第52章

Some friends of Mrs.Brindley's who were going abroad offered her their cottage on the New Jersey coast near Seabright, and a big new touring-car and chauffeur.She and Mildred at once gave up the plan for a summer in the Adirondacks, the more readily as several of the men and women they saw the most of lived within easy distance of them at Deal Beach and Elberon.When Mildred went shopping she was lured into buying a lot of summer things she would not have needed in the Adirondacks--a mere matter of two hundred and fifty dollars or thereabouts.A little additional economy in the fall would soon make up for such a trifle, and if there is one time more than another when a woman wishes to look well and must look well, that time is summer--especially by the sea.

When her monthly statement from the bank came on the first of July she found that five thousand dollars had been deposited to her credit.She was moved by this discovery to devote several hours--very depressed hours they were--to her finances.She had spent a great deal more money than she had thought; indeed, since March she had been living at the rate of fifteen thousand a year.She tried to account for this amazing extravagance.But she could recall no expenditure that was not really almost, if not quite, necessary.It took a frightful lot of money to live in New York.

How DID people with small incomes manage to get along?

Whatever would have become of her if she had not had the good luck to be able to borrow from Stanley? What would become of her if, before she was succeeding on the stage, Stanley should die or lose faith in her or interest in her? What would become of her! She had been living these last few months among people who had wide-open eyes and knew everything that was going on--and did some ``going-on'' themselves, as she was now more than suspecting.There were many women, thousands of them--among the attractive, costily dressed throngs she saw in the carriages and autos and cabs--who would not like to have it published how they contrived to live so luxuriously.No, they would not like to have it published, though they cared not a fig for its being whispered; New York too thoroughly understood how necessary luxurious living was, and was too completely divested of the follies of the old-fashioned, straight-laced morality, to mind little shabby details of queer conduct in striving to keep up with the procession.Even the married women, using their husbands--and letting their husbands use them--did not frown on the irregularities of their sisters less fortunately married or not able to find a permanent ``leg to pull.'' As for the girls--Mildred had observed strange things in the lives of the girls she knew more or less well nowadays.In fact, all the women, of all classes and conditions, were engaged in the same mad struggle to get hold of money to spend upon fun and finery--a struggle matching in recklessness and resoluteness the struggle of the men down-town for money for the same purposes.It was curious, this double mania of the men and the women--the mania to get money, no matter how; the instantly succeeding mania to get rid of it, no matter how.Looking about her, Mildred felt that she was peculiar and apart from nearly all the women she knew.SHE got her money honorably.

SHE did not degrade herself, did not sell herself, did not wheedle or cajole or pretend in the least degree.She had grown more liberal as her outlook on life had widened with contact with the New York mind--no, with the mind of the whole easy-going, luxury-mad, morality-scorning modern world.She still kept her standard for herself high, and believed in a purity for herself which she did not exact or expect in her friends.

In this respect she and Cyrilla Brindley were sympathetically alike.No, Mildred was confident that in no circumstances, in NO circumstances, would she relax her ideas of what she personally could do and could not do.

Not that she blamed, or judged at all, women who did as she would not; but she could not, simply could not, however hard she might be driven, do those things--though she could easily understand how other women did them in preference to sinking down into the working class or eking out a frowsy existence in some poor boarding-house.The temptation would be great.

Thank Heaven, it was not teasing her.She would resist it, of course.But--What if Stanley Baird should lose interest? What if, after he lost interest, she should find herself without money, worse of than she had been when she sold herself into slavery--highly moral and conventionally correct slavery, but still slavery--to the little general with the peaked pink-silk nightcap hiding the absence of the removed toupee--and with the wonderful pink-silk pajamas, gorgeously monogramed in violet--and the tiny feet and ugly hands--and those loathsome needle-pointed mustaches and the hideous habit of mumbling his tongue and smacking his lips? What if, moneyless, she should not be able to find another Stanley or a man of the class gentleman willing to help her generously even on ANY terms? What then?

She was looking out over the sea, her bank-book and statements and canceled checks in her lap.Their cottage was at the very edge of the strand; its veranda was often damp from spray after a storm.It was not storming as she sat there, ``taking stock''; under a blue sky an almost tranquil sea was crooning softly in the sunlight, innocent and happy and playful as a child.

She, dressed in a charming negligee and looking forward to a merry day in the auto, with lunch and dinner at attractive, luxurious places farther down the coast--she was stricken with a horrible sadness, with a terror that made her heart beat wildly.

``I must be crazy!'' she said, half aloud.``I've never earned a dollar with my voice.And for two months it has been unreliable.I'm acting like a crazy person.What WILL become of me?''