It seemed to fill some long-felt, deep-seated, longing on her part: a house of one's own; to be--more than merely an expression of great wealth--an expression of legitimate great wealth; to be the ultimate in stability, in belonging, in caste. It was as if her catalogue of values ran thus: jewels and fine clothes, any fly-by-night may have them from her sweetheart; even a lawfully wedded husband, any sweetheart may be made into one if you cared to take the pains; but a house of your own, then indeed you had reached the summit, then indeed you were socially impregnable, then indeed you were a great lady. Or (pitiful parenthesis) as you fondly imagined one to be.
"It's so much grander," she said. She sighed wistfully. "It makes me feel like a really married woman."
He laughed indulgently. "What had you felt like until now, madame ?"
"Oh, it is useless to tell this to a man!" she said with a little spurt of playful indignation.
And it was, in truth, for each of them had the instincts of their own kind.
Even when he tried, half-teasingly, and only when the arrangement had already been entered into, to warn her and point out the disadvantages, she would have none of it.
"But who'll cook for us? A house takes looking after. You're taking on a great many cares."
She threw up her hands. "Well, then I'll have servants, like the other ladies who have houses of their own. You'll see; leave that to me."
A colored woman appeared, and lasted five days. There was some question of a missing trinket. Then after her stormy discharge and departure, which filled the lower floor with noise for some fifteen minutes, Bonny came to him presently and admitted she had unearthed the valuable in a place she had forgotten having put it.
"Why didn't you search first, and then accuse her afterward ?" he pointed out, as gently as he could. "That is what any other lady, mistress of her own house, would have done."
"Oh, would she?" She seemed at a loss. "I did not think of that."
"You must not tyrannize over them," he tried to instruct her. "You must be firm and gentle at the same time. Otherwise you show that you are not used to having servants of your own."
The second one lasted three days. There was less commotion, but there were tears this time. On Bonny's part.
"I tried being gentle," she came to him and reported, "and she paid no heed to any of my orders. I don't seem to know how to handle them. If I am severe, they walk out. If I am kind, they do not do their work."
"There is an art to it," he consoled her. "You will acquire it presently."
"No," she said. "There is something about me. They look at me and sneer. They do not respect me. They will take more from another woman, and be docile; they will take nothing from me, and still be impudent. Is this not my own house? Am I not your wife? What is it about me?"
He could not answer that, for he saw her with the eyes of love, and he could not tell what eyes they saw her with, nor see with theirs.
"No," she said in answer, to his suggestion, "no more servants. I've had enough of them. Let me do it. I can try, I can manage."
A meal followed that was a complete fiasco. The eggs broke in the water meant to boil them, and a sort of milky stew resulted, neither to be eaten nor to be drunk. The coffee had the pallor of tea without any of its virtues, and on second try became a muddy abomination that filled their mouths with grit. The toast was tinctured with the cologne that she so liberally applied to her hands.
He uttered not a word of reproach. He stood up and discarded his napkin. "Come," he said, "we're going back to the hotel for our meals."
She hastened to get her things, as if overjoyed herself at this solution.
And on their way over he said, "Now aren't you sorry ?" with a twinkle in his eye.
But on this point, at least, she was steadfast. "No," she said. "Even if we have to eat elsewhere, at least I still have my own house. I would not change that for anything." And she repeated what she'd said before. "I want to feel like a really married woman. I want to feel like all the rest do. I want to know what it feels like."
She couldn't, it seemed, quite get used to the idea that she was legally married to him, and all this was hers by right and not by conquest.
44
Increasingly uncomfortable, and extremely bored in addition, feeling that all eyes were on him, he paced back and forth in the modiste's anteroom, and at every turn seemed to come into collision with some hurrying young girl carrying fresh bolts of goods into a curtained recess behind which Bonny had disappeared an interminable length of time previously. These flying supernumeraries always came out again empty handed; judging by the quantity of material that he had already seen go in the alcove, with none ever taken out again, it should have been filled to ceiling height by this time.
He could hear her voice at intervals, topping the rustles of unwound fabric lengths and carefully chosen phrases of professional inducement.
"I cannot decide! The more you bring in to show me, the harder it becomes to settle on one. No, leave that, I may come back to it."
Suddenly the curtains parted, gripped by restraining hands just below the breach, so that it could not spread downward, and her head, no more, peered through.
"Lou, am I taking dreadfully long? I just remembered you, out there."
"Long, but not dreadfully," he answered gallantly.
"What are you doing with yourself?" she asked, as if he were a small boy left for a risky moment to his own, devices.
"Getting in everyone's way, I'm afraid," he admitted.
There was a chorus of polite feminine laughter, both from before and behind the Secretive curtain, as though he had said something very funny indeed.
"Poor thing," she said contritely. Her head turned to someone behind her. The grip on the curtain slit slid slightly downward for a moment, and the turn of an unclad shoulder was revealed, a tapelike strip of white ribbon its only covering. "Haven't you any magazines or something for him to look over, pass the time with ?"
"Only pattern magazines, I'm afraid, madam."
"No, thank you," he said very definitely.
"It's so hard on them," she said patronizingly, still in conversation with someone behind her. Then back to him once more. "Why don't you leave and then call back for me again ?" she suggested generously. "That way you needn't suffer so, and I can put my whole mind to this."
"How soon shall I come back?"
"I won't be through for another hour yet at the very least. We haven't even got past the choice of a material yet. Then will come the selection of a pattern, and the cutting, and the taking of the over-all measurements--"
"Unh," he groaned facetiously, and another courtier-like laugh went up.
"You had best give me a full hour and a half, I shall need that much. Or if you tire in the meantime, go straight back to the house, and I'll follow you there."
He took up his hat with alacrity, glad to make his escape.
Her bodyless face, formed its lips, into a pout.
"Aren't you going to say goodbye to me?"
She touched her lips to show him what she meant, closed her eyes expectantly.
"In front of all these people?"
"Oh dear, how you talk! One would think you weren't my husband at all. I assure you it's perfectly proper, in such a case."
Again a chorus of flattery-forced laughter went up, almost as if on cue. She seemed to make quite an opéra bouffe entertainment of the making of a new dress, taking the part of main luminary surrounded by a doting, submissive chorus. There should have been music, he couldn't help reflecting, and a tiered audience surrounding her on three sides.
He stepped over to the curtains, coloring slightly, pecked at her lips, turned, and got out of the place.
Strangely, in spite of his embarrassment, he had a flattered, selfimportant feeling at the same time; he wondered how she had been able to give him that, and whether she had known she was doing it when she did. And secretly decided that she had.