CHAPTER I

THE PRINCESS CINDERELLA

When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its

trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches

had taken the Allison McCreas' house, furnished, for a year, beginning

in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybody knew,

it was an ideal house for a young married couple, and it was equally

evident that the Rodney Aldriches were an ideal couple for it.

In the sense that it left nothing to further realization, it was an

ideal house; an old house in the Chicago sense, built over into

something very much older still--Tudor, perhaps--Jacobean, anyway--by a

smart young society architect who wore soft collars and an uptwisted

mustache, and who, by a perfectly reciprocal arrangement which almost

deserves to be called a form of perpetual motion, owed the fact that he

was an architect to his social position, and maintained his social

position by being an architect.

He had cooperated enthusiastically with Florence McCrea, not only in the

design of the house, but in the supplementary matters of furniture,

hangings, rugs and pictures, with the effect that the establishment

presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be.

The period furniture was accurate almost to the minute, and the

arrangement of it, the color schemes and the lighting, had at once the

finality of perfection and the perfection of finality. If you happened

to like that sort of thing, it was precisely the sort of thing you'd

like.

The same sort of neat, fully acquired perfection characterized the

McCreas' domestic arrangements. Allison McCrea's income, combined with

his wife's, was exactly enough to enable them to live in this house and

entertain on the scale it very definitely prescribed, just half the

time. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction

or another, and rented their house furnished for exactly enough to pay

all their expenses. They had no children, and his business, which

consisted in allowing his bank to collect his invariable quarterly

dividends for him and credit them to his account, offered no obstacle to

this arrangement. On the alternate years, they came back and spent two

years' income living in their house.

Florence was an old friend of Rodney's and it was her notion that it

would be just the thing he'd want. She made no professions of

altruism--admitted she was fussy about whom she rented her darling house

to, and that Rodney and his wife would be exactly right. Still, she

didn't believe he could do better. They'd have to have some sort of

place to live in, in the autumn. It would be such a mistake to buy a lot

of stuff in a hurry and find out later that they didn't want it! The

arrangement she proposed would leave him an idyllically untroubled

summer--nothing to fuss about, and provide ... Well, Rodney knew for

himself what the house was--complete down to the cork-screws.

Even the servant question was eliminated. "Ours are so good," Florence

said, "that the last time we rented the house, we put them in the lease.

I wouldn't do that with you, of course, but I know they'll be just what

you want." And six thousand dollars a year was simply dirt cheap.

To clinch the thing, Florence went around and saw Frederica about it.

And Frederica, after listening, non-committally, dashed off to the last

meeting of the Thursday Club (all this happened in June, just before the

wedding) and talked the matter over with Violet Williamson on the way

home, afterward.

"John said once," observed Violet, "that if he had to live in that

house, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from

feather-your-nest Saltzman's, and a golden oak sideboard, or else run

amuck."

Frederica grinned, but was sure it wouldn't affect Rodney that way.

He'd never notice that there _wasn't_ a golden oak sideboard with a

beveled mirror in it. As for Rose, she thought Rose would like it--for a

while, anyway. Of course it wasn't forever. But this wasn't the point.

It was something else she had to get an unprejudiced opinion on, "simply

because in this case my own isn't trustworthy. I'm so foolish about old

Roddy, that I can't be sure I haven't--well, caught being mad about Rose

from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit

this winter or not. If she is, they'll want a place just like that and

it would be a shame for her to be bothered and unsettled when she might

have everything all oiled for her. But of course if she doesn't--go (and

it all depends on her; Rodney won't be much help)--why, having a house

like that might be pretty sad. So, if you're a true friend, you'll tell

me what you think."

"What I really think," said Violet, "--of course I suppose I'd say this

anyway, but I do honestly mean it--is that she'll be what John calls a

'knock-out.' To be sure, I've only met her twice, but I think she's

absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never--don't you

know--_being_ anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so

wonderful--clever and witty and beautiful and all that--just honestly

thinks so, that she'll make everybody feel warm and nice inside, and

they'll be sure to like her. Of course, when she gets over feeling that

way about us...."

"She's got a real eye for clothes, too," said Frederica. "We've been

shopping. Well then, I'm going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the

house."

Rose was consulted about it of course, though consulted is perhaps not

the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she

liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as

well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had

provided her with for the prince's ball.

It didn't occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the

fact have had any value for her as an illuminant, because she would have

had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of

her future husband's income. The new house was just a part--as so many

of the other things that had happened to her since that night when

Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater and two

restaurants in Martin's biggest limousine had been parts--of a

breath-arresting fairy story.

It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel

quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return

to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all,

as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole

thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she

had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was,

deliciously, being floated along.

The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for

social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that

Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume

that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful

as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one

provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should

say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for

unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been,

if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes

ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince

the way Cinderella must have looked at him.

While a sophisticated woman can affect this sort of simplicity well

enough to take in the men, the affectation is always transparently clear

to other women and they detest her for it. But it was altogether the

real thing with Rose, and they knew it and took to her as naturally as

the men did.

So it fell out that what with the Junior League, the woman's auxiliary

boards of one or two of the more respectably elect charities, the

Thursday Club and The Whifflers (this was the smallest and smartest

organization of the lot--fifteen or twenty young women supposed to

combine and reconcile social and intellectual brilliancy on even terms.

They met at one another's houses and read scintillating papers about

nothing whatever under titles selected generally from _Through the

Looking-glass_ or _The Hunting of the Snark_)--what with all this, her

days were quite as full as the evenings were, when she and Rodney dined

and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals,

to keep themselves abreast of the minute in all the new dances.

But it wasn't merely the events of this sort, sitting in boxes at the

opera and going to marvelous supper dances afterward, that had this

thrilling quality of incredibility to Rose. The connective tissue of her

life gave her the same sensation, perhaps even more strongly.

Portia had been quite right in saying that she had never _had_ to do

anything; the rallying of all her forces under the spur of necessity was

an experience she had never undergone. And it was also true that her

mother, and for that matter, Portia herself had spoiled her a lot--had

run about doing little things for her, come in and shut down her windows

in the morning, and opened the register, and on any sort of excuse, on a

Saturday morning, for example, had brought her her breakfast on a tray.

But these things had been favors, not services--never to be asked for,

of course, and always to be accepted a little apologetically. She never

knew what it was really to be served, until she and Rodney came back

from their camp in the woods. The whole mechanism of ringing bells for

people, telling them, quite courteously of course, but with no spare

words, precisely what she wanted them to do and seeing them, with no

words at all of their own, except the barest minimum required to

indicate respectful acquiescence--carrying out these instructions, was

in its novelty, as sensuously delightful a thing to her feelings as the

contact with a fine fabric was to her finger-tips.

"I haven't," Rose, in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed,

mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had

been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling

seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinée party. So, she

concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the day was empty.

"Oh, that's too bad," he said with concern. "Can't you manage

something ...?"

"Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. "It's too heavenly! I've got a

whole day just to enjoy being myself;--being"--she reached across to the

other bed for his hand, and getting it, stroked her cheek with

it--"being my new self. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting

all the little things about it are. State Street's so different

now--going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding

something I can make do, and then faking it up to look as much like the

real thing as I could. Portia used to think I faked pretty well. It was

the one thing she really admired about me, because she couldn't do it

herself at all. But I never was--don't you know?--right.

"And then when I was going anywhere, I'd figure out the through routes

and where I'd take transfers, and how many blocks I'd have to walk, and

what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner

always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it simply never

occurred to me that everybody else didn't do it that way. Except"--she

smiled--"except in Robert Chambers' novels and such."

It wasn't necessary to see Rose smile to know she did it. Her voice,

broadening out and--dimpling, betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly

enough, went rather below the surface, carried a reference to something.

But Rodney didn't interrupt. He let her go on and waited to inquire

about it later.

"So you see," she concluded, "it's quite an adventure just to say--well,

that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly

where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as if I ought to say that

if he'll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey Street, I can

walk."

He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful

state of things would last.

"Forever," she said.

But presently she propped herself up on one elbow and looked over at him

rather thoughtfully. "Of course it's none of it new to you," she

said--"not the silly little things I've been talking about, nor the

things we do together--oh, the dinners, and the dances, and the operas.

Do you sort of--wish I'd get tired of it? Is it a dreadful bore to you?"

"So long as it doesn't bore you," he said; "so long as you go

on--shining the way you do over it, and I am where I can see you

shine"--he got out of his bed, sat down on the edge of hers, and took

both her hands--"so long as it's like that, you wonder," he said, "well,

the dinners and the operas and all that may be piffle, but I shall be

blind to the fact."

She kissed his hands and told him contentedly that he was a darling.

But, after a moment's silence, a little frown puckered her eyebrows and

she asked him what he was so solemn about.

Well, he had told her the truth. The edge of excitement in his voice

would have carried the irresistible conviction to anybody, that the

thing he had said was, without reserve, the very thing he meant. But

precisely as he said it, as if, indeed, the thing that he had said were

the detonating charge that fires the shell, he felt the impact, away

down in the inner depths of him, of a realization that he was not the

same man he had been six months ago. Not the man who had tramped

impatiently back and forth across Frederica's drawing-room, expounding

his ideals of space and leisure--open, wind-swept space, for the free

range of a hard, clean, athletic mind. Not the man who despised the

clutter of expensive junk--"so many things to have and to do, that one

couldn't turn around for fear of breaking something." That man would

have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he,

still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose--and meant.

To that man, the priceless hour of the day had always been precisely

this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a

sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest

problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him

to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had

left it the night before.

He spent that hour very differently now. He spent all his hours, even

the formal working ones, differently. And the terrifying thing was that

he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to

now, as he sat there looking down at her--at the wonderful hair which

framed her face and, in its two thick braids, the incomparable whiteness

of her throat and bosom--at the slumberous glory of her eyes.

So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with

more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make

anybody solemn to look at her. And then, to break the spell, he asked

her why she had laughed a little while back, over something she had said

about Robert W. Chambers' novels.

"I was thinking," she said, "of the awful disgrace I got into yesterday,

with somebody--well, with Bertram Willis, by saying something like that.

I'll have to tell you about it."

Bertram Willis, it should be said, was the young architect with the

upturned mustaches and the soft Byronic collars, who had done the house

for the McCreas. And I must warn you to take the adjective young, with a

grain of salt. Youth was no mere accident with him. He made an art of

it, just as he did of eating and drinking and love-making and,

incidentally, architecture. He was enormously in demand, chiefly

perhaps, among young married women whose respectability and social

position were alike beyond cavil. He never carried anything too far, you

see. He was no pirate--a sort, rather, of licensed privateer. And what

made him so invincibly attractive--after you had granted his other

qualities, that is--was that he professed himself, among women,

exceedingly difficult to please, so that attentions from him, even of a

casual sort, became _ex hypothesi_ compliments of the first order. If he

asked you, in his innocently shameless way, to belong to his _hareem_,

you boasted of it afterward;--jocularly, to be sure, but you felt

pleased just the same. The thing that had given the final cachet of

distinction to Rose's social success that season, had been the fact that

he had shown a disposition to flirt with her quite furiously.

Rose didn't need to tell her husband that, of course, because he knew it

already, as he also knew that Willis had asked her to be one of the

Watteau group he was getting up for the charity ball (the ball was to

be a sumptuously picturesque affair that year), nor that he had been

spending hours with her over the question of costumes--getting as good

as he gave, too, because her eye for clothes amounted to a really

special talent.

All that Rodney didn't know, was about the conversation the two of them

had had yesterday afternoon at tea-time.

Rose, intent on telling him all about it, had postponed the recital

while she made up her own mind as to how she should regard the thing

herself; whether she ought to have been annoyed, or seriously

remonstrant, or whether the smile of pure amusement which had come so

spontaneously to her lips, had expressed, after all, an adequate

emotion.

The look in her husband's face made an end of all doubts, reduced the

episode of yesterday to its proper scale. Married to a man who could

look at her like that, she needn't take any one else's looks or speeches

very seriously. It was at this angle that she told about it.

"Why," she said, "of course he's always talked to me as if I were about

six--sixteen, anyway, no older than that, and the names he makes up to

call me are simply too silly to repeat. But I never paid any attention,

because--well, everybody knows he's that way to everybody. 'Flower face'

was one of his favorites, but there were others that were worse. Well,

yesterday he brought around some old costume plates, but he wouldn't let

me look at them without coming round beside me and--holding my hand, so

that didn't work very well. And then he got quite solemn and said

I'd--given him the only real regret of his life, because he hadn't seen

me until it was too late."

"I didn't know," said Rodney, "that he ever let obstacles like husbands

bother him."

"That's what I thought he meant at first," said Rose, "but it wasn't. He

didn't mean it was too late because of my being married to you. He meant

too late because of him. He couldn't love me, he said, as I deserved,

because he'd been in love so many times before, himself.

"And then, of course, just when I should have been looking awfully sad

and sympathetic, I had to go and grin, and he wanted to know why, and I

said, 'Nothing,' but he insisted, you know, so then I told him.

"Well, it was just what I said to you a while ago--that I didn't know

any men ever talked like that except in books by Hichens or

Chambers--why do you suppose they're both named Robert?--and he went

perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got

madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five

minutes; and I wanted to tell him to go ahead and try, and see what

happened, but I didn't. I asked him how he wanted his tea, and he didn't

want it at all, and went away."

As she finished, she glanced up into his face for a hardly-needed

reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her,

trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just

what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck.

"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us

had married anybody else."

If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis

seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the

architect's attentions important.