Linda Condon | Page 4

them when they are smoking a cigar; cigarettes don't matter. Leave the cigarette-smokers alone, anyhow; they're not as dependable as the others. A man with a good cigar--you must know the good from the bad--is usually discreet. I ought to bring you up different, but, Lord, life's too short. Besides, you will learn more useful things right with mama, whose eyes are open, than anywhere else.
"Powder my back, darling; I can't reach. If I'm a little late to-night go to sleep like a duck. You think Mr. Jasper's nice, don't you? So does mother. But you mustn't let him give you any more money. It'll make him conceited."
Linda wondered what she meant by the last phrase. How could it make Mr. Jasper conceited to give her a gold piece? However, she decided that she had better not ask.
It was like that with a great many of her mother's mysterious remarks--Linda had an instinctive feeling of drawing away. The other kissed her warmly and left a print of vivid red on her cheek.
She examined the mark in the mirror when her mother had gone; it was, she decided, the kiss made visible. Then she laid away the things scattered about the room by Mrs. Condon's hasty dressing. Her own belongings were always in precise order.
A sudden hesitation seized her at the thought of going down to the crowd at the music. The women made her uncomfortable. It wasn't what they said, but the way they said it; and the endless questions wearied her. She was, as well, continually bothered by her inability to impress upon them how splendid her mother was. Some of them she was certain did not appreciate her. Mrs. Condon at once admitted and was entertained by this, but it disturbed Linda. However, she understood the reason--when any nice men came along they always liked her mother best. This made the women mad.
The world, she gathered, was a place where women played a game of men with each other. It was very difficult, she couldn't comprehend the rules or reason; and Linda was afraid that she would be unsuccessful and never have the perfect time her mother wanted for her. In the first place, she was too thin, and then she knew that she could never talk like her dearest. Perhaps when she had had some wine it would be different.
She decided, after all, to go down to the assemblage; and, by one of the white marble pillars, Mrs. Randall captured her. "Why, here's Linda-all-alone," Mrs. Randall said. "Mama out again?" Linda replied stoutly, "She has a dreadful lot of invitations."
Mrs. Randall, who wore much brighter clothes than her mother, was called by the latter an old buzzard. She was very old, Linda could see, with perfectly useless staring patches of paint on her wrinkled cheeks, and eyes that look as though they might come right out of her head. Her frizzled hair supported a dead false twist with a glittering diamond pin, and her soft cold hands were loaded with jewels. She frightened Linda, really, although she could not say why. Mrs. Randall was a great deal like the witch in a fairy-story, but that wasn't it. Linda hadn't the belief in witches necessary for dread. It might be her scratching voice; or the way she turned her head, without any chin at all, like a turtle; or her dresses, which led you to expect a person very different from an old buzzard.
"Of course she does," said Mrs. Randall, "any number of invitations, and why shouldn't she? Your mother is very pleasant, to be sure." She nodded wisely to the woman beside her, Miss Skillern.
Miss Skillern was short and broad and, in the evening, always wore curled ostrich plumes on tightly filled gray puffs. She reminded Linda of a wadded chair. Mrs. Randall, after the other's slight stiff assent, continued:
"Your mama would never be lonely, not she. All I wonder is she doesn't get married again--with that blondine of hers. Wouldn't you rather have one papa than, in a way of speaking, a different one at every hotel?"
Linda, completely at a loss for answer, studied Mrs. Randall with her direct deep blue gaze. Miss Skillern again inclined her plumes. With the rest of her immobile she was surprisingly like one of those fat china figures with a nodding head. Linda was assaulted by the familiar bewildered feeling of not understanding what was said and, at the same time, passionately resenting it from an inner sensitive recognition of something wrong.
"How could I have that?" she finally asked.
"How?" repeated Miss Skillern, breathing loudly.
"Yes, how?" Mrs. Randall echoed. "You can ask your mama. You really can. And you may say that, as a matter of fact, the question came from us," she included her companion.
"From you," Miss Skillern exactly corrected