“I guess you were too scared of people.”
“I see that now. Funny how you don’t see things at the time.” “Well, you aren’t scared any more,” Mrs. Gunn said.
“Not so much.” Carla put down the empty coffee-cup, and started halving the oranges. “I’ve changed a little, haven’t I? Am I beginning to do you credit?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I keep my glasses for reading and writing. I wear my shirt tucked into my jeans. I’ve stopped braiding my hair and putting ribbons on it. I’ve cut it short, and everyone likes it.”
“Don’t see what I had to do with it,” Mrs. Gunn protested. But she was pleased. She added a little twist of decoration to each roll as she shaped it with her firm, light hand.
“Oh, it was just a feeling I got from you. You send out little waves of approval and disapproval, you know,” Carla said, with a laugh.
“I wish Earl Grubbock felt them.”
“Why don’t you like him, Mrs. Gunn?”
“I do. Only, I just don’t want him being casual with Norah, the way he treated his girls in Europe.”
“How do you know if he had any girls in Europe?”
“I can read, can’t I? All soldiers had girls, and treated them as if they were a glass of beer or a steak dinner. And if men treated girls that way abroad—and I can’t find any book that tells me different—then that’s the way they’ll treat them anywhere. And I don’t think that’s good enough for any girl, wherever she lives. A nice girl deserves better than that, doesn’t she?”
“But perhaps Earl isn’t that kind of man.”
“I don’t get the feeling he’s looking for a wife. He’s here for a good time, and a pretty girl is part of it.”
“But Norah’s awfully sensible, Mrs. Gunn.”
“That’s a new word for staying out until one o’clock every morning.” Mrs. Gunn bustled around the kitchen, banged the oven door, slammed the skillet on the stove, as if energy would dissipate her anger. It helped. “As I see it,” she said more calmly, “there are several men who wouldn’t object to falling in love with Norah, and marrying her, and keeping her happy for the rest of her life. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” It made Carla unhappy even to think of it, though.
“So what right have other men to come and enjoy themselves for a few weeks, and make a girl fall in love with them, and then leave her?”
“They don’t think of it that way.”
“Then it’s about time they did. Let them enjoy themselves with girls that follow the same game and know their rules. That’s all I’m asking. Is that unfair?”
“But I don’t think life was ever fair to women. Or else we’d all be beautiful. Like Drene or Mimi Bassinbrook.” Carla thought for a little, and then she added with painful honesty, “You know, if I were a man I suppose I’d be stupid enough to fall for Mimi. She’s the most attractive girl.” Except Drene, of course, but she hadn’t better praise Drene to Mrs. Gunn.
Mrs. Gunn said nothing.
Carla, knowing she was making a mistake, still couldn’t resist making it. She had been too fascinated and bewildered by Mimi Bassinbrook, ever since she came here. “Do you think Jim Brent’s more in love with her than he admits? It seems strange that he lets himself be haunted by her. A man can easily get rid of a woman.”
“Can he?” Mrs. Gunn asked dryly. She was seemingly concentrating on cutting the slab of bacon into neat slices.
“At least, you’d think so,” Carla said quickly, appeasingly. “I suppose it must be difficult, too. The trouble is, some girls have so many easy conquests that they think every man could be theirs for the taking.”
“Maybe,” Mrs. Gunn said.
There was silence. Carla flushed a little. She measured the orange-juice with exaggerated care into the seven glasses before her.
“Come in, Mr. O’Farlan,” Mrs. Gunn was saying. “Coffee’s over there. Help yourself.”
21
MRS PEEL CHANGES HER MIND
It was a very peaceful evening, Mrs. Peel thought. She glanced round the living-room, and tried to imagine Earl and Karl in the mountains. By this time they would have made camp for the night: they’d be stretched near their fire, wrapped in warm blankets, looking at the stars. A most poetical experience, if you could judge by all the accounts you had read of sleeping out on mountain-sides.
But it was certainly peaceful here. Robert O’Farlan had no one to argue with tonight. He was pretending to be reading a magazine, and not managing it very well. Perhaps he was unsettled by the presence of Prender Atherton Jones, who was reading the last pages of Robert’s manuscript with a critical frown. Mimi was sitting as near the fire as possible, with an extra cardigan draped round her shoulders. She was shivering a little, and beginning to sneeze, and she said nothing at all. Carla and Esther were over by the window seat. Esther was talking enthusiastically; Carla was looking a little surprised. Sally was studying the help-wanted columns in a newspaper, trying to look cheerful, forcing herself to be amused.
Suddenly Robert O’Farlan rose. “I’ve got a letter to write,” he said, and left the room.
Mimi looked after him. She wondered if it could be a letter to his wife. Then she told herself she was becoming slightly soft in the head with sentimental imaginings. Bob’s problems were his own, weren’t they? She had enough to think about in her own life. Only... She got up slowly from her chair. “I think I’m catching a cold,” she admitted at last. “I’m going to bed.”
“I think that’s very wise,” Mrs. Peel said. “Take some aspirin.”
Sally looked up from the newspaper. “I’ll get that for you, and a hot-water bottle.”
“I can manage,” Mimi said sharply. Then she softened her voice and said, “Thanks all the same.” She left at once.
Sally and Mrs. Peel exchanged glances. Sally folded the newspaper—not one suitable job unless you could add figures, do shorthand, sew furs, or manicure nails. She left too, and went into the library to find something for Mimi to read in bed.
Peaceful evening, Mrs. Peel reminded herself with a touch of bitterness. Sally was unhappy and worried. She had been hiding it for days, and her method of hiding it was to be as kind as possible to Mimi. To make up, perhaps, for the unkind thoughts she must have about Mimi. Mrs. Peel, who hadn’t allowed herself to be worried about Mimi before, was suddenly depressed. That might be the result of repressing her worries over money matters. But it had seemed wise not to think about approaching bankruptcy until August was over and the guests had gone away. For the guests would then feel something was wrong, and that would spoil everything for them. Yet worries were never repressible; they just bobbed up in another disguise.
Mimi... If Sally were taking this Mimi-Jim Brent affair to heart, then that was really something to worry about. In all these years Sally had put up a careful guard against men: she was never going to let herself be hurt so violently, so cruelly again. And here she had relaxed that guard, let it slip just enough. But surely she couldn’t be as unhappy as she had been in Paris in 1932. She was older now. She had been barely twenty-one then. Surely that made a difference! I couldn’t bear it, Mrs. Peel thought, if I had those weeks in 1932 to go through all over again. Money worries seemed nothing at this moment: it was one thing to lose your money, but quite another to lose your happiness. No money in the world was going to put that right. Not with someone who felt as deeply as Sally did. How much did she like Jim Brent, anyway? She tried to hide her strongest emotions. That was another bitter lesson she had learned in Paris in those early days. I just couldn’t bear it if she got smashed down again, Mrs. Peel thought angrily.
Carla, followed by Esther Park, came over to the fireside. Mrs. Peel, putting aside her worries, felt there was an appeal for help in Carla’s eyes.
Esther was bubbling over with an idea. “It will be wonderful,” she said. “You know, Mrs. Peel, my sister is travelling in Europe next winter. I’m much too busy to go with her, and she was
worried about leaving me all alone in New York. But she needn’t worry any more. Carla is coming to share my apartment in town.”
Carla said, “I don’t think—”
“It will be perfect,” Esther said. “We can talk and write. Just perfect.”
“Isn’t your apartment up-town? That may be too far away from Carla’s job,” Mrs. Peel suggested and caught a glance of thanks from Carla.
“Well,” Esther said, frowning as she considered that, “perhaps Carla will find a job in a bookstore farther up-town. I know a man who has lots of bookstores. He’ll—”
“Why not let Carla arrange her own life?”
“But I was.” Esther Park sounded hurt. “Wasn’t I, Carla?”
Carla took a deep breath, looked at Mrs. Peel, and then said, “I like my job. And I don’t want to change my apartment.” But why couldn’t I have said that before, she wondered. It was easy enough, after all.
“But you said you didn’t like your room,” Esther challenged her. “You said—”
“Perhaps Carla didn’t mean what she said exactly in the way you interpreted it.”
“I was only making conversation,” Carla said, with a new assurance. “If I don’t like my room, that doesn’t mean I want to move into an apartment I didn’t choose.”
Esther Park’s eyebrows went up. “I was only trying to help,” she said indignantly. She gave Mrs. Peel a bitter look.
She left them and went over to Atherton Jones.
Carla gave Mrs. Peel a smile of thanks. “I think this might be a good time to slip away and finish some work. It’s going well, really well.”
“I’m glad of that. And I think this might be a very good time.” Mrs. Peel looked over her shoulder to study Atherton Jones, registering alarm, as Esther Park drew up a chair beside him.
“Esther, I am reading,” he said, in a warning tone. “I am sorry. But I must finish this.” He picked up another sheet and gave it all his attention. He didn’t answer her next question.
Esther came slowly back to the fire. “Where’s Carla gone?”
“She had some work to do.”
“It’s so dull tonight,” Esther said. “Where’s Robert O’Farlan?”
“Writing a letter.”
“Perhaps he’s in the library,” Esther said hopefully, and moved towards the door.
“He’s very busy. I shouldn’t disturb him.”
Esther Park studied Mrs. Peel. “You really are very cross tonight,” she said. “What have I done?”
Mrs. Peel could only shake her head.
“You don’t understand,” Esther went on, “but I’ve got to talk to Robert. About something very important. Do you know what he has done?”
Mrs. Peel sighed. What now? Earl Grubbock had made advances to her. Karl Koffing had to be told quite sharply that she wasn’t that kind of girl; Jackson had forgotten his place; Bert had to be reprimanded; Ned kept looking at her in the most peculiar way. What had poor Robert O’Farlan done?
“Of course,” Esther said nobly, “he may not have known what he was doing. But”—she glanced round at Atherton Jones to make sure of a double audience—“he has stolen one of my ideas. And put it in his novel. In the second-last chapter. I told him all about a story I was planning, and he’s used it.”
Atherton Jones, suddenly sitting very erect, looked over at Esther Park. “And when did you see his manuscript? It was never given to you to read.”
The anger in his voice startled both women. At last, Mrs. Peel thought thankfully, at last...
“I just saw it,” Esther Park protested.
“Then you must have read it either in his room or in mine. Who invited you in?”
“He’s used my idea.”
“Nonsense. What idea?”
“About the man who was a failure because his wife underestimated him and then—”
“He told me about that idea more than a year ago. Before you ever met him.”
“But I did have that idea.” She looked pleadingly at them to believe her.
“When you had a look at his manuscript?” Prender Atherton Jones asked cuttingly. Then he picked up the page he had been reading, and concentrated on that.
Mrs. Peel closed her eyes and feigned sleep. It was the weakest evasion she had ever offered, but it worked. When she opened them again Esther Park had gone. Prender Atherton Jones was standing there instead.
“You’re safe now,” he said, with a smile. Then he became thoughtful, as he placed O’Farlan’s manuscript on the mantelpiece. “Something has got to be done about that woman.”
“I’ve been waiting for three whole weeks to hear you say that. Prender, you were wonderful with her. I wish Sally had heard you.”
“That kind of thing has to be scotched at once,” he said. “It is absolutely intolerable.”
Mrs. Peel was thankful that at last he had found something intolerable.
“Something has got to be done,” he repeated firmly.
“I agree. And please do it soon, Prender. Yes, you! You know her. I think you might tell her to leave before Karl and Earl get back here.”
“It’s a most difficult, a most delicate situation.” He was less decided now. His anger was leaving him.
Mrs. Peel looked at Prender, thinking that for almost three minutes he had been the Prender she had once known. But now he was retreating into the man whose established position and future plans made him wary of any decisive issue.
He smoothed his hair several times, then looked at the manuscript on the mantelpiece. He laid his hand on it. “Well,” he said, “that’s that, at least.”
“Then you like O’Farlan’s book?”
He inclined his head. “Yes. On the whole. I have some reservations about the end, though.”
“What’s wrong with it? It seemed the natural development to me.”
“I’m always doubtful of happy endings.”
“You mean that the hero ought to have lost his life? He had lost almost everything else he valued. Why, he is like millions of people who keep on going, in spite of everything. That’s the whole point about the book, the indestructibility of man’s spirit. You’d rather have O’Farlan fake some kind of accident or illness and make his hero die?”
“Well, he’s certainly made sure of the book’s popularity.”
Mrs. Peel stared at him. “Robert wasn’t trying for any such thing. He was writing this story as he saw it. If it’s a success, well and good.”
“A success!” Prender said scornfully. Then he quietened his voice, and even smiled half sadly. “You’ve changed your ideas about literature, it seems to me. In the old days in Paris you used to search for writers who were original and difficult, who had no chance of any popular success whatsoever.”
“I still admire originality,” she said. “And as for difficulty— well, perhaps I am less of a snob than I used to be. Once I did think that anything difficult to understand was necessarily important. I got a little thrill—like all snobs—from feeling I was one of the initiated. Yes, I admit it: I paid little attention to the general reading public.”
“And now you find them the epitome of all good taste?” He tried to hide his annoyance, but his voice was sarcastic. She might seem to be criticising herself, yet he felt the quiet voice was criticising him too.
“No,” she said evenly. “I think all taste has to be encouraged and developed. But how can critics like you help it to develop if you are contemptuous of it? Or don’t you want it developed?”
“That’s a fantastic charge, Margaret.” He shrugged his shoulders. Women, he seemed to say, women...
“Well, so far you’ve been no help at all! You’ve shut people out of your literary world, kept it only for the chosen few. You are just as much to blame for any bad taste there is as—as—”
He smiled as he watched her trying to find words; he didn’t expect her to finish that sentence.
“As those cynical men who cater to twelve-year-old minds,” she said.
 
; He was angry now. He forced himself to be tolerant, and very patient. “I suppose you would say that the critics are to save the people from the snob and the cynic?”
“Why not?” She was in earnest.
“And how many good critics are there in America?” he exploded.
She began to count them with infuriating precision.
“Newspaper, magazine hacks,” he interrupted her, “all working on a deadline.”
That aroused her enough to say, “There you go again, Prender! I suppose if those critics wrote sensitive little pieces for precious little magazines, then you’d think that was enough to make them good critics? Really, Prender—don’t be like poor Karl Koffing, with everything so neatly black and white.”
Sally had entered the room. She said with a smile, “I always think literary arguments are so invigorating, don’t you? Well, Mimi’s taken care of. Her tiny hands got frozen this morning, it seems. If her temperature gets any worse I suppose we ought to send for Dr. Clark. But I think she’ll be all right.” She settled in a chair near the fire, and then looked up at Prender. “Have a seat, Prender,” she said. “You terrify me, looming there like the Empire State Building above me. And what’s your new magazine going to be like?” She was trying to change the subject, and she amazed herself. For this was the first time she had ever seen Margaret stand up against Prender. He wasn’t enjoying it. He couldn’t even talk about his magazine. He didn’t even look at Sally.
“What do you mean? I am like Karl Koffing? And aren’t you a little given to adopting the all-black, all-white standard? I haven’t heard you praise Marie and Charles ever since they took over your printing-press in Paris.”
“I’ve never questioned their literary ability,” Mrs. Peel said indignantly. “I’ve only condemned their moral standards in politics. It is their duplicity and treachery that I’m against. Shouldn’t I be?”
Sally said, “Prender, what’s your new magazine going to be like?”
He answered her this time, although he still didn’t look at her. “Margaret will find it precious, I’m sure,” he said bitterly. “But I believe it will be important. Not in the materialistic sense, of course. And so I am quite resigned to the fact that it will get little support from the public, despite Margaret’s violent belief in their natural good taste.”