CHAPTER THIRTEEN

That winter Diana Reece left her husband. She had adopted Letty as bosom friend and often came to Letty's house, smothered in mink, her dark, hot eyes flashing in little torrents of energy above excited cheeks. When she opened her coat she disclosed a new lissomeness sheathed in black satin. "I've lost ten pounds," she announced in her rich voice. Walter liked her thin. Walter was the man she would marry when she had been divorced and he had been divorced. Walter also liked her in subdued dress, and black was Diana Reece's sole notion of a quiet color.

She always seemed to be impressed by the sacrifices she was capable of making for love and was always boasting of them. "The other day he was a little late in calling me. I had a hair dresser's appointment. But I give you my word I couldn't move a step from the telephone. I was like chained to it until I heard his voice!" With elated conviction her eyes darted from one to another of the group.

Paul rose from the bridge table with the habituated gallantry of the lady's man, to remove her coat.

She thrust forward one satined arm whose wrist was locked in gleaming platinum. "This is what Walter gave me for my birthday." Simultaneously, she curved an index finger loaded with a huge green stone that stuck out of its silver setting. "And this, too."

"A diamond wrist watch," said Grace, admiring, though privately she felt above diamond wrist watches. "How nice of him!"

Blake sneered a little. This sneer was lost in the growing roundness and ruddiness of his face, and there was a faint sense of after-dinner relaxation about his posture, with knees far apart, as if for the stomach to rest between. "A diamond wrist watch is Grace's idea of heaven, isn't it, Grace? She's never got over envying Madalynne's wrist watch, have you, Grace? Jerry won't get over it either for a long time. He's still paying the bill for it while Madalynne sues for breach of promise."

Grace's soft eyes wandered, drawing in sympathy. She said, in a special voice, at once submissive and explanatory, which she often used after some remark of his, "Blake thinks--men who give presents to girls are silly. He thinks because he's never had to, there aren't men who _must_. Otherwise, girls would not even look at them. Or men like Walter who--_like_ to give things from sheer generosity."

"Oh, there's no one like Walter for generosity," said Diana warmly. She turned with a new conviction to the company. "He never comes to see me without bringing me something. I don't know what to do with all the candy and flowers. And bath salts! I have tons of bath salts. All men haven't your ideas, Blake, thank the Lord! You get away with murder." Shooting him a look of disapproval from her hot eyes, she sailed into the bedroom.

There was silence. Blake had paled. His mouth had a wry twist, and when Grace spoke to him he would not answer. She spoke again and touched his arm. "After all," she reminded him in an undertone, "it wasn't I who said that." He grimaced impatiently.

As soon as Dee reappeared he took his departure, saying that he must look in at the theater. His second play had just opened, and, in view of the fact that he was to begin a well-earned playwright's vacation the next day, golfing in Florida, he shook hands around the bridge table and kissed Letty good-bye. Pointedly he ignored Diana Reece, and would almost have passed Grace by in his sullen mood if she had permitted it. She followed him out. Through the half-open door were to be heard ensuing murmurs and the final kiss of reconciliation.

"Well!" said Diana Reece with a sigh of mock relief when Grace reëntered. "I didn't really mean to annoy him. But I should say, Grace, that you have him badly trained."

"Yes, she has," agreed Letty from the bridge table. "I'm devoted to Blake. But you should have heard the things he said about our playing bridge. The next thing, he said, would be for us to get a radio and move to the suburbs and become the perfect Babbitts. But it's all right for Blake to go down South and play golf! People who play golf aren't Babbitts, oh, no! That goes for you, too, Grace. You're always making fun of people who are interested in games. Why don't you laugh at Blake's golf?"

"I do, dearie, I do," said Grace decidedly. "It's not I who play golf, or bridge either. When you see me fighting over cards as you and Paul were fighting a minute ago, then you can crow."

Her eyes and her low, tenacious voice unconsciously concerned themselves with sucking the attention of the others toward herself.

She said pensively and gazed about the circle: "It's funny about Blake, isn't it? He used to--sneer at people who--played golf and fussed with cars. He--wanted to be free of all that--and now, he--rushes away to play golf and even thinks--of buying a car."

And each word sank into the minds of her listeners, impregnating them, despite themselves, even against their wills, irresistibly with her concerns. Their thoughts began to revolve about her chief interest, that now became their chief interest.

"It's because he has money," declared Diana Reece. Almost, her wide, red mouth smacked over the words, especially over the last that so admirably suited her taste.

Grace's shoulders began to curve, her chin to dig into the nook thus made, and her mouth to curl with her particular amusement. "So Anita says. She says that--so long as he hasn't bought a cane, however, there are still--hopes."

"I don't see what's wrong with a cane," muttered Paul, who always carried one.

"No! You wouldn't!" said Letty, briskly scornful.

Paul remained subdued, in silence. But Harold, studying his cards, mildly attempted to change the subject.

It was at Harold's invitation that Paul had come to play bridge. The clandestine meetings which had given Letty so much pleasure in the past had dwindled to this, that Letty now called him "poor Paul," and it was Harold who felt sorry for him. Seeing Paul look at Letty during the evening, Harold felt as if he were watching some lost but still-remembered part of himself, following vicariously the course of a personal experience, as one may perhaps do in a book, with a vivid recognition of each symptom but no pain. He could only show his sympathy by kindnesses that he hoped would go unnoticed--they did not; there was banter in the crowd about "what good friends Paul and Harold are getting to be"--such as asking for Paul's presence at the bridge table, because Paul was, fortunately, a very good player, and now and then turning aside the shaft of one of Letty's observations.

Formerly, Harold had gone out to play bridge. Letty had jeered at the game. Since the birth of the baby, however, bridge night once a week on the maid's evening out had become an institution. Letty said she was tired of spending the evening alone with Harold and if they had people in there was nothing else to do. Only it was difficult to find partners among their close friends. The Lindens played, but they lived in the suburbs. Grace and Blake contented themselves with sitting on the couch and mocking.

To-night Paul had, at Letty's behest, spent an hour telephoning to his club and among his acquaintances to find a fourth. And they had finally been obliged to commandeer a new admirer of Letty's. By profession he was a teacher of shorthand in a high school, but a youthful tramp journey to Africa had seemed to give him a lien on the words "romance" and "adventure," which he used incessantly. He also wrote sonnets. His given name was Leroy and, being fully sensible of his outward characteristics, the girls called him "li'l Leroy." It was perfect. It satisfied even Grace's keen quality of derisive description. She got any amount of amusement from the phrases he used--"I love to roam; I love to wander"--with a dreamy swaying of the head and swooning of the eyes--and from his habit of using the word "child" when he addressed women, delicately, tenderly, dropping it like a crystal from the heights of Olympus to a well-loved mortal. At the same time she took him quite seriously as an admirer of Letty's and a man with a literary background who wrote sonnets.

It was to li'l Leroy, since the others knew it anyway, that Grace announced she had begun a novel.

She caused the bridge game much strangled irritation by distracting his attention to discuss some incidents of the plot. Harold rose finally, crying that the game might as well be broken up.

"So it might," she agreed with a snigger.

And she and li'l Leroy turned their backs on a wrangle over eighteen cents, which Paul and Letty claimed to have won, to engage in an analysis of the story. It had been begun on the advice of Grace's literary agent, who always instructed tyros to write novels first and short stories afterward, as the latter were then apt to sell for bigger and better prices.

"It's a novel about a girl who--wants to--belong to herself--to be free," Grace informed li'l Leroy.

"_Not_ autobiographical!" she emphasized, raising her voice and turning her eyes upon the card table. "The girl is to come from a small town. And she's _not_--to write. I think I'll make her an illustrator."

She paused. Her eyes wandered from face to face, insistent on comment.

Diana, as a professional, felt called upon to ask in a richly derogatory voice, "How would you get the small-town stuff? You never lived in a small town."

"Oh--that will be just--for the opening chapters. Anita is giving me some stuff--and Blake, too. He was brought up in a small town, you know."

"Are you putting Blake in?"

"No, indeed!" said Grace vigorously. She proclaimed: "Blake is _not_--to have--any place at all in this book. I'm making the man--a publicity agent for a movie company. He's to be dark--and to wear glasses. I know everyone'll look for a resemblance--but I defy anyone to find it."

Dee, who was not much in Grace's confidence, having considered her in the past a fool to "waste her time on a married man," now lowered her voice in the expression of a new alliance. She was learning for herself. "How's the status quo?" she asked, with warm sympathy.

"Oh." Grace drew away and shrugged. "As usual." But she could not resist the lure of Dee's attention and explained, after a pause, "She has heart disease."

Dee rolled her eyes to heaven. "They always develop something! Walter's wife was undecided whether to develop t.b. or cancer, as a matter of pride, you understand--not that she wasn't at bottom quite ready for a divorce herself."

"No. It's heart disease all right," said Grace coldly. She might show a sardonic good sense about the loves of others, but she resisted any effort to undermine the solemnity of her own.

"Then perhaps you won't have to bother. She might die."

"Wives _never_ die," declared Letty. "I know. Aren't I a wife? Even if they have cancer they don't die. Look at Ruth's boy friend's wife. She's had cancer for years and she won't die."

"As someone says somewhere, 'They only die--in happy marriages,'" quoted Grace. Her eyes fixed themselves on space, taking on their mournful depths. "It's just as well this way, I suppose," she said at length. "I don't see that marriage is any more--happy. Less, in fact."

"What's that you said about Ruth?" queried Dee. "Is his wife still alive? Why, she's had cancer for at least five years--that I remember. I've already lost my faith in God. _Don't_ let me lose my faith in cancer," she implored them, rolling the morsels of words on her tongue and lavishly rolling her heated eyes. "In spite of what you say," she added with fervent decision, "I'm taking no chances. Marriage is very convenient, you have to admit. Walter has it all arranged to go to Mexico. Millard and I are all set for Reno. And we're to meet and marry in California."

"It ought to be a slogan for the tour companies: 'Get divorced and see the world,'" commented Letty.

Dee appreciated the wit of this as well as anyone. She began a racy account of how Millard and she were rehearsing the way he was to strike her (before witnesses) en route to Reno. "He's so afraid to hurt me." To a question, she grew sober in the midst of her radiance, as one might at a party at the mention of a dead comrade.

"Twelve years," she replied gravely. "Mal's very much upset. I'm sorry for him. But what can you _do_?"

And, having remembered to pay this tribute to the dead, she went on with the opulent wit of her recital.

The men said nothing. They were a little shocked by the conversation. Besides, it did not concern them. It dealt with women's matters.