Chapter VIII

When Gloria awoke in the morning the room was full of sunshine.

She stretched luxuriously, like a cat.

Then she got up on one elbow and looked around her.

Dick's bed was empty. The covers were flung over the foot of it to let it air.

She supposed Dick had left for the office without waking her to say good-by.... He knew how she loved to sleep until noon.

She wondered where he had had his breakfast....

The thought of breakfast made Gloria realize how very hungry she was.

She got out of bed. She would bathe and go downtown to eat. And then she would go to the employment agency to hire a maid.... The mere thought of the disorder downstairs sickened Gloria.

What a horrible job housework was ... eternally making dirty things clean! Dirty dishes, dirty clothes, dirty floors and walls....

While her bath was filling Gloria did her exercising.

She touched the floor a hundred times with her finger tips.

She got down on the rug to do her "bicycle" exercises.

She stood up and went through the head movements that keep the face young.... Her head ached terribly, but she did not falter.

This was the way to remain beautiful! To start young, and to work constantly to keep your lines and color!

For if you lost them you were through! Absolutely! ... Men had no use for women unless they were pretty.... What fools women were not to realize that!

Suddenly Gloria stopped exercising. She sniffed the air with her delicate nostrils.

There was a smell of fresh coffee in the house ... a delicious, appetizing smell!

Then Gloria heard footsteps on the stairs.

Had Maggie changed her mind and come back to work?

... The door opened. In walked Dick, carrying a steaming tray!

"You didn't know I was a regular cook, did you?" Dick grinned.

"I certainly did not!" Gloria laughed. "But isn't it nice for me that I married one.... Let's see what you've got ready for me, chef!"

Dick set the tray down on the bedside table. On it was a plate of sugary rolls that Maggie had made the day before, a silver dish filled with butter balls, and the steaming coffee.

"I made the coffee," Dick said, "and believe me, it's some brew ... strong enough to float an egg!"

"Where did you ever learn to make coffee?" Gloria idly asked. As a matter of fact, she didn't care where Dick had learned. The great thing was that he had made it!

"On camping trips when I was a kid," answered Dick. He put his arm around his wife and drew her down into his lap.

"I can broil bacon and fish and fry potatoes, too," he said proudly. "Honestly, Gloria, cooking isn't hard work.... I wish you'd try it. I'd love to see you in a white apron fussing around the kitchen...."

Instantly Gloria's good humor vanished.

"Oh, I don't doubt that you would!" she cried. "You'd love to see me flying around with a mop and a scrubbing-brush, too! You'd be crazy about seeing me with my nails broken and my hair flying and my face haggard like Lola Hough's, wouldn't you? ... Well, you never will, Mr. Man! Because I'll never be a slave for you or anybody else! ... And a new maid comes into this house to-day or I walk out of it! See?"

She jumped up from Dick's knees. She threw herself face-downward on her bed, and burst into angry tears.

"Now don't start that hysterical stuff!" Dick pleaded. There was fear in his voice ... a man's fear of a woman's tears.

"I didn't say you couldn't have a housemaid, sweetkins," he went on gently. "If it takes every cent I have you shall have one ... but I guess every man dreams of seeing his wife doing little jobs around the home he's made for her.... What's marriage, anyway, but the joy of a man and a woman building a nest for the children they hope to have?"

Gloria sat up suddenly and put her arms around Dick's neck.

She leaned back and let her brilliant eyes rest in his.

"Is that what marriage means to you, Rikky-Tikky-Tavy?" she asked. "Doesn't it mean me? ... Doesn't it mean love and thrills, too, to you ... just a little bit?"

She took his head between her hands and kissed him on his forehead. Dick held her close.

"You know you're the only thing to me," he said solemnly. "You know you hold my whole life in the palm of one of your hands.... And it's because I do love you that I want this house to be a home for both of us ... and after a while, for our babies."

... Gloria said nothing at all.

The telephone rang.

Gloria jumped up to answer it.

"Yes?" she said.

Stanley Wayburn's voice came to her over the wire!

"Well ... how's my Russet this morning?" he said.

"Very well," Gloria answered stiffly. She knew that Dick was listening.

"Have you forgiven me for playing around with your friend, Myra?" Stan asked. "Or are you still green-eyed about it?"

Gloria knew that she couldn't answer that question with Dick right there in the room. And she could feel an uncomfortable flush spreading itself over her face and neck.... At that moment she wished Stanley Wayburn on the other side of the world!

"When am I going to see you again?" Stan's voice asked after a long interval.

Still Gloria made no answer. She actually shook with fright.

Then Stan apparently had a flash of understanding.

"... What's the matter? Why can't you talk? Hubby still at home?" he asked.

"Yes!" Gloria could answer that.

She heard the click of a receiver in her ear. Wayburn had hung up.

"Who was that on the telephone?" Dick asked carelessly.

He did not look at her. He stood by the chiffonier, lighting a cigarette.

"One ... of ... my friends," Gloria stammered.

"Who?"

"Does it matter?" Gloria asked.

"It matters very much ... to me," Dick said. He came toward her.

"It was Wayburn, wasn't it?" he asked.

Gloria threw back her head defiantly.

"Well, what if it was?" she asked. "What's so terribly wrong about his calling me up to thank me for the good time he had here last night? That's only common politeness ... for him to do that!"

She poured herself a second cup of Dick's coffee. Then she took a cigarette from the package he had left lying on the tray. She put it daintily between her lips.

"Give me a light, Dick," Gloria said.

He came toward her. But instead of lighting her cigarette he pulled it from her mouth. Violently he threw it into the waste basket.

"How long have you had that rotten habit?" he asked.

"Why, I've always smoked ... that is, for the last two or three years," Gloria said. "Didn't you know that?"

Dick shook his head. He smiled. But there was a sort of misery in his eyes.

"I guess there are a lot of things about you that I don't know," he said. "For instance, I never knew you had a taste for liquor ... until last night."

Gloria laughed. Her face was as merry as a small girl's.

"Yes, yes, go on," she begged. "Tell me all the other black traits of character that I've kept hidden from you for so long! ... When I drink it's a crime. When you drink it's a foolish act! ... When I smoke it's a disgrace! ... When you smoke it 'rests your nerves!' ... But I can't see where it's any worse for women to do those things than for men!"

The more she talked the angrier Gloria became. She stamped her small foot.

"Here you are shut up in an office all day alone with that secretary of yours ... your Miss Briggs! How do I know that you're not making love to her right along? ... But if an old friend like Stan Wayburn happens to call me up and talk to me for five minutes, you throw a fit about it!" she stormed. "I tell you I won't be treated this way ... as if I were a bad child! I'll do just as I please! And it will take more than you to stop me!"

"Whew!" Dick said. "You're quite some little spitfire, Gloria!"

He pulled out his watch.

"It's nearly noon," he said. "I think I'd better be starting for the office.... We aren't getting anywhere with this argument, anyway..."

He started for the door. Then he wheeled suddenly and came back into the sunny room. From under her lashes Gloria watched him.

"If I asked you something, would you tell me the truth?" Dick asked.

Gloria pondered.

"I might," she said. She picked up a nail file and began to "point" her beautifully kept nails.

"Well, then," Dick began, "why did you never mention this fellow Wayburn, in all the months before we were married?"

Gloria shrugged her lace-covered shoulders.

"Why should I have mentioned that I knew him?" she asked. "Is he so very important?"

How could she tell Dick the truth about Stan Wayburn?

How could she tell him that there had been a time when she would gladly have married Stan if he had asked her to ... but that he had not asked her?

... How could she tell him that there had been a night a year ago when she had cried for hours because Stan had left town without saying good-by to her?

... That there had been weeks and weeks afterward when she had tried not even to think about Stan ... much less talk about him?

... And that even now when she was a married woman, he had only to look into her eyes to make her forget every one else in the world ... even Dick himself?

... How could she tell Dick that? She just couldn't.

... And anyway, it was none of his business!

Dick's voice broke in upon her thought.

"You said last night that you'd had a sort of childish love affair with Wayburn," he said. "Did you ever care for him as much as you do for me?"

Gloria drew a long breath.

"No wonder you're a good lawyer, Dick!" she said. "You can think up more questions to ask a person than anybody else in the world, I'll bet! ... Yes, I did think a lot of Stan once upon a time ... but it wasn't in the way I care for you."

She got up and walked over to the window. She did not want Dick to see her face. She felt as if all her thoughts were written on it for him to read.

"Just how much do you care for me?" His voice was bitter.

"You ought to know ... I married you, didn't I?" Gloria asked.

She turned from the window and sat on the arm of Dick's chair. She laid her cheek on his dark hair. She was just a bit afraid of Dick when he was in a suspicious mood like this....

Then she kissed him. That, she knew, was the surest way to remove all doubt of her from his mind!

"You see, Dick," Gloria went on, "I knew, from the minute I met you, that you were going to be my husband. And in the same way I always knew that Stanley Wayburn and I were never going to be more than playmates.... A girl always sizes men up that way!"

"And just how long were you and Wayburn ... playmates?" Dick asked.

"Oh, for two or three months last winter ... just before I met you," the girl answered. "Look here, Dick, I don't cross-question you about every girl you ever were in love with before you married me! What are you trying to get at, asking me all these questions?"

Gloria laughed nervously.

Dick turned in his chair and took her in a grip of iron.

"I'll tell you what I'm trying to get at!" he said. "I'm trying to get at the truth about this Wayburn! ... the man I saw leaving.... He was Wayburn, wasn't he? You lied to me when you said he was a decorator from the furniture store, didn't you?"

Gloria struggled in Dick's arms. Her soft and yielding body had become a bundle of steel wire.

"You let me alone!" she panted.

"I won't!" Dick said stubbornly. "I won't, until you've told me whether the fellow you had in this house that day was Wayburn or not!"

"It wasn't Stan Wayburn!" Gloria cried. "And you know it! Haven't I told you a dozen times that it was the man about the lamp shades?"

Dick freed her.

Gloria saw that he believed her lie.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "But I would have sworn it was Wayburn.... You'll have to forgive me, Gloria. I'm so damnably jealous of you!"

Gloria tied her head up in a towel. She began to lather her face with cold cream.

"I should say you are jealous!" she agreed. "If you're going to think that every interior decorator or bill collector who comes to this house is Stan Wayburn, we'd better separate right now!"

She walked into the bathroom.

"My bath water's all cold now," Gloria grumbled. "I was ready to take my bath half an hour ago when you started this row! ... I suppose I'll die of pneumonia if I bathe in this cold stuff. Then maybe you'll be sorry for the cat-and-dog life you've led me!"

She closed the door.

"Hey, give me a kiss before I go!" Dick called. He had put on his hat and picked up his brief-case.

But Gloria had locked the door and turned the water on in the tub.... She pretended not to hear him.

As soon as she was dressed Gloria closed the door of her disordered house behind her and started out.

The employment agency was kept by an efficient-looking woman who said she was sure she knew the very housemaid for Gloria.

"Her name is Ranghild Swanson," she said. "I'll call her on the phone and send her right up to your house to see you. I'm sure you'll like her, Mrs. Gregory."

On the way home Gloria passed Lola Hough's shabby, rambling house.

The twins were on the front walk on their kiddie cars. The baby sat in his white buggy on the porch, watching them ride up and down.... Lola was probably drudging away in the house, as usual, Gloria thought to herself.

"Where's your mother?" she asked suddenly of Billy, Junior.

"In vee house, makin' cookies!" said Billy, "and when dem is made, Betty and me is goin' to have one.... Go on in, maybe she'll give you one, too!"

On a sudden impulse Gloria ran up the steps. She rang the bell.

"Come out in the kitchen," Lola Hough said when she opened the door. "I'm doing my Saturday baking.... Smell the cookies in the oven?"

Gloria followed her through the clean rooms of the house. The carpets were threadbare and the furniture worn. But there were red geraniums blooming in all the windows; and the house, somehow, seemed a happy place.

"I have the time of my life on Saturdays," Lola remarked in her brisk way. "The laundry and mending and cleaning are all out of the way earlier in the week.... So Saturday's my day for baking and marketing.... Don't you enjoy going to market, Gloria? I do."

She opened the oven door as she spoke. A rich spicy odor filled the sunlit kitchen.

Gloria stared at her. There were pink spots in Lola's face. Her blue eyes were alight. It was plain to be seen that she really was "having the time of her life" ... baking cookies!

"Do I enjoy going to market?" Gloria repeated slowly. "Are you trying to kid me, Lola? Why, I've never marketed in my life ... and I never will so long as the grocer has a telephone!"

Lola deftly emptied a panful of crisp, hot cookies onto a tea towel.

"That's because you're new to your job of keeping house," she said. "After awhile, you'll become an artist at planning meals and keeping down expenses...."

Gloria jumped up from her chair. This sort of talk bored her.

"Jiminy, it's three o'clock! I must go," she said. "I have a new maid coming.... Maggie quit her job last night after the party."

"Wait until I take these gingerbread boys out of the oven ... and I'll go to the door with you," Lola said. There was a troubled frown on her face.

"Gloria," she said after a long pause, "I'm terribly sorry for going to pieces last night the way I did.... It's not that I mind having said that I think drinking parties are dreadful. I do think it! ... But I'm sorry I told you about Bill and his drinking ... and his debts."

"Oh, I forgot about that as soon as you'd said it," Gloria answered. "Besides, everybody knows all about Bill, anyway."

"I know," Lola answered. "But I'm his wife ... and no matter what he does, it's my job to stand up for him. And if I do I know that, in the end, everything will come out all right!"

"Lola," said Gloria suddenly, "are you ever sorry you married Bill?"

"Sorry I married Bill?" Lola repeated in a surprised tone. "Of course not! ... Why, I'd rather be poor and be Bill's wife than ... anything else on earth!"

Gloria stared at her. She saw that Lola meant what she said. Overworked and neglected, she still was happy in making a home for a man who never was in it when there was any other place to go. She was a puzzle!