Part 3

“As long as he’s looking at rattles,” agreed Timothy, judiciously, “I should say you might speak to him--yes.”

And as Patsy flew across the aisle, he deliberately turned his back and bent his glasses once more on engagement rings. “So foolish to let oneself fear that a Plain Story won’t end well,” he mused to the ring with the fine platinum claws; after all, he was only a writer.

III

GLADYS-MARIE--MERELY A MAID

“So, ’s I was tellin’ you this mornin’, Marmaduke,” Gladys-Marie flipped her dish-towel at the yellow kitchen cat, “I ain’t so thrilled over the i-dea. As Adalbert said to Evelyn Hortense, in _The Madness of a Handsome Hero_, when the grewsomeness o’ this black scheme was sprung upon me, I--well, Marmaduke, though ’twas me own missus, Lady Elinore, put it up to me, I says, ‘Oh, pshaw!’ I did, fer a fact. Course I knew all along Lady Elinore and Mr. Michael was goin’ away, ’n’ leave me here to head off th’ burglars, but w’en she--bless her heart!--come in here yesterday mornin’ ’n’ broke it to me that that Mrs. Verplanck was goin’ to be here while they was away----! Marmaduke, me boy, y’ could ’a’ had me fer this dish-rag, I was that limp ’n’ speechless. ‘Mrs. Verplanck ’n’ her husband need a change,’ says Lady Elinore, in that kind o’ pitiful sweet way o’ hers. ’Y’ see, they live in a hotel, ’n’ they don’t know nothin’ about a home, or the country,’ she says. ‘I’m dependin’ on you, Gladys-Marie, to mak’ ’em see how nice it is. Yes,’ she says, drawin’ on her sixteen-button gloves thoughtful--like the heroine when she’s plannin’ the day-nooment--‘you c’n teach Ellen ’n’ Knollys a lot,’ she says.

“Oh, I know it’s funny, Marmaduke! Y’ needn’t squint yer old wall-eye at me! I know just ’s well ’s you that fer me, Lady Elinore’s gen’ral housemaid, to teach Mrs. Knollys Verplanck ’n’ husband anything is such a Hippodrome-size joke, y’ couldn’t get anybody t’ laugh at it. ’N’ my eye! W’en the station-master drove ’em over last night, I says t’ meself, it’s you that has the nerve, I says, t’ imagine Lady Elinore was drivin’ at anything but a joke, herself. Anyway,” Gladys-Marie patted her pompadour reassuringly, “she don’t even wear a transformation, ’n’ she’d be real plain, Mrs. Verplanck, if ’twasn’t fer her eyes. My, but she has the lamps, Marmaduke--all big ’n’ black ’n’ soft--’n’ the clothes! Gee! makes a _Bon Ton_ colored plate look like a suffragette! Now git out o’ my way, yer Grace, ’n’ pertly too--I gotta get a hike on an’ lift in the dinner. Livin’ ’n hotels don’t give ye no correspondence course in th’ gentle art o’ waitin’.” And Gladys-Marie shoved Marmaduke affectionately under the table as she pinned on her scrap of a cap and took up her tray.

“Really quite a quaint place, don’t you think, Knollys?” Mrs. Verplanck was saying, as Gladys-Marie came in with the soup. She sat languidly back in her chair, so that the gracious candle-light touched her shimmery gown to even more wonderful glory than a _Bon Ton_ colored plate. “It was most awfully sweet of Anne and Michael to turn it over to us for this week, though I dare say they grow bored enough with the quiet. I can’t think why they don’t come in to town for at least the winter.”

“Lady Elinore says th’ country in winter’s the most gorgeous place in the world,” plumped Gladys-Marie, twirling her tray resentfully. “‘N’ last winter we had taffy-pulls ’n’ sleigh-rides, ’n’ corn-roasts, ’n’ toboggans, ’n’ Miss Dorry ’n’ Mister Timothy says people was just fightin’ over bids t’ come out here. I used t’ think th’ city was th’ lobby o’ heaven meself, but my word! ’tain’t nothin’ to the country--Lady Elinore’s country!” She looked at Mrs. Verplanck earnestly.

Mrs. Verplanck looked at her--as though Gladys-Marie had never been heard to say a word.

“Er--rather an interesting person, my dear.” Knollys Verplanck put up his eye-glasses after the little maid’s retreating figure. “A bit--er--chatty, certainly, but--er----”

“Anne has spoiled her scandalously,” returned Mrs. Verplanck. “Fancy her putting in like that, in the midst of serving! No waiter at the hotel would dare think of such a thing. And then calling Anne ‘Lady Elinore,’ as though she were a personage--it’s absurd. Yet Anne seems entirely satisfied with her.”

“Um-m!” Mr. Verplanck looked about the charming, well-ordered dining-room. “She does seem a good servant, doesn’t she? This soup is excellent.” And, behind the big bowl of daffodils, he tipped his plate for the last spoonful--a thing he would never have dared to do in the hotel, before a waiter.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Verplanck admitted, indifferently, “I suppose she can cook and sweep and things, this--er--Marie (I can’t really be expected to call her whole name), but she gives no tone, no prestige to the place, does she? And that’s so important nowadays, when one’s friends--really, Knollys, I think we should move to the St. Midas this spring. Where we are now, it hasn’t the name it used to have, you know.”

“No?” Knollys looked mildly undisturbed. “Then why not take a house some place? Really, Ellen, this--this strikes me as very pleasant, this house of Michael’s; all the room, you know, and no liveries forever underfoot. Even this--er--Marie person’s a relief. I’ve been Sir-ed now for over ten years. Do you know it is ten years since we went to live at Marble Court, Ellen?”

“We were married ten years ago next Sunday,” Ellen’s great black eyes were softer than usual, “and we went to live at the hotel directly we came back from our honeymoon. Yes, it is almost ten years, Knollys. But I’m quite contented; aren’t you? We should never be as comfortable in a house as we have been at Marble Court, I am sure. A house is such a care.”

“I suppose it is.” Knollys smothered his sigh--it was ten years since he had remembered to sigh for a house. “Too much trouble, and all that.”

“Yes,” said Ellen, firmly. “And with all I have to do--and next year I’m up for the Four-in-Hand Club--oh, it’s not to be thought of, of course. No doubt you were only joking, Nollsie----” yet she looked at him a little anxiously; for in spite of the ten years, she was more than very fond of him.

“Joking?” When he let his gaze fall, in that absent-minded way, it suddenly occurred to her that he was almost forty. That slight silvering of the hair about his temples (which secretly pleased her, as an aristocratic touch) took on a hint of new significance. “Joking? Yes, I suppose I was, my dear. I suppose I was. Yet”--his voice grew unwontedly wistful--“it would have been nice if I hadn’t been, wouldn’t it? If our house hadn’t been just a joke. Anne and Michael----”

“Anne and Michael are the two most erratic people one knows,” put in Ellen, somewhat shortly. “As a criterion, they aren’t to be taken seriously. They hide themselves here in the woods in order that Michael may write books---- Oh, they’re good books, I admit that (as Knollys started to interrupt)--but what Anne does with herself while he’s writing them I can’t imagine. A week here is very nice; but a lifetime!” Mrs. Verplanck’s slender hands went up in expressive wonderment.

“That--er--Marie girl said the winters were all right,” reminded Knollys, tentatively; “she said----”

“My dear----” Mrs. Verplanck regarded her husband with the nearest disapproval she could turn upon him. “And what if she did? Do you think _she_ knows--what would be all right for you and me? After all, you are Knollys Verplanck, of Wall Street and Marble Court. This girl--this Marie may be perfectly conscientious, perfectly respectable; but she is nothing but a plain person, my dear Knollys, merely a maid, is she not?” And with reassured composure Mrs. Verplanck rang for her.

* * * * *

“What are you doing?”

Two days later, and Mr. Verplanck was squinting his glasses for a nearer view of Gladys-Marie’s trim stooping figure. The stoop was over a bed of strawberries, near which Marmaduke sniffed about for catnip, guileless and very, very yellow in the morning sun.

“I’m weedin’ this strawb’ry-patch,” puffed Gladys-Marie, looking up very flushed in the face. “What’re _you_ doing?”

“I am--ah--I am doing just nothing,” admitted Mr. Verplanck, suddenly aware that it was a trivial occupation. “But I should like to weed very much if I----”

“You’d spoil yer clothes,” said Gladys-Marie, briefly; “‘n’ besides, what’d she say t’ you?”

Mr. Verplanck stopped regarding his spotless white flannels and regarded Gladys-Marie somewhat sharply; then--“She can’t say anything,” he returned. “She shut me out of the kitchen because she was making angel-food; and whatever I may do in revenge---- I say, Gladys-Marie, if I were to change my clothes, you know?”

“There’s a pair o’ Mister Michael’s overalls in the closet under the stairs,” Gladys-Marie relented. “But you’re s’ much taller---- Ain’t he the handsome figger of a man, though?” she murmured to Marmaduke as Knollys disappeared within the house. “An’ t’ think o’ him cramped up in a hotel! My eye! he’d ought a have the whole world t’ run around in!”

And Marmaduke blinked assent as he swept his yellow tail majestically among the tall grasses.

“Y’ see,” said Gladys-Marie, when she had turned over her trowel to Knollys, “this is Lady Elinore’s strawb’ry-patch, ’n’ while she’s away I gotta keep it goin’ fer her. D’ye ever notice, Mister Verplanck, how much more ye feel like doin’ fer other folks w’en y’re in the country? In the city it’s ev’ry kid fer ’imself, ’n’ a rush t’ get the main graft first. But in th’ country, seems like there’s time fer other people, s’ much time that yerself kind a fergits its kickin’.”

Again Mr. Verplanck glanced penetratingly at her, the plain conscientious person; but the curve of a pink ear was all that he could see. The rest of Gladys-Marie seemed to have been absorbed by the strawberry-bed.

“I guess I never told you about George--the swell middy I’m engaged to?” From the green leaves the friendly voice went on unself-consciously. “He’s gotta serve another year yet, an’ honest, Mister Verplanck, before I come to th’ country I took on worse ’n any Deserted at th’ Altar, over the dee-lay. I was thinkin’ all th’ time about me clothes, ’n’ how we c’d board for a year er two, George ’n’ me, so’s t’ put on a little more style, y’ know. But now--well, I tell y’ on the straight, since I got this country habit, style kinda strikes me like movin’ picters at a vaudyville. I’m s’ keen on the main show, I ain’t no time t’ waste on it. So George ’n’ I’re goin’ t’ be married next June, out here; ’n’ we’re goin’ to have a House!”

When she said that, Gladys-Marie looked up with a smile that did things to Knollys’s throat. A House!

“Nollsie! Nollsie!” Before he could answer the little maid, some one called from the kitchen porch. “I’m going to make the icing now--you can come and help, if you like.” Looking up from the strawberry-patch, one could see Ellen, pink-cheeked and swayingly girlish in her blue cotton frock. “Why, Nollsie Verplanck!” As she caught sight of the overalls her laugh rang out as Knollys had almost forgotten it used to ring. “Whatever are you doing?”

“There--run along, quick!” Gladys-Marie took the trowel from him with an impetuous hurry. “Don’t che see? She wants ye t’ help her!---- ’N’ what I was ever s’ cross-eyed ’s to call her plain for, it ’ud take a couple o’ Con-an Doyles t’ tell me! Don’t it beat Paree how some people c’n get all their best points brought out by chambray at ’leven cents th’ yard?” And Gladys-Marie looked up wistfully at the two just disappearing into the kitchen. She would have liked to go in and make icing with them, as she often did with Lady Elinore; but something back of her pompadour reminded that she was merely a maid. So she sighed, and went on weeding Lady Elinore’s strawberry-patch.

In the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Knollys Verplanck (of Wall Street and Marble Court) sat opposite each other, with a big yellow bowl between them. The blue of Mr. Verplanck’s overalls exactly matched the blue of Mrs. Verplanck’s cotton frock.

“Great eye for color, Anne and Michael, ain’t they?” reflected Mr. Verplanck, mildly, as he sifted sugar into white of egg, with some absorption. “But a blessed good thing they left some of their clothes around. Ours are rather--er--too exotic for this atmosphere.”

“Well, one could hardly bake a cake in white broadcloth, could one?” defended Mrs. Verplanck, as though an excuse demanded itself.

“I never knew one could bake a cake at all,” returned her husband, watching the clever white hands admiringly.

“Mother taught me before I was married; but of course at the hotel----”

“Exactly.” There was something so suggestive in Knollys’s complete understanding that Mrs. Knollys glanced at him suspiciously from under her thick black lashes.

“Anyway, we go back on Monday,” she reassured herself, aloud. “I--it will seem natural to have some one to order about once more, won’t it? With this Gladys-Marie I find myself falling quite into Anne’s lax indulgence--why, do you know, Nollsie, this morning I even dusted the hall for her, and sewed a fresh frill on her cap. Fancy!”

“I suppose that’s what Anne does while Michael’s writing books,” fancied Knollys, dropping vanilla with fascinated attention. “Rather fun, isn’t it?”

“Oh, for a while, perhaps,” acknowledged Ellen, carelessly. “Of course we’re having great larks playing at it, this week, and the house is sweet, but--after all, I’d rather have a little bit more tone, wouldn’t you, Knollys?”

“Gladys-Marie wouldn’t,” said Knollys, gazing out toward the strawberry-patch. “She says she’s so keen on the main show that she has no time to think about style and things.”

“The main show?” Ellen looked up, puzzled.

“Getting married, you know, and--a House. A House in the country.”

“Oh!” For some minutes Ellen stirred in silence. Then suddenly she set the bowl down on the table and untied her apron. “I think”--she took Knollys firmly by the hand--“we will go up and put on our own clothes. Gladys-Marie can finish the icing.”

“Certainly she can,” agreed Knollys, bewildered, “but why? Weren’t we doing it perfectly well?”

“Too well,” returned his wife, succinctly, pushing him before her out of the kitchen.

But as she saw him safely started up the stairs, she slipped back guiltily for just one look at her cake.

* * * * *

Mrs. Verplanck stood regarding a ragged wreath of daisies. Across the centre ran “10 Yeres” in straggling brown-eyed-susan capitals. It was Sunday morning.

“10 Yeres”! Something brighter than the dew upon the daisies brimmed Mrs. Verplanck’s eyes and fell upon the awkward little wreath.

“Why, you silly goose, Ellen!” Her friend, Mrs. Deverence (out from town for the anniversary), took her by the shoulders with an amused little laugh. “Getting sentimental over a bunch of wild flowers!--it was merely a maid who fixed them, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Verplanck turned sharply to answer. Then she remembered the words had a quoted ring. “Merely a maid,” she assented, mechanically, but in spite of her, two more big drops of sentiment fell upon the daisies.

“It’s a good thing for you you’re going back to town to-morrow,” declared Mrs. Deverence, briskly. “Another week of this morbid country atmosphere----”

“It isn’t a morbid atmosphere,” contradicted Ellen, impolitely.

“With nobody in the house except a servant and your husband,” went on the friend calmly. “Tell me, Ellen, hasn’t it seemed awfully odd, having Knollys about, all the time?”

“About, all the time?” Ellen’s amazement was too frank to be mistrusted. “Why, my dear Sheila, I’ve scarcely seen him. You see, he weeds the strawberry-patch every morning, while I’m dusting and doing the flowers, and then after lunch I have my sewing and practising--yes, actually I’ve managed two hours a day!--and Knollys always gets through his mail and goes to the village to wire for stock quotations--why, we’ve never been as busy in our lives.”

“Um-m! And to-morrow it all ends----” Mrs. Deverence sat down very practically to breakfast.

“To-morrow--yes, I suppose so.” Ellen sat down too--as though one chair had been pushed from under her. “We go back--to the hotel to-morrow.”

“And I see you’re up for the Four-in-Hand.” Mrs. Deverence’s manner added to itself blitheness as the men came in. The change in attitude had never before struck Ellen as artificial.

“Yes--a regular club-gourmand she’s getting to be, eh, Knollys?” Hawley Deverence’s weighty laugh took heavy possession of the charming sunny dining-room as he slumped into his chair. “The women are usurping us, Nolly, my boy--they’re usurping us!”

“And Ellen’s such a complex person,” amended Mrs. Deverence. “A whirl of committees and things just suits her. Of course”--she looked brightly at Knollys--“this is all very well for a week, but for a lifetime----!”

“I think it might do quite well for a lifetime,” said Ellen, sitting very straight as she poured the coffee. “Two lumps, Hawley?”

“Er--thanks, three.” Hawley was staring at the graceful uplifted hands. “Ah--you really do that very well, you know, Ellen,” he allowed, graciously. “Don’t think I ever saw you pourin’ things before. You’ve always been at the hotel, haven’t you?”

“Yes”--Ellen looked at Knollys with a smile that had a twist to it--“always at the hotel.”

When Knollys looked back at her there was something in his eyes that seemed to sweep away ten years.

“Well,” Mrs. Deverence announced, cheerfully, “a house is very nice--we’ve had ours ever since we were married; but it’s a great care--oh, a shocking care, really!--and for you, Ellen----” she shrugged her pretty shoulders with a soft laugh. “I simply can’t imagine it. A house for you would be a joke!”

“Why?” Knollys turned to her very quietly. “Why do you think so?”

“Oh, dear me, now I do hope I haven’t said something ultra,” fluttered Sheila. “All I meant was the clubs and things, you know--dear Ellen has so many, and so much to do.”

“I dare say you are right,” said Ellen, slowly. “A house for me would be a joke. Yet--did I tell you, Knollys, what Gladys-Marie said yesterday? ‘Always seems t’ me,’ she said, ‘like a woman’s house is a sort of frame for her, only some poor things don’t care enough about it t’ more’n passepartout ’emselves.’”

“Ha! ha! Smart little baggage, isn’t she?” roared Hawley.

“But, my dear Ellen”--Mrs. Deverence raised her eyebrows a trifle--“surely you don’t encourage a person like that to talk so freely with you? Why, no servant at the hotel would dare----”

“No,” said Ellen, this time avoiding Knollys’s eyes. “No servant at the hotel; but Anne’s and Michael’s servant----”

“Still, one can’t take them as an example, can one, dear? Delightful people, of course, but a bit--er--eccentric. Her frocks--you know----”

“This is one of them.” Ellen smoothed it with a sudden tenderness. “I--it has been a very nice frock.”

“Ahem! A very decent chap he is--the husband, I mean,” put in Hawley, evidently feeling things a bit strained. “Writes A-1 books, doesn’t he?”

“It was really too dear of them to lend you this place, wasn’t it?” Sheila came in conscientiously on her husband’s initiative. “Simply a wonderful house!”

“Yes,” agreed Ellen and Knollys simultaneously, “a wonderful house!”

* * * * *

The Deverences were gone. Knollys and Ellen sat on the porch alone. Beside them lay Gladys-Marie’s wreath.

“Ten years,” said Knollys, meditatively. “Ten years--in the hotel. And to-morrow we go back. To clubs and Wall Street!” There was no cynicism in his brief laugh--just an ache, a sort of emptiness.

“Knollys Verplanck”--his wife laid her hands impressively upon his shoulders, and even through the darkness he could feel the warmth in her great dark eyes--“we’re not going back! That’s the only joke--I--oh, those silly city people! Knollys!--Knollys dear, we’re going to have a House. Say we are! I--I don’t want to be just passepartouted. Knollys--couldn’t we--don’t you think we might pretend it’s ten years ago? Don’t you think we might start over and be just plain married people?”

And Gladys-Marie, coming round the corner of the porch just in time to see Knollys’s answer, stole noiselessly back into the house with Marmaduke. A conscientious person, Gladys-Marie, though, after all, merely a maid.

IV

SHEILA--SIMPLY A SOCIETY PERSON

“She’s the sweetest thing in the world”--Doromea looked up extenuatingly from a large hole in Timothy’s best socks that she was darning--“and ever so lovable, Sheila, but----”

“Just a born butterfly, that’s all,” continued Ellen, for the moment abstracted from dish-towels piled up before her to be hemmed, “a captivating will-o’-the-wisp creature, made to have things done for her--even thought for her; a----”

“Simply a society person!” Patsy sat triumphantly upright, with the air of having nutshelled the whole argument. “Can you imagine Sheila, sitting here on Ellen’s porch, with anything but a bridge score or a cup of tea in her hand? Fancy her making baby-clothes!” There was a pitying smile for the defrauded Sheila as Patsy bent again over the filmy microscopic thing that she was stitching.

“She did do that clever little sketch for us to act at Anne’s last Christmas,” suggested Ellen, doubtfully. It was partly through Sheila that Ellen had come into possession of her own; through Sheila’s very superficiality that Ellen’s desire for a house had crystallized. She looked about the cool shaded porch and into the wide, charming rooms of which she was chatelaine, and sighed contentedly. “If only one could make her a bit more self-realizing----”

“Make her see that she is just a Plain Person.” Doromea was biting thread. “Timothy says that’s where society people disparage themselves--they’re always imagining themselves something extraordinary. But the bewildering part about Sheila is that she doesn’t imagine herself at all; she simply pays no attention to herself.”

“Hasn’t time,” Patsy explained, succinctly. “She’s always at the Suffrage Club or at the theatre--you know, Dorry, she told Anne she fairly lived in the theatre--or off with Hawley somewhere. Of course I’m terribly fond of Hawley--he’s an excellent person, really, and makes one the most delicious things to drink; but as a husband--well, of course he isn’t like Warren.”

“Or Knollys.”

“Or Timothy!”

The three wives nodded at one another emphatically.

“He puffs so,” complained Patsy, returning to her mutton. “And all he ever says when Sheila asks him something is, ‘Yes, m’ dear,’ or, ‘Do jus’ ’s you like, darlin’.’ He does seem fond of her--but then, so many men have been fond of one. It would have been so easy for Sheila to have taken somebody a little less--er--_husky_. She’s such a midget, they make each other ridiculous.”

“Didn’t she say they were going somewhere together this afternoon, Ellen? Wasn’t that the reason she couldn’t come out from town to lunch with us?” The socks were finished and folded, and Doromea turned her attention entirely to the matter of conversation.