Robert Chambers - The Business of Life

"What were you doing in the country, sweetness?"

"Business."

"What kind?"

"Oh, cataloguing a collection. Take the armchair and sit near the stove, dear. And here are the chocolates. Put your feet on the fender as I do. It was frightfully cold in Westchester yesterday – everything frozen solid – and we – I skated all over the flooded fields and swamps. It was simply glorious, Cynthia – "

"I thought you were out there on business," remarked Cynthia dryly.

"I was. I merely took an hour at noon for luncheon."

"Did you?"

"Certainly. Even a bricklayer has an hour at noon to himself."

"Whose collection are you cataloguing?"

"It belongs to a Mr. Desboro," said Jacqueline carelessly.

"Where is it?"

"In his house – a big, old house about five miles from the station – "

"How do you get there?"

"They send a car for me – "

"Who?"

"They – Mr. Desboro."

"They? Is he plural?"

"Don't be foolish," said Jacqueline. "It is his car and his collection, and I'm having a perfectly good time with both."

"And with him, too? Yes?"

"If you knew him you wouldn't talk that way."

"I know who he is."

"Do you?" said Jacqueline calmly.

"Yes, I do. He's the 'Jim' Desboro whose name you see in the fashionable columns. I know something about that young man," she added emphatically.

Jacqueline looked up at her with dawning displeasure. Cynthia, undisturbed, bit into a chocolate and waved one pretty hand:

"Read the Tattler , as I do, and you'll see what sort of a man your young man is."

"I don't care to read such a – "

"I do. It tells you funny things about society. Every week or two there's something about him. You can't exactly understand it – they put it in a funny way – but you can guess. Besides, he's always going around town with Reggie Ledyard, and Stuyve Van Alstyne, and – Jack Cairns – "

" Don't speak that way – as though you usually lunched with them. I hate it."

"How do you know I don't lunch with some of them? Besides everybody calls them Reggie, and Stuyve, and Jack – "

"Everybody except their mothers, probably. I don't want to hear about them, anyway."

"Why not, darling?"

"Because you and I don't know them and never will – "

Cynthia said maliciously: "You may meet them through your friend, Jimmy Desboro – "

" That is the limit!" exclaimed Jacqueline, flushing; and her pretty companion leaned back in her armchair and laughed until Jacqueline's unwilling smile began to glimmer in her wrath-darkened eyes.

"Don't torment me, Cynthia," she said. "You know quite well that it's a business matter with me entirely."

"Was it a business matter with that Dawley man? You had to get me to go with you into that den of his whenever you went at all."

Jacqueline shrugged and resumed her knitting: "What a horrid thing he was," she murmured.

Cynthia assented philosophically: "But most men bother a girl sooner or later," she concluded. "You don't read about it in novels, but it's true. Go down town and take dictation for a living. It's an education in how to look out for yourself."

"It's a rotten state of things," said Jacqueline under her breath.

"Yes. It's funny, too. So many men are that way. What do they care? Do you suppose we'd be that way, too, if we were men?"

"No. There are nice men, too."

"Yes – dead ones."

"Nonsense!"

"With very few exceptions, Jacqueline. There are horrid, horrid ones, and nice , horrid ones, and dead ones and dead ones – but only a few nice, nice ones. I've known some. You think your Mr. Desboro is one, don't you?"

"I haven't thought about him – "

"Honestly, Jacqueline?"

"I tell you I haven't! He's nice to me . That's all I know."

"Is he too nice?"

"No. Besides, he's under his own roof. And it depends on a girl, anyway."

"Not always. If we behave ourselves we're dead ones; if we don't we'd better be. Isn't it a rotten deal, Jacqueline! Just one fresh man after another dropped into the discards because he gets too gay. And being employed by the kind who'd never marry us spoils us for the others. You could marry one of your clients, I suppose, but I never could in a million years."

"You and I will never marry such men," said Jacqueline coolly. "Perhaps we wouldn't if they asked us."

" You might. You're educated and bright, and – you look the part, with all the things you know – and your trips to Europe – and the kind of beauty yours is. Why not? If I were you," she added, "I'd kill a man who thought me good enough to hold hands with, but not good enough to marry."

"I don't hold hands," observed Jacqueline scornfully.

"I do. I've done it when it was all right; and I've done it when I had no business to; and the chances are I'll do it again without getting hurt. And then I'll finally marry the sort of man you call Ed," she added disgustedly.

Jacqueline laughed, and looked intently at her: "You're so pretty, Cynthia – and so silly sometimes."

Cynthia stretched her young figure full length in the chair, yawning and crooking both arms back under her curly brown head. Her eyes, too, were brown, and had in them always a half-veiled languor that few men could encounter undisturbed.

"A week ago," she said, "you told me over the telephone that you would be at the dance. I never laid eyes on you."

"I came home too tired. It was my first day at Silverwood. I overdid it, I suppose."

"Silverwood?"

"Where I go to business in Westchester," she explained patiently.

"Oh, Mr. Desboro's place!" with laughing malice.

"Yes, Mr. Desboro's place."

The hint of latent impatience in Jacqueline's voice was not lost on Cynthia; and she resumed her tormenting inquisition:

"How long is it going to take you to catalogue Mr. Desboro's collection?"

"I have several weeks' work, I think – I don't know exactly."

"All winter, perhaps?"

"Possibly."

"Is he always there, darling?"

Jacqueline was visibly annoyed: "He has happened to be, so far. I believe he is going South very soon – if that interests you."

"'Phone me when he goes," retorted Cynthia, unbelievingly.

"What makes you say such things!" exclaimed Jacqueline. "I tell you he isn't that kind of a man."

"Read the Tattler , dearest!"

"I won't."

"Don't you ever read it?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Curiosity."

"I haven't any."

Cynthia laughed incredulously:

"People who have no curiosity are either idiots or they have already found out. Now, you are not an idiot."

Jacqueline smiled: "And I haven't found out, either."

"Then you're just as full of curiosity as the rest of us."

"Not of unworthy curiosity – "

"I never knew a good person who wasn't. I'm good, am I not, Jacqueline?"

"Of course."

"Well, then, I'm full of all kinds of curiosities – worthy and unworthy. I want to know about everything!"

"Everything good."

"Good and bad. God lets both exist. I want to know about them."

"Why be curious about what is bad? It doesn't concern us."

"If you know what concerns you only, you'll never know anything. Now, when I read a newspaper I read about fashionable weddings, millionaires, shows, murders – I read everything – not because I'm going to be fashionably married, or become a millionaire or a murderer, but because all these things exist and happen, and I want to know all about them because I'm not an idiot, and I haven't already found out. And so that's why I buy the Tattler whenever I have five cents to spend on it!"