第42章

She was glad Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making a fortune.He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was an ill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough to shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedy of flattery and busy each with himself or herself.But for Leonora's sake she invited him.And Leonora was appreciative, was witty, never monotonous or commonplace, most helpful in getting up entertainments, and good to look at--always beautifully dressed and as fresh as if just from a bath; sparkling green eyes, usually with good-humored mockery in them; hard, smooth, glistening shoulders and arms; lips a crimson line, at once cold and sensuous.

On a Friday in December Pauline came up from Dawn Hill and, after two hours at the new house, went to the jeweler's to buy a wedding present for Aurora Galloway.As she was passing the counter where the superintendent had his office, his assistant said: "Beg pardon, Mrs.Dumont.The necklace came in this morning.Would you like to look at it?"She paused, not clearly hearing him.He took a box from the safe behind him and lifted from it a magnificent necklace of graduated pearls with a huge solitaire diamond clasp."It's one of the finest we ever got together," he went on."But you can see for yourself." He was flushing in the excitement of his eagerness to ingratiate himself with such a distinguished customer.

"Beautiful!" said Pauline, taking the necklace as he held it out to her."May I ask whom it's for?"The clerk looked puzzled, then frightened, as the implications of her obvious ignorance dawned upon him.

"Oh--I--I----" He almost snatched it from her, dropped it into the box, put on the lid.And he stood with mouth ajar and forehead beaded.

"Please give it to me again," said Pauline, coldly."I had not finished looking at it."His uneasy eyes spied the superintendent approaching.He grew scarlet, then white, and in an agony of terror blurted out:

"Here comes the superintendent.I beg you, Mrs.Dumont, don't tell him I showed it to you.I've made some sort of a mistake.

You'll ruin me if you speak of it to any one.I never thought it might be intended as a surprise to you.Indeed, I wasn't supposed to know anything about it.Maybe I was mistaken----"His look and voice were so pitiful that Pauline replied reassuringly: "I understand--I'll say nothing.Please show me those," and she pointed to a tray of unset rubies in the show-case.

And when the superintendent, bowing obsequiously, came up himself to take charge of this important customer, she was deep in the rubies which the assistant was showing her with hands that shook and fingers that blundered.

She did not permit her feelings to appear until she was in her carriage again and secure from observation.The clerk's theory she could not entertain for an instant, contradicted as it was by the facts of eight years.She knew she had surprised Dumont.

She had learned nothing new; but it forced her to stare straight into the face of that which she had been ignoring, that which she must continue to ignore if she was to meet the ever heavier and crueler exactions of the debt she had incurred when she betrayed her father and mother and herself.At a time when her mind was filled with bitter contrasts between what was and what might have been, it brought bluntly to her the precise kind of life she was leading, the precise kind of surroundings she was tolerating.

"Whom can he be giving such a gift?" she wondered.And she had an impulse to confide in Leonora to the extent of encouraging her to hint who it was."She would certainly know.No doubt everybody knows, except me."She called for her, as she had promised, and took her to lunch at Sherry's.But the impulse to confide died as Leonora talked--of money, of ways of spending money; of people who had money, and those who hadn't money; of people who were spending too much money, of those who weren't spending enough money; of what she would do if she had money, of what many did to get money.Money, money, money--it was all of the web and most of the woof of her talk.Now it ran boldly on the surface of the pattern; now it was half hid under something about art or books or plays or schemes for patronizing the poor and undermining their self-respect--but it was always there.

For the first time Leonora jarred upon her fiercely--unendurably.

She listened until the sound grew indistinct, became mingled with the chatter of that money-flaunting throng.And presently the chatter seemed to her to be a maddening repetition of one word, money--the central idea in all the thought and all the action of these people."I must get away," she thought, "or I shall cry out." And she left abruptly, alleging that she must hurry to catch her train.

Money-mad! her thoughts ran on.The only test of honor--money, and ability and willingness to spend it.They must have money or they're nobodies.And if they have money, who cares where it came from? No one asks where the men get it--why should any one ask where the women get it?