Their rooms were separated by a bath, but Linda was scarcely ever in her own—her mother's lovely things, acting like a magnet, constantly drew her to their arrangement in the drawers. When the laundry came up, crisp and fragile webs heaped on the bed, Linda laid it away in a sort of ritual. Even with these publicly invisible garments a difference of choice existed between the two: Mrs. Condon's preference was for insertions, and Linda's for shadow embroidery and fine shell edges. Mrs. Condon, shaking into position a foam of ribbon and lace, would say with her gurgle of amusement, “I want to be ready when I fall down; if I followed your advice they'd take me for a nun.”
This brought out Linda's low clear laugh, the expression of her extreme happiness. It sounded, for an instant, like a chime of small silver bells; then died away, leaving the faintest perceptible flush on her healthy pallor. At other times her mother's humor made her vaguely uncomfortable, usually after wine or other drinks that left the elder's breath thick and oppressive. Linda failed completely to grasp the allusions of this wit but a sharp uneasiness always responded like the lingering stale memory of a bad dream.
Once, at the Boscombe, her mother had been too silly for words: she had giggled and embraced her sweet little girl, torn an expensive veil to shreds and dropped a French model hat into the tub. After a distressing sickness she had gone to sleep fully dressed, and Linda, unable to move or wake her, had sat long beyond dinner into the night, fearful of the entrance of the chambermaid.
The next day Mrs. Condon had been humble with remorse. Men, she said, were too beastly for description. This was not an unusual opinion. Linda observed that she was always condemning men in general and dressing for them in particular. She offered Linda endless advice in an abstracted manner:
“They're all liars, Lin, and stingy about everything but their pleasure. Women are different but men are all alike. You get sick to death of them! Never bother them when they are smoking a cigar; cigarettes don't matter. Leave the cigarette-smokers alone, anyhow; they're not as dependable as the others. A man with a good cigar—you must know the good from the bad—is usually discreet. I ought to bring you up different, but, Lord, life's too short. Besides, you will learn more useful things right with mama, whose eyes are open, than anywhere else.
“Powder my back, darling; I can't reach. If I'm a little late to-night go to sleep like a duck. You think Mr. Jasper's nice, don't you? So does mother. But you mustn't let him give you any more money. It'll make him conceited.”
Linda wondered what she meant by the last phrase. How could it make Mr. Jasper conceited to give her a gold piece? However, she decided that she had better not ask.
It was like that with a great many of her mother's mysterious remarks—Linda had an instinctive feeling of drawing away. The other kissed her warmly and left a print of vivid red on her cheek.
She examined the mark in the mirror when her mother had gone; it was, she decided, the kiss made visible. Then she laid away the things scattered about the room by Mrs. Condon's hasty dressing. Her own belongings were always in precise order.
A sudden hesitation seized her at the thought of going down to the crowd at the music. The women made her uncomfortable. It wasn't what they said, but the way they said it; and the endless questions wearied her. She was, as well, continually bothered by her inability to impress upon them how splendid her mother was. Some of them she was certain did not appreciate her. Mrs. Condon at once admitted and was entertained by this, but it disturbed Linda. However, she understood the reason—when any nice men came along they always liked her mother best. This made the women mad.
The world, she gathered, was a place where women played a game of men with each other. It was very difficult, she couldn't comprehend the rules or reason; and Linda was afraid that she would be unsuccessful and never have the perfect time her mother wanted for her. In the first place, she was too thin, and then she knew that she could never talk like her dearest. Perhaps when she had had some wine it would be different.
She decided, after all, to go down to the assemblage; and, by one of the white marble pillars, Mrs. Randall captured her. “Why, here's Linda-all-alone,” Mrs. Randall said. “Mama out again?” Linda replied stoutly, “She has a dreadful lot of invitations.”
Mrs. Randall, who wore much brighter clothes than her mother, was called by the latter an old buzzard. She was very old, Linda could see, with perfectly useless staring patches of paint on her wrinkled cheeks, and eyes that look as though they might come right out of her head. Her frizzled hair supported a dead false twist with a glittering diamond pin, and her soft cold hands were loaded with jewels. She frightened Linda, really, although she could not say why. Mrs. Randall was a great deal like the witch in a fairy-story, but that wasn't it. Linda hadn't the belief in witches necessary for dread. It might be her scratching voice; or the way she turned her head, without any chin at all, like a turtle; or her dresses, which led you to expect a person very different from an old buzzard.
“Of course she does,” said Mrs. Randall, “any number of invitations, and why shouldn't she? Your mother is very pleasant, to be sure.” She nodded wisely to the woman beside her, Miss Skillern.
Miss Skillern was short and broad and, in the evening, always wore curled ostrich plumes on tightly filled gray puffs. She reminded Linda of a wadded chair. Mrs. Randall, after the other's slight stiff assent, continued:
“Your mama would never be lonely, not she. All I wonder is she doesn't get married again—with that blondine of hers. Wouldn't you rather have one papa than, in a way of speaking, a different one at every hotel?”
Linda, completely at a loss for answer, studied Mrs. Randall with her direct deep blue gaze. Miss Skillern again inclined her plumes. With the rest of her immobile she was surprisingly like one of those fat china figures with a nodding head. Linda was assaulted by the familiar bewildered feeling of not understanding what was said and, at the same time, passionately resenting it from an inner sensitive recognition of something wrong.
“How could I have that?” she finally asked.
“How?” repeated Miss Skillern, breathing loudly.
“Yes, how?” Mrs. Randall echoed. “You can ask your mama. You really can. And you may say that, as a matter of fact, the question came from us,” she included her companion.
“From you,” Miss Skillern exactly corrected her.
“Indeed,” the other cried heatedly, “from me! I think not. Didn't you ask? Answer me that, if you please. I heard you with my own ears say, 'How?' While now, before my face, you try to deny it.” It was plain to Linda that Miss Skillern was totally unmoved by the charge. She moved her lorgnette up, gazing stolidly at the musical programme. “From you,” she said again, after a little. Mrs. Randall suddenly regained her equilibrium.
“If the ladies of this hotel are afraid to face that creature I—I—am not. I'll tell her in a minute what a respectable person thinks of her goings-on. More than that, I shall complain to Mr. Rennert. 'Mr. Rennert,' I'll say, 'either she leaves or me. Choose as you will. The reputation of your hotel—'” she spluttered and paused.
“Proof,” Miss Skillern pronounced judicially; “proof. We know, but that's not proof.”
“He has a wife,” Mrs. Randall replied in a shrill whisper; “a wife who is an invalid. Mrs. Zoock, she who had St. Vitus' dance and left yesterday, heard it direct. George A. Jasper, woolen mills in Frankford, Pennsylvania. Mr. Rennert would thank me for that information.”
They had forgotten Linda. She stood rigid and cold—they were blaming her mother for going out in a rolling chair with Mr. Jasper because he was married. But her mother didn't know that; probably Mr. Jasper had not given it a thought. She was at the point of making this clear, when it seemed to her that it might be better to say that her mother knew everything there was about Mr. Jasper's wife; she could even add that they were all friends.
Linda would have to tell her mother the second she came in, and then, of course, she'd stop going with Mr. Jasper. Men,