Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
1
At the same moment that Laurel, high up above the rumbling traffic of New York, was packing her trunk on the last day of her never-to-be-forgotten visit to her father (never to be forgotten because of the wonderful Mrs. Morrison), Stella several hundred miles away, was also packing a trunk.
There was no sound of traffic outside Stella's window, only the distant pound of the surf and a distant glimpse of a deserted board-walk. By the end of September there were only three or four people left at the boarding-house at Belcher's Beach. By the middle of September at least half of the amusement booths on the board-walk had been closed for the season.
Stella had remained until the literal eve of Laurel's return, because she had been very lucky this year, and had found a tenant for her rooms at the King Arthur for the month of September. Laurel could have her fur coat and wrist-watch, too, now! My, though, but Stella was glad her job was over! She did hate horrid places so, and horrid people, and run-down, second-rate boarding-house styles and customs—loud talk and loud laughter and loud women, and flies and dirt, and bathing-suits hanging out all the front windows to dry (that is, when the season was still on), and bathing-corsets, and bathing-garters. ("Honest, Effie, you'd think some people had had no bringing-up.") And all sorts of queer questionable things going on at night—doors opening softly and closing—whispers—giggles. The walls were like paper. Lord, she'd be glad to get away from Belcher's Beach! Thank heaven, the four weeks were at an end.
To-night she'd be sleeping at the King Arthur! To-morrow night Lollie would be sleeping with her at the King Arthur! She hummed deep in her throat as she packed. Nothing gave Stella the blue doldrums like this month of Belcher's Beach. Nothing gave her the spring-song feeling like release from it.
This year Belcher's Beach hadn't been quite so bad as usual, though. At least it ought not to have been. Ed Munn had done his best to brighten it up. Funny, though, Stella would be about as glad to get away from Ed as from the boarding-house. What ailed her? Ed had been ever so generous. Every single Saturday since Laurel had been away, and one Sunday, he had planned some diverting form of entertainment. It must have cost him a pretty penny! Stella was filled with remorse that she couldn't work up any real excitement over Ed. He was paying for "all wool," and deserved it, not the imitation stuff she gave him. It was all pretense with her when she returned his various little signs and signals. How pitiful to be so old one isn't even tempted to flirt any more! How amazing to be so crazy about your own child that being crazy about a man loses all interest and excitement in comparison.
Sometimes, looking straight into Ed Munn's little red hippopotamus eyes, trying her utmost to pay for his expensive entertainment in the harmless coin that he liked best, the vision of Laurel would appear back there in the dark cavern behind her eyes, down there in the mysterious cave where her heart beat, like a sudden shaft of light. And the shaft of light would seem to be pointed like a sword, and pierce Stella. Her eyes would become suffused with sudden tears, and tenderness. Dear dear Lollie, with her big gray eyes and her dark hair, and sharp-pointed, little-girl shoulders breaking through the hair as it fell to her waist, over her slim white body when she slipped off her nightgown in the morning. Dear precious little Lollie! In a little while they would be together again! What a zigzagging thrill of joy the thought gave Stella! Good Lord, how she worshiped the kid!
2
Once, when Stella's eyes had become suddenly soft with the thought of Laurel, Ed Munn had mistaken the cause of her emotion, and grasped hold of her hand, of her arm, of as much of her as he could reach across the small table that divided them; and that sort of mouth-watery look which always turned Stella's pleasure in a man's attentions to disgust—if he persisted in it—came into his eyes.
It had been Stella's intention to keep up her masquerade with Ed Munn to the end of the month (she did admire a good sport), but, my goodness, she wasn't a Sarah Bernhardt. Ed got terribly insistent that day she let her mind trail off to Laurel. She simply had to come out with the truth.
"I'm sorry, Ed," she sighed, as she drew away her hand with a little jerk.
At that he simply imprisoned one of her feet under the table between two of his, and leaned towards her, his eyes still gobbling her up.
She drew away her foot, too, and perched it safely on the rung of her chair.
"Nothing doing, Ed," she shrugged.
"What's the matter?" he inquired. She hadn't shown squeamishness before. "What's got into you all of a sudden?"
"I guess it's age, Ed," she confessed, "and it isn't all of a sudden."
He merely laughed at that and tried to grasp her hand again. But she wouldn't let him. He frowned. Flushed a little.
"I don't wonder you're mad, Ed."
"I didn't say I was mad."
"But you aren't pleased, I guess. I know. Ed, listen. I don't blame you a bit. I'm disgusted myself with the way I act, with the way I feel, or the way I don't feel. But don't, please, think it's anything personal. There's no man living could get me really going now. It isn't your fault. It's Lollie's. It's that darned little Lollie's fault!" She brought out fiercely. "I'm no good for anything any more except to be her mother. I'm so crazy about Lollie that she uses up all the emotion I've got, so I'm just sort of dead ashes with everybody else in the world."
"You're alive enough for me."
But Stella was deaf to flattery now. "Ed," she exclaimed, "I simply worship Laurel!" And the expression that forced its way through the make-up on her face had something sublime about it. A tear splashed down her cheeks. "You see!" She shrugged and shamelessly began to wipe her eyes. "Oh, it makes me so mad!"
Ed Munn leaned over and patted her on the arm, big-brother fashion.
"That's all right. That's all right."
Stella blew her nose. "I'm terribly sorry."
"You needn't be. I'm satisfied. I'm not asking you to get excited over me. I like a woman all the better for being fond of her own kid."
"Oh, Ed, you are nice!" She warmed towards him.
"In fact," he went on (he knew now what tack to pursue), "the few times I've seen the offspring I've thought to myself, what a peach of a kid she was."
"Oh, she's wonderful, Ed. I'd die without her!" And again the tears welled up in her eyes.
"Sure you would! Well, I've no intention of kidnaping her."
You see, as Stella told Effie McDavitt afterwards, she and Ed had a perfect understanding.
3
When Stella paid her bill of indebtedness to the proprietor of the boarding-house at Belcher's Beach, for allowing her to economize for a month on his property, it was with a feeling of triumph and with the comforting sense of a disagreeable job well done. There were those, however, who regarded Stella's sojourn in a different light. Stella was blissfully unaware that any one except Effie and Ed even knew of the sojourn, any one who had any connection with Milhampton.
As the train sped along towards that city, at the end of her ordeal, she was happy with the simple joy of release. She smiled and her heart sang, automatically almost, a little as a kitten purrs when it comes in out of the rain and sees the warm fire on the hearth. She had no premonition of the nest of bombs lying in her letter-box among the other letters and communications that had arrived too near the date of her return to be forwarded. Stella had not seen the automobile standing on the opposite side of the street from the boarding-house at Belcher's Beach the late Saturday night when Ed had brought her back and left her as usual at the foot of the stairs that led up to her room. She had not seen the same automobile the next morning on the Boulevard as she and Ed had started out for lunch in Boston.
The day after Myrtle Holland and Mrs. Kay Bird had seen Alfred Munn follow Stella Dallas into the boarding-house—but had not seen him come out—they had driven to Belcher's Beach again. Myrtle Holland was occupying a summer cottage, that year, thirty miles inland. She had never been to Belcher's Beach before. It was only because the chauffeur had lost the road that she happened to be driving through such a place at all. Myrtle Holland wanted to inspect Stella's boarding-house by daylight. She told Mrs. Kay Bird she wanted to point it out to her husband so he might look it up and see what sort of a place it was.
It chanced to be over the only week-end of Laurel's absence, when Ed Munn had both a Saturday and Sunday engagement with Stella, that Myrtle Holland and Mrs. Kay Bird made their two visits to Belcher's Beach. On the second visit they had been almost as excited as on their first. They had seen Ed Munn and Stella Dallas again! The pair were leaving the boarding-house this time! It was eleven in the morning! It looked pretty bad, didn't it?
It looked still worse when Mrs. Holland called at the fashionable hotel, where Mrs. Kay Bird had heard Stella Dallas was spending the season, and discovered that Mrs. Dallas hadn't been there for three weeks! And that her forwarding address was care of a Mrs. Effie McDavitt, in a very queer part of Milhampton, way down by the mills somewhere. Obviously Stella Dallas had done her best to cover up her tracks. Oh, wasn't it all too shocking for anything?
"Probably those two have been carrying on their little affair, off and on, ever since the scandal about them when her husband left her. I wouldn't believe then that she'd really gone the limit (I'm always slow at jumping to conclusions of that sort); but now, I do not see that we can very well help thinking the worst. My husband says that Belcher's Beach is full of questionable places. He didn't care to go into an investigation of that particular one, but you could see by looking at it—so dirty, and run-down, and ramshackle—and by observing the women who came out of it, what sort of a place it was. Stella Dallas herself looked a little more common and ordinary than ever—paint just piled on, and that riding-teacher—Munn—has degenerated terribly. Oh, it makes my blood boil to think that the mother of one of the girls, with whom our daughters associate daily at the little private school we're all supporting and protecting to the best of our ability, should be carrying on an affair of that sort with a man of that sort in a place of that sort. As one of the trustees of Miss Fillibrown's School there's only one course open to me. A thing like that cannot be known about a woman, and countenanced, can it?"
"Certainly not," was the general dictum.
"I for one won't countenance it anyhow," announced Mrs. Kay Bird, with emphasis. "Either Mrs. Dallas moves out of the King Arthur or I do. I had to play bridge with her twice last winter!"
"And either her child is removed from Miss Fillibrown's or mine is," another voice proclaimed.
This conversation took place in Myrtle Holland's living-room a few days after her return to Milhampton, in late September. There were half a dozen women gathered round the tea-table.
"But," feebly observed one of them, "there's just a possibility that you're mistaken, Myrtle, isn't there?"
"Oh, sweet protector of the innocent, virtuous defender of the maligned," laughed Mrs. Kay Bird.
"My dear Mabel," Myrtle replied, "there's just a possibility a man who frequents corner saloons doesn't drink, but it's rather slight, I fear; and anyhow, whether he drinks or not, the fact that he enjoys the company and atmosphere of corner saloons is sufficient to bar him from certain drawing-rooms. Dear me, Mabel, haven't we all endured Stella Dallas years enough in this town to satisfy you? I, for one, don't enjoy torturing animals even though some of them don't seem to mind it very much. That woman is in for a lot of disappointments when that child of hers she's always using, to boost herself into some sort of prominence, is older. The time has come, for her sake, as well as ours, to put an end to all further suffering."
"The child seems quite a nice little thing."
"But how long will she stay quite a nice little thing with a mother like that? Really, Mabel!"
"And nice little thing or not," spoke up somebody from the other side of the hearth, "I'm sure I don't want my son meeting her at dances, and things, as he grows up, and run the risk of having him fall in love with a girl with such a mother!"
"Oh, isn't it sad?" deplored Phyllis Stearns, with a sanctimonious sigh, "that women exist who care so little for their children as Stella Dallas? I used to know her very slightly, when she was first married, and before her child was ever born she didn't want her. And now she goes off with a man like that! Oh!"
"Such a woman doesn't deserve to have a child," exclaimed Mrs. Kay Bird, who had successfully avoided ever having had one herself.
4
Stella was safely in the haven of her two-rooms-and-a-bath at the King Arthur when she opened her mail. She had just come up from luncheon in the dining-room below, where she had greeted everybody she knew with her usual cordiality. "Be it even an apartment hotel, there's no place like home!" she had laughed to Mrs. Kay Bird. "Gracious, but this place seems good to me!" she had thrown across to the young doctor who ate at the table next to hers; and to the two white-haired old ladies who occasionally asked her of an evening to make a fourth at auction, "All ready for a game, any time," she had exclaimed.
She was still purring as she moved about the three rooms which were hers and Laurel's alone, humming in a low tone to herself, delighting in their luxury and their comfort, as she laid away her hat and veil and gloves, bag and umbrella, in their old familiar nooks and corners.
She sat down on the edge of her bed to open her mail. There was a postcard from Laurel. She read that first. There was a note from Miss Simpson, verifying the hour of Laurel's arrival. She read that next. After Miss Simpson's note there were two announcements of fall openings; a bill; a receipt; then suddenly occurred an explosion of one of the bombs! Miss Fillibrown regretted that, owing to the unexpected increase of pupils in Laurel's class, there would be no place for her next year!
Stella's low humming ceased abruptly. She read the note again. She read it a third time. She was aware of a certain familiar heart-burning sensation which usually followed announcements of this sort. No place for Laurel at Miss Fillibrown's? Oh, that was cruel. There was no other private school in Milhampton. Laurel couldn't go to a public school. Nobody did—except foreigners. No place for Laurel at Miss Fillibrown's! There must be some mistake. But deep in her heart Stella knew there was no mistake. Experience had taught her there never was a mistake in the cruel stabs dealt her.
It was fully ten minutes before the second bomb exploded. The letter immediately underneath Miss Fillibrown's was a note from the proprietor of the King Arthur. The proprietor of the King Arthur regretted that he would be unable to accommodate Stella the following season! He had rented her present apartment, he explained, to a party who had offered almost double what she was paying, and there would be no other space available.
Stella got up and walked over to the window, folded her arms, as if to hold herself under better control, and stood staring out into the street below. What did it mean? What had she done? Why were people so unkind? What was to become of Laurel and herself? It wasn't as if there were other apartment hotels in Milhampton. The King Arthur was unique. The other places were boarding-houses, pure and simple. All sorts of people lived in them. She could no more take Laurel to a boarding-house than send her to a public school. Good heavens, this was a serious situation! Stella had received blows before, but the combination of these two, occurring both at once, and striking such vital parts of the anatomy of her social position in Milhampton, she knew would prove fatal. A wave of physical sickness swept over her.
It was fully half an hour before the last bomb shattered the frail scaffolding of another of Stella's air-castles. The last letter in her pile was from a lawyer in New York. The lawyer stated that he was writing for Mr. Stephen Dallas. Stella's eyes skipped over the introductory sentences. She caught the word "divorce." Stephen wanted to get a divorce!
Hope had never died that sometime she and Stephen might live beneath the same roof again. The possibility that when the golden harvest-time arrived when Laurel was old enough to come out, Stephen, too, would wish to give his child every possible advantage, and resume at least the semblance of a conventional relationship with his wife, had been for years a sort of secret candle Stella would take out and light whenever it seemed dark. But a divorce, a separation would rob her of her candle. Besides, she couldn't say "my husband" any more, could she, to her friends and acquaintances? Nor refer to her husband's absence as temporary. Oh, no one knew what a protection the uncertainty had been to her all these years.
At one o'clock the next morning Stella lay wide awake in her bed beside Laurel's empty one, tossing and turning in the darkness, reviewing the contents of each of the three cruel notes that had swept so bare her little hill of hopes, and left it bleak and desolate. At two o'clock she was still awake, and again at three she heard the chimes ringing in the Episcopal Church belfry, a half a mile away. At half-past three she got up and went into the bathroom. She poured herself out half a glass of gin, and filled the glass up with hot water from the faucet. She placed two sleeping-tablets on the back of her tongue and washed them down with the strong hot drink.
Laurel was due to arrive the next morning at nine o'clock. Stella simply must pull herself together before Laurel arrived.