AT THE BAZAAR

For the days preceding Gertrude’s bazaar, Louise diverted her mind from her difficulties by training her energies in with those of Gertrude in preparation for it. Amazed a little at times at Gertrude’s being so completely engrossed in the minor difficulties and vexations incident to such affairs, Louise could only reflect that when we lack real troubles imaginary ones serve as our retainers.

The grounds of Gertrude’s old home had long been modernized and offered an excellent setting for a garden bazaar. And the weather, for once, as Gertrude almost grumbled, smiled on her labors. And her society friends, for once, as she added, responded to her appeal--the affair went well.

By the time Kennedy got out late from the city, to put in an early afternoon appearance, Gertrude’s face was wreathed with smiles. He found her in the living-room, meeting guests. Of course, he did not escape without some upbraiding.

“Couldn’t make it any sooner, honey,” he pleaded shamelessly. “Court. How’s your party?”

“Why, it’s nearly over, Jim.”

“Is Henry Dunning Janeway here?”

“He is. And having a good time. Louise is out there making the poor man spend all his money. I hope if Bob comes the two won’t clash.”

“Never fear. Simms claims that Bob bearded the lion in his office den that morning after the riot. If he actually did, I hope Brother won’t feel the royal beast’s claws in his domestic and financial gizzard before they’re through.” He scrutinized her rig as he spoke. “Well, baby girl! Some class to the little gown.”

“Do you like it?”

“Do you wear it?”

“I do.”

“I do.”

Gertrude glanced through the open doors of the terrace out at the gardens. Her guests circulated among the booths. “Mrs. Montgomery,” she said incidentally, “hasn’t come yet.”

“What did you invite her for, honey?”

“Bob made me, of course.”

“Dear Brother!”

“I told him it was a public affair, but he was stubborn. I think she made him ask for a special bid. She’s so sensitive, he says.”

“Mother o’ mine! Why was I not born sensitive? I might have married a steel magnate myself!”

“When I did invite her,” continued Gertrude, “she said she didn’t know whether I really wanted her to come or not.”

“She must be a detective,” hinted Kennedy.

“Awfully frank, I thought.”

“It isn’t Maymie’s practice to conceal--much.”

“Jim, I hate _double entendre_.”

“That’s only just plain United States _entendre_. Are you still game, birdie mine, for going ahead and getting married, no matter what Brother thinks?”

Gertrude looked at him with Durand determination. “I ordered my travelling suit to-day; it’s going to be a dear. What _will_ Bob say?” she sighed.

“What he’ll say would probably put him in jail if it got into the mails. And by the great Jehovah, there she is, on the terrace with Brother, right now. Didn’t I tell you, Gertie, she wouldn’t hide anything you could speak of?”

Mrs. Montgomery, under Durand’s protecting wing, was, in fact, crossing the terrace toward the living-room.

A painstaking selection of beauty parlors kept Mrs. Montgomery in condition. She was perhaps just overgroomed, but her confident step was justified by the lack of noticeable encroachments that three years had made on her appearance. The family quarrels that had agitated the Durand circle on her threatened entrance into it, had left her unscathed by worries; no wrinkles had invaded her pleading eyes; she asked only for sympathy and forbearance. The worst that could be said of Maymie Montgomery was that she was happy and wanted everybody else to be happy, which Kennedy pronounced fair enough; forgetting that happiness is a joint-stock liability concern, in which neither man nor woman, neither husband nor wife, neither parent nor child can be selfish without making somebody, somewhere, pay the price in tears.

“I thought you were never coming!” exclaimed Gertrude, when her brother and Mrs. Montgomery entered the room.

“Dear girl!” murmured Mrs. Montgomery. “Are you dead?”

“Dead?” echoed Kennedy, as the greetings were exchanged. “Well, I hope not--yet.”

Mrs. Montgomery wore white. Her figure, with a tendency to plumpness, was under control, and though her utterances were at times stern, her voice was pleasant. “I’m so late,” she apologized, with real regret, “and it’s all the fault of this tyrannical brother of yours.” She was addressing Gertrude.

“Of _ours_, Mrs. Montgomery,” interposed Kennedy. “You can’t lose me in this family.”

“See here a minute, Kennedy,” said Durand, stepping away for a side confab.

Mrs. Montgomery, studying Gertrude’s gown with a critical eye--a study in which Gertrude, herself, was not at all behind--resumed complacently: “_Is_n’t Mr. Kennedy ‘inimicable’?”

Kennedy was just near enough to overhear. “What’s that?” he asked, starting.

Mrs. Montgomery pushed him away with her fan. “Listeners never hear any good of themselves.” Then to Gertrude. “You’ve had a perfect crush, Gertrude, haven’t you? I’ve never seen such a stream of cars up and down the hill. You must have sent out a raft of invitations.”

“Why, I didn’t send out any. It’s public. I couldn’t exclude anybody from a children’s hospital benefit.”

“Fortunate for me!” purred Mrs. Montgomery.

Gertrude was mildly shocked. “Mrs. Montgomery! I don’t understand! Would any one in Fond du Lac dream of leaving you out?”

“Dear girl! You know very well my position is a difficult one. But Bob! You know how he is; he simply _must_ have his own way--don’t blame me, dear, for all of it. And I hear Louise is very, very sweet. But when two people can’t live happily together, it’s really a crime to make them--don’t you think so? Yet I certainly sympathize with her.” Gertrude was too hot to retort. She felt if she said anything it would be too much.

Durand, who was talking to Kennedy about the arbitration committee, was not holding him. Kennedy turned at the last words to Mrs. Montgomery. “Come right out into the garden, Mrs. Montgomery. We need sympathizers. Poor Gertrude had yesterday eighty-seven babies to feed--you may go as far as you like.”

Mrs. Montgomery had an indulgent smile for her prospective brother-in-law. “Lovely!” she drawled, turning again to Gertrude.

“They had the prettiest things in the booths,” suggested Gertrude encouragingly, “if they’re not all gone. Run along and I’ll join you in a minute.”

Mrs. Montgomery walked happily away with Kennedy. “Isn’t Gertrude dear?” she smiled.

“Just like her brother,” suggested Kennedy blandly. The touch was not lost on his companion.

“Don’t say mean things,” she objected. “You’re not a bit nice to me.”

“I must be the only man in town that isn’t.”

“There you go again. But I want to tell _you_, Jim Kennedy--and I never get the chance--that instead of _my_ trying to influence Bob against Gertrude’s marrying you----”

“I never said you did.”

“I’ve tried to make him give in.”

“Does he do it?”

“Like a mule.”

“You mustn’t call Brother names.”

Maymie tossed her head. “He doesn’t hesitate to call me names; why, he even had the nerve to tell me if I hadn’t any manners I might copy some from his wife--wouldn’t that kill you? Maybe he’s getting tired of Maymie. But I ain’t afraid of him.”

“No more am I,” chimed in Kennedy. “Come on! You and I’ll be pals yet.”

* * * * *

Gertrude was talking with her brother. “When did you get back, Bob?”

“Day before yesterday. I haven’t had time to think yet. This infernal strike----”

“But that’s going to be settled now.”

“Settled!” snapped her brother. “Settled--with that man Marion running the committee! A fine show _we’ll_ have! My brave uncle is responsible for shoving that down my throat. He’s got about as much fight in him as a sparrow. I think Janeway had a hand in it.”

“Bob, why worry about what can’t be helped? Why wear out your health and strength fighting all the time. My heavens!” Gertrude paused to let her words sink in. “Haven’t you got money enough, no matter what happens now? More than you ever dreamed of having? What do you care whether the strikers get a dollar a day more or not?”

Her brother looked no less saturnine. “I don’t like committees running my business. I don’t like to be beaten, either. I’ll get even with the whole bunch yet.”

Durand’s eyes, never quite still, were roving as he spoke; as if nothing within vision was to be lost. They now fixed on a couple at some distance on the driveway, below the lotus ponds. Durand recognized Janeway. This in itself would have annoyed him. But he looked also at the person standing with the man he regarded as his enemy. Her back was toward him, and he was trying to make out whether it was a young girl or a woman talking with the man he detested. Whoever it was, her figure, very satisfying in its lines, gave him no clew; it might have belonged either to a young girl or a woman of twenty-five. While Durand’s eyes were on them, Janeway’s vis-à-vis turned from him, apparently with some excuse, and tripped up a short flight of steps and through the pergola, where girls were serving tea.

Janeway, looking after the slight figure until it disappeared, stood until two bazaar salesgirls, coming up, claimed his attention.

“What’s Janeway doing here?” demanded Durand gruffly of his sister.

“Spending his money, I hope,” retorted Gertrude, undisturbed. “What should anybody be doing here?”

“I don’t like this idea of Louise’s staying here with you,” said Durand shortly. “Who’s that going up-stairs?”

Gertrude looked around; she knew her brother’s different tones so well that she knew when he was interested. And she saw through the open French doors of the terrace the feminine figure that had arrested Durand’s attention when his eye had caught Janeway. Gertrude suppressed a laugh. “What is it?” asked Durand testily. “What’re you laughing at?”

She regarded him as if not quite sure of his good faith. “Don’t you know your own wife when you see her?”

The figure disappeared on the mezzanine. “Was that Louise?” he demanded.

Gertrude was still laughing. “It certainly was.”

“Some style!” murmured Durand, still looking toward the stairs.

“Hasn’t she?” commented Gertrude maliciously. “Uncle Sid said she was the best-looking, the best-dressed woman at the Horse Show last week.”

“Paris has given her an air,” he snapped.

“Paris won’t give you an air unless it’s in you to begin with. Louise always had an air; you never realized it. Her figure is more rounded and her cheeks are fuller. There she comes again.”

The brother and sister were standing where they could see without being seen. Louise, purse in hand, was fairly tripping down the hall stairs. She crossed the terrace quickly and disappeared among the guests.

“Bob, you’ve cast off the best woman that ever came into your life,” said Gertrude indignantly. She knew her brother’s face and knew how the change in his wife had taken his breath. Physical feminine beauty made an appeal to Durand that nothing else in the world could quite equal, and, like all men of his temperament, he was usually a failure in choosing women.

“No use talking about that now,” he growled.

“That’s what every man says when he’s ashamed of himself.”

“I’m no parson. Louise knew that when she married me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Her mother knew, anyway.”

“And you’ve lost the best business adviser you ever had. When you were afraid to spend such an awful sum to rebuild the mills, who made you do it--and with her money, too!”

“I never said she didn’t have a good head for business.”

Gertrude seemed to welcome the chance to free her mind. “When you were ready to close down the mills and give up--and I was, too--she made you hold on. You ought never to have let her go.”

“It’s too late to switch back.”

“It was a _mighty_ bad mistake, Brother.”

Guests approached to say good-by. Durand, greeting them absent-mindedly as they neared his sister, crossed the terrace and went out into the gardens. Mrs. Montgomery, deserted by Kennedy, caught sight of him. Durand joined her, and, making the round of the booths, Mrs. Montgomery spent liberally--even beyond what Durand liked. He told her so.

His admonition was capriciously taken and Mrs. Montgomery feathered a barb in return. “Your devoted sister is catty to-day, isn’t she?”

“Well, what the devil did you insist on coming for?” demanded Durand peevishly.

“Well, why the devil shouldn’t I come and go where I please, Bobbie dear?”

“You know she doesn’t like you.”

“That’s why I wanted to come.”

“You like a fight, don’t you?”

“No more than Bobbie does, do I?”

“Well, you’ve spent all the money I’ve got. Let’s get out.”

Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes fixed on some one in the pergola. “Oh, there’s Mr. Janeway!” she exclaimed. “Let’s speak to him!”

Durand’s face grew black. She laughed out loud. But just the same she did insist on going over to the tea-tables, where Durand, glumly absorbed in thought, sat while Mrs. Montgomery laughed and chatted with the chatty attendants and sipped a cup of tea.

The course of true love doesn’t traditionally run smooth. But it may at least be said that, compared with the course of untrue love, it is the merest mill-pond.