Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torsonians. "Mrs. Freke was a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant when he married her. Don't you see the bang in her hair still? … Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky—very old family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard—he was very wild. He's disappeared since. … Yes, Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to like her. I don't trust her green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn't the one to care!"
Often they came back to Darnell—that impetuous, black-haired young lawyer with his deep-set, fiery eyes, who had run away with his wife.
"She looks scared most of the time, don't you think? They say he drinks. Too bad, isn't it? Such a brilliant man, and with the best chances. He ran for Congress two years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection is against him. … Oh, Sue Darnell—she is nobody; she can't hold him—that's plain."
"What does she think of Mrs. Adams?"
Bessie shrugged her shoulders significantly.
"Sue has to have her out at their farm. Well, they say she was pretty gay herself—engaged to three men at once—one of them turned up in Torso last year. Tom was very polite to him, elaborately polite; but he left town very soon, and she seemed dazed. … I guess she has reason to be afraid of her husband. He looks sometimes—well, I shouldn't like to have Rob look at me that way, not for half a second!"
The two women clothed the brilliant Kentuckian with all the romance of unbridled passion. "He sends to Alabama every week for the jasmine Mrs. Adams wears—fancy!"
"Really! Oh, men! men!"
"It's probably her fault—she can't hold him."
That was the simple philosophy which they evolved about marriage—men were uncertain creatures, only partly tamed, and it was the woman's business to "hold" them. So much the worse for the women if they happened to be tied to men they could not "hold." Isabelle, remembering on one occasion the flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, his passionate denunciation of mere commercialism in public life, felt that there might be some defence for poor Tom Darnell—even in his flirtation with the "common" Mrs. Adams.
Then the two friends went deeper and talked husbands, both admiring, both hilariously amused at the masculine absurdities of their mates.
"I hate to see poor Rob so harassed with bills," Bessie confided. "It is hard for him, with his tastes, poor boy. But I don't know what I can do about it. When he complains, I tell him we eat everything we have, and I am sure I never get a dress!"
Isabelle, recollecting the delicious suppers she had had at the Falkners's, thought that less might be eaten. In her mother's house there had always been comfort, but strict economy, even after the hardware business paid enormous profits. This thrift was in her blood. Bessie had said to Rob that Isabelle was "close." But Isabelle only laughed at Bessie when she was in these moods of dejection, usually at the first of the month. Bessie was so amusing about her troubles that she could not take her seriously.
"Never mind, Bessie!" she laughed. "He probably likes to work hard for you—every man does for the woman he loves."
And then they would have luncheon, specially devised for Bessie's epicurean taste. For Bessie Falkner did devout homage to a properly cooked dish. Isabelle, watching the contented look with which the little woman swallowed a bit of jellied meat, felt that any man worth his salt would like to gratify her innocent tastes. Probably Falkner couldn't endure a less charming woman for his wife. So she condoned, as one does with a clever child, all the little manifestations of waywardness and selfishness that she was too intelligent not to see in her new friend. Isabelle liked to spoil Bessie Falkner. Everybody liked to indulge her, just as one likes to feed a pretty child with cake and candy, especially when the discomforts of the resulting indigestion fall on some one else.
"Oh, it will all come out right in the end!" Bessie usually exclaimed, after she had well lunched. She did not see things very vividly far ahead—nothing beyond the pleasant luncheon, the attractive house, her adorable Isabelle. "I always tell Rob when he is blue that his chance will come some day; he'll make a lucky strike, do some work that attracts public attention, and then we'll all be as happy as can be."
She had the gambler's instinct; her whole life had been a gamble, now winning, now losing, even to that moment when her lover had ridden up to the hotel and solved her doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had known men whose fortunes came over night, "millions and millions," as she told Isabelle, rolling the words in her little mouth toothsomely. Why not to her? She felt that any day fortune might smile.
"My husband says that Mr. Falkner is doing excellent work—Mr. Freke said so," Isabelle told Bessie.
"And Rob talks as if he were going to lose his job next week! Sometimes I wish he would lose it—and we could go away to a large city."
Bessie thus echoed the feeling in Isabelle's own heart—"I don't want to spend my life on an Indiana prairie!" To both of the women Torso was less a home, a corner of the earth into which to put down roots, than a way-station in the drama and mystery of life. Confident in their husbands' ability to achieve Success, they dreamed of other scenes, of a larger future, with that restlessness of a new civilization, which has latterly seized even women—the supposedly stable sex.
* * * * *
As the year wore on there were broader social levels into which Isabelle in company with Bessie dipped from time to time. The Woman's Club had a lecture course in art and sociology. They attended one of the lectures in the Normal School building, and laughed furtively in their muffs at "Madam President" of the Club—a portly, silk-dressed dame—and at the ill-fitting black coat of the university professor who lectured. They came away before the reception.
"Dowds!" Bessie summed up succinctly.
"Rather crude," Isabelle agreed tolerantly.
During the winter Isabelle did some desultory visiting among the Hungarians employed at the coke-ovens, for Bessie's church society. Originally of Presbyterian faith, she had changed at St. Mary's to the Episcopal church, and latterly all church affiliations had grown faint. The Colonel maintained a pew in the first Presbyterian Church, but usually went to hear the excellent lectures of a Unitarian preacher. Isabelle's religious views were vague, broad, liberal, and unvital. Bessie's were simpler, but scarcely more effective. Lane took a lively interest in the railroad Y.M.C.A., which he believed to be helpful for young men. He himself had been a member in St. Louis and had used the gymnasium. Isabelle got up an entertainment for the Hungarian children, which was ended by a disastrous thunderstorm. She had an uneasy feeling that she "ought to do something for somebody." Alice Johnston, she knew, had lived at a settlement for a couple of years. But there were no settlements in Torso, and the acutely poor were looked after by the various churches. Just what there was to be done for others was not clear. When she expressed her desire "not to live selfishly" to her husband, he replied easily:—
"There are societies for those things, I suppose. It ought to be natural, what we do for others."
Just what was meant by "natural" was not clear to Isabelle, but the word accorded with the general belief of her class that the best way to help in