The Gorgeous Girl

Nalbro Bartley

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• Publié par: erde
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 13
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gorgeous Girl, by Nalbro Bartley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Gorgeous Girl Author: Nalbro Bartley Release Date: August 22, 2009 [eBook #29753] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GORGEOUS GIRL*** E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) “He was very diplomatic in his undertaking ” THE GORGEOUS GIRL BY NALBRO BARTLEY Illustrated GARDEN C ITY 1920 N EW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY ILLUSTRATIONS “He was very diplomatic in his undertaking ” “The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life” “It was with a charming timidity that she tip-toed into the office” “A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed ” Frontispiece FACING PAGE 12 188 284 THE GORGEOUS GIRL THE GORGEOUS GIRL 3 CHAPTER I “Before long two bank accounts will beat as one,” Trudy said to Mary Faithful. “Tra-la-la-la-la,“ humming the wedding march while the office force of the O’Valley Leather Company listened with expressions ranging from grins to frowns. “Sh-h-h! Mr. O’Valley has just opened his door.” As she was private secretary and general guardian to Steve O’Valley, president of the concern, Miss Faithful’s word usually had a decisive effect. But Trudy was irrepressible. Besides boarding at the Faithful home and thus enjoying a certain intimacy with Mary, she was one of those young persons who holds a position merely as a means to an end––the sort who dresses to impress everyone, from the president of the concern if he is in the matrimonial or romantic market to the elevator boy if said elevator boy happens to have a bank account capable of taking one to all the musical shows and to supper afterward. Having been by turns a milliner’s apprentice, assistant in a beauty parlour, and cashier in a business men’s restaurant, Truletta Burrows had acquired a certain chicness enabling her to twist a remnant of chiffon or straw into a creation and wear it in impressive contrast with her baby-blue eyes and Titian-red hair. In the majority of cases where a girl has neither family nor finances she must seek a business situation in order to win a husband. Trudy went after her game in no hesitating manner. She had no intention of becoming one of the multitude of commercial nuns who inhabit the United States of America this day––quiet women with quick eyes, a trifle cold or pensive if analyzed, severely combed hair, trim tailor suits and mannish blouses with dazzling neckties as their bit of vanity––the type that often shoulders half the responsibility of the firm. Whether achieving a private office and a nervous stenographer who is disappointed at having a lady boss is to be preferred to a house-and-garden career is, like all vital issues, a question for debate. Neither did Trudy propose to shrivel into a timid, slave-like type of person kept on the pay roll from pity or by reason of the fact that initiating a novice would be troublesome. Such a one was Miss Nellie Lunk, who sat in a corner of the hall making out requisition slips and taking care of unwelcome visitors––a pathetic figure with faded eyes and scraggly hair, always keeping a posy on her old-style desk and crocheting whenever there was a lull in work. Thirty years in business was Miss Lunk’s record, twenty-five in Mark Constantine’s office and five in the employ of Mr. O’Valley, that lovable, piratical Irishman who achieved his success by being a brilliant opportunist and who, it would seem, ran a shoestring into a fortune by a wink of his blue eyes. Trudy knew that Miss Lunk lived alone––the third story back, where she cooked most of her meals, while a forlorn canary cheeped a welcome. She possessed a little talking machine with sentimental records, and on Sundays she went to a cafeteria for a good, hearty meal unless cousins asked her to their establishment. Some day Miss Lunk would find herself in a home with other no longer useful old people and here she would stay with her few keepsakes, of which the world knew nothing and cared less, the cousins dropping in at intervals to impress upon her how carefree and fortunate she was! In conclusion Trudy had decided not to accept the third choice of the modern business woman, which, she decided, was Mary Faithful’s fate––to give your heart to a man who never had thought of you and never would think of you as other than a reliable and agreeable machine; as someone––should Florida and a certain Gorgeous Girl named Beatrice Constantine beckon––who would say: “Yes, Mr. O’Valley, I understand what to do. I arranged the New Haven sale 4 5 this morning. You were at the jewellery store to see about Miss Constantine’s ring. So I long-distanced Martin & Newman and put it through. If the ring is sent in your absence I know what you have ordered and can return it if it does not comply with instructions––platinum set with diamonds, three large stones of a carat each and the twenty smaller stones surrounding them. And a king’s-blue velvet case with her initials in platinum. And you want me to discharge Dundee and divide up his work. Yes, I gave the janitor the gold piece for finding your pet cane. I’ll wire you every day.” And Steve O’Valley had swung jauntily out of the office, secure in his secretary’s ability to meet any crisis, to have to work alone in the almost garish office apparently quite content that she was not going to Florida, too. Trudy’s imagination pictured there a someone petulant, spoiled, and altogether irresistible in the laciest of white frocks and a leghorn hat with pink streamers, at whose feet Steve O’Valley offered some surprise gift worth months of Mary Faithful’s salary while he said: “I ran away from work to play with you, Gorgeous Girl! See how you demoralize me? Even your father frowned when I said I was coming. How are you, darling? I don’t give a hang if I make poor Miss Faithful run the shop for a year as long as you want me to play with you.” Having the advantage of studying Mary Faithful’s position both from the business and family aspects Trudy had long ago decided that she was not going to be like her. In no way did she envy Mary’s position. Since her dreamer of a father had died and left dependent upon her her fouryear-old brother and a mother whose chief concern in life was to have the smartest-looking window curtains in the neighbourhood, Mary went to work at thirteen with a remnant of an education. Possessions spelled happiness to Mrs. Faithful; poetical dreams had been Mr. Faithful’s chief concern, and as an unexpected consequence their first child had been endowed with common sense. With Mary at the wheel there had been just enough to get along with, so they stayed on in the old-fashioned house while Mrs. Faithful bewailed Mary’s having to work for a living and not be a lady, as she could have been if her father had had any judgment. Mrs. Faithful had become quite happy in her martyrdom as she was still able to maintain the starched window curtains. After a conventional period of mourning she began to relive the past, her husband’s mistakes, her own girlhood and offers of marriage––such incidents as these sufficed to keep her from enjoying the present, while Mary rose from errand girl to grocery clerk, with night school as a recreation, from grocery clerk to filing clerk, assistant bookkeeper, bookkeeper, stenographer, and finally private secretary to Steve O’Valley, one of the war-fortune kings. And she had given her heart to him in the same loyal way she had always given her services. At home Trudy noted that Mary worked round the house because she liked the change from office routine, deaf to the complaining maternal voice reciting past glories in which Mary had no part. If the parlour furniture with its tidies and a Rogers group in the front window sometimes got on her nerves she forced herself to laugh over it and say: “It’s mother’s house, and all she has.” She concerned herself far more with Luke, an active, fair-to-middling American boy somewhat inclined to be spoiled. Mary had taken Luke into the office after school hours to keep a weather eye on him and make him contribute a stipend to the expenses. 6 7 “If a man won’t work he should not eat,” she informed him as she proportioned his wage. Recalling Mary’s position at home––though Trudy rejoiced in her own front room and the comforts of the household––she shrugged her shoulders in disapproval. Certainly she could never endure the same lot in life. For if one man will not love you why waste time bewailing the fact? Find another. Mary could have had other suitors. Mr. Tompkins, the city salesman, and young Elias, of Elias & Son, had both made brave attempts to plead their cause, only to be treated in the same firm manner that Luke was treated when he hinted of making off to sea. “She’ll spend her life loving Steve O’Valley and slaving for him,” Trudy had confided to her dozen intimate friends, who never repeated anything told them. “And he will spend his life being trampled on by Beatrice Constantine, and after they are married she will be meaner than ever to him. But he will love her all the more. Honest, business men make the grandest husbands! College professors are lots harder to get along with––but business men are as cross as two sticks in their offices and at home they’re so sweet it would melt pig iron.” The first plank in Trudy’s platform was to marry a business man as nearly like Steve O’Valley as po