“I’ll give you a check tomorrow, Helen,” Mrs. Sheridan said. “Don’t worry.
“Yes, ma’am,” Helen said. “Thank you.”
Mr. Sheridan came through the pantry into the kitchen. He looked handsome in his dark clothes. “Oh, here you are,” he said to his wife. “Let’s have a drink before they come.” Then, turning to the waitress, he asked, “Have you heard from your family recently?”
“No, Mr. Seridan,” Helen said.
“Where is it your family lives?” he asked.
“In Missigan, Mr. Seridan.” She giggled, but this joke had been made innumerable times in the past few years and she was tired of it.
“Where?” Mr. Sheridan asked.
“In Missigan, Mr. Seridan,” she repeated.
He burst out laughing. “By Jove, I think that’s funny!” he said. He put his arm around his wife’s waist and they went in to have a drink.
MR. BRUCE returned to a much pleasanter home. His wife, Lois, was a pretty woman, and she greeted him affectionately. He sat down with her for a cocktail. “Marguerite called me this morning,” she said, “and told me that Charlie’s lost his job. When I heard the phone ring, I sensed trouble; I sensed it. Even before I picked up the receiver, I knew that something was wrong. At first, I thought it was going to be poor Helen Luckman. She’s had so many misfortunes recently that she’s been on my mind a lot of the time. Then I heard Marguerite’s voice. She said that poor Charlie had been a wonderful sport about the whole thing and that he was determined to get an even better job. He’s traveled all over the United States for that firm and now they’re just letting him go. She called while I was in bed, and the reason I stayed in bed this morning is because my back’s been giving me a little trouble again. It’s nothing serious?it’s nothing serious at all?but the pain’s excruciating and I’m going to Dr. Parminter tomorrow and see if he can help me.”
Lois had been frail when Mr. Bruce first met her. It had been one of her great charms. The extreme pallor and delicacy of her skin could be accounted for partly by a year of her life when, as she said, the doctors had given her up for dead. Her frailness was a fact, a mixture of chance and inheritance, and she could not be blamed for her susceptibility to poison oak, cold germs, and fatigue.
“I’m very sorry to hear about your back, dear,” Mr. Bruce said.
“Well, I didn’t spend the whole day in bed,” she said. “I got up around eleven and had lunch with Betty and then went shopping.”
Lois Bruce, like a great many women in New York, spent a formidable amount of time shopping along Fifth Avenue. She read the advertisements in the newspapers more intently than her husband read the financial section. Shopping was her principal occupation. She would get up from a sickbed to go shopping. The atmosphere of the department stores had a restorative effect on her disposition. She would begin her afternoon at Altman’s?buy a pair of gloves on the first floor, and then travel up on the escalator and look at andirons. She would buy a purse and some face cream at Lord & Taylor’s, and price coffee tables, upholstery fabrics, and cocktail glasses. “Down?” she would ask the elevator operator when the doors rolled open, and if the operator said “Up,” Lois would board the car anyhow, deciding suddenly that whatever it was that she wanted might be in the furniture or the linen department. She would buy a pair of shoes and a slip at Saks, send her mother some napkins from Mosse’s, buy a bunch of cloth flowers at De Pinna’s, some hand lotion at Bonwit’s, and a dress at Bendel’s. By then, her feet and her head would be pleasantly tired, the porter at Tiffany’s would be taking in the flag, the lamps on the carriages by the Plaza would be lighted. She would buy a cake at Dean’s, her last stop, and walk home through the early dark like an honest workman, contented and weary.
When they sat down to dinner, Lois watched her husband taste his soup and smiled when she saw that he was pleased. “It is good, isn’t it?” she said. “I can’t taste it myself?I haven’t been able to taste anything for a week?but I don’t want to tell Katie, bless her, because it would hurt her feelings, and I didn’t want to compliment her if it wasn’t right. Katie,” she called, through the pantry, “your soup is delicious.”
MRS. SHERIDAN did not come to the corner all the next week. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Bruce stopped by for Katherine at her dancing class, on the way home from his office. The Sheridan girls were in the same class, and he looked for Mrs. Sheridan in the lobby of the Chardin Club, but she wasn’t there. He didn’t see her again, actually, until he went, on Sunday afternoon, to bring Katherine home from a birthday party.
Because Lois sometimes played cards until seven o’clock, it often fell to Mr. Bruce to call for Katherine at some address at the end of the day, to see her through the stiff thanks and goodbyes that end a children’s party. The streets were cold and dark; the hot rooms where the parties were smelled of candy and flowers. Among the friends and relatives there he was often pleased to meet people with whom he had summered or been to school. Some of these parties were elaborate, and he had once gone to get Katherine at an apartment in the Waldorf Towers where six little girls were being entertained by a glass blower.
