the fall cleaning and sewing! ... My goodness, I don't get time to do half the things I'd like to do!"

Gloria looked at her intently. Was this little, bright-eyed smiling woman discontented like herself?

"What would you like to do, really?" Gloria asked her.

Mrs. Donberg laughed.

"Well," she said, "I've had three cans of blue paint up on my broom-closet shelf for three months," she said, "and I know it sounds silly to say it, but I just can't seem to find time to paint the twins' bedroom set with it! That's what I'd really enjoy. Fixing up my house so it would be pretty, like yours, Mrs. Gregory."

Gloria's interest flagged.

She certainly had nothing in common with the little "haus-frau" beside her!

She said good-by to her and walked on.