Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 595
“What did you go and make that worse for, then, Ben Raphael?”
“I don’t excuse myself,” he said. “But she’d have got that way, anyhow; I only helped her on a little faster.”
“Yes, you did.” Arlene looked at him angrily. “Pushed her right over to another man; I suppose you know that.”
“Gillie Ives? Oh, yes; I don’t take that seriously. She isn’t in love with her husband; she isn’t in love with Gillie Ives, and she won’t be. She’ll never be in love with anybody — it’s too much to be expected of her. You’ve been talking to her this evening, have you?”
“No,” Arlene said. “This afternoon. You know what she as good as told me? Not more or less than that she hopes to get him wild enough to leave his wife and marry her, instead. If his wife is taking Irene’s husband away from Irene, why, Irene pays her back in the same coin — just like that! To top off, that’s to leave Irene rich with the rich husband, in the other woman’s place — and the other woman poor and Ernie poor, on each other’s hands! That’s the A B C of what’s in Irene’s mind, Ben Raphael, and who’s responsible for it if you aren’t?”
“No,” he protested. “No, no, no! I think that’s in her mind; but I didn’t put it there. Do you think I want Irene to become Mrs. Gillespie Ives? Do you think — —”
Arlene interrupted him impatiently. “I don’t care what you want Irene to be. I want her to keep her husband. How much of a fool do you think that woman’s making of Ernie?”
“A fool?” Raphael looked dubious. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. It’s all on a very high plane. This young fellow — handsome, almost poetic-looking, yet manly — he’s sent out there to show her some hinges. He’s very attractive, very modest, yet laughing and frank. The lady shows him some pictures she’s making; it’s easy to become interested in such a young man, so honest, so receptive and appreciative. What a pleasure to educate him a little — even to dazzle him a little, too — and even to show one’s friends this fine young man attached and dazzled! I don’t think you’d call Ernie Foot a fool, though, if you saw him there; he’s very quiet, very dignified — you’d only see how much he looks up to her. More like the kind, almost loving teacher and the best pupil — maybe you’d say not only the best but the best-looking! Not a fool, though; she wouldn’t be interested in one. She’s anything but that herself, you see, Arlene.”
“I don’t care what she is,” Arlene said sharply. “She ought to let him alone!”
Ben Raphael shook his head. “No, she’s quite interested, maybe you’d even say excited. So much so that I might have some news for you very soon. News that would take you out there to see for yourself, Arlene.”
“Out where? Me? What are you — —”
“Yes; I’m not joking. Suppose you’re invited for tea among the murals at Mrs. Gillespie Ives’s new studio at Foxglen Farms in Oldwood, Arlene; do you think you could live up to that?”
“How’d you get this way?” she asked. “Talk plain!”
“Mrs. Ives invites anybody that comes into her head. Look at me,” he said cheerfully. “She keeps her own Oldwood circle separate, of course — yet she even asked me to dinner with some of them once. You could see they looked upon me as a child of the slums, but felt she had a right to be eccentric in having me there if she wanted to. Well, it just happens now she’s curious to see what Mr. Ernest Foot’s wife looks like.”
“Oh, she is, is she?”
“She’s been asking me a little about Irene lately,” he said. “She puts on an air of carelessness, of course. Wanted to know if Mrs. Foot was ‘anywhere near equal to her husband intellectually’. I just told her Irene was unusually pretty; so she asked me if I thought Mrs. Foot would be interested in seeing the murals. I said I was sure of it. She didn’t want to make a point of asking Mrs. Foot alone to look at them, so she said perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Foot had friends who’d like to visit the studio, too.”
“So?” Arlene blew out an audible breath of hostile, brief laughter. “Wants to see Ernie’s wife and the kind of people he lives among too, does she? Going it over him, isn’t she! She expect to invite the Lorenzo bunch out there?”
“No, no — though I’d like to see it!” He laughed. “Just a specimen or two will explain the type to her, you see. She asked me who were Mr. and Mrs. Foot’s most intimate friends and I mentioned you and Roy; so I think maybe you and your husband’ll have an invitation before long.”
Arlene, troubled, shook her head. “We wouldn’t go.”
“No,” Raphael said. “I can’t imagine Roy’s going; but you would, I hope. Irene Foot in the house of Mrs. Gillespie Ives would need some support. You’d go, wouldn’t you?”
“No.” Arlene changed the subject decisively. “What are you up to?”
“Again that question!” Raphael smiled, but made despairing gestures in which there appeared to be some sincerity. “Everlastingly that question! How do I know, Arlene?”
“Look here!” Arlene rose and confronted him sternly. “Things are bad enough between Irene and her husband without anybody’s helping it on. If Irene goes out to that woman’s house something’ll happen!”
“Will it?” he asked eagerly. “What?”
“I don’t know; but those two couldn’t meet without something’s happening. You know that as well as I do, and yet here you are fixing it up, helping to have it happen. What for? Why didn’t you try to stop it?”
“Me? Stop Mrs. Gillespie Ives from asking Irene out there once she’d decided she wants to know what Mrs. Ernest Foot looks like? You don’t know the lady! There’s only one thing I can do about it.”
“Only one?” Arlene said contemptuously. “What’s that?”
“To beg you to be there with your friend. She’d need you, and you’re the only friend she’s got except me.”
“Except you!” Arlene laughed out the two words harshly, seeming to throw them in his amiably persuasive face. Then, in three long-legged strides she reached the door, where she added a farewell of sardonic meaning. “Except you! Good night!”
XIV
TO THE CLEAR mind of Arlene Parker it was but too evident that she was Irene’s only friend on earth, and that when one is any human creature’s only friend great staunchness in friendship is needed. Irene’s voice had been sweet when she’d called back over her shoulder, in the corridor, “We’re pals from now on, though, aren’t we?” More, just before that, when she’d all at once changed, and, no longer frigid and hostile, had put out a hand and made a friendly moment, she had a great effect. Arlene was touched, disproportionately touched. The rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner may be disproportionate; but it is natural, and it was in the nature of Arlene Parker never to forget an appeal that touched her.
Irene, too, remembered that moment of friendly emotion; its warmth remained within her, and thenceforth, without more words, she counted upon this friend. When the two next saw each other, some days later, her manner recognized the change that had taken place between them. Outspoken even startlingly, she revealed herself for the first time; and to Arlene it was as if some shrouded stranger, after traveling sulkily beside her for days, had suddenly thrown off a muffling veil to show all trustfully a frank and mischievous face. Irene might have been an excited high-school belle engaged in an adventure, gayly imparting narrative bits of it to a schoolmate and not doubting this confidante’s sympathetic admiration.
Thus, in this reversion, was known once more the self-centered but laughing and friendly Corinth City beauty Ernie Foot had courted. Here was the lively girl of whom he’d seen less and less as she began to disappear beneath the surface of the moody wife. Here, indeed, was the girl of whom he’d seen so nearly nothing since she became one of the Lorenzo wives that by now he must almost have forgotten what she was like and how to be in love with her.
She was in high spirits, rushed in upon Arlene at noon and hurried her off to eat dangerously in the “luncheonette” alcove of the drug store in the next block.
There in partial seclusion Irene chattered confidentially about everything, sniffed a big clump of violets she wore — an offering from Ben Raphael — and laughed immoderately as she talked of him and his gifts to her. Her beautiful eyes were even more brilliant with mischief, however, when she spoke of her husband. “You wouldn’t believe the nerve of that bird, Arlene!”
“Yes, I would. I’d believe anything about Ben Raphael because — —”
“No, no! I mean my own precious Ernie. What you think he had the gall to try and put over on me last night? I don’t know how many days we haven’t said more’n just, ‘You better open that can’ or ‘Your socks aren’t in my drawer, so shut it’; but last night he came in with his face all dressed up in the expression of a boy scout. Just rich! I wish you’d been there, Arlene!”
“You mean you had a talk?”
“I mean I had a listen!” Irene cried. “He had the talk. Regular little Christian lecture. We ought to face life together, make the best of it together; ought to reason things out together, be utterly frank with each other and learn to understand each other.” Irene uttered a mirthful hoot. “Never struck him he might be a little bit late!”
“No, that needn’t be,” Arlene urged. “It oughtn’t ever — —”
“Wait! That’s not all of it, hon. He said he wanted to be frank with me; that he’d wanted to be for a long time but we’d been on such terms he couldn’t break the ice and speak. He had nothing to be ashamed of but rather something to be proud of — something his wife ought to be glad of because it opened up higher opportunities for both of us to lead a finer and fuller kind of life. He’d wished all the time I’d allowed him to tell me how often he was seeing Mrs. G. I. because there was nothing I’d really mind if I only understood, and now he felt he’d truly won her friendship and he wanted me to meet her, too, and do the same. Honest, hon, can you beat that?”
“But he was trying to be straight with you, don’t you see?” Arlene said. “He wanted — —”
“Wait! Here’s a laugh! He went on how when I met her I’d feel just the way he did about her, and together we’d up and get to going with a finer kind of people. The Lorenzo bunch were all right in their way, and Roy and you in particular he would always remember kindly; but, after all, when something better was calling to us we mustn’t miss these higher opportunities. Gosh, he had us moved right out into millionaire’s row in Goldwood! The laugh is that when we first moved up to the Lorenzo I wasn’t too strong for the bunch, or you and Roy either, Arlene, myself, and he sat up pretty near all night crying about it. Isn’t that a laugh?”
Arlene didn’t laugh. “He spoke as if he expected you were going to meet her?”
“Yes; and again this morning before he went downtown. I didn’t say anything at all last night; I just let him talk. I thought about what Ben Raphael’d said to me — how if she ever got anxious to see what I look like I’d better look out. Guess I can attend to that! This morning before he went downtown Ernie did a little more Sunday Schooling — I mean he spoke like that, sort of teacherish and superior and yet terribly conscientious and kind, the old softhead! I just said, ‘All right, Ernie, if she wants to meet me tell her to go right ahead; I’ll meet!’ ”
“I wouldn’t, Irene.”
“I would!” Irene said merrily. “She wants to know what I look like and that’s just what I’ll be pleased to show her! Maybe I could show her something else, too. It might do her a little good to find out how it feels to have a husband running up with his tongue hanging out every time some other woman says, ‘Hyuh, Fido!’ ” Irene lowered her voice to an unctuous whisper, so profoundly did she seem to marvel over the miracle she discovered herself to be. “Honest, Arlene; I’ve got him eating out of my hand — all just by not even letting him hold it! I wouldn’t ‘a’ dreamed I could ever got a big society fellow like that simply cuckoo that easy! Why, they’re just like anybody else, aren’t they?”
“Yes — just men.”
Irene was merry again. “ ’Darling!’ he’ll say in the convertible. ‘Darling, I’m dying for you!’ So then I laugh and tell him I don’t see any strong signs of it, and he’ll say what can he do to prove it, so then I tell him wait, maybe there’ll be a way some day, and then I commence talking about how pretty the sky is and won’t talk about anything else and he gets almost cuckoo. Honest, he’d bark and jump over a stick if I snapped my fingers and told him to!”
She was radiant; color glowed on her cheeks like roses on ivory, and her eyes had the shining blue of a happy child’s. Indeed, she might have been a child chattering of triumphant innocent mischief, Arlene thought, and sat wondering if there were essentially much difference between Irene and any lively beautiful schoolgirl delighting in the thought of vengefully switching boy-sweethearts with some rival schoolgirl and getting the best of the exchange.
Arlene asked of herself, “Then are we always really just children with only our bodies grown up?” She saw one difference, however — that children can sometimes be controlled — and with Irene she wasted no more breath upon either persuasion or remonstrance. Like the wise woman who said of men, “We can’t stop them from doing what they oughtn’t to, we can only take care of them when it makes them sick,” Arlene saw that she could only wait until Irene was sick.
Irene, in brilliant health, showed little prospect of ever needing any nursing. When they left the “luncheonette” she stopped at the corner for a ‘bus. “No, not keeping a date,” she explained. “This is the stage where the scarcer the dates the more they’re ready to bark and jump over sticks. G’by!” And she called back from the door of the ‘bus, “Bet I know by to-night what comes next! I’ll put you wise, hon.”
She did more than keep this promise. That evening Arlene was alone, as Parker had left on the day before for the meeting of the Knights’ officials in Toledo, and Ola was at a dancing class. Irene spoke over the telephone. “You and Roy there, hon? No, I forgot — he’s out of town, you told me — but I mean is any of the bunch there? If not, why, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Foot’d like to call on you.”
“No, nobody’s here,” Arlene said. “Did you say Ernie’s coming, too?”
“Yes.” Irene’s voice was gay. “Oh, yes! Didn’t you understand me? Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Foot would like to present their compliments to Mrs. Parker and come up and give you a big time for a few minutes, hon!”
XV
THE INSTRUMENT AT Arlene’s ear clicked a giggle at the other end into sudden silence; but when Irene and Ernie arrived, some moments later, Irene seemed to have brought the rest of the giggle with her. That is, she came in tittering, kissed Arlene, whispered, “Get him; he’s a scream!” and sat down, breathing loudly in laughter. Her husband, on the contrary, was more than serious; his handsome face expressed an anxious gravity.
“I’m sorry Roy’s out of town, Arlene,” he said. “He came over to my department yesterday to tell me good-by but didn’t mention when he’d be back. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of his getting home by to-morrow?”
“Yes, he’ll be back to-morrow evening at six forty-five, in time for dinner, Ernie.”
“Six forty-five? I’m afraid that’ll be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I’d better explain,” Ernie said. “I have an invitation for you and Roy, Arlene. I — —” He hesitated, glanced at his wife whose all too brilliantly smiling face plainly perturbed him. “I — ah — it just happens, Arlene, that lately I’ve made a number of new friends in town here — ah — lovely people, very lovely people — —”
“Very lovely people,” Irene said with apparent amiability. “That’s the new way he talks now, Arlene. Notice any change in him?”
Ernie sighed patiently. “I think, myself, there’s a change in me,” he admitted, and turned to Arlene plaintively. “I hope it isn’t one for the worse. Irene hasn’t been in sympathy with that feeling in me; but I hope that after to-morrow — that after to-morrow maybe she’ll understand me better and maybe begin to see for herself how — —”
“Get ahead,” Irene interrupted. “Tell her about to-morrow.”
“I’m trying to. Arlene, perhaps you remember my mentioning one evening that — that in a purely business way I’d met a Mrs. Ives who — —”
“Yes,” Irene said. “She remembers that, Ernie.”
Ernie’s color heightened. “I — it just happened that I was of some slight service to Mrs. Ives in helping her to select some hardware for her studio and that she’s the kind of woman who’s very appreciative of — of anything one does — —”
“One,” Irene said, apparently musing. “Anything one does. Some slight slervice — I mean service. Anything one does.”
Outwardly he ignored the interruption. “You see, Arlene, Mrs. Ives has been very, very kind and — and I — and it happens that I’ve had the privilege of seeing something of her and later of meeting some of her friends. She’s been very kind indeed, and naturally she’s the sort that would want to take the same interest in my wife that she does in me.”
“Yes,” Irene said. “Naturally she’s that sort. Naturally she is.”
