Linda Condon
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Joseph Hergesheimer >> Linda Condon
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It was terribly mixed up, but, as she thought about it, it seemed to
her that the world of women was divided into two entirely different
groups, the ones men liked, and who had such splendid parties; and
the ones who sat together and gossiped in sharp lowered voices. She
hoped passionately that her mother would not become one of the
latter for a long long while. But eventually it seemed that there
was no escape from the circle of brilliantly dressed creatures with
ruined faces who congregated in the hotels and whispered and nodded
in company until they went severally to bed.
The great difference between one and the other, of course, was the
favor of men. Their world revolved about that overwhelming fact. Her
mother had informed her of this on a hundred occasions and in
countless ways; but more by her actions, her present wretchedness,
than by speech. It was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else
mattered. She was even beginning, in a vague way, to think of it in
connection with herself; but still most of her preoccupation was in
her mother. She decided gravely that a great deal, yet, could be
done. For instance, lunch to-day:
Her mother had given her a birthday celebration at Henri's, the
famous confectioner but a door or two from their hotel, and at the
end, when a plate of the most amazing and delightful little cakes
had been set on the table, the elder had eaten more than half.
Afterwards she had sworn ruefully at her lack of character, begging
Linda--in a momentary return of former happy companionship--never to
let her make such a silly pig of herself again. Then she got so
tired, Linda continued her mental deliberations; if she could only
rest, go away from cities and resorts for a number of months, the
lines in turn would soon vanish.
The elder moved impatiently, with a fretful exclamation, in the
inner room; from outside came the subdued dull ceaseless clamor of
New York. Formerly it had frightened Linda; but her dread had become
a wordless excitement at the thought of so much just beyond the
windows; her hands grew cold and her heart suddenly pounded,
destroying the vicarious image of her mother.
VI
"I wish now I'd been different," Mrs. Condon said, standing in the
door. Her dress was not yet on, but her underthings were fully as
elaborate and shimmering as any gown could hope to be. "And above
everything else, I am sorry for the kind of mother you've had." This
was so unexpected, the other's voice was so unhappy, that Linda was
startled. She hurried across the room and laid a slim palm on her
mother's full bare arm. "Don't say that," Linda begged, distressed;
"you've been the best in the world."
"You know nothing about it," the elder returned, momentarily seated,
her hands clasped on her full silken lap. "But perhaps it's not too
late. You ought to go to a good school, where you'd learn
everything, but principally what a bad thoughtless mama you have."
"I shouldn't stay a second in a place where they said that," Linda
declared. A new apprehension touched her. "You're not really
thinking of sending me away!" she cried. "Why, you simply could not
get along. You know you couldn't! The maids never do up your dresses
right; and you'd be so lonely in the mornings you would nearly die."
"That's true," Mrs. Condon admitted wearily. "I would expire; but I
was thinking of you--you're only beginning life; and the start
you'll get with me is all wrong. Or, anyway, most people think so."
"They are only jealous."
"Will you go into the closet, darling, and pour out a teeny little
sip from my flask; mama feels a thousand years old this evening."
Returning with the silver cup of the flask half full of pale pungent
brandy Linda could scarcely keep the tears from spilling over her
cheeks. She had never before felt so sad. Her mother hastily drank,
the stinging odor was transferred to her lips; and there was a
palpable recovery of her customary spirit.
"I don't know what gets over me," she asserted. "I'm certain, from
what I've heard of them, that you wouldn't be a bit better off in
one of those fashionable schools for girls. Woman, young and older,
were never meant to be a lot together in one place. It's unnatural.
They don't like each other, ever, and it's all hypocritical and
nasty. You will get more from life, yes, and me. I'm honest, too
honest for my own good, if the truth was known."
She rose and unconsciously strayed to the mirror over the mantel
where she examined her countenance in absorbed detail.
"My skin is getting soft like putty," she remarked aloud to herself.
"The thing is, I've had my time and don't want to pay for it.
Blondes go quicker than dark women; you ought to last a long while,
Linda." Mrs. Condon had turned, and her tone was again almost
complaining, almost ill-natured. Linda considered this information
with a troubled face. It was quite clear that it made her mother
cross. "I've seen men stop and look at you right now, too, and you
nothing more than a slip fourteen years old. Of course, when I was
fifteen I had a proposal; but I was very forward; and somehow you're
different--so dam' serious."
She couldn't help it, Linda thought, if she was serious; she really
had a great deal to think about, their income among other things. If
she didn't watch it, pay the bills every three months when it
arrived, her mother would never have a dollar in the gold mesh bag.
Then, lately, the dresses the elder threatened to buy were often
impossible; Linda learned this from the comments she heard after the
wearing of evening affairs sent home against her earnest protests.
They were, other women more discreetly gowned had agreed,
ridiculous.
Linda calmly realized that in this her judgment was superior to her
mother's. In other ways, too, she felt she was really the elder; and
her dismay at the possibility of going away to school had been
mostly made up of the realization of how much her mother's well-being
was dependent on her.
Mrs. Condon, finishing her dressing in the bedroom, at times called
out various injunctions, general or immediate. "Tell them to have a
taxi at the door for seven sharp. Have you talked to that little
girl in the black velvet?" Linda hadn't and made a mental note to
avoid her more pointedly in the future. "Get out mother's carriage
boots from the hall closet; no, the others--you know I don't wear
the black with coral stockings. They come off and the fur sticks to
my legs. It will be very gay to-night; I hope to heaven Ross doesn't
take too much again." Linda well remembered that the last time Ross
had taken too much her mother's Directoire wrap had been completely
torn in half. "There, it is all nonsense about my fading; I look as
well as I ever did."
Mrs. Condon stood before her daughter like a large flame-pink tulle
flower. Her bright gold hair was constrained by black gauze knotted
behind, her bare shoulders were like powdered rosy marble and the
floating skirts gathered in a hand showed marvelously small satin-tied
carriage boots. Indeed Linda's exclamation of delight was entirely
frank. She had never seen her mother more radiant. The cunningly
applied rouge, the enhanced brilliancy of her long-lashed eyes, had
perfectly the illusion of unspent beauty.
"Do stay down-stairs after dinner and play," the elder begged. "And
if you want to go to the theatre, ask Mr. Bendix, at the desk, to
send you with that chauffeur we have had so much. I positively
forbid your leaving the hotel else. It's a comfort after all, that
you are serious. Kiss mama--"
However, she descended with her mother in the elevator; there was a
more public caress; and the captain in the Chinese dining-room placed
Linda at a small table against the wall. There she had clams--she
adored iced clams--creamed shrimps and oysters with potatoes
_bordure_, alligator-pear salad and a beautiful charlotte cream
with black walnuts. After this she sedately instructed the captain
what to sign on the back of the dinner check--Linda Condon, room
five hundred and seven--placed thirty-five cents beside the finger-bowl
for the waiter, and made her way out to the news stand and the
talkative girl who had it in charge. Exhausting the possibilities of
gossip, and deciding not to go out to the theatre--in spite of the
news girl's exciting description of a play called "The New Sin"--she
was walking irresolutely through the high gilded and marble
assemblage space when, unfortunately, she was captured by Mr. Moses
Feldt.
VII
He led her to a high-backed lounge against the wall, where, seated
on its extreme edge, he gazed silently at her with an expression of
sentimental concern. Mr. Moses Feldt was a short round man, bald but
for a fluffy rim of pale hair, and with the palest imaginable eyes
in a countenance perpetually flushed by the physical necessity of
accommodating his rotundity to awkward edges and conditions. As
usual he was dressed with the nicest care--a band of white linen
laid in the opening of his waistcoat, his scarf ornamented by a
pear-shaped pearl on a diamond finished stem; his cloth-topped
varnished black shoes glistened, while his short fat fingers clasped
a prodigious unlighted cigar. At last, in a tone exactly suited to
his gaze, he exclaimed:
"So that naughty mama has gone out again and deserted Moses and her
little Linda!" In what way her mother had deserted Mr. Feldt she
failed to understand. Of course he wanted to marry them--the
comprehensive phrase was his own--but that didn't include him in
whatever they did. Principally it made a joke for their private
entertainment. Mrs. Condon would mimic his eager manner, "Stella,
let me take you both home where you'll have the best in the land,"
And, "Ladies like you ought to have a loving protection." Linda
would laugh in her cool bell-like manner, and her mother add a
satirical comment on the chance any Moses Feldt had of marrying her.
Linda at once found him ridiculous and a being who forced a
slighting warmth of liking. His appearance was preposterous, the
ready emotion often too foolish for words; but underneath there was
a--a goodness, a mysterious quality that stirred her heart to
recognition. Certain rare things in life and experience affected her
like that memory of an old happiness. She could never say what they
might be, they came at the oddest times and by the most extraordinary
means; but at their occurrence she would thrill for a moment as if
in response to a sound of music.
It was, for example, absurd that Mr. Moses Feldt, who was a Jew,
should make her feel like that, but he did. And all the while that
she was disagreeable to him, or mocking him behind his back, she was
as uncomfortable and "horrid" as possible. While this fact, of
course, only served to make her horrider still. At present she
adopted the manner of a patience that nothing could quite exhaust;
she was polite and formal, relentlessly correct in position.
Mr. Moses Feldt, the cigar in his grasp, pressed a hand to the
probable region of his heart. "You don't know how I think of you,"
he protested, tears in his eyes; "just the idea of you exposed to
anything at all in hotels keeps me awake nights. Now it's a drunk,
or a fresh feller on the elevator, or--"
"It's nice of you," Linda said, "but you needn't worry. No one would
dare to bother us. No one ever has."
"You wouldn't know it if they did," he replied despondently, "at
your age. And then your mother is so trustful and pleasant. Take
those parties where she is so much--roof frolics and cocoanut groves
and submarine cafes; they don't come to any good. Rowdy." Linda
studied him coldly; if he criticized them further she would leave.
He mopped a shining brow with a large colorful silk handkerchief.
"It throws me into a sweat," he admitted.
"Really, Mr. Feldt, you mustn't bother," she told him in one of her
few impulses of friendliness. "You see, we are very experienced." He
nodded without visible happiness at this truth. "I'm a jackass!" he
cried. "Judith tells me that all the time. If you could only see my
daughters," he continued with a new vigor; "such lovely girls as
they are. One dark like you and the other fair as a daisy. Judith
and Pansy. And my home that darling mama made before she died." The
handkerchief was again in evidence.
"Women and girls are funny. I can't get you there and not for
nothing will Judith make a step. It may be pride but it seems to me
such nonsense. I guess I'm old-fashioned and love's old-fashioned.
Homes have gone out of style with the rest. It's all these
restaurants and roofs now, yes, and studios. I tell the girls to
stay away from them and from artists and so on. I don't encourage
them at the apartment--a big lump of a feller with platinum
bracelets on his wrists. What kind of a man would that be! I'd like
to know who'd buy goods from him.
"Sometimes, I'm sorry I got a lot of money, but it made mama happy.
When she laid there at the last sick and couldn't live, I said, 'Oh,
if you only won't leave me I'll give you gold to eat.'" He was so
moved, his face so red, that Linda grew acutely embarrassed. People
were looking at them. She rose stiffly but, in spite of her effort
to escape him, he caught both her hands in his:
"You say I'm an old idiot like Judith," he begged. This Linda
declined to do. And, "Ask your mother if you won't come to dinner
with the girls and me, cozy and at home--just once."
"I'm afraid it will do no good," she admitted; "but I'll try." She
realized that he was about to kiss her and moved quickly back. "I am
almost afraid of you," he told her; "you're so distant and elegant.
Judith and Pansy would get on with you first rate. I'll telephone
tomorrow, in the afternoon. If the last flowers I sent you came I
never heard of it."
She thanked him appropriately for the roses and stood, erect and
impersonal, as a man in the hotel livery helped him into a coat. Mr.
Moses Feldt waved the still unlighted cigar at her and disappeared
through the rotating door to the street.
She gave a half-affected sigh of relief. Couldn't he see that her
mother would never marry him. At the same time the strange thrill
touched her; the sense of his absurdity vanished and she no longer
remembered him perched like a painted rubber ball on the edge of the
lounge.
In the somber red plush and varnished wood of the reception-room of
their suite he seemed again charming. Perhaps it was because he,
too, adored her mother. That wasn't the reason. The familiar rare
joy lingered. It seemed now as though she were to capture and
understand it ... there was the vibration of music; and then, as
always, she felt at once sad and brave. But, in spite of her old
effort to the contrary, the feeling died away. Some day it would be
clear to her; in the meanwhile Mr. Moses Feldt became once more only
ridiculous.
VIII
In the morning she was dressed and had returned from breakfast
before her mother stirred. The latter moved sharply, brought an arm
up over her head, and swore. It was a long while before she got up
or spoke again, and Linda never remembered her in a worse temper.
When, finally, she came into the room where the breakfast-tray was
laid, Linda was inexpressibly shocked--all that her mother had
dreaded about her appearance had come disastrously true. Her face
was hung with shadows like smudges of dirt and her eyes were netted
with lines.
Examining the dishes with distaste she told Linda that positively
she could slap her for letting them bring up orange-juice. "How
often must I explain to you that it freezes my fingers." Linda
replied that she had repeated this in the breakfast-room and perhaps
they had the wrong order. Neither her mother nor she said anything
more until Mrs. Condon had finished her coffee and started a second
cigarette. Then Linda related something of Mr. Moses Feldt's call on
the evening before. "He cried right into his handkerchief," she
said, "until I thought I should sink."
Mrs. Condon eyed her daughter speculatively. "Now if you were only
four years older," she declared, "it would be a good thing. He was
simply born to be a husband." Horror filled Linda at the other's
implication. "Yes," the elder insisted; "you couldn't do better;
except, perhaps, for those girls of his. But then you'd have no
trouble making them miserable. It's time to talk to you seriously
about marriage." The smoke from the cigarette eddied in a gray veil
across her unrefreshed face.
"You're old for your age, Linda; your life has made you that; and,
like I said last night, it is rather better than not. Well, for you
marriage, and soon as possible, is the proper thing. Mind, I have
never said a word against it; only what suits one doesn't suit
another. Where it wouldn't be anything more than an old ladies' home
to me you need it early and plenty. You are too intense. That
doesn't go in the world. Men don't like it. They want their pleasure
and comfort without strings tied to them; the intensity has to be
theirs.
"What you must get through your head is that love--whatever it is--and
marriage are two different things, and if you are going to be
successful they must be kept separate. You can't do anything with a
man if you love him; but then you can't do anything with him if he
doesn't love you. That's the whole thing in a breath. I am not
crying down love, either; only I don't want you to think it is the
bread and butter while it's nothing more than those little sweet
cakes at Henri's.
"Now any girl who marries a poor man or for love--they are the same
thing--is a fool and deserves what she gets. No one thanks her for
it, him least of all; because if she does love him it is only to
make them miserable. She's always at him--where did he go and why
did he stay so long, and no matter what he says she knows it's a
lie. More times than not she's right, too. I can't tell you too
often--men don't want to be loved, they like to be flattered and
flattered and then flattered again. You'd never believe how childish
they are.
"Make them think they're it and don't give too much--that's the
secret. Above all else don't be easy on them. Don't say 'all right,
darling, next spring will do as well for a new suit.' Get it then
and let him worry about paying for it, if worry he must. If they
don't give it to you some one smarter will wear it. But I started to
talk about getting married.
"Choose a Moses Feldt, who will always be grateful to you, and keep
him at it. They are so easy to land it's a kind of shame, too. Perhaps
I am telling you this too soon, but I don't want any mistakes. Well,
pick out your Moses--and mama will help you there--and suddenly, at
the right time, show him that you can be affectionate; surprise him
with it and you so staid and particular generally. Don't overdo it,
promise more than you ever give--
"In the closet, dearie, just a little. That's a good girl. Mama's so
dry." She rose, the silver cup of the flask in her hand, and moved
inevitably to the mirror. "My hair's a sight," she remarked; "all
strings. I believe I'll get a permanent wave. They say it lasts for
six months or more, till the ends grow out. Makes a lot of it, too,
and holds the front together. If you've ever had dye in your hair, I
hear, it will break off like grass."
Linda pondered over what she had been told of love and marriage; on
the whole the exposition had been unsatisfactory. The latter she was
able to grasp, but her mother had admitted an inability exactly to
fix love. One fact, apparently, was clear--it was a nuisance and a
hindrance to happiness, or rather to success. Love upset things.
Still she had the strongest objection possible to living forever
with a man like Mr. Moses Feldt. At once all that she had hoped for
from life grew flat and uninteresting. She had no doubt of her
mother's correctness and wisdom; the world was like that; she must
make the best of it.
There was some telephoning, inquiries, and she heard the elder make
an appointment with a hair-dresser for three that afternoon. She
wondered what it would be like to have your hair permanently waved
and hoped that she would see it done. This, too, she realized, was a
part of the necessity of always considering men--they liked your
hair to be wavy. Hers was as straight and stupid as possible. She,
in turn, examined herself in a mirror: the black bang fell exactly
to her eyebrows, her face had no color other than the carnation of
her lips and her deep blue eyes. She moved away and critically
studied her figure; inches and inches too thin, she decided.
Undoubtedly her mother was right, and she must marry at the first
opportunity--if she could find a man, a rich man, who was willing.
Her thoughts returned vaguely to the mystery, the nuisance, of love.
Surely she had heard something before, immensely important, about
it, and totally different from all her mother had said. Her mind was
filled with the fantastic image of a forest, of dangers, and a fat
china figure with curled plumes, a nodding head, that brushed her
with fear and disgust. A shuddering panic took possession of her,
flashes burned before her eyes, and she ran gasping to the perfumed
soft reassurances of her mother.
IX
In a recurrence of her surprising concern of the day before Mrs.
Condon declined to leave her dearest Linda alone; and, their arms
caught together in a surging affection, they walked down Fifth
Avenue toward the hairdresser's. There was a diffused gray sparkle
of sunlight--it was early for the throngs--through which they passed
rapidly to the accompaniment of a rapid eager chatter. Linda wore a
deep smooth camel's hair cape, over which her intense black hair
poured like ink, and her face was shaded by a dipping green velvet
hat. Her mother, in one of the tightly cut suits she affected, had
never been more like a perfect companion.
They saw, in the window of a store for men, a set of violent purple
wool underwear, and barely escaped hysterics at the thought of Mr.
Moses Feldt in such a garb. They giggled idiotically at the
spectacle of a countryman fearfully making the sharp descent from
the top of a lurching omnibus. And then, when they had reached the
place of Mrs. Condon's appointment, stopped at the show of
elaborately waved hair on wax heads and chose which, probably, would
resemble the elder and which, in a very short while now, Linda.
There was an impressive interior, furnished in gray panels and
silvery wood; and the young woman at the desk was more surprisingly
waved than anything they had yet seen. M. Joseph would be ready
almost immediately; and in the meanwhile Mrs. Condon could lay aside
her things in preparation for the hair to be washed. She did this
while Linda followed every movement with the deepest interest.
At the back of the long room was a succession of small alcoves, each
with an important-looking chair and mirror and shelves, a white
basin, water-taps and rubber tubes. Settled, in comfort, Mrs.
Condon's hair was spread out in a bright metal tray fastened to the
back of the chair, and the attendant, a moist tired girl in a
careless waist, sprayed the short thick gold-colored strands.
"My," she observed, "what some wouldn't give for your shade! Never
been touched, I can see, either. A lady comes in with real Titian,
but yours is more select. It positively is Lillian Russell." While
she talked her hands sped with incredible rapidity and skill. "The
gentlemen don't notice it; of course not; oh, no! There was a girl
here, a true blonde, but she didn't stay long--her own car, yes,
indeed. Married her right out of the establishment. There wasn't any
nonsense to her.
"So this is your little girl! I'd never have believed it. Not that
she hasn't a great deal of style, a great deal--almost, you might
say, like an Egyptian. In the movies last night; her all over. It's
a type that will need studying. Bertha Kalich. But for me--"
Already, Linda saw, this part of the operation was done. The girl
wheeled into position a case that had a fan and ring of blue
flickering flames, and a cupped tube through which hot air was
poured over her mother's head. M. Joseph strutted in, a small
carefully dressed man with a diminutive pointed gray beard and
formal curled mustache. He spoke with what Linda supposed was a
French accent, and his manners, at least to them, were beautiful.
But because the girl had not put out the blue flames quickly enough
he turned to her with a voice of quivering rage.
It was so unexpected, in the middle of his bowing and smooth
assurances, that Linda was startled, and had to think about him all
over. The result of this was a surprising dislike; she hated, even,
to see him touch her mother, as he unnecessarily did in directing
them into the enclosure for the permanent wave.
The place itself filled her with the faint horror of instruments and
the unknown. Above the chair where Mrs. Condon now sat there was a
circle in the ceiling like the base of a chandelier and hanging down
from it on twisted green wires were a great number of the strangest
things imaginable: they were as thick as her wrist, but round,
longer and hollow, white china inside and covered with brown
wrapping. The wires of each, she discovered, led over a little wheel
and down again to a swinging clock-like weight. In addition to this
there were strange depressing handles on the wall by a dial with a
jiggling needle and clearly marked numbers.
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