The Dust [18]
been at it a few years and lose the little bloom they ever had--why, they've got to take their chances at the game, precisely like a man. Only, they're handicapped by always hoping that they'll be able to quit and become married women. I'd like to see how men would behave if they could find or could imagine any alternative to `root hog or die.' "
"What's the matter with you this evening, Fred? I never saw you in such a bitter mood."
"We never happened to get on this subject before."
"Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail."
"And I still scoff at them--most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence-- petty self-indulgence--that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you."
"What a mood! SOMETHING must have happened."
"Perhaps," said he reflectively. "Possibly that girl set me off."
"What girl?"
"The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon. Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had. She was tall yet she wasn't. She seemed thin, and when you looked again, you saw that she was really only slender, and beautifully shaped throughout."
Miss Burroughs laughed. "She must have been attractive."
"Not in the least. Absolutely without charm--and so homely--no, not homely--commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank--pale, lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became--amazingly different. Not the same thing every time, but different things."
Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to make the mistake--rather, to commit the breach of tact and courtesy--involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman. Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office machinery--and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly understood the look in her eyes--the strained effort to keep the telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of inward agitation.
"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there--long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage--apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous --it WAS ridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl--the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation--how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class--or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line --yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class-- It was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world--a knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing
"What's the matter with you this evening, Fred? I never saw you in such a bitter mood."
"We never happened to get on this subject before."
"Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail."
"And I still scoff at them--most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence-- petty self-indulgence--that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you."
"What a mood! SOMETHING must have happened."
"Perhaps," said he reflectively. "Possibly that girl set me off."
"What girl?"
"The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon. Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had. She was tall yet she wasn't. She seemed thin, and when you looked again, you saw that she was really only slender, and beautifully shaped throughout."
Miss Burroughs laughed. "She must have been attractive."
"Not in the least. Absolutely without charm--and so homely--no, not homely--commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank--pale, lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became--amazingly different. Not the same thing every time, but different things."
Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to make the mistake--rather, to commit the breach of tact and courtesy--involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman. Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office machinery--and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly understood the look in her eyes--the strained effort to keep the telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of inward agitation.
"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there--long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage--apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous --it WAS ridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl--the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation--how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class--or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line --yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class-- It was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world--a knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing