The Celebrity by Laura Z. Hobson Read Free Book Online Page B

part of it, and certainly nobody did.
    Thorn looked around the room. It was true that a more sober mood could be detected, a kind of settling down. That was only natural. Gloria was beginning to talk of leaving before too long—“When you can’t afford a real nurse,” she said, with a toss of her head in her husband’s direction, “you’re the slave of a baby-sitter.” Her sisters nodded knowingly, and all three of their husbands, in a mass reaction of their collective muscles, moved off to the tray of decanters at the other end of the room.
    Even Dad and Mother, Thorn noticed, were beginning to show signs of strain, but they made no move to end the party. Their glance had scarcely wavered from the face of their younger son and even now, as Gregory left the room to call Ed Barnard, their dazed eyes clung with inexpressible pride to the chair where he had been sitting. It was touching, Thorn thought, and started toward them, but at that moment Cindy turned away from Abby and drifted aimlessly over to the fireplace. He forgot about his parents and joined her.
    She was looking into the mirror over the mantel and, as he approached her, he saw that she too had come down from the first pinnacle of happiness over Gregory. She said softly, “I suppose Gregory will take Abby to Florida or some place to celebrate,” and before he could reply, she pushed her face close to the glass and added, “I look half dead and awful.”
    In this she was wrong. Lucinda Johns never looked half dead and rarely looked awful. She was a woman of energy, just as she had been a girl of energy, with the kind of energy which comes from health, vitality, and inner dissatisfaction. She had an energetic voice, free, it is true, of the two attributes which make an excellent thing in woman, but with other, and compensating, characteristics. These included a certain brash charm, a ring of humor, and an expensive Brearley-Vassar way of speaking which she had somehow picked up on her road through New York’s free public schools and colleges.
    Cindy was tall and redheaded, with a complexion so good that its occasional periods of floridity could be forgiven. She was a trifle large, but she carried herself perfectly and never, even in the country, wore slacks. Recently she had taken to having “rinses” for her hair, but henna is, of course, a vegetable product and not a true metallic dye. She was Thornton’s age, looked it, never bewailed it publicly, and believed that a good wife was one who subtly pushed her husband to greater business effort than he would put out by himself. In this Thornton concurred, and in affectionate moments told her that half his. success was due to her, and that he was lucky she wasn’t devoid of normal ambition like some wives.
    In this, she concurred. She had long held it a family misfortune that Gregory had not married a girl who could have made something, of him, who could have persuaded him to give, up writing esoteric stuff nobody wanted to read in favor of sensible writing like, romantic stories, radio serial, or popular novels. Appealing to a large public, was, a trick of the trade you could pull off, at will—how often had she read that in hook reviews! And how often spoken of it to Thorn!
    Tonight’s, news about more “esoteric, stuff,” he suddenly realized as he met her glance in the mirror, must have thrown his wife a bit off keel. It was never pleasant to have one’s theories assassinated by facts, and for anybody like Cindy, it would be very nearly infuriating. A rush of sympathy warmed him and he said, “You’ve never looked awful in your whole life and right now you look wonderful.”
    Cindy’s eyes cleared and he was reassured. How natural had been her comment about Florida, and how disloyal of him to find it troubling, even momentarily. Cindy had faults, many faults, but she was as incapable as he of being jealous of Gregory. Consolingly he said, “Gregory won’t be taking a vacation just