Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

Chapter Five

We drove up to the Hutton, and I went up and packed and then came down and checked out, and paid with a check. He put my things in the car, and we drove over to his apartment, which was on East 54th Street. It was in a regular apartment building and had a large living room with a view clear over to Queens, and dining room and kitchen, and seemed a great deal more expensive than anybody could afford who made only a hundred dollars a week. But that wasn’t what struck me about it. It was the strangest place I had ever been in, and yet I knew it was interesting and in very fine taste. Except for the furniture itself, which was comfortable and of good quality, everything in it, even the rugs, was Indian. There were Mexican serapes, all very beautiful, hanging on the walls, as well as pictures by Mexican artists, mainly, as I later found out, Rivera and Orozco, all of Indians. There were Navajo rugs scattered around, and Indian silver and gold work, and on the wall a framed collection of arrowheads, ranging in size from tiny little red ones, which had been used to shoot birds with, up to big spear heads, and all arranged beautifully, in order of size, in white cotton batting with a glass frame over them. Then off on a table, under glass, there was a collection of stone instruments, which I later found out were what the Aztec priests had used to hack out the hearts of the sacrificial victims. However, there was something very beautiful about them, made as they were out of a black stone called obsidian, which was capable of being sharpened, as Grant once showed me, merely by holding it in water so that the oxidation or something brought it to a fine edge.

All this, however, I only partly saw, except to realize I was in a most unusual place, and also to realize that there was something back of all this wild talk of Grant’s that I did not in the least understand. He had the boy take my things to the bedroom, and then began walking around much as he had the evening before. Suddenly it was dismal and hot, and sticky, and completely different from what a bride’s first day is supposed to be. However, I merely said: “It must be getting on toward eleven, so I think I had better go to work.”

He hardly seemed to hear me. “Ah — what was that?”

“I say it’s time for me to go to work.”

“Oh. I suppose so.”

“Well — shall I come back here then?”

“Why — yes, of course.”

“May I have a key?”

“Why — certainly. Here, take mine.”

I usually went to work on the subway, but I felt so miserable I took a taxi, first taking care to note the number of the apartment house, which made me feel still worse, as it was really supposed to be my home, and yet I had to remember it as though it was the address of some stranger. I cried in the taxi all right, and I was still crying when we came in sight of the restaurant. Then I saw it was being picketed, with a lot of the girls out there carrying placards, and arguing with people that started to go in. So I knew the strike had come as a result of the big meeting. But I was too sick at heart even to think about the union, or anything, and I told the driver to go on without stopping, and then I told him to turn around and take me back where he had picked me up.

He had to go down to the Battery to turn around, and then was when I heard newsboys screaming the name Harris and saw the big headlines. I bought a paper out of the cab window and there it was:

Underneath was a big picture of Grant, with the caption Heir to Railroad Millions, and a smaller picture of a girl named Muriel Van Hoogland, with a brief item in very big type saying their engagement was announced last June, the wedding to take place in September, but that when she flew in from California that morning, she found he had just two hours before married me. I began to see things a little more clearly, or thought I did. I looked to see if there was any more, but there wasn’t except for a small item about the Karb strike. It had started, apparently, only a few minutes before I drove up there. The demands adopted at the big meeting had been presented to the management, which refused even to consider them at all, whereupon the girls had been called out on strike.

By now, I realized that except for the coffee at the shack, I hadn’t had anything to eat, so instead of going at once to the apartment, I had the driver let me out at Times Square, and went in a restaurant for a sandwich. But while that was coming I went to the phone booth and called NBC and checked on the programs that had gone on ahead of Bergen on that station. And one of them was the young man who does interviews with people boarding planes at Lockheed Airport, in Burbank, California.

When I came out on the streets again there were later editions, with longer items in them. One was an interview with Muriel Van Hoogland, in which she said she didn’t care a bit, and then burst out crying and slammed the door in the reporters’ faces. One was about me and my work at Karb’s and in the headline of that occurred for the first time the nickname, Modern Cinderella, which stuck. So by now I was not only feeling miserable, but afraid and worried, and I wanted time to think. I didn’t feel glad I had married a rich man. That part hardly entered my head, important though I hold money to be. I merely felt in some bitter way that I had been made a fool of, and when I ate my sandwich I walked up to the Newsreel Theatre and went in and sat down. There was nothing about me on the screen that day. I suppose it was too soon, though there was plenty later. I don’t know how long I sat there, but finally it all seemed to focus that I had to have it out with Grant, and yet I even hated the idea of going back to the apartment. So after a long time I left the theatre, and it must have been three or four o’clock.

When I came out into the sunshine, I was startled to see my own picture in the papers, very big, with Grant’s picture much smaller, and Muriel Van Hoogland’s just a little circle down at one side. It was the picture I had had taken when I graduated from high school in Nyack, and that meant it must have come from there, and that frightened me. And sure enough, there was a whole long item about the orphan asylum, and being a waitress in the hotel, and all the rest of it that I had wanted to keep to myself.

But what made something turn over inside of me was the big headline at the top of the page:

And the main story was all about how Clara Gruber said I had absconded with the union funds, and had sworn a warrant out for my arrest.

I went to a drug store and called the Solon, and told them I was quitting. I didn’t take a cab over to the apartment. I didn’t want to go that fast. I went clumping over on my two feet, and the nearer I got the slower I went. I went up in the elevator, let myself in, and Grant was in the bedroom making a phone call. It took several minutes, and seemed to be about somebody that was ill, whom I took to be Muriel Van Hoogland, but that was a mistake. I sat down and waited. He hung up, and came out and began marching around again, and seemed to be under a great strain. He went to the window and looked out. “It’s hot.”

“Quite.”

“By the way, I was thinking of something else this morning when you went out and didn’t realize what you meant. You don’t have to bother about that job. There’s no need for you to work.”

“I didn’t.”

“You — oh. That’s good. It’s terribly hot.”

“They’re on strike.”

“Who?”

“The girls. The slaves. Remember?”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

The bell rang, and he answered. It was a reporter who had come up without being announced. “Well — I suppose you’d better come in.”

I remembered what Muriel Van Hoogland had done, and thought that was a pretty good idea myself. I went and slammed the door in the reporter’s face, then went back and took my seat again. “Now — suppose you begin.”

“About what?”

“About all of it.”

“I don’t quite know what you mean. If there’s something on your mind suppose you begin.”

“Who was that you were so concerned about just now?”

“My mother. This thing seems to have upset her.”

“You mean your marriage?”

“Yes, of course.”

“To a waitress?”

“—All right, to a waitress, but if I’m not complaining, I don’t see that we have anything to discuss.”

“I do, so we’ll discuss. Who are you, anyway?”

“I told you my name. In case you’ve forgotten it, you’ll find it on the marriage certificate. I believe you took it.”

“You seem to be a little more than Grant Harris, Esquire. May I ask who the Harrises are — why the newspapers, for example, give so much space to the marriage of a Harris to — a waitress?”

“U. S. Grant Harris, my grandfather, was perhaps the worst scalawag in American history. He stole a couple of railroads, made a great deal of money — $72,000,000, I believe was the exact figure — and died an empire builder, beloved and respected by all who knew him slightly — or at any rate by the society editors. He left two children — my father, Harwood Harris, who died when I was five years old, and my uncle, George Harris, head of Harris, Hunt and Harris, where I have the honor to be employed. My uncle carries on my grandfather’s mighty work — he stole a railroad in Central America only last week, come to think of it. I could have told him the locomotive won’t run, now that all the wood along the right-of-way got burned off in a mountain fire a few months ago, but he didn’t consult me, and—”

“Never mind the mountain fire. Whose house was that — where we spent the day yesterday?”

“...My sister’s, Mrs. Hunt’s.”

“Why did you say it belonged to a friend?”

“Well — of course, it really belongs to her husband. I hope I can call Hunt a friend.”

“I’d call him a brother-in-law.”

“I guess he is, but I never think of him that way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”

“Well — you never asked me, and—”

“And, in addition to that, there was this little matter of — Miss Muriel Van Hoogland. Who is she?”

“Just a girl.”

“Whom you had promised to marry?”

“That was all my uncle’s doing. My uncle continues another pleasing custom of my grandfather’s, by the way — the negotiation of what he calls favorable alliances, meaning marrying his nephews off to girls who have money. It wouldn’t have meant anything except that my mother let the wool be pulled over her eyes and before I knew it, mainly to make her happy, I had got myself into something pretty serious.”

“And then Muriel went west?”

“Yes, that was in July.”

“To buy her trousseau?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Oh, I think we can take it for granted, that to be worthy of a Harris, Muriel would buy her wedding clothes at Adrian’s.”

“What she did in California I don’t-know and I’d rather we took nothing for granted, if you don’t mind.”

“And then?”

“And then you came along.”

“And then true love was so irresistible that you left Muriel stood-up at the airport and married me, is that it?”

“I guess that about covers it.”

“Well I don’t. You didn’t say anything about love when you asked me to marry you — not at first, and it hurt me, and I ought to have known that any other reason was an insult, and—”

“Is a marriage proposal an insult?”

“Oh, it can be, even from a Harris, if that one thing isn’t there—”

“Don’t you know how I feel about you?”

“Sometimes I know — or think I do. But that wasn’t why you asked me. It was all about the system and getting back at them, whoever ‘they’ are. Is that the only reason you wanted me, so you could get back at your uncle for trying to make you marry Muriel?”

“No!”

“Then what was it?”

“It would take me a week to explain it to you.”

“I’ve got a week.”

“They won’t let me do what I want to. They—”

“And who is ‘they’?”

“My uncle!”

“And your mother.”

“We’ll leave my mother out of this.”

“Oh no, we won’t.”

“I tell you my mother has nothing to do with it. If everybody in the world were as fine as she is — the hell with it! I... I’ve got to go see how she is. She’s my mother, can’t you understand that? And she’s sick. I’ve... I’ve brought this on her. I—”

He started for the door but I was there first. “And I’m your wife, if you can understand that. And you’ve brought this on me. You’re not going to your mother. I don’t care how sick she is — if she’s sick, which I seriously doubt. You’re staying here, and we’re going into it. I told you — I’ve got a week, I’ve got a lifetime. They won’t let you do what you want to do, I think that’s what you said. What is it you want to do?”

I still stood there by the door, and he began tramping up and down the room, his eyes set and his lips twitching. He kept that up a long time and then he dropped into a chair, let his head fall on his hands and ran his tongue around the inside of his lips before he spoke to stop their twitching. “Study Indians.”

“You — what did you say?”

He leaped at me like a tiger, took me by the arms and shook me until I could feel my teeth rattling. “Laugh-let me hear you laugh! I’ll treat you like a wife! Just let me see a piece of a grin and I’ll knock it down your throat so fast you won’t have time to swallow it! Go on — why don’t you laugh?”

“Is that why you have all these Indian things here?”

“Why do you think?”

“And you want to read books about them? I still don’t quite understand it.”

“What do I care whether you understand it or not, or anybody understands it? You don’t study Indians out of books. You study them on the hoof. You go where they are, and — oh, God, what’s the use?”

“You mean in... Oklahoma?”

“If you knew anything — or if you or any of them knew anything — you’d know that all the Indians aren’t in Oklahoma. More than half the population of this hemisphere is Indian — millions and millions of them — they’re the one surviving link with this country’s past — they’re anthropologically more important than all the tribes of Asia put together and — skip it. I’m sorry. It would be impossible to make you understand it, or any of them understand it, and I apologize for even trying.”

“You study them — and then what?”

“Write a book. That’s all — just a book.”

I sat down and then looked around the room at all the things he had in there and after awhile I got up and walked around looking at them one by one. There were little typewritten labels on most of them which I hadn’t noticed before, telling exactly where they came from, what their use was and what their names were in Indian languages and in English. Then I walked over to the big built-in bookcase that filled one side of the room and pulled out one or two books and looked through them. They were different from any books I had ever seen — most of them were bound in leather, some of them in parchment, and they were filled with all sorts of footnotes and scientific references. I knew then at least what he was talking about, the kind of books he wanted to write anyway, even if I had never read any books like that, or even knew there were such books. But there was still more I had to find out. “Why won’t they let you — study Indians?”

“Costs money.”

“In what way?”

“All you have to have is an expedition, a flock of assistants, an army of porters and a boatload of equipment. It runs into money, big money. And I’ve got money — all the money it takes — or will have some day, when George Harris is no longer trustee. That’s why I said I’d marry that Muriel idiot. I thought if I did that George might kick in, but when he got coy about it I knew that was just a dream.”

“You didn’t make the money.”

“Neither did George Harris. Neither did my grandfather. He stole it — and a lot I care. But isn’t it better to have it put to some decent use? Am I supposed to jump up and cheer when George Harris uses it to win a race with one of his yachts? All right, you want to know why I hate the system — any system’s wrong that lets useful wealth be wasted so George Harris can sail yachts — the Alamo, the Alamo II, the Alamo III, and the Alamo IV — aren’t they a lovely end-product for a civilization? For them men sweat and walk tracks in blizzards and tap flanges and get killed in wrecks, and for them I have to give up something that’s worth doing.”

“And to break that system you tried to organize a junior executives’ union?”

“Anyhow, I tried to do something! All right, George made me a junior executive. The day after I got out of Harvard he had a job waiting for me — a swell job where I can learn the business from the ground up, so one day I can acquire a knowledge of stealing, so I know how it’s done. I beat that rap by going in the Army. But Okinawa didn’t last forever and pretty soon here we were again, and this time I told him O.K. And so I don’t disgrace him when I board his yacht he gives me an allowance of $200 a week. And so I get thoroughly integrated, as he calls it, he tells me to marry Muriel. Well, you’re right. Going after George by organizing an office-workers’ union is like hunting an elephant with a cap pistol. But a kid with a cap pistol is fire-arm conscious, at least. I’ll get him. I’ll get him yet.”

“I see. Marrying a waitress was merely exchanging a cap pistol for a pea shooter. They’re not much good against elephants either.”

“Listen, I’ve got you, and you’re my first step in cutting loose from George, his yachts and everything he stands for.”

I felt sick and queer and frightened. We sat there for a time in the half-dark, for it was now well after six, and then it was my turn to begin walking around. I kept passing the bookcase, and little by little it crept in on me that this man was my husband and that, in spite of my pride, I had to help him fight through somehow, even if I didn’t quite understand what it was about or believe in it at all, for that matter. I went over, sat down in his lap and pulled his head against me. “Grant.”

He put his arm around me and drew me close to him. “You never called me that before.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“I think the Indians are swell.”

“I think you mean you like me.”

“I more than like you, or will, if you’ll let me. But that isn’t what I meant, and that isn’t what you want me to mean. I don’t know much about Indians, or this book—”

“It’ll be a hell of a book.”

“That’s it — tell me about it.”

“It’ll take me ten years to write it but it’ll really be a history of this country that everybody else has missed. Listen, Carrie, they’ve all written that story from the deck of Columbus’ ship. I’m going to write it from San Salvador Island, beginning with the Indian that peeped out through the trees and saw that anchor splash down. It was a bright moonlight night all over the American continent the night before Columbus slipped into that harbor — did you know that, Carrie? I’m going to tell what that moon shone on — are you listening?”

“Go on. I love it.”

Chapter Six

I lay in his arms until it was quite dark and he told me more about his book and how it was not to be an ordinary history at all but a study of Indians and the imprint they have left on our civilization. Then for a few minutes he had nothing to say and then he stirred a little. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been thinking, Carrie, just as a sort of peace offering, hadn’t I better send some flowers around to my mother?”

“I think that will be fine — as soon as she sends flowers to me.”

“She sends flowers to—?”

“I’m the bride, after all.”

“Oh — that’s a different department. What she sends you, that couldn’t be just a bunch of flowers, you know, bought at the drop of a hat. But tonight — she’s not herself and it will make a difference.”

“Can’t you order them by phone?”

“I’ll have to put a card in. I’ll only be a few minutes, and then we’ll pick out a nice place to have dinner.”

He got his hat and went out, and I was left with this same feeling I had had before, of being sick and forlorn and up against something I didn’t understand, and mixed in with it was a sense of helplessness, for I was sure that it wasn’t the system, or his Uncle George, or the yachts that was the cause of his trouble, but this same woman he refused to talk about and yet seemed to have on his mind all the time, his mother. And what could I do about her?

The place seemed horribly gloomy then, and I wanted light. I groped all around but couldn’t find any of the switches. I began to cry. Then the house phone rang and I went to answer it and couldn’t find that. Then the phone stopped ringing and in a minute the buzzer sounded. I knew how I had come in, at any rate, so I opened the door. A policeman was standing there. “Carrie Selden Harris?”

“I’m Carrie Harris.”

It was the first time I had used my new name and it felt strange, but I tried not to show it to him.

“Warrant for your arrest. I warn you that anything you say in my presence may be used against you — come on.”

I asked him to wait, then went to change from my sport outfit, which I still had on, into a dress that seemed more suitable to be arrested in, and then, fumbling around in the dark, I really broke down and wept. Why couldn’t Grant be there instead of traipsing out to a florist’s to send flowers to a woman who hadn’t even had the decency to wish him well when he got married?

I don’t think I could have got dressed at all if the policeman hadn’t found a switch and turned it on so that a little light filtered into the bedroom.

I put on my green dress, a green hat and powdered my nose some kind of way and went into the living room. The policeman was a big man, rather young, and looked at me, I thought, in a kind way. “You got any calling to do about bail, something like that, be a good idea to do it from here. Station house phone, sometimes they got a waiting line on it and anyhow you’re only allowed one call. Besides, it’s pretty high on the wall for you to be talking into.”

“Thank you, there’s nobody I want to call.”

“You got a husband?”

“There’s nobody I want to call.”

I wouldn’t have called Pierre’s or waited for Grant to get back if they were going to send me to the electric chair.

I had never been in a police station before but I didn’t stay there long enough to find out much about it. We rode around in the police car, the officer and I, and it was a battered-looking place with a sergeant behind a big desk, and sure enough, five or six people waiting to use the telephone, which was so high against the wall that everybody had to stand on tiptoe and yell into it. The sergeant was a fat man who told me I was under arrest on a complaint sworn out by Clara Gruber for embezzlement of union funds, and that if I gave him the required information about myself quickly he might be able to get my case disposed of before the magistrate went home to dinner and at least I would know the amount of bail.

But just as I had finished giving him my name, age and residence, Mr. Holden came striding in and that was the end of it. He said something quickly to the sergeant and then I saw Clara Gruber standing outside the door looking pretty uncomfortable. He beckoned to her and then he, she and the sergeant went into a room where there seemed to be some kind of court in session. When they came out he took my arm and patted it. “It’s all over — Clara made a little mistake.”

“The money is still in the bank, every cent of it.”

“Don’t I know it? Come on — the girls are waiting to give you a cheer.”

What became of Clara Gruber I don’t know, because before I knew it I was in a taxi with him and in a few minutes we were at Reliance Hall. Hundreds of girls were up there holding a big meeting and when he brought me in they all started to yell and applaud and newspaper photographers began clicking flashlights in my eyes and when I got up on the platform the cheering broke out into one long scream. Next thing Mr. Holden was banging for order and a girl was on her feet nominating me for president. That was when I got into it. I made them a little speech, saying that I still regarded myself as one of the them and wanted to keep on being treasurer but that I couldn’t be president because I had just got married and might not have the time to give to the duties. However, I never really finished about why I didn’t want to be president. As soon as I mentioned my marriage they all broke out again into yells and I realized that why they were cheering for me had nothing to do with the money at all but was really on account of my marrying Grant. I felt warm and friendly and a little weepy, because it meant something after the day I had had to know I had friends, but at the same time I wanted to get out of there, because what they had in mind was a successful Cinderella and I didn’t feel that way about it at all and even hated the very idea. Besides, no matter how angry I had been at Grant, I had to get back to him.

Mr. Holden must have guessed what I was thinking, because he banged for order again and made them a little speech saying I had to leave and for them to continue with the reelection of a new president and he would be back. So next day, I found out, they elected a girl by the name of Shirley Silverstein from the Brooklyn restaurant.

When we got to the street we didn’t take a taxi, we went to a little coffee pot around the corner and I ordered bacon and eggs, and Mr. Holden had a cup of coffee. His whole manner changed as soon as we had done our ordering, and he sat there studying me until finally a bitter little smile came over his face. “Well — how does it feel to be rich, envied and socially prominent?”

I could see he was horribly disappointed in me for having, as he thought, engaged in a cold-blooded piece of gold-digging, and I had to exercise control to keep from laughing in wild shrieks. However, I merely said: “Please — I didn’t know anything about that until I read the papers.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

He lit a cigarette and studied me for a time, then took my hand again. “How’s it going?”

“Terribly.”

“I wanted you myself.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me?”

“I made up my mind long ago I would never ask any woman unless I knew she wanted me to — a great deal.”

“I thought you meant something else.”

“I did. If you didn’t want me enough for that I wouldn’t want you enough for this.”

I felt somehow guilty, as though I ought not to be talking of such things with him at all, so I said nothing. After a moment he went on: “Did you?”

“Why?”

“Because if you did — and do — that other-way is still open and this one will be — I mean a wedding, a ring and all the rest of it — as soon as you can get an annulment and forget what you did today. Here we are — if you want me you simply don’t go back to him at all.”

I thought a long time over that and then I said: “I married the man I wanted.”

“You can’t get away with it. You aren’t of his class—”

“If I hear any more about his class I’ll... I’ll scream! I’ll stand right up here and scream.”

“You can scream from now until doomsday and you’ll not scream down his class... his class can’t be destroyed by screaming. I didn’t say he was better than you are — he and a million like him are not worth one girl like you and for all of them together I wouldn’t give the powder it would take to blow them to hell. But he is of one class and you are of another. They have never mixed — from the time of Cromwell, from the time of Danton, from the time of Lenin, they have made war, the one upon the other. The trouble with you is, that you’re American and you have this stupid illusion of equality. If you came from Europe, as I do, you’d know you’re attempting something that can never come to pass, even when a whole caravan of camels march through the eye of a needle. Carrie, you’re doomed. Give this foolish thing up, come with me tonight and we’ll start out together, two people of a similar kind with some chance of success.”

My eggs came then and I ate them, weighing every word he had said. When I was through I replied: “I married the man I want.”

When I got home Grant was sitting in a big chair reading a book, but I could tell from the quick way he was breathing that he had just grabbed the book when he heard my key in the lock. He looked up, then looked back to the book. “Oh, hello, Carrie.”

“Hello.”

“Been out for a walk? It is a beautiful night.”

“No — just been getting arrested.”

He looked up and stared at me, trying to make up his mind if I was kidding. “...For what?”

“Embezzlement.”

He put up his book then and came over to me and I told him briefly what happened, omitting, however, anything about my talk with Mr. Holden. But I was casual about it and when I got through he couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. After a few moments he turned away and remarked: “Well — we haven’t had that dinner yet.”

I went out to the pantry, looked in the icebox and came back. “If you can wait a few minutes you can have exactly what I had.”

“Oh — you’ve eaten?”

“Yes — since you seemed to be more concerned about your mother than about me I thought it advisable to have a little something. I had bacon and eggs. Just have a seat in the breakfast room and yours’ll be ready in a little while.”

I made him bacon, eggs, buttered bread and coffee, and served them to him there in the dining room. He ate the first two eggs I made him but still looked hungry, so I gave him three more and some extra bacon and poured a glass of milk for him. During all this I don’t think three words were spoken, but when he had finished he appeared to be in a more amiable humor. But when I was about through washing the dishes the phone rang and he went in the bedroom to answer it. He came back as I was hanging up the dish towel and his face was white. “Carrie — mother’s just been taken to the hospital. I’ll have to go over there.”

He dashed out of the kitchen and I heard him go in the bedroom. I went in there. He was taking off the smoking jacket he had on when I came home and changing into his street coat. I closed the door and put my back against it. “Where did you say you were going?”

“To mother — they’ve just taken her over to Polyclinic.”

“Very well — then I’m going over to the Wakefield Hotel, where a gentleman has just invited me to live with him.”

“What?”

“Grant, perhaps you’ve forgotten. This is our wedding night. You stay with me or I leave.”

I opened the door and stepped away from it. “Take your choice. It’s her or me.”

He stood staring, his face working as though the door were some frightful object. Then he closed it, turned around and stared at me as though I were some frightful object. Then he broke into sobs, fell on the bed and buried his face in the pillow. I turned away, as it made me sick to look at him. Then I snapped the switch and turned out the light.

The next day was one long nightmare of reporters, phone calls, photographers and more reporters. The desk kept sending up stacks of papers as soon as they would come out, and it appeared that his family had now decided to talk and that his uncle, sisters and various relatives all agreed that whom he married was up to Grant. They also agreed, apparently, that while it was his own affair, he had disgraced them pretty thoroughly.

In addition to the interviews there was an item about his mother’s being in Polyclinic. After breakfast he went over to see her and to this I made no objection. When he came back I tried to find out what had passed between them, but he was extremely evasive. He pretended to tell me everything, said his mother had assured him that if he loved me there was only one thing for him to do and he had done it and she would have been distressed if he had done anything else. Later I realized that this was probably true. But it was only half true, and Grant, although he tried to conceal it from me, was in more of a turmoil inside, if that was possible, than he had been before. As to the peculiar ways in which she was able to torture him while saying the sweetest things, I cannot explain in a few words, so you will have to let me make this clear when I come to it.

About four-thirty the house phone rang, and I answered. “Mrs. Bernard Hunt and two other ladies in the lobby, calling on Mr. Harris.”

“Will you tell them that Mr. Harris is indisposed at the moment and ask them if they would care to see Mrs. Harris?”

“Just a moment, Mrs. Harris.”

By that time Grant had come into the foyer of the apartment where the house phone was, looking very puzzled. “There’s nothing the matter with me. Who is it?”

“I think it’s your sisters. I’m just giving them a little lesson in manners. Funny, considering their position in society they wouldn’t know about such things themselves.”

The desk was on the line again, then: “Mrs. Harris?”

“Yes?”

“They’ll be right up.”

He didn’t make any sense out of it, but I pushed him into the bedroom and told him to wait five minutes before he came out. The buzzer sounded then. I counted three slowly and in between kept saying to myself: “Don’t talk about the weather! — Don’t talk about the weather! — Don’t talk about the weather!” — Then I opened the door. The three of them were standing there and at once I had a chilly feeling because written all over them, with a big S, was Society. That is, with the exception of the one that turned out to be Mrs. Hunt, who had at least something else besides that. She was not as tall as the other two, who looked like blobby imitations of Grant, and she was a little better-looking and had more shape and zip. I found out later she slightly resembled her mother, and while she was the snootiest of the three, she did seem to have some little spark of humanness, or humor, or whatever you would call it. I tried not to overdo it. I merely looked pleasant, glanced from one to the other, and said: “Mrs. Hunt?”

“I am Mrs. Hunt.”

“I’m the new Mrs. Harris, and I think you must be Grant’s sister. I’ve heard him speak of you a number of times.”

I held out my hand and she took it, and then introduced the other two, whose names were Elsie and Jane, but I was careful to address them as “Miss Harris.” Mrs. Hunt’s name turned out to be Ruth, but again I called her Mrs. Hunt. By that time I had got them into the living room and all four of us had said we were so glad to meet each other, which certainly was not true on my part and I don’t think it was true on theirs, but I had tried to get them into a position where there was nothing else they could say. I asked them to sit down but at once Mrs. Hunt turned to me and burst out: “But how is poor Grant? My dear, don’t tell me it’s made him — really ill?”

“Oh, he’s all right. I’ll tell him you’re here. I only said he was indisposed so you’d have to call on me instead of him.”

That one landed between her eyes just where I aimed it. She blinked, then laid her hand on my arm. “My dear — of course, of course! But the papers said something about your being employed, and it didn’t occur to me you’d be home.”

That one landed between my eyes, and I half admired the fast way in which she had come back at me. But I laughed very gaily and said: “Oh, I’m employed, but we’re on strike.”

“Oh, how thrilling!”

It come like a chorus from all three of them and on that we sat down. I had an awful second when I didn’t know what I was going to talk about next, but my eye happened to catch the arrowheads and I began to gabble as fast as I could about the strange Indian collection I had come to live with, and this had a most unexpected result. They all chimed in about how stupid the Indian idea was and how I had to cure Grant of it, and this was not at all what I thought, but I thought it advisable to say it was all so unfamiliar to me I didn’t know how I felt about it, and about that time Grant came in.

They all jumped up and I think they had expected to throw their arms around him and offer condolences for the terrible thing that had happened in his life, but as he looked just as big and healthy as ever and merely said hello, without any particular fuss, they sat down again and it was a little flat. So I thought perhaps as I had put them in their places a little, at least to my own satisfaction. I had better set out a little hospitality. I got up and asked: “May I give you some tea?”

“Oh no, my dear, don’t even think of it. We’ll have to be going in a few minutes anyway. We just stopped by to—”

“—Call on the bride—”

“Certainly! But don’t even consider going to any trouble about us.”

That was Mrs. Hunt, and the other two chorused along with her. Grant got up and went out. I did some more babbling about the Indians and in a few minutes he was back, carrying a tray with a bottle of Scotch on it, a seltzer siphon, some glasses and a bowl of ice. “Tea is a little out of date, Carrie. I think we’ll offer them something more modern.”

I got up, took the bottle of Scotch and, as gracefully as I could, pitched it out the window. It seemed the longest time before it broke in the court beside the apartment house. When I heard it crash I turned to him. “That’s for correcting my manners. I am offering them tea.”

There was a long and extremely dismal silence. Then Mrs. Hunt wriggled in her chair a little, “I guess we take tea.”

“I guess you do.”

I went out and fixed tea and canapes, which turned out very well, considering what was there to make them with, for I had had no chance to go out and do any marketing at all. Then on the tray I put a bottle of rye and a bottle of brandy and went back in the living room. “Now we have tea, rye and brandy. Which can I give you?”

Mrs. Hunt smiled sourly. “Tea, darling.”

But the taller one, Elsie, jumped and said: “Oh, the hell with it! We’ve got to say it, so why keep this up? Give me a slug of rye, will you, dear sister-in-law, so I can really fight? Make it double, it’ll save time.”

The other one, Jane, closed in on the liquor tray and grabbed the bottle. “Two.”

“Three,” said Mrs. Hunt.

Grant got up. “Oh, hell — let’s all have a slug of rye.”

So we all began to laugh and they got up and grabbed canapes without waiting for me to pass them, began wolfing them down and grunting that they were pretty good. Then we all had a slug of rye, including myself, a most inadvisable step on my part, as I found out afterwards, for while my restaurant work had made me very expert at serving liquor, I hadn’t much experience drinking it. But it all seemed so comical at the time, us hating each other the way we did and at the same time sociably having a drink so we could fight, that I wanted to be a good sport, and so gagged mine down too. Then we all sat down and Grant hooked one knee over his chair and growled: “Well, get at it.”

Mrs. Hunt got at it without any further encouragement. She jumped up, charged over to Grant and shook her finger right under his nose. “You big slob! What do you mean by doing a thing like this? Haven’t you any regard for us? Haven’t you any regard for her? Don’t you know you’ve ruined her life?”

That was where I jumped up, for the liquor was reacting on me in a most unexpected way and leading me to do something I practically never do, which is lose my temper. “Who asked you to take up for me? You can confine yourself to your own ruined life or you’ll get something that will be a big surprise! I may look small, but I’m perfectly able to throw all three of you down every flight of stairs, in this apartment house, and if there’s any more of that kind of talk out of you I’ll do it.”

“Where did you get all that muscle — carrying trays?”

“Yes! And milking cows on my stepfather’s farm, and a whole lot of other things you never did.”

“Set ’em up in the next alley,” said Grant. “Let’s all have another drink.”

So we all had another drink, and this time when Mrs. Hunt started in, it was on me. “Oh, you needn’t be so tough. We’ve all got to arbitrate, you know.”

I wanted to yell at her some more, but all of a sudden it seemed to be too much trouble, and also my tongue felt woolly and thick, so all I said was: “Whass arbitrate?”

“Now we’re gett’n somewhere,” said Jane, and her tongue seemed to be thick too.

“Arbitrate,” said Mrs. Hunt in a very waspish way, “means that for the sake of appearances you have to take us to your bosom and pretend to like us, and we have to take you to our bosoms and pretend we like you, although we don’t at all. We’d like that distinctly understood. We think you’re terrible.”

“Oh, thass all right. I think you’re terrible too.”

So then everything became extremely cloudy in my mind and yet wholly delightful in a way, because I said the most awful things to them, and they said the most awful things to me, and then we would have another drink and laugh very loudly and start all over again. So then there was a great deal of talk about a cocktail party which Mrs. Hunt would give for me within three or four days because, as she said, a cocktail party practically required no manners at all and I would disgrace them less in that way than at any other form of entertainment she could think of. So I said I thought that was swell and a great deal better than a dinner party would be, because at a dinner party I might get up and begin to serve just from force of habit, and if I ever got hold of a plate of soup I might let her have it in the face. So then Grant said, “Set ’em up in the next alley,” which seemed to be about the only remark he could make all afternoon, and Mrs. Hunt said she would give anything to be able to throw soup with such accuracy, and I said it was really no trick at all, that all it needed was something inspirational to aim at. So then Elsie said: “The rye’s all gone. Never mind about the soup, redhead, get the cork out of the brandy.”

So next thing I knew I was in the bedroom lying down, very sick, and Grant was sitting beside me and they were gone. And next thing I knew, it was very late at night and I was alone there, with my head very clear and a guilty feeling all over me. I got up and went into the living room. Grant was there reading. I went and sat down in his lap and he put his arm around me and ran his fingers through my hair. “How do you feel, Carrie?”

“All right. What happened?”

“Oh — my sisters came and you and I and they had a good Kilkenny fight that cleared the air quite a little.”

“What was that about — a cocktail party?”

“Ruth’s giving you one. Friday, I believe.”

“I don’t want to go to her cocktail party.”

“I was a little leery of it, but you seemed set on it, so I kept my notions to myself.”

“Then I said I’d go?”

“ ‘In Karb’s uniform,’ were your exact words, ‘with a napkin on one arm and a pewter tray under the other.’ ”

“Tell me something, Grant. Was I drunk?”

“Stinko. And very sweet.”

“I’ve heard about that all my life, being drunk, and here it had to happen to me today, of all times.”

“It’s all right. I got you to bed.”

“Then I’ll have to go? To the cocktail party?”

“I’m afraid you’re hooked.”

Chapter Seven

If I had no very clear recollection about accepting the invitation to the cocktail party the newspapers quickly refreshed my memory. The first of the next day’s editions had nothing about it but around the middle of the afternoon some of the people Mrs. Hunt called up must have tipped the reporters off, because when Grant’s financial editions came up, there I was again, plastered all over the front pages, with stories of how the family had decided to accept me “on probation,” as one paper put it. I had hardly started to read them when the phone rang and it was Mrs. Hunt. She accused me of calling up the papers and giving them the information, and I promptly accused her of the same, so that was how we discovered that it must have been one of the guests who had done it.

Grant was not at home at the time. He was supposed to be on vacation but had gone down to his office in connection with some matter he had to attend to. It threw me into a highly nervous state again and I wanted to call Mrs. Hunt back and tell her I wanted nothing to do with the cocktail party, or her, or any of them, for that matter, but I kept reminding myself that I had to think of Grant and make an earnest effort to adjust myself to a situation that he couldn’t very well help. I wanted a chance to think, and as the phone had started ringing again, with reporters asking all sorts of stupid questions, I put on my hat and went out.

I didn’t pay any attention to where I was going but next thing I knew I was at Sutton Place. It reminded me of the night Grant and I walked over there and it had all been so simple and gay, so I turned on my heel and started west, toward Broadway. I got as far as Seventh Avenue and turned south toward Times Square. Pretty soon that brought me to the Newsreel Theatre. That seemed to be about the only place I could have any peace in those days, so I bought a ticket and went in.

I was paying very little attention, and had about come to the conclusion that I was going to follow my instincts and not go to the cocktail party, when to my complete astonishment I saw my name appear on the screen with a flash announcement that patrons of the Newsreel Theatre would now get their first glimpse of the Modern Cinderella who had married herself to a million. Then there were shots of the Karb girls on strike and the announcer was rapidly explaining, in a manner very complimentary to me, that while I was now one of the socially elect of New York, I had not renounced my connection with the girls who had followed my leadership in union matters. Then the scene changed to Reliance Hall, with all the girls cheering and me going up on the platform with Mr. Holden, and I certainly had no idea at that time that among the cameras clicking at me was one making moving pictures. Then it changed again to a close shot of me making my little speech to the meeting, and I was surprised how young and unworldly I looked. But at least the green dress was nicely pressed and my hat was on straight and my face was decently powdered, and I thanked my stars I had taken the time to make myself look presentable before going out with the police officer.

When I came to the point where I mentioned my marriage it broke off and there were a lot of quick shots of the girls cheering, and then single shots of a number of girls, one after the other, with the various expressions on their faces, and I did wish they hadn’t betrayed so clearly what was in their minds, which was that they wished they had married a rich man too. Then there was a quick shot of Mr. Holden telling them I had to leave, and then here we came, he and I, down past the cameras, he with his arm around me, guiding me through the mob of girls who were trying to take me in their arms or shake hands with me or kiss me. Then it went into some automobile factory stuff, and I got up quickly and went out. The newsboys were still calling my name and I had a feeling there was no place I could go where I would have any peace and once again I was panicky and frightened.

When I got home Grant still hadn’t come, so I sat down and waited and when he came in, around six-thirty, he was cold and formal and different from what he had ever been before. He went in the bedroom and after a few minutes I went in there and asked him if he didn’t think we had better go out to dinner, and he said he supposed so, and then for a few minutes he stood tying and retying his necktie and nothing was said. Then he turned on me quite savagely. “You said something, I believe, about some man who had invited you to come and live with him.”

“Oh, yes. So I did.”

“Who is he?”

“Oh, you met him, I believe. A... labor leader.”

“Yes, I met him. You and he seem to have been pretty intimate — even after you married me.”

“I don’t know of any intimacies.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you went to a union meeting with him?”

“That was in the papers.”

“Not all of it. You better go up to the Newsreel Theatre and have a look at yourself.”

“Oh, you saw that?”

“I saw it three times — especially the end of it, where he had his arm around you and was patting your hand. And you — you didn’t have any objection, did you? Oh, no — you looked up at him every time he did it and — where did you go with him then?”

He had his fist doubled up and his eyes were glaring in a most frightening way, but something was singing inside of me and I didn’t care whether he hit me or not. So I switched my hips as impudently as I could and said: “I went to dinner.”

He took me by the shoulders and shook me and then our lips met and everything went swimming around and we lost all track of time until it was quite late. Then we were very near to each other and in love and I told him I had just acted that way because I liked to see him jealous. Then we went to dinner and I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to tell him I had decided not to go to the cocktail party.

I made all preparations for this horrible event as carefully as I could and yet I became more and more nervous as Friday approached. I went to Miss Eubanks, the saleslady who had been so helpful to me before, and let myself be guided by her advice. She suggested two outfits, one in case the summer weather held, and another in case it should turn cold or rainy or both. This I thought a good idea, and for the first I picked out a chartreuse green. It was very expensive, but Miss Eubanks insisted that my costume should be very simple and reminded me that simplicity is only to be found in well-made clothes. This I knew to be true, so I took it, and she went with me to the hat department and I picked out a very lovely hat to go with it. It was another shade of green, and then we bought bronze shoes. She kept cautioning me not to get anything that looked like an ensemble. “You want to be dressed — not dressed up.” For the other outfit she suggested a suit and I picked out a steel blue which went very well with my hair, brown suede hat and brown shoes. She hesitated about letting me wear a suit that was ready-made, but finally concluded that with my figure, since it was very well tailored, it would be all right. Then she had me buy proper handbags, stockings and all accessories, and I paid with my personal check. It made quite a dent in my savings, but for some reason I wanted to appear in my things and not things that Grant had bought me. And that was why I went for them alone too, as I didn’t want to feel or have him or anybody feel that I had needed any coaching from him.

Friday was a beautiful day, with just a touch of fall in the air, and he was so delighted with the way I looked in the chartreuse dress that I was almost glad I was going, and yet a nervous feeling kept spreading from the pit of my stomach until, as four-thirty approached, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to go through with it or not. About a quarter after four he suddenly said: “Let’s walk, it’s not far.”

“Oh, yes — let’s.” Because I thought I would die if I had to sit and watch the El posts go by in a taxi.

“Then let’s start now.”

“I’m ready.”

So we walked, and it did take a little of the nervousness out of me. We went over and turned up Park Avenue. Grant had got a hair-cut in the morning, quite unusual for him, and had on a dark brown suit and a new fall hat and carried a stick. I knew I looked very well, and for a few minutes I was very proud to be swinging along with him up Park Avenue, with people turning to look and a sense of being somebody.

The house was on Sixty-first Street between Park and Madison, and it was a whole house, not just an apartment. We were let in by a house-man who spoke to Grant and bowed to me. We then went upstairs to a large living room and Mrs. Hunt came in and we sat around talking as though we had never called each other names. We were ahead of the crowd, as she had asked us to be, and it was all very quiet and casual. Then Elsie and Jane arrived and joined in the discussion and you would hardly have known they were giving any party at all. I really didn’t like Mrs. Hunt, or any of them, but I caught the point and remembered it: Never make a fuss about your hospitality, as so many people I had known were so prone to do. Then Mr. Hunt came in. He had just left his office and disappeared for a little while to dress, but he stopped long enough to shake hands with me and I caught him eyeing me sharply and, I thought, in a not unfriendly way. He was considerably older than Mrs. Hunt, who was younger than Grant, as were the other two girls, but even so he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, and was tall and rather good-looking. When he came down again he had on a short black coat and gray trousers, and I had a sudden reminder that, in spite of the pleasant casualness of the preliminaries, what I had to go through with would be, for me at any rate, very formidable indeed.

Then the guests began to arrive and they were being introduced to me very rapidly and I must say Mrs. Hunt was very graceful and considerate about it and made it seem that everything was in my honor and I almost felt I was welcome. So in a few minutes I was faced with what worried me most of all, which was what to talk about. Once more I had drilled it into myself: “Don’t talk about the weather.” But what else did I know to talk about? This had given me several bad nights, for I try to be honest with myself, and after a great deal of restless tossing around I had come to the realization that I didn’t know anything to talk about. I had never read any books or heard any music or seen any pictures or done any traveling. Of what is called culture I had none whatever. My world had been limited to my work, my savings and the few people I had come in contact with, and that was all I ever talked about with other girls of my kind from morning until night. But certainly I couldn’t begin complaining about the slowness of Karb’s counterman to these people, or criticize the way the cooks neglected to break the soft-boiled eggs, so the waitress had to do it. For Grant’s sake I had to give some kind of account of myself, and I stood there shaking hands, badly frightened as to what it was going to be, when suddenly an idea hit me.

I began telling them about the strike. Luck was with me, for all of them became excited and wanted to hear about it, and so the ice was broken in two ways. I had found something that interested them and that I knew enough about not to make a fool of myself in discussing it, and also it relieved them of any embarrassment they may have felt about mentioning my occupation, and I breathed much easier. When another houseman came with a tray of cocktails I took one and sipped it a little so I could laugh and seem to be having a good time, but I was careful of the amount I drank, for I didn’t want any repetition of what had happened before. One thing helped me a great deal. In my work as a waitress I had trained myself to remember people’s names and use them in speaking to them, as that is the way to get regular customers. So it was no trouble for me to keep all the names straight, even after fifty or sixty people had arrived, and this greatly astonished Mrs. Hunt. I thought it advisable not to tell her how I became so name-conscious, but I could see that she was favorably impressed and also was breathing much easier.

This went on for about an hour and I managed fairly well, for when the strike ran thin one of them would usually say something which permitted me to let them take the lead and I fell back on something which has stood me in good stead before, especially with talkative customers. I professed to be greatly interested, which in a way I was, as I find many things interesting, and asked a lot of eager questions, so that they would do the talking for a little while.

I must have been acquitting myself quite creditably, because Mr. Hunt drifted by one time, leaned close to me and mumbled in my ear: “You’re doing fine.”

I had got separated from Grant, as I wanted to be, since I shouldn’t appear a clinging vine that he had to look out for, and of course Mrs. Hunt was too busy to be paying much attention to me anymore. Then two or three women who were talking to me suddenly stopped what they were saying and glanced over my shoulder toward the entrance from the outer hall. I became aware that a strained hush had fallen over the room. I turned around and there, standing with Mrs. Hunt, was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She didn’t appear to be over thirty-eight, she was even smaller than I am, with a lovely figure and beautiful high color in her cheeks that you could tell at once was natural. Her hair was blonde but shot slightly with gold so it was very brilliant. Her eyes were a peculiarly vivid green which I could see even from where I was. She had on the simplest summer dress, black with a design in it, and yet with her figure you could hardly take your eyes off it. She seemed to radiate charm and friendliness, and I was still staring at her when Mrs. Hunt came over to me. Her face was drawn and nervous and she didn’t quite look me in the eye when she spoke. “Don’t say I did this to you. She wasn’t even invited. So come on. But I can tell you this much. The worst you can possibly imagine can’t be as bad as it’s really going to be.”

“Who is it?”

“Mother.”

It seemed impossible that one so young could be Grant’s mother, but I later found out she had been married at seventeen and that Grant came along as soon as the law allowed. But in spite of my surprise a chill began to creep up my backbone. I took a deep breath and we crossed the room.

Chapter Eight

We had no sooner done so than I discovered that the warm friendliness was all on the outside, with none on the inside whatever. She had shaken hands with some woman and stood there talking about a Commander in the Navy and the funny way he used to kick the goals when he was a midshipman at Annapolis, keeping Mrs. Hunt and me waiting and never looking at us at all. Even the woman was getting uncomfortable and Mrs. Hunt was growing more irritated by the second. Suddenly she cut in sharply:

“Mother!.. If you can interrupt that fascinating discourse on the drop kicks long enough—”

“Place kicks, dear. Not drop kicks.”

“They’ll be just plain shin kicks if I hear any more about them — I’d like to present Granny’s new bride, the young Mrs. Harris.”

Mrs. Harris looked at me then and her eyes seemed to shrink into two pieces of hard green glass. She opened her arms, drew me to her and spoke in a voice that fairly throbbed with emotion: “Darling! Oh, I’ve been looking forward so much to meeting you! Every day I made up my mind to pay you a visit but I’ve been so ill — really, you have no idea. Will you overlook it — can you bring yourself to forgive me?”

She didn’t look ill and I didn’t believe she cared whether I forgave her or not, but I thought if she was going to be hypocritical I might as well too, so I made my voice sound as gushy as I could and said: “And I too, Mrs. Harris! I so wanted to call at the hospital the moment I heard you were there but I wasn’t sure you would like it, because so few of us look well in hospitals, do we?”

This dirty crack seemed to surprise her greatly but nothing like as much as it surprised me, so we stood grinning at each other, our arms intertwined, and for a moment neither of us had any more to say. Then a servant came up with a tray of cocktails and she stood there at her favorite trick of making everybody wait. This time it was while she decided what kind of cocktail she wanted. There were Martinis, Manhattans and side-cars on the tray, but of course, after changing her mind for five minutes she had to have an old-fashioned and, just to make it good and complicated, it had to be an old-fashioned made with Scotch. I wanted to get away from her, so, having been audacious about my occupation once with some success, I thought I would try it again and appear to be exceedingly nice to her while at the same time removing myself from where she was. I said: “Oh, Mrs. Harris, do let me make you one. I know exactly how you want it and I’m an expert at old-fashioneds with Scotch — I used to make so many when I was a waitress at the Solon Cocktail Bar.”

Her eyes opened wide, as though this was the most heavenly idea she had ever heard in her life. “Oh, darling — would you?” Then she looked around at everybody and exclaimed: “Isn’t that marvelous? Think of being an expert!” And then to me again: “There’s so much that you’ll have to teach me!”

By that time the big table at one side of the room had been converted into a sort of bar and one of the housemen was mixing drinks while the other passed them around. But of course some of the guests were standing around getting their drinks direct from the bar, so when I stepped over, there was quite a gallery, some of them rather friendly toward me. An old-fashioned with Scotch was nothing new to me, so I put it together very quickly, and when I got through two or three men laughed and gave me a little hand. When I went over with it to Mrs. Harris she was again talking about place kicks, and kept me standing there, glass in my hand. But as though to be very friendly, she raised her hand and without looking around put it on my arm. There was an exclamation from somebody and there went the cocktail all over her dress, and the orange, cherry and ice all over the floor.

I had served rush orders in a crowded cocktail bar with drunks elbowing me from every side and I assure you it is almost impossible to make me drop anything or do something clumsy like spilling a cocktail. That grip on my arm was like iron and it was deliberate. But there was nothing for me to do but get down and begin dabbing at her dress with my handkerchief, then call for a napkin and dry her off as best I could. All that time she talked a mile a minute, loudly proclaiming that it was all her fault, and that I mustn’t mind, as the dress was an old rag anyhow, but there I was, stooped in front of her, making a holy show of myself when I wanted to be at my best.

It was Mr. Hunt who rescued me. He lifted me to my feet, patted my arm and drew me aside. Then for the first time Mrs. Harris became shrill. “But, Bernie, I’m wringing wet! Just look at my dress!”

“That’s what we have dry cleaners for.”

“And that’s what we have such dresses for.” It was Mrs. Hunt who said this, very grimly. “That’s the third cocktail that’s been spilled on it this year. Or was it a Tom Collins last time?”

Mrs. Harris’ answer to this was to make a speech in which she said she didn’t know what people were coming to, the ill-bred way they got drunk and spilled drinks all over her, but Mrs. Hunt took me to another part of the room and that seemed to be the end of it. She gave me a cocktail and mumbled: “Don’t worry about her dress. It’s last color, quick-drying crepe, bought especially to have cocktails spilled on it and get women down on their knees and make them feel foolish. You behaved very well and you needn’t give it a thought.”

The man who had been passing cocktails came up just then and said: “She’s here, Mrs. Hunt.”

“Oh. Then you’d better take out some of those glasses and tell her to wash them up as quickly as she can, but don’t wait for her to get through with them. You come back to keep things moving here, and have her bring them in as soon as they’re ready.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hunt.”

She turned to me. “I did something I rarely do. I borrowed a maid from Mrs. Norris, but of course the children had to be taken to the park as usual and she has only now arrived — when it’s almost all over.”

“It’s all been going beautifully.”

“It’s been going somehow, but I hate that clutter of used glasses at a cocktail party. The very idea that I might have been drinking out of somebody else’s glass makes me squirm, and I don’t see why my guests should feel differently.”

It seemed like a trifling thing at the time but only too often in the weeks that followed I wished bitterly that one of the children had got lost in the park so that maid never arrived.

Mr. Hunt had disappeared, and now came up from downstairs and hurried over to his wife. “What do we do now?”

“What is it, Bernie?”

“The reporters and photographers. They’re lined up outside of the house three deep trying to get in and Gus is having a hard time to keep them out.”

“You’d better call an officer.”

He thought a moment, then said: “I wonder...”

She looked at him very intently and he rubbed his chin and thought a few moments. Then he said: “If that angelic mother of yours could be induced to pose for a few pictures with Grant and Carrie I have an idea this thing could be washed up right now.”

“That’ll never work.”

“What the hell? Are you going to keep it up forever? She’s married to him, she’s been a perfectly delightful guest, she’s all right. The thing to do is to tap this newspaper stuff and let some of the pressure off. Having all three of their pictures taken will turn the trick and then these headlines will die off so fast it’ll amaze you.”

Mrs. Hunt rather absent-mindedly put her arm around me and shook her head. “I’m not thinking about her. She’s been fine, and I take back all I said about her and—” with a little pat to me — “to her. But you can’t trust mother. She’ll pull something—”

“What can she pull?”

“She can pull nonsense you and I could never think of, and I’m warning you, you may be starting something that’ll be dreadful before you get through with it.”

“In these things I have a gift.”

He went over to Mrs. Harris, who by now had decided to be in a gay mood again, and said something to her. She turned and came over to me, her arms outstretched, which seemed to be her regular way of approaching anybody. “But, darling, I’d simply love to. Why, of course — I had no idea the photographers were out there or I would have suggested it myself.”

So Mr. Hunt went downstairs and next thing the photographers and reporters were trooping in, all very noisy and impudent, and a buzz of excited talk was going around the room and Mr. Hunt was asking everybody to stand back a little to give the photographers a chance. So then Grant came over and put his arm around his mother and had tears in his eyes and I didn’t believe for a second that she was as sweet as she pretended to be, but I was like Mr. Hunt: even if she didn’t like me, having the picture taken would probably end all these terrible things in the newspapers, because if she accepted me, at any rate publicly, there couldn’t be much left for the newspapers to say.

So we all lined up. At first the photographers wanted me in the middle, then they changed their minds and put Mrs. Harris in the middle, and then finally they decided it would be better with Grant in the middle, his arm around each of us. So then they told us to smile and yelled “hold it,” and I was standing there with the grin pasted patiently on my face, when all of a sudden there was the most awful crash and everybody jumped and looked around.

It seemed a year before my mind could comprehend that who I was looking at was Lula Schultz, the girl who had shared the room with me at the Hotel Hutton and who had disappeared after we had the big quarrel over my staying out with Grant. She was the maid who had arrived late, and I found out later that after she quit her job at Karb’s she had taken a place as a servant with Mrs. Norris. However, I didn’t know any of that then, and all I was aware of was the mess on the floor and Lula staring at me and all the rest of them staring at the two of us. Then a reporter seemed to sense something, for he held up his hand to the photographers and for a moment there was absolute silence. Then Lula contributed her brilliant remark: “Well, for crying out loud, Carrie, where did you come from?”

Then the photographers woke up and for a minute or more it was like a madhouse, with the cameras clicking first at Lula, standing there with the tray, the glasses all over the floor in front of her, then at me, then at Mrs. Harris and Grant, and it later turned out that one or two of them had got over into a corner to shoot the whole scene. All while they were taking pictures they were yelling at us in the most disrespectful way. Then Mr. Humt tried to take command and get Lula out of there and the mess cleared away, but all she would do was stand and gape and gabble at me that she seen all about it in the papers but she hoped she’d drop dead if she had any idea it was the same party she had been sent over to work at. She spoke terrible grammar, which is something I have always tried to avoid.

I was furious enough to break the tray over her head, but there was only one thing for me to do and I gritted my teeth and did it. I went over and shook hands with her as calmly as though it were nothing at all. That was when Mrs. Harris screeched: “Isn’t she simply a dear! And mustn’t she be thrilled! Imagine — an old friend from the slums and meeting her here! It’s such a small world!”

Somehow, by asking a number of his friends to help and practically using main force, Mr. Hunt got the photographers and reporters out and Mrs. Hunt must have dealt with Lula for she wasn’t there any more, and then for fifteen or twenty minutes everybody stood around and talked about it, except that when I approached they hurriedly began to talk about something else. Then they all went, shaking hands with me very hurriedly, and then I found myself alone in the living room, as Grant, his three sisters and his mother having gone somewhere else. But in a moment Mr. Hunt came in, made two highballs and said: “Let’s go in here — it’s not so public.”

He took me into a small library and closed the door. We sat down and sipped our drinks and he kept rubbing the moisture on his glass with his thumb. Then he said: “I’m not sure, but I think that sinks you.”

“You mean Lula?”

“Couldn’t you have pretended it was a case of mistaken identity or something?”

“If I were sick or needed somebody she’s the one person on earth that I could call on.”

“I suppose there was nothing else you could do, but if you think the noble Grant is going to take a broad attitude toward it, you’re very optimistic.”

“Grant is not a complete fool.”

“No, but he’s a complete snob, and that’s serious.”

“I haven’t seen any signs of it.”

“Did you ever hear of the silver cord?”

“What’s that?”

“An intangible but terrible bond, that sometimes exists between mother and son, and invariably spells trouble for them both. Not one thing about Grant is on the up-and-up except his interest in Indians. His phony radicalism, his rebellion against Uncle George, his nutty talk about breaking the system, and all the rest of it merely represent his feeble effort to break the silver cord, and whether he can do it I wouldn’t like to say. But I know this much: Lula will give Mama a club over him that he’ll feel from morning to night. And don’t make any mistake about it: Grant is the worst snob of the lot.”

“He married me. That doesn’t look much like a snob.”

“Masochism.”

“...What did you say?”

“Torturing himself, going out in the back yard and eating worms so Mama will feel ashamed of herself, for trying to make him marry Muriel.”

“Why, by the way, did she try to make him do that?”

“Money, partly. With those two fortunes blended many things would be possible. But mainly because Muriel is a dull cluck of a girl that Mama wouldn’t have to be jealous of that Grant hates. The silver cord binds two ways.”

“Why does she oppose the Indians?”

“Sadism.”

“You’re using words I’m not familiar with.”

“She also likes to torture him, and she’s not done yet.”

“What else can she do?”

“One thing she can do is begin trotting around with some man. That’s what she usually does, and when she starts it this time I predict Grant will go simply insane. I don’t think you quite understand this yet. It’s not pretty. It’s unnatural, unhealthy and tragic. But it’s what you’re up against.”

“You mean — she wants to make him jealous as though she were some girl he was in love with — or that was in love with him?”

“Exactly. Except that it’s a love that can never get anywhere. If you ask me, Mama has some strange youth complex. I think she resents Grant — why Grant and not the other three I can’t explain, except that he came first — because he compelled her to become a woman instead of the seventeen-year-old girl that she instinctively wants to be. When he arrived, that was the end of her youth. But it doesn’t help any that her youth is still with her, so far as her appearance goes, and so is a habitual interest in men and a trained technique at getting them. As to her morals, I prefer not to speak. Grant had the misfortune to be born to a woman who could still be his sweetheart, and it’s the blight of his life.”

I didn’t feel depressed or hysterical as I had felt before in these last few days. I merely felt cold and weak from encountering things that I didn’t understand. Still, I heard myself say: “Well — what am I going to do about it?”

“Perhaps there’s nothing you can do about it. Reckoning condition of the track, form of the starters and confidential information from the paddock, I would rate your chances at about one to ninety-nine. If it were myself, I think I’d scratch my entry and be done with it. Of course you may feel differently.”

To that I made no reply. He sipped his drink, then came over to me, sat on the arm of my chair and turned my face up to him. “I like you, for some reason. I could see your head working in there this afternoon. You played your cards well and if there’s one thing I enjoy it’s seeing somebody lead into dummy, finesse through trouble and win through a grand slam. But you haven’t got the cards, that’s all. I’m on your side, and if there’s anything I can do you can call on me. But what I really think is: You’re sunk.”

When we went back in the living room everybody except Grant had gone and he had his hat and stick and was waiting for me. I thanked Mrs. Hunt and she said it had been a pleasure, but her eyes had the same glassy look I had seen in her mother’s and I knew that her little flurry of friendliness was over and that so far as she was concerned the whole thing had been a fiasco that would not be repeated.

Grant and I walked down Madison a few blocks, then crossed over and had dinner at a place on Fifty-fifth Street. There would be long silences and then he would talk feverishly about things like the Army Air Force and the new planes they were building. It was well after eight when we left the Hunts and it must have been ten o’clock when we got through dinner. We walked down Fifth Avenue to Fifty-fourth Street, then over toward the apartment. As we crossed Third Avenue a truck was unloading tabloids at a newsstand. I stopped and bought one and there, sure enough, was the first of those terrible pictures that came out showing Lula at the cocktail party with numbers all over it and down at the bottom the names, corresponding to the numbers, of all the prominent-people who were present. We started along again but as we went I was looking at the paper. Suddenly he stopped, snatched the paper out of my hand and threw it down on the pavement. He ran toward it and kicked it, then kicked it again and again until it was just a litter of pages flying all over the street. Then he stood there panting, and I knew that everything Mr. Hunt had said was true. He hated that picture, hated Lula and I think at that moment hated me. In spite of all his fine talk he was really what money, education and family had made him, a snob who had no respect for what my life had made me. A terrible sense of helpless pain swept over me, of being hurt more than I knew I could be hurt, and it was then that I knew how much I loved him and how desperately I had to fight, even if the chances were one to ninety-nine against me.