The Friend of Women and Other Stories Read Free Page A

material, it came as something of a surprise to me, but not to the Bar Harbor summer community, that she did not go farther afield. The Belknaps were hardly an adventurous clan and seemed always to have been satisfied with the company of relatives and neighbors. And Tommy Newbold was a man whom everybody liked. He had messy blond hair, laughing blue eyes, and a strong, short, stocky figure; he joked about everything, sometimes a bit tiresomely but with an infectious good humor that nothing seemed able to quell. And yet he was reputed to be a shrewd and capable lawyer with a bright future in the great Wall Street firm for which he clerked. His family occupied a summer villa next to the Belknaps, and he had been “sweet on” his prim, pretty little neighbor from an early date. She must have seen greater possibilities in him than I did, though I by no means underrated him. But would he make the world go round?
    They made, it was true, a somewhat incongruous pair. Where she was so neat and dainty, presiding over the younger gatherings at her parents’ house with grace and precision, he was a rather fumbling sort, apt to spill a drink or slump too heavily in a delicate chair or even tell an off-color story to a prudish aunt. Yet he worshipped Alfreda; he seemed indeed almost in awe of her. She was always a little princess in his adoring eyes. She must have imagined that he was the kind of clay she could handle. Had she been a teacher as I was, she might have recognized that there were clays capable of resisting the deftest hands.
    They started well enough after a big stylish wedding at St. James’s in New York and a honeymoon in Majorca. Tommy soon became a partner in his firm, and Alfreda, in a few years’ time, was known about town for her elegant dinner parties in their small but exquisite penthouse on Park Avenue. She certainly did things well. Her food and wine were fine, her decoration tasteful, and she was clever in bringing people out, in making them talk. But there was no concealing from so close and interested an observer as myself that our hostess was not as satisfied with her achievement as her guests. The reason came out one evening when she had selected me to chat with after dinner. I had just congratulated her on the congeniality of the group she had assembled.
    â€œThere are too many lawyers,” she complained. “Tommy always has his list of musts. And when they’re not lawyers, they’re clients. In Tommy’s world people dine out only to eat, drink, and talk shop. They have no interest in the exchange of ideas. Or of a social gathering as the soil in which the finest things can grow. I suppose they’re all as American as apple pie. But I sometimes wonder how long I can stand it, Hubert.”
    â€œYou’re not really serious, Alfreda?”
    â€œI’ve never been more so!”
    â€œThen you’ve been dreaming, I suppose, of some kind of brilliant salon. Perhaps like Cora’s mother’s?”
    â€œWell, something of that sort. It was part of my old credo that a woman’s role is to make something of a man. Have I just been a fool?”
    â€œNo. But you may have been born at the wrong time. And in the wrong place. Women are thinking today that their role is to make something of women.”
    â€œWhich to me is the same thing. But Tommy is perfectly content to remain exactly what he is. He doesn’t want to change a thing about himself except to become a better and better lawyer.”
    â€œWhich he will be,” I replied in stout defense of her worthy spouse. “You may find yourself the wife of a famous judge one day, my dear.”
    â€œAnd what will I be? An old, dull woman, the recipient of a million legal anecdotes. What can I make of a man who’s already made himself?”
    I was only left to hope that if Alfreda didn’t have a husband who could be fashioned into the man of her dreams, she might have a son or sons