Work of Art

21

To Effie May, after a life of dusting and bed-making, with sodas at the drug-store and dances at Fireman's Wigwam as her maddest dissipations, their suite at the Westward was Paradise.

For himself Myron would have preferred to keep his suite as it was, with grey walls, few pictures, sparse furniture of waxed oak, and plenty of space; but he knew that Effie was all for brightness, and from Bermuda he had written to Luciano Mora asking him to have the suite properly littered. Effie May, when she first saw it, after blushing prettily at the manly greetings of Elphinstone, Mora, and Carlos Jaynes, down in the lobby, squealed, 'Oh, it's just too simply adorably ducky!' Myron beamed--and groaned. Luciano had jammed into bedroom and sitting-room, each twenty by twenty, nearly all the unnecessary furnishings they could hold. There were small applewood tables, large mahogany tables, and nests of Chinese Chippendale tables. There were side-lights in imitation of candles, and floor lamps of writhing gilded iron. There were a couch, and a chaise-longue piled with saffron cushions of leather, pink and gold cushions of satin, tan cushions of broadcloth embroidered with emerald blossoms, and a long, skinny, floppy, milk-faced, degenerate Columbine doll, which Effie May picked up with a scream of delight, and which Myron hated on sight. There were grey and blue lithographs of Paris, chromos of cats that were up to no good, and very funny and rather dirty French caricatures of cocottes and chalets de necéssité, over which Effie blushed again. There was a small piano, which she touched affectionately, proving that music was not one of her sounder accomplishments, and there were even books--Myron's books, consisting of a set of Dickens, two novels by Rex Beach and one by Conan Doyle, and sixty-seven volumes dealing with hotel-keeping and accounting.

And the bath-room was in glossy black tiles, with lavender tub and bowl, and two dozen assorted towels.

'My, they must expect us to get dirty!' giggled Effie May. 'But, oh, Myron, it's all just too won'erful for words!'

After rising at seven, in Black Thread, and preparing breakfast before she could sit down to it, in a room that still reeked of last night's creamed chipped beef, Effie May stretched her paws like an Angora at being able to have breakfast brought to her bedroom--and such a variety: a choice of three kinds of melons and thirteen kinds of cereal and four kinds of fish (fish for breakfast!) and French toast with honey or syrup, and English strawberry jam in 'ducky' little pots, and shirred eggs with little sausages, and kidneys with mushrooms! 'I'm so excited Myron, but I'm such a pig! I want to order everything! I'll get fat as butter! You better watch me!'

'I will, old lady! Trust me! Watching is my speciality. Kiss me!'

She loved the importance of having the floor-waiter--not a hired girl but a real man waiter, and in a dress suit at nine-thirty in the morning!--bring in a table all for herself, and humbly murmur, 'Madame is served'. She loved the silver, the amethyst-coloured water-glass, the coffee in a thermos jug, the English muffins tucked under a clean napkin, and the single rose in a slim vase. She loved loafing for an hour and nibbling and gravely daubing herself with jam like a baby while Myron was already downstairs at work.

She could have a hair-wash, a wave, a manicure, or massage, at any time Her Ladyship chose, in her room or down in the 'beautician's', and the attendants were delighted to chatter about hotel feuds and scandal with the wife of the probable future president of the company.

Effie May was indeed an Angora; she loved strong, soft fingers at the roots of her electric hair, upon her flushed cheeks, across the nerves of her shoulder.

The chambermaids were equally obsequious. They crooned, 'Oh, no, ma'am, no hurry at all!' when she had kept them out of the suite till eleven. She was delighted with the luxury of fresh bed-linen daily, and she suspected now that, though the Lambkin household had regarded itself as Puritanically neat, she had never learned anything about dusting and sweeping. . . . To have them brush beneath the bed and the couch, and every day--that, she bubbled to herself, was 'class'. And the whole housekeeping department was complaisant about carrying out her notions of further decorating. In the sour and faded rooms of the Lambkin house she had longed for broad ribbons and laces and velvet. She rejoiced in having as much of them now as she wanted. To the welter on the chaise-longue she added fluffy sofa-pillows of apricot silk trimmed with lace; she put flounces on the apparently unflounceable maple twin beds; and the telephone in each of the rooms she hid under a doll with wide skirts of gold lace and tiny glass jewels, which caused Myron to curse wildly, though secretly, every time he had to telephone.

She hung photographs, of her father quail-hunting, of Julia in tulle, of Herbert undergoing the mystic process of being turned from flesh into a Master of Arts, and of the whole family on the ancestral lawn in 1902, a brown and faded print with Effie May herself a chunk of a child in a short, hiked-up skirt, a sailor hat, and a simper.

Myron never complained about her bills. She believed him to be a rich man and wondered--though she was good-natured enough not to nag him--why, with all his wealth, he went on working so anxiously.

There was so excitingly much to do, at first; rituals of the toilet, new to her who, for all the stuffy dignity of the Lambkin residence and the stores of cosmetics in her father's handsome establishment, had known nothing beyond a quick bath in a tin-lined tub, and hasty rubbing with a skinny towel. Now she revelled in a long, languid soaking in warm water scented each day with a new kind of bath salts, in fringed towels vast as a sheet, in eau-de-Cologne and powder and lip-stick, in nail-cream and orange-stick, and the gentle hands of a maid to do her hair--she who all her life had done it herself, or been subjected to the jerky impatience of Julia's harsh fingers. She bought 'lotions' with French names, and was surprised to discover from a saleswoman, after she had been using them as toilet waters, that they were intended for the hair. She initiated herself into the mysteries of creams which were to rub on and rub off, and creams which were to be rubbed in and to stay in. She even tried having purple and green eyelids, but at this Myron protested.

So much to do! After toilet and breakfast, and rearranging the flowers and cushions, and deciding whether the sandalwood cigarette box or the Chinese enamel box would look better on the teakwood stool, there was always window-shopping, with surprises unheard of in Black Thread: English shooting-sticks which turned into one-legged stools, aquamarine necklaces, Parisian hats, cut-glass dishes for hors d'œuvres, onyx-topped evening sticks, Benedictine in unnatural-looking squat bottles, silver evening-slippers. She had engagements at the dressmaker's, at the shoemaker's, and in between there were always these won'erful motion pictures, which had not yet reached Black Thread. When she saw 'Queen Elizabeth', with Sarah Bernhardt, and Zukor's imperial settings, Effie May gasped with ecstasy over her brilliant new life.

If there was nothing else, she could always stretch herself on the chaise-longue, looking down at her new slippers and silk stockings while she curled her toes and waved her small feet, rejoicing at being secure from Julia's demands from the kitchen, and slowly, luxuriously gulping down candy--real dollar-a-pound store-candy! Back home, they had had home-made fudge, or thirty-cent candy from the drug-store, the best their father sold. Dollar-a-pound candy, in gold and scarlet boxes with silver ribbons, was something a beau brought you in awe from Bridgeport, once in a year. Here, in the Westward, she could have all she wanted, and she wanted a good deal, so that she began to worry about becoming too plump, as she nibbled sweets, cakes, fruit preserved in syrup, all afternoon long.

Myron was always attentive--at first. However busy, he telephoned up to her every hour; he sent flowers daily; he took her to lunch and dinner either in the brocade-panelled Georgian Room of the Westward, or in outside restaurants, where she was gratified to have head waiters bow and croak, 'Good evening, Mr. Weagle--good evening, ma'am,'

They went often to the theatre.

'We've got to see a lot of shows. We both of us need to broaden our minds, and lead a more you-might-say social life,' said Myron.

The social life consisted largely of Luciano Mora, Alec Monlux, and Ora; and to Effie May that seemed a very fine social life indeed, after the Lambkin parlour and Herbert whining about the school-board and Julia quarrelling with Willis. It was both mind-broadening and lovely fun to listen to Myron and Alec and Luciano discussing Colonial Reproductions and the presidential chances of Governor Woodrow Wilson and the objections to the gear-drive in mechanical potato-peelers, while beautifully they drank whisky not straight but with soda-water out of little bottles! Then Luciano returned to Naples, to manage one of his father's smaller hotels, and Myron and Effie missed him, daily. Without his laughter, their cocktail-hours seemed a little dull. Myron was ever busier and, however fond when he did telephone, less likely to telephone at all. Suddenly, when neither Genuine Lotus Bath Salts from an Old Eyptian Recipe, nor looking at tortoise-shell mirrors in shop windows, nor rustling through the box for chocolates with nigger-toe centres, was so novel, Effie May discovered that she had nothing to do, and that she was bored.

It had never occurred to Myron or to Effie that in an hotel suite, without even dish-wiping or feeding the chickens, and with no particular longing to study Imagism or Assyriology or the History of Endocrinology, she would not have enough to do. Being bored, she began to feel neglected--as she probably was, though the driven Myron could not think what to do about it. She felt the more neglected when Ora helpfully told her that she was. She took up French classes, dancing classes, daily exercise at a gymnasium where ex-pugilists anxiously tempered the labour to the fat lambs, and she had dress-fittings till Myron did begin to be alarmed about the bills. But she discovered in herself no talent for any of these arts save dressing. The jolly Effie May of Black Thread, with her three good frocks made by the village seamstress, became smart now, in tweed suits and Paris models, and just when she was falling into real discontent and whimpering at Myron that she could not endure the emptiness of her days, she met Mrs. Bertha Spinney.

Mrs. Spinney had red hair and alimony; she devoted half her life to preserving these treasures, and the rest to elderly young bachelors with exploratory fingers and imported Chartreuse. She was forty-five in the afternoon sunlight, twenty-five in the dark, her cheeks were powdered as with cake-flour, she laughed frequently, she told very good stories, and she clanked with heavy oxidized silver chains. Her suite was just down the hall from the Weagles' and Effie May had met her often in the elevator. She apparently knew all about Effie, and one day introduced herself and invited Effie in for a cocktail.

Immediately they were chums.

Myron did not like Bertha Spinney.

The blind, doting, efficient kindly Myron had never considered that in all of New York Effie had no woman friend, and indeed no friend of any kind save himself and Alec and perhaps Ora.

Effie May was happily occupied now. With Bertha Spinney she went window-shopping, and it was far more interesting, with Bertha to explain about diamonds that were blue and sapphires that were white, and how 'Couronne d'Amour' perfume, in a small black bottle shaped like a fig, cost ten dollars because it was so enticing that men were maddened by it. Effie secretly longed for a bottle, and saved up the ten dollars for it, but whenever she went back to the shop and looked into the window, she shamefacedly did not quite dare to go in and ask for it.

With Bertha she went to lunch, went to matinées, drove in the Park, ferreted out 'little dressmakers who make you real Paris models for just nothing, my dear!' and, at last, went to cocktail parties.

The era of penthouses and multiple cocktails and public kissing and universally saying 'Hello, darling', of gigolos posing as bond-salesmen and bond-salesmen posing as gigolos, and the other happy concomitants of Prohibition and the Great Peace had not yet come, but the Men About Town in 1911 did not do so badly on single cocktails. If they did not call the girls by their first names or manhandle them quite so quickly, when they got to it they meant it, and Effie May found herself the habituée of masculine flats that were floors of large old houses near Washington Square or Gramercy Park; found herself--giggling--the adored friend, suddenly, of a dozen Wall-Street men, or at least a-block-from-Wall-Street men, and occasionally even of genuine imported noblemen who, after five o'clock, when they had removed their alpaca office-coats, became great gentlemen, yet so simple of heart that they were willing to go to tea with any lovely Norse Goddess, provided she paid the bill.

Effie May discovered that she was charged and tingling with sex. She trembled, and felt as though fireworks had gone off inside her, when one of those public conveniences, the bachelors about town, stropped her damp arm or drew lingering finger-tips beneath her chin. She did respect Myron enough to remain what is technically known as a 'good woman', but she scampered back to him with such panting desire that he was overwhelmed with her ardour, her hot hands, her uncreased ivory skin, and while he seemed most strait-jacketed with filing-cards and kitchen-reports, he was most longing for her.

Probably he was too rigid of spirit ever to have aroused her vastly by himself; probably he owed a good deal to Bertha Spinney and the electrifying minor nobilities, but he never appreciated them.

Effie met a whole society of detached women dwelling in hotels, idle women, mostly living on alimony and displaying energy only when they dragged their former husbands into court. Many of them talked incessantly about their devoted care to their children, whom they got rid of by sending them away to school in winter and to camps in summer. Many of them were handsome, many of them were supporting lovers on the alimony from their curiously unwilling ex-husbands, and most of them were devoted to cocktails. In the Westward and other hotels within a dozen blocks, there were hundreds of these leeches, and Effie May was inducted into their splendidly blood-gorged society by Bertha Spinney.

One Mrs. Koreball, officially known as No. 772, The Westward, gave a 'party' for Effie May.

Effie May found it charming.

Mrs. Koreball, Effie perceived, was so sweet! Such a little lady, with black hair so sleek and shiny, exactly parted in the middle, and with demure lips and the small chin of a child, but such gay and knowing eyes! Her suite was ever so much bigger than Effie's, and had the most won'erful real genuine Spanish antiques: a great, big, thick oak table--a refectory table, it was called--with the oldest wooden chairs, hundreds of years old, from a Spanish monastery! And on the walls Mrs. Koreball didn't have ordinary pictures, but so different--images of the saints, very antique, and what she said were copes, all deep red with gold borders, hung right on the wall. And there was a candlestick of gilded oak with a candle four feet tall!

Mrs. Koreball did not serve cocktails, but a simply won'erful punch made, she said, of champagne and brandy and Mosel (that was a German wine) and vodka (that was a kind of Russian white-mule) and a lot of other things, but all with fruit juice, so it didn't seem strong, but Mrs. Koreball warned her--she must be careful, Mrs. Koreball told her, not to drink too much, because it was awfully strong and she couldn't have her new friend Effie get cockeyed at this first party, she said, and she laughed like anything, and kissed Effie, and her eyes were naughty but so nice.

'What do you think I had the nerve to do, Mrs. Weagle? I called up your handsome husband, and he says maybe he'll drop in, too.'

'Oh, I hope he does!'

'You still like him?'

'Oh, I think he's marvellous--so strong and you can depend on him and everything. But it is so hard to get him to go to a party before seven. They keep him so busy in the Front Office.'

'He's the handsomest thing!'

'Oh, do you think so, Mrs. Koreball? I suppose he is, but what I always think of first is how he's so strong, and so sort of dependable. Of course he does look kind of clean and all, like he did wash behind the ears, but handsome . . . now a handsome man is like that Duke of Essex or Earl of something or whatever he was in "Queen Elizabeth". That was a picture that . . .'

'Yes, I know. I saw it.' Mrs. Koreball seemed a little abrupt. 'Well, come, you must meet the Bunch.'

Round the punch-bowl was simply the nicest group of people Effie May had ever met--oh, of course, except Myron and Luciano and Alec. The men has such lovely diagonally barred ties, and two of them wore spats, though quite a few of them, unfortunately, were bald. The funniest one was a short little man with a red face that he screwed up like a monkey, but you just had to like him, he was so funny.

'My Lord, it's Helen of Troy herself!' he screamed, when Effie was introduced, and everybody laughed, so pleasantly.

Fortunately Effie knew that Helen of Tory was a very beautiful woman, who was named Helen and who lived in Troy, which was in ancient Greece, so she did not feel embarrassed.

'Come on, Helen, time for another glass,' said the monkey-man.

'Oh, I've just had one, and I'm afraid it's awfully strong--I wouldn't want to get cockeyed!'

'Nonsense! It's just orange juice with just a wee, tiny touch of dynamite and maybe a trace of carbolic acid! Come hither, lovely one, and let us converse!' He took her arm, guided her to a couch covered with purple brocade, and chattered, 'My name is Harry Burphy, and what, my rose of Sharon, is your monicker? I didn't catch it when our fair hostess threw you to us lions.'

'My name is Effie May Weagle. Isn't it just the silliest name!' She giggled.

'Well, Effie May, when are you going to have lunch with me? I've got the slickest imported Italian auto in town and even if it is winter now, I think it would be fun to run up the Hudson to Ye Bunche of Grapes some noon. What say? Good Lord, what lovely fingers you have! Why, I've never seen such lovely fingers as you have!' He seized them; he recited, with ample illustration, 'This little pig went to market'.

It certainly was not Black Thread, but Effice May liked it, while assuring herself that she didn't. His wiry little hands were strong, and he knew how to do such unusual and interesting things with fingers. She meant to refuse his luncheon invitation, but he hadn't yet given her a chance, and just when she was thinking out a good formula for it, he leaped up, dashed at the punch-bowl, and brought back an enormous glass--her third. She sipped it slowly, determining with each sip to stop sipping, and she felt odd and very happy, and presently she seemed to be arguing about going to Ye Bunche of Grapes, but a little uncertain as to just which side of the argument she was taking. And then, curiously, Myron was standing by the couch, looking down at them, enormously tall and, while his lips smiled, terrifyingly stern about the eyes.

Myron had never been in Mrs. Koreball's apartment, but he knew the lady and disliked her with simple fervour. She was a neat little trick, with baby lips and chin, and with the more decorative hotel clerks, she was plush-genteel and syrup-sweet. But she was always sending chambermaids out weeping, and bell-boys out cursing. Every month she made the deuce of a row with the cashier about her bill; she always insisted that the waiters were thieves and that she simply couldn't have had that much mineral water. When they begged her to add up her own initialed cheques, she said they were insulting, and stamped her dainty little foot, and her girlish eyes showed an active desire to boil the cashier in oil. She was one of the few guests who had furnished their own suites, and over that, too, there had been a gorgeous row. She had, Myron recalled, tried to jew them down to half the rent, though it meant only that they would have to store the furniture already installed.

He devoutly did not wish to attend the punch-bowl party, but when she insisted that it was in Effie May's honour, he had to go--merely cynically wondering in how many other people's 'honour' it might be also.

As he came in, he looked sharply at the gang: just the sort of well-pressed, well-spoken bill-dodgers who were an hotel's worst pest. The room-decorations, he saw, were atrocious: a big slab of a table, dining-chairs with backs that were too-straight and provided with knobs for the gouging of your shoulder blades, and priestly vestments desecrated by being hung as wall ornaments. Spanish, eh? Antique, eh? Oh yes? Well, he knew the venerable Iberian Händler from whom they came--none other than Señor Don Milton Pincus of the Bronx.

Mrs. Koreball was buzzing, 'So sweet of you to come, Mr. Weagle--though I almost feel like calling you "Myron", like your girl friend! She's the loveliest thing I ever saw! Now you two have found your way, you must drop in for a drink often--the latch-string is always out.'

('Gawd, it's certainly fine for Effie to get away from Black Thread hicks like Mrs. Ted Dingle, and meet cultivated women of the world like this female!')

'But it always seems so hard to get hold of busy executives like you, Myron, and I suppose you handsome men are just chased to death by silly women like me! Well, of course, ever since my Ex put me in my place and let me see what a mean, difficult wench I am, I've learned to sit and fold my hands and just wait to be noticed. Now you come and have some punch. It's quite good, even if I did make it--it's nice orange juice, with maybe a tiny touch of dynamite and just a trace of carbolic acid. Oh! Before I forget! I know it's shocking to talk business in society, but you're so hard to get hold of, and do you suppose you could persuade that dumb beast of a housekeeper to give me just a few towels, now and then? Won't you speak to her? But now come and have a nice glass of punch.'

(He did speak to the housekeeper, to have the pleasure of justified wrath, and he discovered, as he had guessed, that Mrs. Koreball never used the biggest hand towel more than once, and that she was, on her best days, able to get through sixteen of them.)

Even before he had noticed the Bronx-Spanish furniture, he had spied and waved to Effie May, sitting over on a couch with a fellow named Harry Burphy, whom Myron knew as a clever, competent, sometimes amusing importer, whose only fault was over-conscientiousness: he would never be content until he had seduced all the wives of all his friends. He watched them while he drank half a glass of punch. He was disturbed. Effie May was giggling helplessly, as though she were a little tipsy, and letting Burphy rub her hand against his lips . . . Myron had never thought so much of the New York husbands who made the glad cause of Freedom synonymous with Gin, and who let their wives crawl around the laps of other men. He stalked over, only the more annoyed at the innocent-eyed haste with which Burphy dropped her hand.

'Hello, Burphy. Effie! I'm afraid it's about time we were beating it. You know we're going out to dinner.'

'Oh . . . ur . . . we?' she said.

They weren't.

She was certainly not drunk, but she was voluble almost to hysteria. When they were back in their own suite, he coaxed her to lie down for a nap.

'Oh, I couldn't sleep! I feel like going somewhere and dancing! Oh, I feel won'erful!' she cried.

But she passed out as soon as she touched the pillow, and she slept heavily, hour on hour, moaning a little. He sat rigid in a straight chair by her bed, staring at her miserably. She was so desirable and young! It was vileness for her to be touched by slimy people like Burphy and the Koreball, and, he decided, it was his fault, not hers. What could she know of hotel life and hotel loafers? And he had planned nothing for her, he snarled at himself, except the beatitude of being with him when he had the time! He longed to touch her cheek with a cautious finger; there would be delight in just that frail contact. No, she must sleep. And afterwards there would be no more Burphys!

So he very sensibly went in and shaved.

When she awoke, toward eleven, he had hot coffee and cold clam juice waiting for her, and he droned, quite placidly:

'Effie, I've just been thinking that . . .'

'Oh, did I get cockeyed at Mrs. Koreball's party?'

'Oh, no, of course not, though I guess that punch had more kick than I realized.'

'She's a great sweetie, isn't she--so pretty and such fun!'

'Yes, yes, a fine woman. Look, Effie, I was just thinking: I guess you've enjoyed living in an hotel--I certainly hope so, anyway. But I wonder if there's quite enough for you to do, to keep you busy. How would it be if we took a flat, or maybe a house in the suburbs?'

'Oh, I . . .'

'Of course we'd have a first-rate maid to do all the dirty work, but still, what with ordering and maybe making up our room and visiting with the neighbours and so on, you'd have something to keep you busy.'

'Oh, but I've had so much of housework, all my life! Even times when dad could afford a hired girl, I had to help with the dishes and so on and so forth, and oh, Myron, you aren't going to send poor lil Effums back to the kitchen are you? She just loves to go to theatres and dances and restaurants and parties and all!'

'Oh, no, no, certainly not! Go to 'em just as much--evenings, the second I can get away from my office. But I mean . . . Daytimes.'

'Oh, I know, but let's wait a while yet. It's sort of fun here. But listen, honest, I didn't fall for that lil chimpanzee--Murphy or Burphy or Brophy or whatever his name was--Mrs. Koreball called him Harry--but I mean: I thought he was just silly!'

He awoke at dawn, thinking coldly.

'No. She's good and honest and kind. She has a real happy nature. But she has nothing in herself, in her mind, to keep her occupied. And she could never, possibly, hold down a job, the way Miss Absolom and the Wild Widow and Tansy Quill could . . . That's darn curious, that the three women that have impressed me should have been a Jewish school-teacher, prob'ly from one of these international Jewish families that are interested in music and painting the way I am in stew-pans, and a grocery-demonstrator old enough to be my aunt, and a quadroon chambermaid! Oh, and then Effie for the fourth--four in all, of course, not three.

'And it was my fault. Effie never for a second pretended to be anything she wasn't. And I am crazy about her! Apparently just wanting to kiss a woman is a bigger bond in marriage than brains or virtue or beauty or any other darn thing! And she is so kind and good. I've got to coax her into a real home, away from these alimony-leeches. I wonder if it will keep me from making my resort inn? Well, if it does. . . .'

The candy and cakes and fruit in syrup, the chocolate with whipped cream and coffee with four lumps of sugar, the hot rolls and fat mutton chops and heaps of hashed brown potatoes, which the healthy Black Thread appetite of Effie relished and for which idleness gave her time, were all in competition with massage, with massage a bad second. Daily Effie May weighed herself in the bathroom and wailed, 'Oh, I'm getting terribly plump! I must diet!' And didn't.

She still saw enough of Bertha Spinney and of Mrs. Koreball, though she was less naive and more suspicious about the innumerable Harry Burphys. And if she was still bored, now and then, she was rewarded for having to be that popular martyr of the era, a Bird in a Gilded Cage, by the admiration of her family when they descended from Black Thread.

Julia, with Willis and young, came, not very much invited, to spend a fortnight with her before Christmas, and Julia, an authority, said that the Weagle suite was 'simply elegant--so much taste'. She treated Effie May almost with respect. Herbert, with wife and young, offered themselves as guests for the following Easter vacation. Herbert insisted that Myron stop shilly-shallying now, and produce that large and well-paid hotel job right away, as he had promised. (Myron did not remember promising it.) He let it be known that he had been ever so generous; he had given Myron his own sister, he had forgiven Myron for not being a Yale Man, and he had made a point of cutting out every reference to hotel affairs in the newspapers and mailing them to Myron.

Myron reflected that there are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things you don't wish to do. He made a plot, with the not-too-unwilling Alec Monlux, now manager of a large residential hotel in Yonkers. Alec came calling, affected to be awed by Herbert's training and vocabulary, and offered him the position of assistant manager of the hotel. It was, he said unenthusiastically, a hard job. The last three occupants had died of overwork or had committed suicide, and for that reason they needed a man with Herbert's powers of philosophy. Herbert looked anxious but flattered until, after several acts of comedy, Alec led up to the climax, which was that Herbert's salary would be thirty dollars a week.

Herbert did not come to New York again for a year, and when Effie 'ran up' to Black Thread next summer, Myron went with her for only forty-eight hours, of which he spent thirty-two with his mother.

Most of that summer, a year after their marriage, Effie May loafed through at Frigate Haven Manor, a vast wooden pile of an hotel on the South Shore of Long Island. Myron came out only for week-ends, but Bertha Spinney had joined her, and all summer they munched candy, napped on the beach, yawned on the porch, giggled at flattery, and read novels about sheikhs and civil engineers.

All through one week, a man of whom she later remembered only that his white flannels were beautiful made whispered love to Effie May by moonlight. She did go to sleep on his shoulder one evening, but after that she was snappish. But when Myron came out on Saturday, she was waiting for him so impatiently that he was gratified and rather bewildered; she was at the station when he came in, and when he chuckled, 'What do you say to a little tennis before dinner?' she panted, 'Oh, no, I want to kiss you, first!' and, her hand in his, she dragged him to their room and seized him with so desperate a clutch that his whole being rose to delight in her.

He had intended to spend most of that week-end in making plans for interesting Mark Elphinstone in the Perfect Inn. But he swam with her, he loafed close beside her in hot little pine woods, and about building the Inn he never thought.

Eyeing the men who were moved by Effie May's pink and gold and by her ardent dancing, and who said that she was not one of your doggone, modern, intellectual women that bothered you with deep questions, Bertha Spinney had hopes for Effie's social career. As they rocked together on the Frigate Haven Manor terrace, knitting bright scarfs which no one would ever wear, Bertha hinted, 'If you ever got divorced from Myron, how much alimony do you think you could get?'

'Get divorced? Get divorced from Myron? Why! I'd never dream of such a thing! I love him like anything! Ummmm! I could just hug him to death!'

'Oh yes, of course, my dear! I didn't mean . . . Don't be silly! I just meant, I was thinking about alimony in general. Women have to stand together. I never went out for the vote and women's rights and all that silly rot, but I do remember--I was so interested, I heard Dr. Malvina Wormser, this lady doctor, lecturing, and it's just as she said, women must stick together and not let these men try to put it over on them, and what I meant was . . . of course Myron and you will get away with it, but I do think every lady ought to know about these things, so that--so she can advise others! Just like a lady friend of mine that was the first to put me wise that you always got to keep men waiting and guessing, or else they'll take advantage of you. And what I was thinking of: if you ever have a friend that's going to get divorced, you just keep right after her, and what is most important, make sure she doesn't sign any contract so her alimony ceases if she gets remarried. That's where these dirty dogs of Ex's get you! You have to watch 'em like a hawk! Of course the second or third time you might marry somebody that's richer than the first one was, but on the other hand, you might want to marry some nice boy that wasn't just mean and penny-pinching and commercial like the Old Man was, and that couldn't hardly support himself, let alone you, but was so kind and loving you didn't mind, and then, of course, you'd want to go on getting your income and not give your Ex a chance to cut it off, the dirty hog! And serve him right, too! I tell you, a girl that's been married to a man, any man, and given herself to him, and stood for his nasty tempers and his disgusting habits and his behaving the way he does, so he prevents you from going on and taking your rightful place in social circles, I tell you you've earned your share of his cash, and it's your right and duty to go on compelling him to give you your just rights, and if he's been fool enough to go and make new marital arrangements in the meantime, why, that's just his hard luck--he certainly never consulted you about it! So that's how I mean. If anything should ever happen between Myron and you . . . But nothing ever will, of course, or I'll be the most surprised girl that ever lived!'

'Oh, no-o! I hope and pray that Myron and I will always stick to each other!'

She did not like Bertha Spinney, just then. She was inexplicably afraid. She wished that Myron were there, to protect her, to explain away the hints of danger she felt in the Spinney's toothily smiling confidences. She had a won'erful idea! She would run into New York to-morrow, to surprise him, and stay with him till the next Saturday.

But the day after was so hot, and Bertha had planned a swimming party.

When she returned to the Westward, in the fall, Myron had worked out a plan of saving her from sloth. ('Another of my darn plans! Oh, Lord, I do hope this one is intelligent!')

Many wives of hotel-men took part in running the shop, and seemed to enjoy it. Myron had had an uncomfortable feeling that he must save Effie from such toil, but pondering through lonely evenings all this summer--sitting on hot nights in a large chair by a window that looked up hectic Broadway, stripped to his undershirt, a cold drink in his tired hand--he had convinced himself that this was a prejudice springing from the memory of his overworked mother in an hotel kitchen.

Effie May might become a great executive of the Back of the House, and have activity, triumphs, an income of her own. Wasn't she a trained cook, housekeeper, buyer--for you couldn't tell him that it had been the horse-faced Julia, and not his shining Effie May, who had controlled the Lambkin mansion!

Effie May was scarcely back from Frigate Haven when Myron cried that he had an Idea!

That was nice, said Effie.

Why didn't she look over the Westward kitchens and see if she could think of any useful changes? Here was her commission to do so, signed by Elphinstone and Carlos Jaynes, and they had promised that if she had any valuable notions, they would pay her.

She was delighted, and next morning, early--for her--she was exploring the kitchen, alone. Myron would not go with her. No, he would only be in the way.

She had had a tour of them a year ago, but she had noticed little beyond the obsequiousness (or so she had considered it) of everyone to her big, handsome, clever Myron. Now venturing through a swinging door into the vast main kitchen, she was bewildered and intimidated.

The second cook waddled up with, 'Good morning, Mrs. Weagle. Anything I can do for you?'

'No--no--I just thought I'd like to look around.'

She dared not flourish her pretentious 'commission'.

She bravely poked ahead, and at every step was more confused by the complex of coal ranges, charcoal broilers, steam tables, steam bake-ovens, soup-boilers large as three wash-tubs, electric ice-cream freezers, electric egg-boilers, machines for grinding bread crumbs and peeling vegetables and polishing silver, the butcher-shop, refrigerator-rooms with various temperatures for fish, game, joints, and milk, storerooms like whole groceries, and skilfully operating all these mysteries, a hundred brisk men and girls.

Their uniforms were so neat, their hands moved so surely. They looked at her as an outsider.

She fled.

When Myron came up to the suite for lunch, expectant, Effie May howled. 'I went down and looked at the kitchen, and I was absolutely scared! I got all confused! I don't know a thing! I just know about frying chicken and scrambling eggs and like that, and sitting down and peeling potatoes with a little knife and not with a great, big, huge machine! Oh, dear!'

'But you could learn . . .'

'Oh, no, no, no! I'm too stupid! And the noise scared me--it was so noisy, and the cooks--oh, they were nice as pie, but they were all laughing up their sleeve at me, they were, and I was scared!'

To comfort her, he took her shopping.

He had always worried because he had never felt able to buy jewellery for her. He had heard that pretty women have a strange liking for jewellery. That was not very comprehensible to him. He had always disliked diamond cuff-links and pearl stick-pins on desk clerks. Why didn't they buy New York Central stock, or real estate equity, or something solid, whose value couldn't ever decrease? But still, authorities like Luciano Mora, who understood women, assured him that they really did care for these shiny stones, and he bravely led Effie May to one of the gaudiest shops on Fifth Avenue. There, he was appalled to find that what he believed to be such a pretty amethyst, for which he would be willing to pay three or four hundred dollars, was an alexandrite priced at five thousand.

He was glad to be allowed to sneak off with a hundred-dollar opal.

Effie May said she liked opals better than anything; there was so much fire in them. Just like they were alive!

True, Mrs. Koreball convinced her, next day, that opals were unlucky, so she never wore the ring again.

Every day Myron wished that they had a baby. They both asserted that they wanted one, Effie May most fervently, but the gods in charge of that department, so gratifyingly prompt with couples who did not want more children and could not afford them, had not seen fit to be generous to the Weagles. And, he fretted, a baby would save Effie May from slipping down into fat uselessness.

After three years of marriage, and four, and five, Effie May accepted him as a necessary part of her good-natured, candy-nibbling existence, except that now and then she tried to be witty about his laboriousness and his preference for sleep after midnight.

He suspected that she had caught this from the witty, the never-sleeping Ora.