The Gorgeous Girl. Nalbro Bartley
boarding house,” Trudy began, defiantly.
“You wouldn’t last out at either. You need this sort of a place and our sort of house, you ridiculous little thing. Besides, you have Gaylord at your beck and call”––Trudy blushed––“and you seem to manage to have a pretty good time when all is said and done. I do feel responsible for you because at twenty-three you are more scatterbrained than–––”
“Finish it––than you were at thirteen! Well, what of it? I’m out for a good time and you are always talking about the right time, I suppose. I’ll take your lecture without weeping and promise to reform. But don’t be surprised at anything I may do regarding tra-la-la-la-la.” She burst into the wedding march again and vanished, Mary shaking her head as she prepared to sign off some letters.
Steve O’Valley opened the door connecting their offices, displaying a face as happy as a schoolboy’s on a Christmas holiday. “Miss Constantine is downstairs, I’m going to escort her up,” he announced, shutting the door as abruptly as he had opened it.
12
Presently there came into Steve’s office someone who was saying in a light, gay voice: “Perfectly awful old place, Stevuns––as bad as papa’s. I hate business offices; make my head ache. It was Red Cross to-day, and after that I had to rush to cooking school–––”
Steve answered in rapt fashion: “I’ll have to talk to Miss Faithful for half a jiffy and then I’m free for the rest of the day–––” opening the door of Mary’s office and beckoning to her.
Coming into his office Mary nodded pleasantly at the Gorgeous Girl, who nodded pleasantly in return and settled herself in an easy-chair while Steve rehearsed the things to be attended to the following day since he was not to be at the office.
“I’m getting Miss Faithful ready to run the shop single-handed,” he explained, telling Mary details which she already knew better than he but to which she listened patiently, her twilight eyes glancing now at Beatrice and back again at Steve.
Outside the hum of commerce played the proper accompaniment to Steve O’Valley’s orders and Mary’s thoughts and Beatrice’s actions––a jangling yet accurate rhythm of typewriters and adding machines and office chatter, pencil sharpeners, windows being opened, shades adjusted, wastebaskets dragged into position, boys demanding their telegrams or delivering the same, phone bells ringing, voices asking for Mr. O’Valley and being told that he was not in, other voices asking for Miss Faithful and being told she was not at liberty just now––would they be seated? Trudy’s giggle rose above the hum at odd intervals, elevators crept up and down, and outside the spring air escorted the odour of hides and tallow and what not, grease and machine oil and general junk from across the courtyard; trucks rumbled on the cobblestones while workingmen laughed and quarrelled––a confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve’s life and of the Gorgeous Girl’s and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to say yes and no in answer to his questions and to make an occasional notation.
“The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life”
13
The panorama rather bewildered her; it was like being asked to describe a blizzard while still in it, whereas one should be sitting in a warm, cheery room looking impersonally at the storm swirl.
First of all, she thought of Steve O’Valley’s Irish grandfather, by like name, who spent his life in Virginia City trying to find a claim equal to the Comstock lode, dying penniless but with a prospector’s optimism that had he been permitted to live manana surely would have seen the turning of the tide. Old O’Valley’s only son and his son’s wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work would have been their only alternative. So they left a small, black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O’Valley to battle single-handed with the world and bring honour to his name.
The first twelve years of the battle were spent in an orphanage in the Grass Valley, the next four as a chore boy on a ranch, after which the young man decided with naïve determination that in order to obtain anything at all worth while he must be fully prepared to pay its price, and that he desired above all else to become a rich man––a truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far as education was concerned he felt that if he was not 14 quite so brushed up on his A B C’s as he was on minding his P’s and Q’s the result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not to be duplicated Yankee pep.
As Steve planned it he was to leave his mark on the world and not endure the world’s mark upon himself. This straight-limbed and altogether too handsome youngster––his grandmother had been a Basque––possessed the same quality of the fortune hunter as his grandfather, only he did not propose to do his prospecting in the mines of Nevada. Following the general tactics of a Stone Age man––a belief in muscle and great initiative––Steve found himself at twenty-four in the city of Hanover and in the employ of Mark Constantine, a hide-and-leather magnate who was said to be like all hard-boiled eggs––impossible to beat. After Steve advanced to the top notch of his ability he discovered that the only reason he was not considered as a junior member of the firm was because he could not buy stock. At this same time Beatrice Constantine had become interested in him.
To her mind Steve was different in other ways than merely being handsome and possessed of physical strength. And she considered that if he had a fortune he would be far more wonderful than any of the young gentlemen of her set who wondered which would be the lucky chap to lead Constantine’s Gorgeous Girl to the wedding-license bureau.
In the seventeen-year-old patronizing fashion of a Gorgeous Girl she permitted Steve to see that she was interested, and Steve with the romance of his Basque 15 grandmother and the audacity of his Irish grandfather immediately thought of what a strange and wonderful thing it would be if he could by hook or crook become a rich man all in the twinkling of an eye, and marry this superior, elegant little person.
The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life. Her father, self-made from a boyhood as poor as Steve’s, carved his way to the top without delay or remorse for any one he may have halted or harmed in the so doing. He had wisely married a working girl whom he loved in undemonstrative fashion, and when at the turning point of his career she bore him a daughter and then died he erected an expensive monument to her memory and took his oath that their daughter should be the most gorgeous girl in Hanover and that her life should be spent in having as good a time as her father’s fortune allowed. He then invited his widowed sister to live with him and take charge of his child.
After this interlude he returned to his business grimmer of face and harsher of heart, and the world was none the wiser regarding his grief for the plain-faced woman in the churchyard. As his fortune multiplied almost ironically he would often take time to think of his wife Hannah, who was so tired of pots and pans and making dollars squeal so that he might succeed and who was now at rest with an imposing marble column to call attention to the fact.
So the Gorgeous Girl, as Hanover called her, half in ridicule and half in envy, developed into a gorgeous young woman, as might be expected with her father to pay her bills and her Aunt Belle to toddle meekly after her. Aunt Belle, once married to a carpenter 16 who had conveniently died, never ceased to rejoice in her good fortune. She was never really quite used to the luxury that had come to her instead of to the woman in the churchyard. She revelled in Beatrice’s clothes, her own elaborate costumes, ordered the servants about, went to Florida and the Bermudas whenever the Gorgeous Girl saw fit, rolled about the country in limousines, and secretly admired the hideous mansion Constantine had built––an ornate, overbearing brick affair with curlicue trimmings and a tower with a handful of minor turrets. It was furnished according to the dictates of a New York