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LADIES MUST LIVE

by

ALICE DUER MILLER

Author of "Come Out of the Kitchen," etc.

1917







CHAPTER I


Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year's
Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable
people in New York were out of town.

Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in
such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same
instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in people were
concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability very much as the
douser's hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring. When she crossed the
room to speak to some woman after dinner, whatever that woman's social
position might formerly have been, you could be sure that at present she
was on the upward wing. When Mrs. Ussher discovered extraordinary
qualities of mind and sympathy in some hitherto impossible man, you might
be certain it was time to begin to book him in advance.

Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more power over
the situation than the barometer has over the weather. She merely was
able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching social success.

She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her sudden
and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual attraction. The
fact that for years her friends had been the small group of the
momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no explanation. So simple
was her creed that she believed people were fashionable for the same
reason that they were her friends, because "they were so nice."

During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to these
friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized over the
financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends; she sat up till
the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl; during the height of
their careers she organized plots for their assistance; and even when
their stars were plainly on the decline, she would often ask them to
lunch, if she happened to be alone.

Many people, we know, are prone to make friends with the rich and great.
Mrs. Ussher's genius consisted in having made friends with them before
they were either. When you hurried to her with some account of a newly
discovered treasure--a beauty or a conversable young man--she would
always say: "Oh, yes, I crossed with her two years ago," or "Isn't he a
dear?--he was once in Jack's office." The strange thing was these
statements were always true; the subjects of them confessed with tears
that "dear Mrs. Ussher" or "darling Laura" was the kindest friend they
had ever had.

Her house party was therefore likely to be notable.

First, there was of course Mrs. Almar--of course without her husband.
There is only one thing, or perhaps two, to be said for Nancy Almar--that
she was very handsome and that she was not a hypocrite, no more than a
pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard with his cutlass in his teeth.
Mrs. Almar's cutlass was always in her teeth, when it was not in
somebody's vitals.

She had smooth, jet-black hair, done close to her pretty head, a clear
white-and-vermilion complexion, and a good figure, not too tall. She said
little, but everything she did say, she most poignantly meant. If, while
you were talking to her, she suddenly cried out: "Ah, that's really
good!" there was no doubt you had had the good fortune to amuse her;
while if she yawned and left you in the midst of a sentence there was no
question that she was bored.

She hated her husband--not for the conventional reason that she had
married him. She hated him because he was a hypocrite, because he was
always placating and temporizing.

For instance, he had said to her as she was about to start for the
Usshers':

"I hope you'll explain to them why I could not come."

There had never been the least question of Mr. Almar's coming, and she
turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:

"You mean that I would not have gone if you had?"

He did not seem annoyed.

"No," he said, "that I'm called South on business."

"I shan't tell them that," she said, slowly wrapping her furs about her
throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, "but I'll tell
them you say so, if you like."

She was as good as her word--she usually was.

When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without
the slightest change of expression:

"Would any one like to hear Roland's explanation of why he is not with
us?"

"Had it anything to do with his not being asked?" said a pale young man;
and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to
ascertain how his remark had succeeded.

So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact,
though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her
again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had
been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or
two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was
an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled
hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more,
he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the
bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where
she despised she made no secret of the fact.

"Not asked, Mr. Wickham!" she said. "I assume my husband is asked
wherever I am," and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint
smile: "One's husband is always asked, isn't he?"

"Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come," said another
speaker.

This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was blond and
some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that
she was the beauty of the hour.

She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her
cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had
another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the truth of the
observation that a married woman's greatest charm is her husband, he is
also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand
across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs.
Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much
better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the
unmarried.

She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the party was
understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had discovered a
cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from a technical college,
had invented a process in the manufacture of rubber that had brought him
a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on
aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he
was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver
frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs.
Almar admired.

Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored
Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that
Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable
world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on
wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of
splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a
good-looking young man.

In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the
little public that really mattered, the lists were set. Nobody present,
except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously ignorant of the world in
which he was moving, doubted for one moment that Miss Fenimer had
resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that is, he turned out to be actually as
per the recommendations of Mrs. Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs.
Almar intended that he should be hers.

Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not
have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to
Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical Nancy was
her friend, too.

Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to
interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss
Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson,
her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was
a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man--exactly the type you would
like to see your rival marry. Hickson had motored out with his sister,
and had received some excellent counsel on the way.

"Now, Ned," she had said, "don't cut your own throat by being an adoring
foil. Don't let Christine grind your face in the dust, just to show this
new man that she can do it."

"You don't do Christine justice," he had answered, "if you think she
would do that."

His sister did not reply. She thought it would have been doing the girl
injustice to suppose that she would do anything else.

They were still sitting about the tea-table at a quarter to seven, when
Christine and Mrs. Almar rose simultaneously. It was almost time for the
arrival of Riatt, and neither had any fancy for meeting him save at her
best--in all the panoply of evening dress.

"We're not dining till a quarter past eight, my dears," said Mrs. Ussher.

Both ladies thought they would lie down before dinner. And here chance
took a hand. Riatt's train was late, whereas Christine's clock was fast.
And so it happened that she came downstairs just as he was coming up.

There had been no one to greet him. He was told by the butler that Mrs.
Ussher was dressing, that dinner would be in fifteen minutes; he started
to bound up the stairs, following the footman with his bags, when
suddenly looking up the broad flight he saw a blond vision in white and
pearls coming slowly down. He hoped that his lower jaw hadn't fallen, but
she really was extraordinarily beautiful; and he could not help slowing
down a little. She stopped, with her hand on the banisters, like Louise
of Prussia.

"Oh, you're Mr. Riatt," she said, very gently. "You know you're most
awfully late."

"I wish," he said, "that I were wise enough to be able to say: 'Oh,
you're Miss ----'"

"I might be a Mrs."

"Oh, I hope not," he answered. "Are you?"

She smiled.

"You'll know as soon as you come down to dinner."

"I shall be quick about dressing."

He went on up, and she pursued her slow progress down. She felt that her
future had been settled by those few seconds on the stairs.

"He will do admirably," she said to herself, and a smile like that of a
sleeping infant curved her lips. She felt calmly triumphant. She had
always said there was no reason why even a rich man should be absolutely
impossible. She recalled certain great fortunes with repulsive owners,
which some of her friends had accepted. For herself she had always
intended to have everything--love and money, too. And here it was, almost
in her hands. There had