The Beauty and the Bolshevist

								

“A little weak brother, Leo.”
“David in trouble again?”
Moreton nodded. “He thinks he’s going to marry William Cord’s
daughter.”
Klein, who was Ben’s friend as well as his assistant, blanched at the
name.
“Cord’s daughter!” he exclaimed, and if he had said Jack-the-ripper’s,
he could not have expressed more horror. “Now isn’t it queer,” he went
on, musingly, “that David, brought up as he has been, can see anything
to attract him in a girl like that?”
Ben was tidying his desk preparatory to departure—that is to say, he
was pushing all the papers far enough back to enable him to close the
roller top, and he answered, absently:
“Oh, I suppose they’re all pretty much the same—girls.”
“Why, what do you mean?” said Leo, reproachfully. “How can a girl who’s
been brought up to be a parasite—to display the wealth of her father
and husband, and has never done a useful thing since she was born—Why,
a woman was telling me the other day—I got caught in a block in the
subway and she was next me—awfully interesting, she was. She sewed in
one of these fashionable dressmaking establishments—and the things she
told me about what those women spend on their clothes—underclothes and
furs and everything. Now there must be something wrong with a woman who
can spend money on those things when she knows the agony of poverty
right around her. You can’t compare that sort of woman with a
self-respecting, self-supporting girl—”
At this moment the door opened and Miss Cox entered. She wore a
short-sleeved, low-neck, pink-satin blouse, a white-satin skirt,
open-work stockings, and slippers so high in the heels that her ankles
turned inward. Her hair was treated with henna and piled untidily on
the top of her head. She was exactly what Klein had described—a
self-respecting, self-supporting girl, but, on a superficial
acquaintance, men of Cord’s group would have thought quite as badly of
her as Klein did of fashionable women. They would have been mistaken.
Miss Cox supported her mother, and, though only seventeen, denied
herself all forms of enjoyment except dress and an occasional movie.
She was conscientious, hard-working, accurate, and virtuous. She loved
Ben, whom she regarded as wise, beautiful, and generous, but she would
have died rather than have him or anyone know it.
She undulated into the room, dropped one hip lower than the other,
placed her hand upon it and said, with a good deal of enunciation:
“Oh, Mr. Moreton, the Newport boat leaves at five-thirty.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Cox,” said Ben, gravely, and she went out
again.
“It would be a terrible thing for Dave to make a marriage like that,”
Klein went on as soon as she had gone, “getting mixed up with those
fellows. And it would be bad for you, Ben—”
“I don’t mean to get mixed up with them,” said Ben.