But she did. And whenever she relaxed in her unpleasant campaign and condescended to smile upon him again, he presently learned that it was only a prelude to a definite plan for something more that she wanted. She desired new furniture, and when he demurred she even went so far as to purchase what she wanted herself, charging it to her husband, in places where he had never had a charge account before. And she gave away some of the old things. In vain he stormed and glowered, and declared he would return everything she had bought. She managed calmly and smilingly, sometimes even contemptuously, to conquer. She kept what she wanted always, whether it had to be gained by battle, or by wheedling and coaxing and a brief period of sweetness.
What she bought was all modern stuff, furniture without normal legs, straight and square, bookcases in sections of square cubby holes, cabinets that looked like boxes. Nothing sensible and beautiful according to old-fashioned lines. Not that Hiram was a connoisseur in art or beauty, but he hated all this stuff that she had bought and he had to pay for. And he hated it worse when the bills came in. There was a storm and a tempest in the house every time a new and unexpected bill was discovered by him. Then the lady went about with a haughty, abused look on her delicate face, until Hiram wondered why he had ever had the idea of marrying her. There was no pleasure to be found with a woman who looked that way.
But it was when Natalie began to demand that the house be built over, with an extensive addition to its already impressive proportions, that the real fight was on. Hiram put his foot down with all the force of the former years, and Natalie tried all her wiles on him without effect.
All this time there had been frequent battles about the servants. Hiram detested the French maids and the butler who had been established in the house. He longed for the accustomed deference of Irving and Mandy, and he saw no sense in having four servants where two had been all that were necessary. He told Natalie that they were all sly and were always snooping around to spy on him. He occasionally lost his temper with one or another of them and roared at them, and then these special servants of his wife carried their heads high and ignored him. That he could not brook.
And always there was company, guests who sometimes stayed a week or more. Ladies and men, a married couple now and then. And Hiram did not like any of them. He did not like the men she brought there, and the women did not attract him. Oh, he was getting his eyes open to a great many things, almost open to some of his own faults, though that, of course, he never would own.
So when Natalie declared she couldn’t stand the restrictions of this country house that Hiram had once thought so stately and palatial, and began to tell what additions she wanted, how there should be dressing rooms, and bathrooms for every bedroom, and there should be sun porches, sleeping porches, a game room with billiard table and other accommodations for entertaining her guests, Hiram began to swear roundly.
He had never had occasion before to swear in his own home, for the women who had been around him had always done his bidding. He had scolded them and roared at them, but he had not sworn. He hadn’t had to swear to get his wishes carried out, but now this wife was obdurate. She wanted what she wanted at once! And she even went so far as to say that she had been to the city to see an architect and had secured prices on what she wanted.
That finally finished Hiram. He roared at her so that the servants came hastily from different parts of the house where their duties called them, and peered furtively at him.
“What in the name of all that’s unholy do you want all that room for, I’d like to know? Are you planning on taking in boarders? You might as well, I suppose, for we are never alone now. It might be a little profitable. I don’t know why I have to feed such hordes of strangers, who just come and park on us continually. I used to think I would be a rich man someday, but you are trying to spend every cent I have saved as fast as you can. I think the time has come to call a halt.”
“Call a halt?” said the lady of the house, lifting well-groomed eyebrows. “I should think the time had come for you to call a halt on yourself. You are making yourself a byword in the kitchen and among my friends. Don’t roar so! You can be heard all the way out to the street.”
Hiram’s reaction to that was to roar a little louder.
“I shall speak as I like in my own house!” he thundered. “And I want a halt called on the strangers that are coming here in a continual stream. There is one man in particular that I don’t want to have darken these doors again, and that is that lily of a fool who hovers around you every minute when he is here. I mean that creature you call ‘Herbert dolling’! If he comes here again I shall certainly have him arrested or thrown out or something. You might tell him, to avoid trouble. And I’m just about fed up with all these guests. If you have any more coming, just cancel them. I mean that! I want to find my house to myself this evening when I get home. If I find any guests here, I’ll send for taxis to take them home, and I’ll tell them I don’t want them to come again. Those are orders!”
“But, Hiram—”
“No ‘but-Hirams’! I mean what I have said. I want a little peace and rest. I did want the company of my wife in a comfortable home, till you opened the doors for the whole world to come in and eat and drink and be merry. And now I’m done. I don’t want to see strangers smirking around occupying my rooms, and playing bridge and running the excruciating jazz and swing on your radio. I don’t want to hear another radio as long as I live! And no, I won’t build this house over! It’s going to stay just as it was when you married me and told me it was the most adorable house you ever saw. I want to get rid of all these odd-shaped things you call furniture in the place where my fine antiques used to be, and I want to get rid of your high-and-mighty creatures you call servants. I’m going out in the kitchen and fire them this minute, and I’m going to town to hunt up Mandy and Irving. I want them back, and we won’t have any comfort till they get here. I’m sick of these stylish messes your servants get up for food, and I won’t have another meal in this house until I get Mandy back to cook it! Now, if you don’t like that you can go, too! For now I’m the head of this house, and you’ll do as I say if you want to stay here.”
“But, Hiram! Hi, dear!” Natalie was crying prettily now.
“No! You needn’t try any ‘Hi-dears’ on me, either. I’m done with that nonsense. If you want to stay here, you’ve got to quit this sloppy business, calling everybody ‘dolling’ and trying to make my honorable name of Hiram into a fool modern contraction!”
“But—but—I thought you liked me to call you by a special pet name that was all our own,” she pleaded, her large eyes filling with great effective tears that were trained to fall just at the proper moment down a well-made-up cheek.
“Yes, that was all very well when you first came and were a well-behaved wife, as you ought to be, before you began to upset the whole regime here, and fire my servants I had had for years, and put out my furniture, and bring in your pesky friends. Then I used to think it was cute and you were very attractive. But now I’ve found you out, and I don’t want to hear it again! I heard that baboon of a Herbert yell it all over the place, “Hi! Oh, Hi! I say, where are you, Hi? I want another bottle of wine. Will you tell the sehvant to bring it in?”
Hiram, in his extreme rage, imitated the man Herbert’s tone to perfection. The servants listening in had a great laugh over it. It was as if a mad dog should stop in his wild career to put on a little lap-poodle’s act.
But Natalie was very angry. Her eyes were flashing now. She stiffened visibly.
“That will be enough!” she said in her severest tone. “When you take to caricaturing my friends, I think we have reached the limit.”
“I agree with you,” said Hiram. “I have reached the limit! If you can behave like a decent woman, and put off this social act and live at home quietly with your husband, and be guided by my wishes, well and good. I will agree to put aside and forget what you have done. Otherwise, you can get out and stay out! I want no more to do with
you!”
Hiram turned and stamped across the dining room to the door of the butler’s pantry. He could hear the scuttling of quick feet as the servants fled before his coming, and Natalie caught her breath. She was not ready for this turn of events. Things had been going on this way for almost two years now, since they were married, and she had managed to stave off their coming to a head before the time was ripe. Never before had Hiram gone quite so far. He had made threats, but he had not actually put them into action. Actually carrying the war into the kitchen! And those foreign servants of hers wouldn’t stand for his high-tempered nonsense. They would resent it. And it did not suit her purposes to have them dismissed just now. They were discreet. In case of real difficulty of some sort they would be excellent witnesses for her if any real trouble arose. She knew their testimony would be all for herself. She had been working toward that end, if at any time her purposes did not carry out and she got into trouble.
Natalie turned deadly white as she followed cautiously after her husband, near enough to hear without being seen.
So she heard Hiram announce to the discreet-looking waitress in the pantry who was demurely putting away dishes on the pantry shelves that she might go to her room and pack her things at once. She was done working here, and a taxi would be at the door within a half hour to take them all to the station. He would see that she had her wages.
Natalie, looking through the crack of the swing door, was able to see the sneer on the maid’s face and hear her contemptuous laugh as she went on with her work as much as to say that she did not take her orders from him.
But Hiram did not stay to argue with her. He stalked on into the kitchen and out to the back door where the butler had vanished, and gave the same orders to him and the other maids in a very final tone.
It was the butler, standing on the back steps, who dared to answer him in a most disrespectful way.
“It was the lady who hired us,” he said. “We have nothing to do with you, sir!”
“Yes,” said Hiram, “it was the lady who hired you, but it was I who paid your wages. Now go, and be quick about it!” And he turned and went back into the house with a look on his face that boded no good to anyone who crossed him.
He went straight to the telephone and ordered a taxi to be there in exactly half an hour to take four people to the station for the next train, in a tone so loud that they could not fail to hear every word he said. Then he slammed down the receiver and hunted up his wife, who was weeping very effectively in the library, and ordered her to tell her servants to hurry and get out. He would give her checks for each of them, and he wanted to have the matter finished as quickly as possible.
He wrote the four checks at high speed, as if he were hastening the departure of the hated servants, and then went to the telephone again and called a henchman in his office. This message, too, was easily heard all over the house as it was delivered in stentorian tones.
“That you, Jim? I want you to get ready to go to the city in my car and find Mandy and Irving. You know where they used to live. They probably have gone back there. If they are not there, find out where they are, and go get them. Bring them out to my house with you tonight! If they are working some other place, tell them I’ll make it well worth their while to give it up and come back to me. Tell Irving those are orders.”
The click that came as Hiram hung up the receiver seemed to reverberate through the whole house, even to the third story, where now the packing of the departing crew became accelerated. The master had evidently come into his own, and meant business. The lady had just been up with evidences of weeping on her face and given them their checks, arranging an address where she could contact them if circumstances should change and she wanted them back again, or she needed them to stand by her.
Then the taxi arrived, and the lady retired to her locked room to see what she should do next, while the master of the house saw the whole group speedily into the coach and watched them depart with a grim look on his face. He had never made it his business to keep tabs on the amount of liquor that was brought into the house, so he did not know that quite a number of bottles departed with the servants. But his first act after he came back into the house was to investigate the sideboard, pantries, and store closets in the cellar, and gather all refreshments of that sort together, putting it under lock and key. It wasn’t that he wanted it for himself, for he did not have the habit of drinking. He was too frugal of nature for that. But he desired to put out of the house all that contributed to the constant stream of wild guests who seemed to be satellites of this wife of his. If her guests came again they would not stay long if she had nothing to give them to drink, he reasoned.
Next he called up all the stores in the village where he had charge accounts and asked for an itemized statement of what he owed, and told them to send all further orders C.O.D. and not to charge anything more until further notice from him. He said he wanted to straighten out his accounts, for he had just discharged some servants and he wanted to check up on what they had been doing.
When Natalie heard that, she was furious and resolved somehow to get even with him. But before she could formulate any plans, Hiram had stamped out of the house and slammed the door behind him. Then she heard his car go out the drive, and she knew that she was alone in the house, with only her problems to consider, for which she would probably have the whole day. Hiram would not likely return until late in the evening. That had come to be a habit with him when there had been discord in the morning before he went away.
She went to the telephone and called up a few of her friends. She had to do something before Hiram got home. It wouldn’t do for him to come back tonight and find them all here as usual. And yet of course she didn’t want to tell them too much, for there had been many a storm of tempers in that house during the past two years, and they had passed. Perhaps this, too, would pass.
She was safe during the daytime, and after consideration, she called Herbert Grandison. After all, why hadn’t she married Herbert? He was fairly wealthy and not the least bit stingy, as Hiram was beginning to show that he was. Of course Herbert was devoted, and dressed charmingly, always so well groomed, which, now that their honeymoon was over, could not often be said of Hiram. But she adored big men, and Hiram was big and broad shouldered and strong. That was really why she had chosen him after all. Well, he had been devoted for a time, and perhaps that was all one could expect of any human being—devotion for a time.
So with a smile and a sigh for glories past that had not lasted, she betook herself to the telephone. She arranged for an evening with one of her women friends, dinner at her house, with a round of nightclubs afterward. She said of her husband that he was busy and couldn’t possibly go, and of course they would invite “dolling Herbie” to be her escort.
It was all comfortably arranged at last, and she settled down to rest a little after the exciting morning she had passed, to rest and to get a bite of something to eat and drink. But lo, she found the sideboard and all the places where liquor could be, locked! How outrageous! She prowled around and had to be satisfied with a few fancy cakes and some ice water. She wouldn’t even make coffee. Hiram should see how destitute he had left her when he came home and went the rounds to try and find something to eat himself. He could take a little of his own punishment. It was he who had sent four most efficient servants away! And of course he would not be able to get his old Mandy and Irving. Well, let him suffer. She didn’t intend to get his breakfast for him. She would let him see the consequences of his own act. And she would keep it up for weeks if necessary. She could always run into the city and get a good meal for herself if she got hungry, and for a time she would return some of her guests’ visits.
Early in the afternoon she arrayed herself in an attractive negligee and awaited Herbert. And he was not long in coming.
He came in with a smiling face, a glint of triumph in his eyes. This was the time for which he had been waiting. Natalie had sent for him herself, had told him t
hat she would be alone.
He came forward into the room, his hands extended, and took her hands in both of his. He drew her close and looked down into her eyes.
“Dolling Natalie!” he said glowingly. “We are free from the angry mob at last! I have you to myself. Let’s sit down here, Natalie, my dear.” And he drew her down beside him on a love seat that was placed diagonally across in front of the fireplace. Natalie had started a gentle blaze that the maids had arranged for early that morning. All Natalie had to do was to touch a match to the kindling as soon as she heard her Herbert ring the bell, and then fly to open the door.
She sank gently down on the sofa, his arm about her, and looked up into his eyes.
“Oh, this is like heaven, to rest with your arm about me,” she murmured. “I’ve had such a terrible day!”
“Well, forget it, and let us just enjoy this time together, my sweet. Then tonight you’ll meet me somewhere, and we’ll go dancing, or to the opera—”
“Not tonight,” she said sadly. “I’ve already promised Neeta to come there to dinner and go places. I guess I can’t get out of that.”
“Oh, well, I’ll go there, too. She asked me. I said I wasn’t sure, but how about tomorrow night? You’ll give me that, surely?”
“Oh yes,” said Natalie, “that will be sweet. I’ll give you that, of course.”
“And I will give you tonight!” said Hiram, suddenly stepping up behind them and laying a strong hand on “dolling Herbie’s” neck. He slid his fingers under Herbert’s collar and lifted the other man bodily from the couch with a mighty grip, lifted him over the couch, set his feet on the floor, and propelled him, choking and gulping and strangling, from the room. On the front steps he paused, then giving his man a swift and efficient kick, he sent him sprawling down the steps and onto the walk.