So Big Edna Ferber (most romantic novels txt) 📖

than he could conveniently afford to lose. Though Mrs. Phil had much to do with this, as Dirk’s partner. Paula played with Emery, a bold shrewd game.

Theodore Storm came in at ten and stood watching them. When the guests had left the three sat before the fire. “Something to drink?” Storm asked Dirk. Dirk refused but Storm mixed a stiff highball for himself, and then another. The whiskey brought no flush to his large white impassive face. He talked almost not at all. Dirk, naturally silent, was loquacious by comparison. But while there was nothing heavy, unvital about Dirk’s silence this man’s was oppressive, irritating. His paunch, his large white hands, his great white face gave the effect of bleached bloodless bulk. “I don’t see how she stands him,” Dirk thought. Husband and wife seemed to be on terms of polite friendliness. Storm excused himself and took himself off with a word about being tired, and seeing them in the morning.

After he had gone: “He likes you,” said Paula.

“Important,” said Dirk, “if true.”

“But it is important. He can help you a lot.”

“Help me how? I don’t want⁠—”

“But I do. I want you to be successful. I want you to be. You can be. You’ve got it written all over you. In the way you stand, and talk, and don’t talk. In the way you look at people. In something in the way you carry yourself. It’s what they call force, I suppose. Anyway, you’ve got it.”

“Has your husband got it?”

“Theodore! No! That is⁠—”

“There you are. I’ve got the force, but he’s got the money.”

“You can have both.” She was leaning forward. Her eyes were bright, enormous. Her hands⁠—those thin dark hot hands⁠—were twisted in her lap. He looked at her quietly. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t look at me that way, Dirk.” She huddled back in her chair, limp. She looked a little haggard and older, somehow. “My marriage is a mess, of course. You can see that.”

“You knew it would be, didn’t you?”

“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, what’s the difference, now? I’m not trying to be what they call an Influence in your life. I’m just fond of you⁠—you know that⁠—and I want you to be great and successful. It’s maternal, I suppose.”

“I should think two babies would satisfy that urge.”

“Oh, I can’t get excited about two pink healthy lumps of babies. I love them and all that, but all they need is to have a bottle stuffed into their mouths at proper intervals and to be bathed, and dressed and aired and slept. It’s a mechanical routine and about as exciting as a treadmill. I can’t go round being maternal and beating my breast over two nice firm lumps of flesh.”

“Just what do you want me to do, Paula?”

She was eager again, vitally concerned in him. “It’s all so ridiculous. All these men whose incomes are thirty⁠—forty⁠—sixty⁠—a hundred thousand a year usually haven’t any qualities, really, that the five-thousand-a-year man hasn’t. The doctor who sent Theodore a bill for four thousand dollars when each of my babies was born didn’t do a thing that a country doctor with a Ford wouldn’t do. But he knew he could get it and he asked it. Somebody has to get the fifty-thousand-dollar salaries⁠—some advertising man, or bond salesman or⁠—why, look at Phil Emery! He probably couldn’t sell a yard of pink ribbon to a schoolgirl if he had to. Look at Theodore! He just sits and blinks and says nothing. But when the time comes he doubles up his fat white fist and mumbles, ‘Ten million,’ or ‘Fifteen million,’ and that settles it.”

Dirk laughed to hide his own little mounting sensation of excitement. “It isn’t quite as simple as that, I imagine. There’s more to it than meets the eye.”

“There isn’t! I tell you I know the whole crowd of them. I’ve been brought up with this moneyed pack all my life, haven’t I? Pork packers and wheat grabbers and peddlers of gas and electric light and dry goods. Grandfather’s the only one of the crowd that I respect. He has stayed the same. They can’t fool him. He knows he just happened to go into wholesale beef and pork when wholesale beef and pork was a new game in Chicago. Now look at him!”

“Still, you will admit there’s something in knowing when,” he argued.

Paula stood up. “If you don’t know I’ll tell you. Now is when. I’ve got Grandfather and Dad and Theodore to work with. You can go on being an architect if you want to. It’s a fine enough profession. But unless you’re a genius where’ll it get you! Go in with them, and Dirk, in five years⁠—”

“What!” They were both standing, facing each other, she tense, eager; he relaxed but stimulated.

“Try it and see what, will you? Will you, Dirk?”

“I don’t know, Paula. I should say my mother wouldn’t think much of it.”

“What does she know! Oh, I don’t mean that she isn’t a fine, wonderful person. She is. I love her. But success! She thinks success is another acre of asparagus or cabbage; or a new stove in the kitchen now that they’ve brought gas out as far as High Prairie.”

He had a feeling that she possessed him; that her hot eager hands held him though they stood apart and eyed each other almost hostilely.

As he undressed that night in his rose and satin room he thought, “Now what’s her game? What’s she up to? Be careful, Dirk, old boy.” On coming into the room he had gone immediately to the long mirror and had looked at himself carefully, searchingly, not knowing that Paula, in her room, had done the same. He ran a hand over his close-shaved chin, looked at the fit of his dinner coat. He wished he had had it made at Peter Peel’s, the English tailor on Michigan Boulevard. But Peel was so damned expensive. Perhaps next time⁠ ⁠…

As he lay in the soft bed with the satin coverlet