CHAPTER XVII

The cook could not get along with Jenny. Jenny gave notice and acted upon it promptly, deaf to remonstrance, because her young man was going to get her a place as waitress so she wouldn’t “have to lower herself” doing housework. The laundress was ill with influenza and the substitute laundress did not wash the baby’s clothes clean. That was why Mrs. Warner, coming into her daughter’s house one morning in January, found Cecily herself in the laundry bending over a tub of diapers. Cecily was disheveled and a little defiant at her mother’s protest.

“I don’t see what else there is to do. If I can’t get help, the children have to have clean clothes, don’t they?”

Mrs. Warner, looking as incongruous in the laundry as a person possibly could, shook her head, simply implying that some things like washing diapers were quite impossible.

“You shouldn’t do things like this. You ought to manage somehow.”

“But how, mother?”

“Send the clothes over to my house. Get another laundress.”

“There isn’t one to be had for two days, and to send a bundle of clothes across the city is really too silly.”

“Make your cook do them.”

“And have her leave! No, that would be the last word. I’m through now. Wait until I hang these up and let’s go upstairs.”

“Let’s--by all means.”

Mrs. Warner led the way upstairs and gazed around the house. It was very orderly, but Cecily looked very tired.

“What does Dick say to all this?”

“Dick protests, but that doesn’t solve the servant problem.” There was a little edge in Cecily’s tone. “Dick doesn’t like domesticity anyhow if it interferes with his amusements.”

“I wouldn’t talk like that. It’s not like you.”

Cecily flushed. “Lots of things that didn’t use to be like me are becoming normal. A little more Billingsgate in my manner is only natural after doing the washing, isn’t it?”

Her mother did not smile. She looked worried.

“You are tired.”

“Please don’t say that, mother. Of course I’m tired. Why shouldn’t I be tired? But it isn’t lack of sleep or work that tires me as much as--other things.”

“What things?” Mrs. Warner’s questions came not curiously, but reluctantly as if she did not want confidences and was forcing herself to ask for them.

“People’s point of view.” By people she meant Dick, and Mrs. Warner knew it. She did not go on.

“Dear Cecily, I’m so sorry to overburden you with another worry just now, but some one else will tell you if I don’t. You are bound to hear it about town in a day or so. And Leslie and I wanted to know what you thought about it before we decided finally what our attitude should be.”

“What has happened?”

“I had a letter yesterday from Walter. It seems he is married.”

“Walter--at college--married? But he’s only twenty.”

“Twenty-one to-morrow.” Such sorrow in poor Mrs. Warner’s voice as she reflected on that birthday.

“But are you sure? To whom?”

“To a girl he met in the town there. He wrote me simply that he was married and that he hoped we’d like Della. She is very pretty.”

“But why marry her this way, mother? Why----” She stopped with a possible answer flashing through her own mind.

“He wrote your father, too. I didn’t see that letter. Leslie said it was confidential, but he seemed to think Walter had done the only thing. He compromised the girl in some way. It seems they were out all night in an automobile--and there was talk.” Neither woman spoke for a moment. Delicacy, fine distaste put an end to the conversation. Cecily’s face grew harder than her mother’s.

“Poor mother, poor mother.”

“But I’m glad he married her, Cecily. It’s not so bad for him as the other thing would have been. I couldn’t have borne the other thing. I saw enough of that once. This shows at least that he has--conscience.”

Cecily stood, meditating harshly on a probable Della.

“Where did he meet her?”

“At some dance in the town. She seems to be just an ordinary girl. And of course I don’t know anything against her. We must think nothing. Probably she was only as foolish as many girls are nowadays. Your father thinks we must accept it and bring Walter and his wife home.”

“Walter didn’t say anything about this at Christmas time.”

“No. I don’t believe he contemplated anything of the sort then. It was sudden--as much so to him as to us, perhaps.”

“Mother, you seem so excusing, so tolerant! Do we just have to accept a situation like this? Can the girl expect to be treated like the wife of your son? This girl who let herself be compromised.”

Mrs. Warner gave again that queer impression of treating her trouble as if it had happened to some one else. In contrast to Cecily’s protest she drew back a little.

“She is your brother’s wife, Cecily.”

“She has no right to such a title!”

“I was afraid you’d take it like this. You mustn’t be so hard, Cecily. You must be tolerant.”

“I’m tired of tolerance for laxity. I’m tired of moral laxity, of cheapness of ideals. Why should those of us who are decent do the work for the ones who aren’t decent?”

“Work?”

“Work. Have the children and try to keep them clean and healthy and fine, while the women who won’t have children, who won’t work, won’t do anything but play, get the real interest of every one?”

“They don’t; they don’t get the real respect of people. There may be a kind of attraction, but it’s hardly skin-deep.”

“You’re wrong, mother. You’re wrong. It’s the so-called respect that’s skin-deep. Men will tell you that the ideal woman is the good wife and mother, but you try being a good wife and mother and you’re pretty soon a deadly bore; while the little half moral Dellas and Flisses are the women men give up things for and like to be with.”

Mrs. Warner forced herself to a question. She did not answer Cecily’s tirade, but struck at the root of it.

“Is anything seriously wrong between you and Dick?”

“No. Nothing seriously wrong, I suppose. I suppose I wanted marriage to get deeper and better. It’s getting thinner and almost tawdry. I wanted Dick to be content with it and me. And he’s restless. He likes all this excitement and all these noisy people that I don’t like. He doesn’t want to stay home with me and the children.”

“Surely he doesn’t neglect you, dear.”

“Ah, it’s not so tangible. It’s simply that I don’t satisfy.”

“Cecily, darling, aren’t you imagining all this?”

“I thought so, mother. Then I didn’t think so, but I tried to think so. Then I knew that I wasn’t. You see, mother, I’m growing up. I’m trying to live by the ideals I was taught were the ones to live by, but I can’t find any one else living by them. At first I thought Dick thought as I did--wanted to live as I do. He doesn’t. Secretly he thinks I’m stupid.”

Her mother tried to laugh reassuringly. “That’s so foolish. You know better than that, Cecily. I can’t see that you’ve any real grievance. You’re going through a hard period now. But the babies will grow older and all this----”

“Suppose I have more babies.”

Mrs. Warner hesitated. “Are you quite strong enough now, I wonder?”

“Oh,” cried Cecily, “you are evading me, too. Are there no rights and wrongs? Why was I brought up to believe in right and wrong? Is everything compromise? Babies, marriage, Dellas?”

Fine lines stood out in Mrs. Warner’s face. “I never had your fundamental courage or strength,” she said, “but there was a time when I did believe in very black wrong and very white right. That was when I married your father. He was a brilliant man and I loved him, not as I love your dear stepfather, but differently. I don’t let myself remember that first part of my love. I can’t, even yet. But your father was a poor husband; he was a poor father; he was not honest with me; he was not even faithful. When I found that out--he told me--I said that I would not let it kill me, but it nearly did. The first had seemed so beautiful that to find it was not even real----” Her voice dragged, weighted even now with the horrible discovery. Cecily, her eyes half closed in imagining the pain, listened. “Since then I have believed that most things are compromise. All the happiness in my life, the real happiness, has come through compromise. All the pain through the lack of it. You have so much more than I had with your father. Dick is good. I know he loves you. I know he is faithful to you.”

“Oh, yes, mother--faithful,” Cecily shuddered at the words, “of course. I didn’t mean----”

“My husband wasn’t,” said Mrs. Warner simply, and went on: “You have much to learn about men and much tolerance to acquire.”

But the softening in Cecily was lost at that word.

“Don’t you see that I think all this trouble comes because we are so tolerant? Tolerant of ideals! Why should I be tolerant of Walter’s wife? Of Fliss?”

“Why do you bring in Florence Allenby?”

“Because she typifies all the things I’m struggling against. She seems to invade this whole house with her ideas. I suppose she’s no worse than lots of others, but she’s the specific example. Dick admires her.”

“Likes her, you mean.”

“Well----”

“Men are bound to like her. She’s the kind of woman that satisfies a need of men, for flattery, for play.”

“She’s fun,” said Cecily, bitterly.

Her mother agreed.

“And because she’s fun and because Della is fun, Matthew is tied to her for the rest of his life and poor Walter at twenty-one is tied to his Della.”

“But Matthew and Walter are happy.”

“They shouldn’t be happy like that! It’s unworthy!”

Mrs. Warner stood up. “We’ve talked a lot and I’m not convincing you. Perhaps I won’t ever convince you that I’m right. You’re strong, Cecily. You don’t know yet how strong. But when you were a little thing I could see the will in you, underneath the dreaming and the softness. I think now that your father’s laxities have turned in you to rigors. Just now you’re tired and upset by your problems and your household and inclined to group all your troubles into a very destructive point of view. You mustn’t. Walter is married. Gerald writes that he thinks it is all right. He likes Della, too. His father and I want to bring Walter home and to make the most of the situation. If Della is possible material to form into the sort of woman we would like to see Walter have for a wife, it is our privilege to do it. Your example will be necessary and helpful. You’re young, and you’re a happy, married woman.”

She smiled at Cecily and Cecily smiled back through a mist of tears.

“Please help me with Della by being tolerant of her. Think what it will mean to Walter to have his mistake, if it is a mistake, turned to good account--to have us receive his wife instead of being hard on her.”

“You’re so fine and wise and beautiful,” sighed Cecily. “I am foolish; haunted by chimeras. But I feel so glad, mother, to have said it all.”

“It isn’t ended in the saying. But it has helped us both to have talked a little. Shall we go to see the babies before I go?”

They were themselves again--the beautiful, passive woman and the lovely, eager girl, hiding again their depths and the disturbances in them. Mrs. Warner smoothed over the surface as well as the depths. She sent her housemaid to stay with the children and insisted that Cecily and Dick come to her house for dinner, where the case of Walter and Della was discussed and so much the best made of it that the tragic part was fairly smothered in hopes.

* * * * *

Three weeks later, after a wedding trip financed by his father, Walter brought Della home. The family in Carrington were thoroughly adjusted to the blow by that time and a few newspaper notices and careful statements of Mrs. Warner and Cecily had made it clear to their friends and acquaintances that Walter was not to return as a prodigal, but to a very genuine welcome. Yet at the first glance at Della, Cecily felt her heart sink.

It would have been so much easier if Della had been flagrantly impossible, if she had been chewing gum or wearing lace veils and jockey perfume, but showing a diffidence and teachability that they could work with. Cecily had seen so many Dellas, she thought as she looked at her. Della was small and pretty and stylish. Stylish without imagination, wearing the “latest” in everything; a kind of fashion book model with fashion book curves and a manner that was reminiscent of the stories in the fashion books. She came into the Warners’ big drawing-room behind Walter, a kind of pertness and determination to demonstrate that she was as “good as anybody else” most apparent in her greetings. Mrs. Warner’s kindness and Cecily’s welcome excited no gratitude. She was going to deal with Walter’s family without making any concessions. Walter’s slight evident excitement and sensitiveness, his response to what his people were offering him were lost on her. She giggled a little and talked about how cold it had been in the sleeper and how she guessed everybody on the train knew they were “newly-weds” and how funny it was getting used to another name. There was a trace of petulance in her manner towards Walter, too.

“I told him he just better hurry with his suit-case, that I wasn’t going to pack it for him--break him in wrong,” she said.

Cecily, the memory of her own wedding trip coming back to her, with its wonder of service, felt herself helpless.

“We’ve got to find a place to live now, I suppose,” was Della’s next comment.

“But there’s no hurry surely. We want you to stay with us for a while until we get acquainted,” said Mrs. Warner.

“That’s nice of you, but we’ll want a place of our own as soon as we can find one and Walter goes to work. I suppose you people didn’t like his leaving college.”

“A college degree is sometimes valuable,” said Mr. Warner, rather grimly.

“Well, I don’t know. I wonder sometimes what good it does them. I’ve always lived in a college town, you know, and been used to college men; been used to lots of fun, haven’t I, Walter? Well, as I was saying, I don’t know that finishing your course gets you any place especially. Sometimes those who don’t, get ahead the fastest.”

They all refrained from comment. Walter had grown a little flushed.

“Can I take Della upstairs? She’s tired, I know, mother.”

“Isn’t he bossy?” from Della.

“Yes, dear, take her up to your own room. It’s ready for you.”

A little-boy, lonesome look came into Walter’s face for a moment. Then he turned to Della and took her out of the room. Mrs. Warner looked at her husband and then at Cecily.

“Did you say I was to be a model for her?” asked Cecily, with her new grimness. “For her? Why, the girl scorns me.”

“She’s certainly going to make Walter stand around,” said Mr. Warner, with a feeble attempt at jocularity. Then, at the sight of the tears in his wife’s eyes he was beside her in an instant. “She’s not so bad,” he declared. “Lots of energy and nerve in that small person.”

Lots of energy and lots of nerve there were. In the succeeding weeks they all found out how much. Della, twirling on her finger the platinum and diamond symbol that she was a Warner, knew how to have a good time and how to get what she wanted. She was fond of Walter in her under-bred little way. Though she scolded at him, she was always willing to have him exhibit his affection in public, and in automobiles and theatres would curl into his arms in a way that was unceasingly embarrassing to the people with her.

Cecily, who had planned on winning her confidence, soon found that confidence a thing to dread. Della’s easy, careless tongue ran away with itself on most occasions. She wanted to tell Cecily intimate things that Cecily could not bring herself to listen to. And when Cecily, trying to impart an ideal or a vision, half opened her mind to Della, she found her visions ignored or criticized.

“Cute kids, aren’t they?” commented Della. “But whatever do you do with so many? It’s wonderful how you’ve kept your figure, though.”

That ended that lesson.

Dick was amused. He laughed above Cecily’s constant dismay.

“It’s a damned shame Walter married that chicken. But then, if he’s satisfied! Did you see her try to vamp me?” And he was off in a gale of chuckles.

Gradually, after a few weeks, they stopped trying to do things with Della. She had her little apartment with its expensive furnishings paid for by Mr. Warner and she and Walter kept an unceasing succession of exploiting maids and dined out at public places at least half the time. Cecily simply made the best of her. She was unceasingly busy at home. Ellen’s vacation had lengthened. She had written most contritely that she could not come back at once. “As soon as I can, but my cousin won’t have a nurse. We are trying to find one that will do her.”

Cecily made determined efforts not to let her household weigh on her. She told herself again and again that there must be ways to manage. She interviewed nurses and cooks, bribed employment agencies, but even with all her effort her mind could never escape from her house and her babies. The little grudge against Dick that he could escape, that he could want, as he so often did want, gayety and people, wore deeper in her.