Chapter III: Part 3

But to-night he came rushing in like a boy, and the instant Nancy saw the cause of his excitement, she was up from her place, and as wild with pleasure as a girl. The deeds! The actual title to Holly Court! Then it was all right? It was all right! It was theirs. Nancy showed the stamped and ruled and folded paper to the children. Oh, she had been so much afraid that something would go wrong. She had been so worried.

Nothing else was talked of that night, or for many days and nights. Bert said that they might as well move at once, no use paying rent when you owned a place, and he and Nancy entered into delightful calculations as to the placing of rugs and tables and chairs. The things might come out of storage now--wouldn't the banjo clock and the pineapple bed look wonderful in Holly Court! The children rejoiced in the parental decision to go and see it again next Sunday, and take lunch this time, and be all by themselves, and really get to know the place.

Curiously, neither Nancy nor Bert could distinctly remember anything but its most obvious features, now. Just how the stairs came down into the pantry, and how the doors into the bedrooms opened, they were unable to remember. But it was perfection, they remembered that.

And on Sunday, as eager as the children, they went down to Marlborough Gardens again, to find it all lovelier and better than their memory of it. After that they went every Sunday until they moved, and Holly Court seemed to grow better and better. The school and county taxes were already paid, and the receipts given him, and there was no rent! Husband and wife, eyeing the dignified disposition of the furniture, the white crib in the big dressing room next to their own, the boys' narrow beds separated by strips of rug and neat little dressers, the spare room with the pineapple bed, and the blue scarfs lettered "Perugia--Perugia--Perugia"--looked into each other's eyes and said that they had done well.

Chapter Twenty

The rest of that summer, and the fall, were like an exquisite dream. All the Bradleys were well, and happier than their happiest dream. Nancy took the children swimming daily on the quiet, deserted beach just above the club grounds; on Saturdays and Sundays they all went swimming. She made her own bed every morning, and the children's beds, and she dusted the beautiful drawing room, and set the upper half of the Dutch door at a dozen angles, trying to decide which was the prettiest. She and Anne made a little ceremony of filling the vases with flowers, and the boys were obliged to keep the brick paths and the lawn clear of toys.

Nancy made a quiet boast in those days that they let the neighbours alone, and the neighbours let them alone. But she did meet one or two of the Marlborough Beach women, and liked them. And three times during the summer she and Bert asked city friends to visit them; times of pride and pleasure for the Bradleys. Their obvious prosperity, their handsome children, and the ideal home could not but send everyone away admiring. It was after the last of these visits that Bert told his wife that they ought to join the club.

"I don't quite understand that--don't we belong?" Nancy asked.

"The Club belongs to all the owners of Marlborough Beach," Bert explained. "But--but I feel a little awkward about butting in there. However, now that this fellow Biggerstaff, that I meet so much in the train, seems to be so well inclined, suppose you and I dress up and wander over there for tea, on Sunday? We'll leave the kids here, and just try it."

Nancy somewhat reluctantly consented to the plan, observing that she didn't want to do the wrong thing. But it proved the right thing, for not only did the friendly Biggerstaff come over to the Bradleys tea-table, but he brought pretty Mrs. Biggerstaff, and left her with the new-comers while he went off to find other men and women to introduce. The Bradleys met the Roses, and the Seward Smiths and gray-haired Mrs. Underhill, with her son, and his motherless boys--the hour was confused, but heart-warming. When the Bradleys went home in the Roses' car, they felt that they had been honestly welcomed to Marlborough Gardens. Nancy was so excited that she did not want any supper; she sat with Anne in her lap chattering about the social possibilities opening before her.

"Rose tells me that the club dues are fifty a year," Bert said, "and some of the bathhouses are five, and the others twenty each. The twenties are dandies--twelve feet square, with gratings, and wooden hooks, and lots of space. However, we don't have to decide that until next year. Of course you sign for teas and all that but the cards and card-tables and so on, are supplied by the club, and the tennis courts and lockers and so on, are absolutely free."

"Isn't that wonderful?" Nancy said.

"Well, Rose said they weren't trying to make anything out of it--it's a family club, and it's here for the general convenience of the Gardens. Now, for instance, if a fellow from outside joins, he pays one hundred and fifty initiation fee, and seventy-five a year."

"H'm!" said Nancy, in satisfaction. The Marlborough Gardens Yacht Club was not for the masses. "All we need for the children is a five-dollar bath house," she added presently, "For we're so near that it's really easier for you and me to walk over in our bathing suits."

"Oh, sure!" Bert agreed easily. "Unless, of course," he added after a pause, "all the other fellows do something else."

"Oh of course!" agreed Nancy, little dreaming that she and her husband were in these words voicing the new creed that was to be theirs.

Chapter Twenty-one

Up to this time it might have been said that the Bradleys had grasped their destiny, and controlled it with a high hand. Now their destiny grasped them, and they became its helpless prey. Neither Nancy nor Bert was at all conscious of this; in deciding to do just what all the other persons at the Gardens did, they merely felt that they were accepted, that they were a part at last of this wholly fascinating and desirable group.

At first it meant only that they went to the fortnightly dinner at the club, and danced, on alternate Saturday nights. Nancy danced exquisitely, even after her ten busy and tiring years, and Bert was always proud of her when he saw her dancing. The dances broke up very late; the Bradleys were reproached for going home at two o'clock. They both usually felt a little tired and jaded the next day, and not quite so ready to tramp with the children, or superintend brush fires or snow-shovelling as had once been their happy fashion.

But they were fresh and eager at four o'clock when Marlborough Gardens came in for tea by the fire, or when the telephone summoned them to some other fireside for tea. It rarely was tea; Nancy wondered that even the women did not care for tea. They sometimes drank it, and crunched cinnamon toast, after card parties, but on Saturdays and Sundays, when men were in the group, stronger drinks were the fashion, cocktails and highballs, or a bowl of punch. The Bradleys were charming people, Marlborough Gardens decided warm-heartedly; they had watched the pretty new-comer and her splashing, sturdy children, all through the first quiet summer--the children indeed, were all good friends already. The grown-ups followed suit.

Motor-cars began to come down the short lane that ended at the gate of Holly Court, and joyous and chattering men and women to come in to tea. Nancy loved this, and to see a group of men standing about his blazing logs filled Bert's heart with pride. It was rather demoralizing in a domestic sense, dinner was delayed, and their bedtime consequently delayed, and Dora, the cook was disgruntled at seven o'clock, when it was still impossible to set the dinner table. But Nancy, rather than disturb her guests, got a second servant, an enormous Irishwoman named Agnes, who carried the children off quietly for a supper in the kitchen, when tea-time callers came, and managed them far more easily than their mother could.

Before the second summer came Nancy had come to be ashamed of some of her economies that first summer. Taking the children informally across the back of the empty Somers' place, and letting them bathe on the deserted beach next to the club, wearing faded cottons, and picknicking as near as the Half Mile Light, seemed rather shabby performances. These things had seemed luxury a year ago, but she wondered now how she could have done them. Sometimes she reminded Bert of the much older times, of the oyster party and the hat-pins, or the terrible summer at The Old Hill House, but she never spoke of them above her breath.

On the contrary, she had to watch carefully not to inadvertently admit to Marlborough Gardens that the financial standing of the Bradleys was not quite all the heart might have desired. Nancy had no particular sense of shame in the matter, she would have really enjoyed discussing finances with these new friends. But money, as money, was never mentioned. It flowed in a mysterious, and apparently inexhaustible stream through the hands of these young men and women, and while many of them knew acute anxiety concerning it, it was not the correct thing to speak of it. They had various reasons for doing, or not doing, various things. But money never influenced them. Oliver Rose kept a boat, kept a car and gave up his boat, took to golf and said he might sell his big car--but he seemed to be wasting, rather than saving, money, by these casual transfers. Mrs. Seward Smith said that her husband wanted her to go into town for the winter, but that it was a bore, and she hated big hotels. Mrs. Biggerstaff suggested lazily that they all wait until February and then go to Bermuda, and although they did not go, Nancy never heard anyone say that the holiday was too expensive. Everybody always had gowns and maids and dinners enough; there was no particular display. Old Mrs. Underhill indeed dressed with the quaint simplicity of a Quaker, and even gay little Mrs. Fielding, who had been divorced, and was a daughter of the railroad king, Lowell Lang, said that she hated Newport and Easthampton because the women dressed so much. She dressed more beautifully than any other women at Marlborough Gardens, but was quite unostentatious and informal.

Nancy's cheeks burned when she remembered something she had innocently said to Mrs. Fielding, in the early days of their acquaintance. The fare to the city was seventy cents, and Nancy commented with a sort of laughing protest upon the quickness with which her mileage books were exhausted, between the boys' dentist appointments, shopping trips, the trips twice a month that helped to keep Agnes and Dora happy, and the occasional dinner and theatre party she herself had with Bert.

"Besides that," she smiled ruefully, "There's the cab fare to the station, that wretched Kilroy charges fifty cents each way, even for Anne, and double after ten o'clock at night, so that it almost pays Mr. Bradley and myself to stay in town!"

"I never go in the train, I don't believe I've ever made the trip that way," said Mrs. Fielding pleasantly. And immediately she added, "Thorn has nothing to do, and it saves me any amount of fatigue, having him follow me about!"

"But what do you do with the car, if you stay in for the theatre?" Nancy asked, a day or two later, after she and Bert had made some calculations as to the expense of this.

"Oh, Thorn leaves it in some garage, there are lots of them. And he gets his dinner somewhere, and goes to a show himself, I suppose!" Mrs. Fielding said. Nancy made no answer, but when she and Bert were next held on a Fifth Avenue crossing, she spoke of it again. Hundreds of men and women younger than Nancy and Bert were sitting in that river of motor-cars--how easily for granted they seemed to feel them!

"Just as I am beginning to take my lovely husband and children, and my beautiful home for granted," Nancy said sensibly, giving herself a little shake. "We have too much now, and here I am wondering what it would be like to have a motor-car!"

And the next day she spoke carelessly at the club of the smaller bathhouses.

"This is a wonderful bath house of yours, Mrs. Ingram; but aren't there smaller ones?"

Mrs. Ingram, a distinguished-looking, plain woman of forty, with the pleasantest smile in the world, turned quickly from the big dressing room she had just engaged, and was inspecting.

"Yes, there are, Mrs. Bradley, they're in that little green row, right against the wall of the garages. We had to have them, you know, for the children, and a bachelor or two, who couldn't use a big one, and then of course the maids love to go in, in the mornings--my boys used one until last year, preferred it!"

And she smiled at the two tall boys in crumpled linen, who were testing the pegs and investigating the advantages of the room. Nancy had meant to be firm about that bathhouse, but she did not feel quite equal to it at this moment. She allowed her fancy to play for one delightful minute with the thought of a big dressing room; the one right next to Mrs. Ingram's, with the green awning!

"But twenty dollars a season is an outrageous rent for a bathhouse!" she said to Bert that night.

"Oh, I don't know," he said comfortably, "We've got the money. It amounts only to about five dollars a month, after all. I vote for the big one."

"Well, of course it'll be just the most glorious luxury that ever WAS," Nancy agreed happily. She loved the water, and Bert enjoyed nothing so much in the world as an hour's swimming with the children, but before that second summer was over they could not but see that their enthusiasm was unshared by the majority of their neighbours. The children all went in daily, at the stillwater, and the few young girls Marlborough Gardens boasted also went in, on Sundays, in marvellous costumes. At these times there was much picturesque grouping on the pier, and the float, and much low conversation between isolated couples, while flying soft hair was drying. Also the men of all ages went in, for perhaps ten minutes brisk overhand exercise, and came gasping out for showers and rough towelling.

But Nancy's women friends did not care for sea-bathing, and she came to feel that there was something just a trifle provincial in the open joyousness with which the five Bradleys gathered for their Sunday riot. If there was a morning tide they were comparatively unnoticed, although there were always a few boats going out, and few men on the tennis courts. But when the tide was high in the afternoon, even Bert admitted that it was "darned conspicuous" for the family to file across the vision of the women who were playing bridge on the porch, and for Anne to shriek over her water-wings and the boys to yell, as they inevitably did yell, "Gee--it's cold!"

Their real reason for more or less abandoning the habit was that there was so much else to do. Bert played golf, Nancy learned to score tennis as she watched it, and to avoid applause for errors, and to play excellent bridge for quarter-cent points. She went to two or three luncheons sometimes in a single week; and cold Sunday lunches, with much passing of beer and sharing of plates, were popular at Marlborough Gardens. Holly Court was especially suited to this sort of hospitality, and it was an easy sort to extend. Nancy sent the children off with Agnes, bribed her cook, bribed the laundress to wash all the table linen twice weekly, and on special occasions employed a large, efficient Swedish woman from the village for a day, or a week-end. "I'll get Christiana," was one of the phrases that fell frequently from Nancy's lips.

Chapter Twenty-two

Miraculously, finances stood the strain. Bert was doing well, and sometimes made several good commissions together--not as large as the famous commission, but still important. Neither he nor Nancy kept accounts any more, bills were paid as they came in, and money was put into the bank as it came in. Nancy had a check book, but she rarely used it. Sometimes, when Mrs. Biggerstaff or Mrs. Underhill asked her to join a Girls' Home Society or demanded a prize for the Charity Bridge, Nancy liked to show herself ready to help, but for other purposes she needed no money. She ordered all household goods by telephone, signed "chits" at the club, kept her bridge winnings loose in a small enamelled box, ready for losing, and, when she went into town, charged on her accounts right and left, and met Bert for luncheon. So that, when they really had their first serious talk about money, Nancy was able to say with a quite plausible air of innocence, "Well, Bert, I haven't asked you for one cent since the day I needed mileage. I don't WASTE money! I never DID."

"Well, we've got it!" Bert said uncomfortably, on the day of this talk. He had vaguely hoped, as the month went by, that it was going to show him well ahead financially. However, if things "broke even," he might well congratulate himself. Certainly they were having a glorious time, there was no denying that.

"Do you recognize us, Bert?" Nancy sometimes asked him exultingly, as she tucked herself joyously into somebody's big tonneau, or snatched open a bureau drawer to find fresh prettiness for some unexpected outing. "Do you remember our wanting to join the Silver River Country Club! That little club!"

"Gosh, it's queer!" Bert would agree, grinning. And late in the second summer he said, "If I put the Buller deal over, I think I'll get a car!"

"Well, honestly, I think we ought to have a car," Nancy said seriously, after a flashing look of delight, "It isn't an extravagance at all, Bert, if you really figure it out. The man does errands for you, saves you I don't know how much cab fare, takes care of the place, and Mary Ingram's man has a garbage incinerator--and saves that expense! Then, it's one of the things you truly ought to have, down here. You have friends down Saturday, you play golf, you play bridge after dinner--well and good. Sunday morning we swim, and come home to lunch, and then what? You can't ask other friends in to lunch and then propose that they take us in their cars down the island somewhere? And yet that's what they do; and I assure you it embarrasses me, over and over again."

"Oh, we'll have to have a car--I'm glad you see it," said Bert.

The Buller deal being duly completed, they got their car. The picturesque garage was no longer useless. A silent, wizened little Frenchman and his wife took possession of the big room over the kitchen, Pierre to manage the garden and the car, Pauline to cook--she was a marvellous cook. Nancy kept Agnes, and got a little maid besides, who was to make herself generally useful in dining room and bedrooms.

The new arrangement worked like a charm. There was no woman in the Gardens who did not envy the Bradleys their cook, and Nancy felt the possession of Pauline a real feather in her cap. Pauline exulted in emergencies, and Nancy and Bert experienced a fearful delight when they put her to the test, and sat bewildered at their own table, while the dainty courses followed one another from some mysterious source to which Pauline alone held the clue.

The children were somewhat in the background now, but they seemed well cared for, and contented enough when they made their occasional appearances before their mother's friends. There was a fine private school in the Gardens, and although the fees for the two boys, with music lessons twice weekly, came to thirty dollars a month, Nancy paid it without self-reproach. The alternative was to send them into the village public school, which was attended by not one single child from the Gardens. The Ingram boys went away to boarding school at Pomfret, Dorothy Rose boarded in New York, and the Underbill boys had a tutor, who also had charge of one or two other boys preparing for college preparatory schools. While the boys were away Anne drifted about with her mother, or more often with Agnes, or was allowed to go to play with Cynthia Biggerstaff or Harriett Fielding.

Chapter Twenty-three

Life spun on. The Bradleys felt that they had never really lived before. They rushed, laughed, played cards, dressed, danced, and sat at delicious meals from morning until night. There were so many delightful plans continually waiting, that sometimes it was hard to choose between them. The Fieldings wanted them to dine, to meet friends from Chicago--but that was the same night that the Roses and Joe Underhill were going in to see the new musical comedy--

"This is Bert--" a voice at Nancy's telephone would say, in the middle of a sweet October morning, "Nance...Tom Ingram picked me up, and brought me in...and he was saying that Mrs. Ingram has to come into town this afternoon...and that, since you do, why don't you have Pierre bring you both in in the car, and meet us after your shopping, and have a little dinner somewhere and take in a show? You can let Pierre go back, do you see? ... and the Ingrams will bring us back in their car. Now, can you get hold of Mrs. Ingram, and fix it up, and telephone me later? ..."

Nancy's first thought, so strong is habit, might be that she had just secured ducks for dinner, Bert's favourite dinner, and that she had promised Anne to take her with her brothers to see the big cows and prize sheep at the Mineola Fair. But that could wait, and if Anne and the boys were promised a little party, and ice cream--and if Pauline had no dinner to get she would readily make the ice cream--

"Ingram is here... he wants to know what you think..." Bert's impatient voice might say. And Nancy felt that she had no choice but to respond:

"That will be lovely, Bert! I'll get hold of Mrs. Ingram right away. And I'll positively telephone you in fifteen minutes."

The rest of the day would be rush and excitement, Nancy felt that she never would grow used to the delicious idleness of it all. During the week there were evenings that might have been as quiet as the old evenings, nothing happened, and if anybody came in it was only the Fieldings, or Mrs. Underhill and her son, for a game of bridge. But domestic peace is a habit, after all, and the Bradleys had lost the habit. Nancy was restless, beside her own hearth, even while she spangled a gown for the Hallowe'en ball, and discussed with Bert the details of the paper chase at the club, and the hunt breakfast to follow. She would ask Bert what the others were doing to-night, and would spring up full of eager anticipation when the inevitable rap of the brass knocker came.

Saturdays and Sundays were almost always a time of complete absorption. Everyone had company to entertain, everyone had plans. Nancy and Bert would come gaily into their home, on a Saturday afternoon, flushed from a luncheon party, and would entertain the noisy crowd in the dining room. After that the chugging of motors began again on the drive, and the watching children saw their parents depart in a trail of gay laughter.

Chapter Twenty-four

There was a brief halt when a fourth child, Priscilla, was born. It was in the quiet days that followed Priscilla's birth, that the Bradleys began to look certain unpleasant facts squarely in the face. They were running steadily deeper and deeper into debt. There were no sensational expenditures, but there were odd bills left unpaid, from midsummer, from early fall, from Christmas.

"And I don't see where we can cut down," said Bert, gloomily.

It was dusk of a bitter winter day. Nancy was lying on a wide couch beside her bedroom fire, Priscilla snuffled in a bassinet near by. In a lighted room adjoining, a nurse was washing bottles. The coming of the second daughter had somehow brought husband and wife nearer together than they had been for a long time, even now Nancy had been wrapped in peaceful thought; this was like the old times, when she had been tired and weak, and Bert had sat and talked about things, beside her! She brought her mind resolutely to bear upon all the distasteful suggestions contained in his involuntary remark.

"What specially worries you, Bert?" she asked.

He turned to her in quick gratitude for her sympathy.

"Nothing special, dear. We just get in deeper and deeper, that's all. The table, and the servants, and the car, and your bill at Landmann's--nothing stays within any limit any more! I don't know where we stand, half the time. It's not that!" He pulled at his pipe for a moment in silence. "It's not that!" he burst out, "but I don't think we get much out of it!"

Nancy glanced at him quickly, and then stared into the fire for a moment of silence. Then she said in a low tone:

"I don't believe we do!"

"I like Biggerstaff--and I like Rose and Fielding well enough!" Bert added presently, after profound thought, "but I don't like 'em all day and all night! I don't like this business of framing something up every Sunday--a lot of fur coats and robes, and all of us getting out half-frozen to eat dinners we don't want, all over the place--"

"And hours and hours of making talk with women I really don't care about, for me!" Nancy said. "I love Mary Ingram," she said presently, "and the Biggerstaffs. But that's about all."

"Exactly," said her husband grimly. "But it's not the Ingrams nor the Biggerstaffs who made our club bill sixty dollars this month," he added.

"Bert! It wasn't!"

"Oh, yes it was. Everyone of us had to take four tickets to the dance, you know, and we had two bottles of wine New Year's Eve; it all counts up. But part of it was for Atherton, that cousin of Collins, he asked me to sign for him because he had more than the regulation number of guests!"

"But Bert, he'll surely pay you?"

"Maybe he will, maybe he won't; it's just one of those things you can't mention."

"I could let Hannah go," mused Nancy, "but in the rush last summer I let her help Pauline--waiting on table. Now Pauline won't set her foot out of the kitchen for love or money."

"And Pauline is wished on us as long as we keep Pierre," Bert said, "No, you'll need 'em all now, with the baby to run. But we'll try to pull in a little where we can. My bills for the car are pretty heavy, and we've got a Tiffany bill for the Fielding kid's present, and the prizes for the card party. That school of the boys--it's worth all this, is it?"

Nancy did not answer; her brow was clouded with thought. Doctor, school, maids, car, table--it was all legitimate expense. Where might it be cut? For a few minutes they sat in silence, thinking. Then Bert sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and walked over to look down at Priscilla.

"Hello, Goo-goo!" said he: "You're having a grand little time with your blanket, aren't you?"

"I'll truly take the whole thing in hand," Nancy said, noticing with a little pang that dear old Bert was looking older, and grayer, than he had a few years ago. "When I come downstairs, self-denial week will set in!"

Her tone brought him to her side; he stooped to kiss the smiling face between the thick braids.

"You always stand by me, Nance!" he said gratefully.

Chapter Twenty-five

There was no stopping half way, however. The current had caught the Bradleys and it carried them on. There was no expense that could be lessened without weakening the whole structure. Nancy grew sick of bills, bills that came in the mail, that were delivered, and that piled up on her desk. She honestly racked her brain to discover the honourable solution; there was no solution. Even while she pondered, Priscilla in her arms, the machinery that she and Bert had so eagerly constructed went on of its own power.

"The cleaner's man, Hannah?" Nancy would ask, sighing. "You'll have to give him all those things; the boys' white coats are absolutely no good to them until they're cleaned, and Mr. Bradley really needs the vests. And put in my blue waist, and all those gloves, and the lace waist, too--no use letting it wait!"

"The things to-day came collect, Mrs. Bradley," Hannah might respectfully remind her.

"Oh, of course! And how much was it?--eleven-forty? Heavens! What made it so big?"

"Two suits, and your velvet dress, and one of Anne's dresses. And the man came for your furs this morning, and the awning place telephoned that they would send a man out to measure the porches. Mr. Bradley sent a man back from the station to ask you about plants; but you were asleep, and I didn't like to wake you!"

It was always something. Just as Nancy thought that the household expenses had been put behind her for a few days at least, a fresh crop sprang up. A room must be papered, the spare room needed curtains, Bert's racket was broken, the children clamoured for new bathing-suits. Nancy knew two moods in the matter. There was the mood in which she simply refused to spend money, and talked darkly to the children of changes, and a life devoid of all this ridiculous waste; and there was the mood in which she told herself desperately that they would get through somehow, everyone else did, one had to live, after all. In the latter mood she ordered new glasses and new towels, and white shoes for all four children, and bottles of maraschino cherries, and tins of caviar and the latest novel, and four veils at a time.

"Mrs. Albert Bradley, Marlborough Gardens--by self," Nancy said smoothly, swimming through the great city shops. Sometimes she was a little scared when the boxes and boxes and boxes came home, but after all, they really needed the things, she told herself. But needed or not, she and Bert began to quarrel about money, and to resent each other's extravagances. The sense of an underlying financial distress permeated everything they did; Nancy's face developed new expressions, she had a sharp look for the moment in which Bert told her that he was going to take their boys and the Underhill boys to the Hippodrome, or that he was going to play poker again. Bert rarely commented upon her own recklessness, further than to patiently ejaculate, "Lord!"

"Why do you say that, Bert?" she might ask, with violent self-control.

"Nothing, my dear, nothing!" Bert would return to his newspaper, or his razor. "I was just thinking. No matter!"

Nancy would stand, eyeing him sulphurously.

"But just what do you mean, Bert?" she would pursue. "Do you mean that you don't think I should have gotten the suit? I can't wear that fur-trimmed suit into the summer, you know. The hat was eighteen dollars--do you think there's another woman in the Gardens who pays no more than that? Lots of men haven't four lovely children and a home to support, they haven't wives who make all their friends welcome, as I do. Perhaps you feel that they are better off? If you don't--I don't see what you have to complain about. ..." And she would take her own way of punishing him for his air of detachment and superiority. Bert was not blameless, himself. It was all very well for Bert to talk of economy and self-denial, but Bert himself paid twelve dollars a pair for his golf-shoes, and was the first man at the club to order champagne at the dance suppers.

Smouldering with indignation, Nancy would shrug off her misgivings. Why should she hesitate over furs and new hangings for the study and the present for the Appletons, when Bert was so reckless? It would all be paid for, somehow.

"And why should I worry," Nancy asked herself, "and try to save a few cents here and there, when Bert is simply flinging money right and left?"

But for all her ready argument, Nancy was sometimes wretchedly unhappy. She had many a bitter cry about it all--tears interrupted by the honking of motors in the road, and ended with a dash of powder, a cold towel pressed to hot eyes, and the cheerful fiction of a headache. It was all very well to laugh and chat over the tea-cups, to accept compliments upon her lovely home and her lovely children, but she knew herself a hypocrite even while she did so. She could not say what was wrong, but something was wrong.

Even the children seemed changed to her in these days. The boys were nice-looking, grinning little lads, in their linen suits and white canvas hats, but somehow they did not seem to belong to her any more. Her own boys, whose high chairs had stood in her kitchen a few years ago, while she cut cookies for them and their father, seemed to have no confidences to unfold, and no hopes to share with their mother, now. Sometimes they quite obviously avoided the society of the person who must eternally send them to wash their hands, and exclaim at the condition of their knees. Sometimes they whined and teased to go with her in the motor, and had to be sternly asked by their father if they wished to be punished. Pierre took them about with him on week days, and they played with the other boys of the Gardens, eating too much and staying up too late, but rarely in the way.

Anne was a shy, inarticulate little blonde now, thin, sensitive, and plain. Her hair was straight, and she had lost her baby curls. Nancy did what she could for her, with severe little smocks of blue and lemon colour, and duly started her to school with the boys. But Anne cried herself into being sick, at school, and it was decided to keep her at home for a while. So Anne followed Agnes about, Agnes and the radiant Priscilla, who was giggling her way through a dimpled, rose-pink babyhood; the best of the four, and the easiest to manage. Priscilla chewed her blue ribbons peacefully, through all domestic ups and downs, and never cried when the grown-ups went away, and left her with Agnes.

Chapter Twenty-six

Worse than any real or fancied change in the children, however, was the unmistakable change in Bert. Heartsick, Nancy saw it. It was not that he failed as a husband, Bert would never do that; but the bloom seemed gone from their relationship, and Nancy felt sometimes that he was almost a stranger. He never looked at her any more, really looked at her, in the old way. He hardly listened to her, when she tried to engage him in casual talk; to hold him she must speak of the immediate event--the message Joe had left for him, the plan for to-morrow's luncheon. He was popular with the men, and his wife would hear him chucklingly completing arrangements with them for this affair or that, even while she was frantically indicating, with everything short of actual speech, that she did not want to go to Little Mateo's to dinner; she did not want to be put into the Fieldings' car, while he went off with Oliver Rose in his roadster.

"Are you crazy!" she would exclaim, in a fierce undertone when they were upstairs dressing, "Didn't you see that I don't want to go to-night? I can't understand you sometimes. Bert, you'll fall in with a plan that I absolutely--"

"Now, look here, Nancy, look here! Weren't you and Mrs. Rose the two that cooked this whole scheme up last night--"

"She suggested it, and I merely said that I thought SOMETIME it would be fun--"

"Oh, well, if you plan a thing and then go back on it--"

This led nowhere. In silence the Bradleys would finish their dressing, in silence descend to the joyous uproar of the cars. But Nancy despaired of the possibility of ever impressing Bert, through a dignified silence, with a sense of her displeasure. How could she possibly be silent under these circumstances? What was the use, anyway? Bert was tired, irritable, he had not meant to annoy her. It was just that they both were nervously tense; presently they would find some way of lessening the strain.

But--she began to wish that he would not drink quite so much. The other men did, of course, but then they were more used to it than Bert. Perhaps this constant stimulation accounted for Bert's nervous irritability, for the indefinable hardening and estranging. Nancy was not prudish, she had seen wine on her father's table since she was a baby, she enjoyed it herself, now and then. But to have cocktails served even at the women's luncheons; to have every host, whatever the meal, preface it with the slishing of chopped ice and the clink of tiny glasses, worried her. Bert even mixed a cocktail when he and she dined alone now, and she knew that when he had had two or three, he would want something more, would eagerly ask her if she would like to "stir up something" for the evening--how about a run over to the Ocean House, with the Fieldings? And wherever they went, there was more drinking.

"Let's make a rule," she proposed one day. "Let's confine our hospitality to persons we really and truly like. Nobody shall come here without express invitation!"

"You're on!" Bert agreed enthusiastically.

Ten minutes later it chanced that two motor-loads of persons they both thoroughly disliked poured into Holly Court, and Nancy rushed out to scramble some sandwiches together in the frigid atmosphere of the kitchen, where Pauline and Hannah were sourly attacking the ruins of a company lunch.

"It's maddening," she said to Bert, later, when the intruders had honked away into the late summer afternoon, "But what can we do? Such a sweet day, and we have that noisy crowd to lunch, and then this!"

"Well, we're having a lot of fun out of it, anyway!" Bert said, half-heartedly. Nancy did not answer.

Chapter Twenty-seven

But Nancy began to ask herself seriously; was it such fun? When house and maids and children, garden, car, table-linen and clothes had all been brought to the standard of Marlborough Gardens, was the result worth while? Who enjoyed them, who praised them? It was all taken for granted here; the other women were too deep in their own problems to note more than the satisfactory fact; the Bradleys kept the social law.

It was a terrible law. It meant that Nancy must spend every waking moment of her life in thought about constantly changing trifles--about the strip of embroidered linen that curtained the door, about the spoons that were placed on the table, about a hundred details of her dress, about every towel and plate, every stocking and hat-pin she possessed. She must watch the other women, and see how salad-dressing must be served, and what was the correct disposition of grapefruit. And more than that she must be reasonably conversant with the books and poetry of the day, the plays and the political atmosphere. She must always have the right clothing to wear, and be ready to change her plans at any time. She must be ready to run gaily down to the door at the most casual interruption; leaving Agnes to finish Priscilla's bath just because Seward Smith felt in a mood to come and discuss the fairness of golf handicaps with his pretty, sensible neighbour.

She did not realize that she had been happier years ago, when every step Junior and Ned and Anne took was with Mother's hand for guide, but she often found herself thinking of those days with a sort of wistful pain at her heart. Life had had a flavour then that it somehow lacked now. She had been tired, she had been too busy. But what richness the memories had; memories of three small heads about a kitchen table, memories of limp little socks and crumpled little garments left like dropped petals in Mother's lap, at the end of the long day.

"Are we the same people?" mused Nancy. "Have I really my car and my man; is it the same old Bert whose buckskin pumps and whose silk handkerchiefs are imitated by all these rich men? No wonder we've lost our bearings a little, we've gone ahead--if it IS ahead--too fast!"

They were getting from life, she mused, just what everyone wanted to get from life; home, friends, children, amusement. They lived near the greatest city, they could have anything that art and science provided, for the mere buying, no king could sleep in a softer bed, or eat more delicious fare. When Mary Ingram asked Nancy to go to the opera matinee with her, Nancy met women whose names had been only a joke to her, a few years ago. She found them rather like other persons, simple, friendly, interested in their nurseries and their gardens and anxious to reach their own firesides for tea. When Nancy and Bert went out with the Fieldings they had a different experience; they had dinners that were works of art, the finest box in the theatre, and wines that came cobwebbed and dusty to the table.

So that there was no height left to scale; "if we could only afford it," mused Nancy. Belle Fielding could afford it, of course; her trouble was that the Fielding name was perhaps a trifle too surely connected with fabulous sums of money. And Mary Ingram could afford anything, despite her simple clothes and her fancy for long tramps and quiet evenings with her delicate husband and two big boys. Nancy sometimes wondered that with the Ingram income anyone could be satisfied with Marlborough Gardens, but after all, what was there better in all the world? Europe?--but that meant hotel cooking for the man. Nancy visualized an apartment in a big city hotel, a bungalow in California, a villa in Italy, and came back to the Gardens. Nothing was finer than this.

"If we could only appreciate it!" she said again, sighing. "And if we need only see the people we like--and if time didn't fly so!" And of course if there were more money! She reflected that if she might go back a few years, to the time of their arrival at the Gardens, she might build far more wisely for her own happiness and Bert's. They had been drawn in, they had followed the crowd, it was impossible to withdraw now. Nancy knew that something was troubling Bert in these days, she guessed it to be the one real cause for worry. She began almost to hope that he felt financial trouble near, it would be a relief to fling aside, the whole pretence to say openly and boldly, "we must economize," and to go back to honest, simple living again. They could rent Holly Court--

Fired with enthusiasm, she looked for her check book, and for Bert's, and with the counterfoils before her made some long calculations. The result horrified her. She and Bert between them had spent ten thousand dollars in twelve months. Nearly ten times the sum upon which they had been so happy, years ago! The loans upon the property still stood, twelve thousand dollars, and the additional three, they had never touched it. There was a bank balance, of course, but as Nancy courageously opened and read bill after bill, and flattened the whole into orderly pile under a paper weight, she saw their total far exceeded the money on hand to meet them. They could wait of course, but meanwhile debts were not standing still.

It was a quiet August afternoon; the house was still, but from the shady lawn on the water side, Nancy could hear Priscilla crooning like a dove, and hear Agnes's low voice, and Anne's high-pitched little treble. For a long while she sat staring into space, her brows knit. Ten thousand dollars--when they could have lived luxuriously for five! The figures actually frightened her. Why, they should have cleared off half the mortgage now, they might easily have cleared it all. And if anything happened to Bert, what of herself and the four children left absolutely penniless, with a mortgaged home?

"This is wicked," Nancy decided soberly. "It isn't conscientious. We both must be going crazy, to go on as we do. I am going to have a long talk with Bert to-night. This can't go on!"

"Interrupting?" smiled pretty Mrs. Seward Smith, from the Dutch doorway.

Nancy jumped up, full of hospitality.

"Oh, come in, Mrs. Smith. I was just going over my accounts--"

"You are the cleverest creature; fancy doing that with everything else you do!" the caller said, dropping into a chair. "I'm only here for one second--and I'm bringing two messages from my husband. The first is, that he has your tickets for the tennis tournament with ours, we'll all be together; so tell Mr. Bradley that he mustn't get them. And then, what did you decide about the hospital? You see Mr. Ingram promised fifty dollars if we could find nine other men to promise that, and make it an even thousand from the Gardens, and Mr. Bradley said that even if he only gave twenty-five himself he would find someone else to give the other twenty-five. Tell him there's no hurry, but Ward wants to know sometime before the first. I didn't know whether he remembered it or not."

"I'll remind him!" Nancy promised brightly. She walked with her guest to the car, and stood in the bright warm clear sunlight smiling good-byes. "So many thanks for the tickets--and I'll tell Bert about the hospital to-night!"

But when the car was gone she went slowly back. She eyed the cool porchway sombrely, the opened casement windows, the blazing geraniums in their boxes. Pauline was hanging checked glass towels on the line, Nancy caught a glimpse of her big bare arms, over the brick wall that shielded the kitchen yard. It was a lovely home, it was a most successful establishment; surely, surely, things would improve, it would never be necessary to go away from Holly Court.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Bert was very late, that night. The children were all asleep, and Nancy had dined, and was dreaming over her black coffee when, at nine o'clock, he came in. He was not hungry--just hot and tired--he wanted something cool. He had lunched late, in town, with both the Pearsalls, had not left the table until four o'clock. And he had news for her. He was leaving Pearsall and Pearsall.

Nancy looked at him stupefied. What did he mean? Panic seized her, and under her panic something rose and exulted. Perhaps it was trouble--perhaps Bert needed his wife again!

"I'm going in for myself," said Bert. "Now, don't look so scared; it may be slow for a while, but there's big money in it, for me. I'm going to be Albert Bradley, Real Estate. You see, I've been advising Fred to handle this new proposition, down the Island, but he's young, and he's rich, and his father's an old man. Fred won't keep up the business when old Buck retires. He didn't want to handle it and they both asked me why I didn't go into it for myself. There's a pot of money in it, Nance, if I can swing it. However, I never thought of it until Biggerstaff asked me if I knew about anything of that kind--he's got some money to put in, and so has Ingram. This was last week. Well, I went to see. ..."

Nancy listened, frightened and thrilled. Fear was uppermost; before this she had seen something of daring business ventures in her southern childhood. But on the other hand, there was the possibility of "big money," and they needed money! They needed, as Bert said, to get out of the ranks, to push in before the next fellow pushed in. She had a vision of herself telling the other women of the Gardens that Mr. Bradley had gone into business for himself; that the Pearsalls were going to throw anything they could his way. It sounded dignified--Bert with a letter head, and an office in Broadway!

She was lost in a complacent dream when Bert's voice awakened her.

"So that, if Buck does lend it, that means the interest on fifty thousand. ..."

"Fifty thousand?" Nancy repeated, alarmed.

"Well, perhaps not quite that. I've got to figure it as closely as I can. ..." Nancy's colour had faded a trifle.

"Bert, you would be MAD to get into it, or into anything, as deep as that!" she said breathlessly. Bert, dashed in the midst of his confident calculations, turned something like a snarl upon her.

"Well, what am I going to do?" he asked angrily. "It's all very well for you to sit there and advise me to keep out of it, but what am I going to do? It's a chance, and I believe in taking it. I know my market, I know how these things are handled. If I can swing this in the next three or four years, I can swing other things. It means that we step right into the rich class--"

"But if you fail--?" Nancy suggested, impressed in spite of herself.

"You keep your end of things going," he urged her, in a sombre voice, "and I'll take care of mine!"

"I'll try, Bert, I'll do the best I can." With something of her old, comradely spirit, she laid her hand on his arm. "I'll let Hannah go--at least I will as soon as the Berrys' visit is over. And what about our going to the Sewalls', Bert, that's going to be an expensive trip. Shall I get out of that?"

"No," Bert decided thoughtfully. "I may want to get Sewall into this thing. We'll have to go there--I wish to the deuce we could get rid of Pauline and Pierre; but I don't see myself taking care of the car, somehow!"

"Everyone envies us Pauline," Nancy observed. And seeing that he was still scowling thoughtfully at his black-coffee cup, she touched his hand affectionately again, and set herself seriously to soothe him. "But we'll find ways of economizing, dear. I'll watch the bills, and I'll scold Pauline again about the butter and eggs and meat that she wastes. You must remember that you have a big family, Bert. You're raising four healthy children, and you have a car, and a man, and a beautiful home, and a delightful group of friends, and two or three fine clubs--"

But for once Bert was not easily quieted. He put his head in his hands and gave a sort of groan.

"Don't tell me what I've got--I know it all! Lord, I lie awake nights wondering what would happen to the crowd of you--However!" And dismissing the topic, he glanced at his watch. "I think I'll turn in before anybody comes in, Nance. I need sleep." With a long tired yawn, he started for the big square stairway; paused at her desk. "What're all those?"

"Bills, Bert. I'm sorry to have you see them now. But we ought to pay some of them--I've been going over things, this afternoon. Now, especially if you're going to make a fresh start, we ought to straighten things out. We ought to plan that we can spend so much money, and stick to that."

Bert flipped the pile with a careless finger.

"We never will!" he said morosely. "We never HAVE."

"Oh, Bert--we used to clear everything off on the first of the month, and then celebrate, don't you remember?"

He jerked his head impatiently.

"What's the use of harking back to that? That was years ago, and things are different now. We'll pull out of it, I'm not worried. Only, where we can, I think we ought to cut down."

"Dentist--" Nancy said musingly. She had come over to stand beside him, and now glanced at one of the topmost bills. "You HAVE to have a dentist," she argued.

"Well, I'm too tired to go over 'em now!" Bert said, unsympathetically. "Leave 'em there--I'll take them all up in a day or two!"