# Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII
1
"I shouldn't think that Simpson woman earned her salt. She's let your nails get into a terrible condition!" scolded Stella.
"Oh, but Miss Simpson never does my nails, mother," laughed Laurel.
She and Stella were seated opposite each other at a card-table in their bedroom at the King Arthur. There was a bath-towel spread over the table. Laurel held the finger-tips of one hand in a bowl filled with warm water, while her mother worked over the other. It was early afternoon of the first day of Laurel's arrival.
"Gracious, Laurel, this cuticle hasn't been pushed back once since you've been gone, I'll bet. I don't know what will become of you if you don't take more pains with yourself. These nails of yours are all split and broken to pieces."
"But I've been camping, mother."
"I should think you'd been mining, and using your fingers for pick-axes!"
A cat no more vigorously sets herself to work over the deplorable condition of her kitten after a visit to the coal-bin than did Stella over Laurel after her visit to New York and the Maine woods, "where they lived like animals," according to her way of thinking.
Stella was thankful this time, with all her heart, ​that she could work over Laurel, for when she had anything to conceal it was always easier to talk to the funny little perceiving creature, if she could keep her eyes down close on some sort of fine careful job, like cutting a bit of cuticle, or filing a nail to just the proper arch.
When the manicuring was well under way, Stella inquired, "How is your father?"
She always asked that question before Laurel had been back many hours.
Laurel always replied, "He's all right."
"Didn't seem different any way?"
"No."
"Didn't refer to me, I suppose?"
"No."
Laurel wished he would refer to her sometime, so she might tell her he had.
"Goodness," exclaimed Stella, "I should think he'd ask after my health once in a while!"
Laurel was silent.
Stella applied the blunt end of a steel file to the half-moon just appearing out of the pink flesh of Laurel's thumb.
"I should think he'd have some interest in my Welfare."
Still Laurel was silent.
"I never did anything to have him treat me as if I was dead."
"You hurt, mother."
Stella laid down the file. But it was somewhere inside where Stella was really hurting Laurel. Laurel always suffered when her mother talked like that about her father.
​"You'd think from the way he acts such a thing as a marriage ceremony had never taken place between him and me."
"Mother," Laurel interrupted—she must change the subject somehow—"I've learned to use a shotgun."
"I hope, Laurel," Stella went right on, "you'll have more respect for the promises you make, than your father seems to."
Laurel made another desperate attempt.
"Oh, mother," she exclaimed brightly, "I saw that lovely lady again in New York."
She was successful this time.
"What lovely lady?" asked Stella.
Laurel had been too busy so far answering her mother's questions as to what restaurants and theaters she had visited in New York to tell her about Mrs. Morrison.
"The lovely lady who gave me my silver pencil."
"Oh, yes, you met her at afternoon tea last year. I remember. You said she had on black broadcloth with broad-tail trimming then. What did she wear this time?"
"She isn't wearing black at all this year, but palish colors when she dresses up that you think are white until you see her up against a white wall or something, and then you see they aren't. They're usually pale yellow, or faint blue. She never wears pink."
"Good gracious, how many different rigs did you see this person in?"
"Oh, lots!"
She had not referred to Mrs. Morrison in her ​letters to her mother. That was not strange. Laurel was not fluent with her pen. Her letters were labored little notes, usually, that mirrored her personality imperfectly. Laurel's father used to say he could scarcely catch a glimpse of Laurel in the stilted notes she wrote to him. Once Laurel had tried to write to her mother about Mrs. Morrison, but Mrs. Morrison was like the Maine woods. There was so much to say that you just didn't know what one or two things to choose to cramp into half a dozen proper little sentences that must begin with a capital, contain a subject and a predicate, and end with a period.
"You'd love her clothes, mother," Laurel now went on. "She's got the loveliest negligée, she's got two or three lovely negligées, but I think my favorite was a yellowish one, made of a most beautiful crêpy stuff, with not a speck of trimming on it anywhere."
"Negligée!" exclaimed Stella. "Did she spend the night with you?"
"Oh, no, I spent the night with her. I spent almost a whole week of nights with her, while father was in Chicago."
"Oh, you did, did you?" said Stella, speaking thickly through an orange-stick which she held between her teeth. Stella often used her mouth to hold small tools, when she sewed or manicured. Lucky for her now! A sudden suspicion had shot up and gripped her in the throat. The orange-stick helped to disguise the tenseness in her voice. "That was a funny arrangement, I should think."
"I didn't want to go a bit, at first," said Laurel. ​"I was frightened at the thought of visiting a stranger. But I needn't have been. Mrs. Morrison was perfectly lovely to me!"
"Oh, she was, was she? How?"
"Just every way there is to be lovely. For one thing—she thought I had lovely clothes, and that you had awfully good taste. She said so. She talked about you, mother. She thought you must be simply beautiful when I told her what you looked like."
"What does she look like?"
"A little like an Indian Pipe," said Laurel reflectively. "That's a sort of flower that grows in dark places up in the Maine woods. It hasn't got any color at all."
"Oh, gracious. I mean is she tall or short, dark or light, fat or thin. I don't care what kind of a flower she looks like."
"Well," Laurel began slowly, methodically. "She's dark—at least her hair is—and tall—at least she looks tall until you see her beside somebody taller like father—and slim, and cool-looking and pale—oh, ever so pale. And the queer thing is, she doesn't use any rouge at all. She does her hair," Laurel went on, "with only five hairpins, and no net. And once I saw her put soap right on her face! And she goes out in the broiling sun and lets it beat down on her without any veil or sunshade, or anything."
"What's her age?"
"She doesn't seem to be any special age. She's like one of those goddesses in my Greek Mythology Book that way."
"Oh, come. You can tell me whether she's twenty or forty, I guess."
​"Oh, she's not forty! She can touch her fingers to the floor without bending her knees just as well as I can. We tried it one morning. And she rides horseback, and swims and plays tennis and golf. Father said she could almost beat him at golf. I guess she's about twenty-five."
"Oh, she and your father play golf sometimes."
"Sometimes."
"How in the world did your father become acquainted with this goddess?" Stella inquired, in as light a tone as she could muster. "Happen to know?"
"Yes, and it's like a story. Father found her in Central Park! He saw her there riding horseback one day. He was on a horse, too. She passed him. He didn't like to run after her, and try to catch her, so he went by another path, and cut her off when she came round a curve later on. Con told me about it."
"Who's Con?"
"Con is her oldest son."
"Oh, son! Married is she?"
"She used to be. Her husband is dead now."
"Oh, dead, is he? That's convenient," murmured Stella.
"Oh, no, it isn't. It isn't a bit convenient. Mr. Morrison left a whole lot of money and horses and houses and things, and Mrs. Morrison has to look out for them all alone. She says she wouldn't know what to do without father to help her and advise her."
"Oh, I see, I see." Stella was still polishing, still keeping her voice light and inconsequential with the ​help of the steadying orange-stick. "A whole lot of money and horses and houses, has she? And what house did you visit her at?"
"I visited her at her house on Long Island. Oh, mother, it's wonderful! It has a beautiful lawn and garden all around it, and on the first floor out of all the rooms there are long windows, like doors, which are always kept open, so you can walk out onto the grass any time, just as easily as walking out from underneath a tree. Upstairs in the house there are the loveliest bedrooms and little tiled bathrooms hidden away like jewels on the inside of a watch. And all the bedroom doors stand open all day. Nobody ever thinks of locking the bedroom door. And in the pantry off the dining-room there's a big tin box with rows of thin cookies on each shelf. You can take one whenever you're hungry. Sometimes you can go into the kitchen and make candy! Oh, mother," Laurel broke off, "would it cost too awfully much for us to have a house all of our own somewhere—not a great big expensive one, like Mrs. Morrison's, but a little tiny one with a front door that's just ours, and a dining-room that's just ours, and a warm sleepy-looking kitchen that's just ours, where I could make candy sometimes (Mrs. Morrison and I made fudge one rainy day in the kitchen), and a guest-room so I could ask girls to come and stay all night with me sometimes? Mrs. Morrison asked a girl my age, whose mother she knew, to come and stay with me one night. And she came, and when she went she asked me to come and stay all night with her!" (No girl had ever asked Laurel to stay all night with her before.) "But I ​couldn't because I had to go back to New York the next day. I hated to go back to New York to Miss Simpson. Mother, next to you I think Mrs. Morrison is the loveliest lady I ever saw." Laurel's voice actually trembled.
Stella removed the orange-stick from her mouth and laid it down on the table beside the buffer.
"There," she said, "how do those look?" And she held up Laurel's fingers for her to see. She spoke harshly. She had to or the child might discover the tremble in her voice too.
Laurel gave the fingers a hasty glance. "They're all right," she remarked. Then dropping her hands on the bath-towel, and gazing out of the window, she added, and a glow stole into her eyes—into her voice also, "Mrs. Morrison has the most beautiful hands—long and white and slim like the rest of her. I wish I could have hands like hers!"
2
Stella got up and went into the bathroom. She closed the door and locked it, then turned on both faucets, so that Laurel would think she was busy washing up. She stood staring at herself in the mirror over the wash-stand, while the water gushed into the basin.
Laurel had never glowed about a woman before. Stella didn't know what to make of it. It perplexed her. It hurt her. It hurt her more than the possibility that Stephen might be glowing about the same woman. Who was she, anyway—this tall mysterious siren, who was bewitching Lollie with her youth and beauty and prosperity, buying the kiddie's ​affection, by bestowing luxuries and attentions upon her in a single week which Stella would give her eyeteeth to be able to give Laurel in a lifetime.
Laurel was sensitive to beauty, Stella was aware of it—cruelly aware of it, as she stared at herself in the mirror before her. She saw all the tiny wrinkles. She saw the coarseness and the flabbiness She saw the unmistakable yellow cast of color. It was as definite now as that of a white China silk waist after half a dozen washings. Good gracious, how could she hope to compete with a woman of twenty-five? It seemed lately as if nothing would cover up the defects and blemishes for any length of time. Often within so short a period as half an hour after she had left her bedroom, glancing into some unexpected mirror, she would discover the horrible old look sneaking out of hiding. A wave of discouragement swept over Stella. She had never required youth so much as now.
She pulled open the door to the medicine-closet in the wall beside the wash-stand with a determined jerk. She produced a large jar of cold cream, and began smearing great globs of it over her face. "A cold-cream bath, and a good hot steam is what you need," she announced to her reflection, and with a practiced rotating motion she proceeded to massage cheeks, chin, neck, and forehead vigorously, furiously; admonishing herself the while in the mirror—exhorting, and inciting with fresh courage.
This wasn't the time to lie down and submit. What if the world was treating her like a bunch of cruel boys a dog—kicking her from all sides, all at once? She mustn't put her tail between her legs and ​yelp and hug the ground. She must stand up and bristle her back, and snarl, and show her teeth, if necessary. And she would, too! Oh, there was a lot of fight left in her yet.
She didn't know exactly how a dog managed to fight so many boys at once. No sooner did she consider lowering her head to offer resistance to one of her tormentors than another hit her from behind. Seemed as if. Really, within the last twenty-four hours it seemed as if everything in the way of sharp-cornered missiles had been thrown in her direction, and struck her somewhere. It was confusing. It was alarming. But she mustn't show she was confused or alarmed. Lollie mustn't guess. Good Lord, no!
Half an hour later Stella emerged from the bathroom, with all her war-paint on. Her cheeks were a little rosier than usual, her eyebrows a little more distinctly emphasized, and her lips a little more definitely bowed.
3
Three days later Stella took the early morning train to Boston, "to do a little fall shopping," she told Laurel, but really to meet Mr. Morley Smith, the lawyer who had written to her from New York about the divorce. Mr. Smith had suggested in his letter that he would like a personal interview with Stella. Stella had replied that she would meet him at the appointed hour, at the office of the Boston law firm which he had mentioned.
You may be sure she had on all her war-paint when she sallied forth that morning, all her war-feathers too. She had selected a costume of wide ​black-and-white striped foulard in which to combat this particular adversary (the stripes wound sleekly around her. She resembled a zebra somewhat), and she had made herself as formidable as she knew how with all her loudest finery. A hat with sharp futurist angles, a shadow veil that hung unsecured and diaphanous to her shoulders; pearl ear-rings, filbert size; around her neck a long noisy chain of imitation amber beads. Her shoes were French-heeled, and steel-buckled. She carried several dangling articles on her left wrist that clattered every time she moved her hands.
When she was ushered into the private office placed at Mr. Morley Smith's disposal, he had to make an effort not to allow himself to betray his amazement. Stephen had not prepared him for anybody of this sort. The truth is Stephen himself would have been surprised at Stella's appearance. In the days when he had advised plain dark dresses, and no decorations, she had not used rouge, lipsticks, and eyebrow pencils. She hadn't needed to. Stephen didn't take into account that there had been no one to advise Stella since he had given up the enterprise, no friend or protector to care what mistakes she committed during that critical period when her volatile prettiness began to evaporate like ether into air.
As Morley Smith drew up a chair and asked Stella to be seated, he looked at her closely and catalogued her forthwith. Morley Smith had known Stephen Dallas for years. How could he ever have married this woman? How could any man, who was attracted by the gentle, genuine charms of Mrs. ​Cornelius Morrison (and had been attracted by them, too, according to his story, before he ever met this Stella Martin), have contemplated matrimony with such an absolute antithesis? What a Quixote Stephen Dallas must have been, in spite of his insistence that he had married the pretty Normal-School student of his own free will and in the pursuit of happiness.
"I am glad, Mrs. Dallas," Mr. Morley Smith began from his high place of authority in front of the flat-topped desk, glancing across to Stella in her low place at the side of the desk (three feet and an armchair make all the difference in the world), "that you found it convenient to meet me here to-day. It is so much more satisfactory to talk a matter of this kind over quietly together."
"Oh, that's all right," said Stella. She wished her chair had a deep seat and arms so that she could lean back and assume a position of command.
"It is my hope," Mr. Smith went on suavely, "that I may be performing a service for both you and Mr. Dallas in arranging this affair without publicity, to your mutual satisfaction. I want you to feel, Mrs. Dallas," he smiled, "that I am here, not only as Mr. Dallas's friend and attorney, but as your friend and attorney, too."
"I don't need any attorney," said Stella.
"I agree with you, you do not. This affair should be, and can be settled without contest—between ourselves. That is your husband's wish, too. He and I have gone into the details of this matter and there lies open to us a line of procedure, which, if pursued, will cause almost no unpleasantness, as far as you are concerned."
​"And what's that?"
"Why, you are to bring suit against Mr. Dallas for desertion. He will not contest the grounds of your suit, and the divorce will be granted without disagreeable controversy."
"I don't want a divorce," said Stella.
"Really?" Mr. Morley Smith raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Surely, you want your separation of seven years' standing legalized, do you not, and enjoy the advantages thereof?"
"I don't want a divorce," Stella repeated.
"The word has an unpleasant sound for some women, I know," Mr. Smith smiled. "It shouldn't. Let me explain. Perhaps you haven't thought in detail just what the benefits would be of a settlement of the relations existing between you and Mr. Dallas—just what hardships you are inflicting upon yourself, unnecessarily, in allowing them to continue in their present state."
And in the next ten minutes he laid out before Stella, as attractively as he knew how, all the fine arguments, moral, social, and financial, for her consideration, that he possessed.
But his display apparently made no impression upon Stella. For when he had finished all she said was, just as if she hadn't been listening, "I don't want a divorce, and," she added, "what's more I don't intend to have one."
Mr. Morley Smith frowned and shrugged. Then, balancing the tips of his elbows on the arms of his chair, and the tips of the fingers of his left hand nicely against the tips of the fingers of his right, he said, "That's a pity."
​"I'm sorry to disoblige Stephen, I'm sure," said Stella, shrugging too.
"I meant a pity for you," flashed back Mr. Smith. And the smile and suave manner had disappeared. "Mr. Dallas can obtain his divorce without the least difficulty in the world, by another method. Don't have any doubt on that point. But the other method will not be exactly to your liking, I fear," he announced, fastening his keen shrewd eyes upon Stella. "I always feel sorry for any woman," he went on, "whose mistakes and misdemeanors of a dozen years are dragged out by opposing lawyers from the little hiding-places where she thought they were safe, and held up for the curious public to gape at and glory in. Your husband, Mrs. Dallas, in allowing you to bring suit against him, instead of the other way round, is acting chivalrously. He is offering you an avenue of escape."
"I don't want any avenue of escape," Stella retorted. "I tell you I don't want a divorce."
Really it was annoying. Mr. Morley Smith couldn't make the least indentation on her.
"It looks to me, Mrs. Dallas, as if you will be obliged to have a divorce whether you want it or not."
"I don't know why. I don't pretend to know anything about the law, but I've got some common sense, and I never heard of a woman's being forced to get a divorce from her husband because he happens to want to go and get married again. Stephen does want to get married again, doesn't he?"
"That's entirely a side issue in this case, Mrs. Dallas. I am unable to inform you."
​"Well, he does. I know he does."
"I should think under the circumstances he would wish to feel free to marry again."
"Well, he can't do it, and that's all there is to it. You can go back to New York and tell him that I refuse, with thanks, his chivalrous offer. Gracious. I don't call it exactly chivalrous for a man to walk off and leave his wife for seven years, and then, when he gets good and ready, give her the privilege of suing him for a divorce, so he can go and marry a rich young widow, and kick the high spots with her."
"You will, then, as I said before, force Mr. Dallas to bring suit against you."
"I never deserted him."
"No, your offense is graver."
"I never knew what my offense was. I've been ransacking my brain for seven years to find some good reason for Stephen's clearing out the way he did."
"Oh, come, Mrs. Dallas," half-laughed, half-sneered Mr. Morley Smith.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Don't try and pretend innocence with me. I've handled too many cases of this nature, dealt with too many women placed in your unenviable position. It won't work."
He looked straight into Stella's eyes, as he spoke, piercingly, drillingly. It was a horrid look. It was a look not to be endured from a man who was your enemy. Stella could feel the blood throbbing up into her throat.
"Are you trying to be insulting to me somehow?"
​Mr. Morley Smith's sneer deepened. "That's right. You're acting consistently. It's quite the right tack—surprise, indignation, rage, tears, confession finally. Mrs. Dallas, allow me to spare you further attempt at evasion. I have facts—unalterable, unescapable facts. You were seen." He lowered his voice. "You were seen at Belcher's Beach," he brought out.
"Well, what of that?" flashed Stella.
"You were seen at the boarding-house, with Munn," he added, still keeping his sword-pointed eyes upon Stella.
Oh, so that was it! That was why there was no room for Laurel at Miss Fillibrown's! That was why the proprietor at the King Arthur had rented her apartment.
"Oh, what a rotten, rotten world!" she exclaimed.
Mr. Morley Smith shrugged and looked away. There was a silence. Then, "Well, you understand me, now, I think. You have your choice. Think it over. Either the generous escape Mr. Dallas offers, or the public exposure of acts you have taken such pains heretofore to conceal and cover up."
Stella stared at Mr. Morley Smith speechless, helpless for a moment. Every word he uttered, every glance of his eyes, every pharisaical shrug of his shoulders shamed and degraded her. She would simply have to get out of his presence, or she would do something horribly common and crude to him, like slapping him in the face, or calling him something unladylike, like a cur or a skunk. She stood up.
"I'm going," she said.
​He stood up too. He smiled.
"You will coöperate with us, then? You will accept our proposition?"
"Coöperate? Accept your proposition? No, I won't. I'll fight! That's what I'll do. I'll prove to the world whether I'm guilty or not of the filthy things rotten-minded people have said about me. And I'm glad of the chance, too. I hope Stephen will sue me for a divorce. I said I didn't need a lawyer, when I first came here, but I need somebody to defend me against such a pack of muckrakers. Why, Mr. Smith, I have no more done the thing you come here and accuse me of doing than your own wife, or, if you're not married, your own mother, or the woman you honor the most in this world, whoever it is, and I'll get the best lawyer in this country to prove it."
Behind the belying paint and elaborate make-up the white image of this woman's innocence stood out before Morley Smith clear and defined, for an instant, like a white-sailed ship, when the fog lifts a moment—a white-sailed ship in distress. He saw it. He recognized it. He turned away from it.
"You're going through the usual motions, Mrs. Dallas," he commented with another sneer.