And for another thing, she felt increasingly the sense of inferiority that he had aroused in her, that first night at the lake. Somehow, by his easy flippancy, he made her accomplishments seem small, of no consequence. The restaurant, which to her was a sort of Holy Grail, attained by fabulous effort and sacrifice, to him was the Pie Wagon, a term quickly taken up by Veda, who blandly shortened it to The Wagon. And even though he sometimes brought his friends there, and introduced them, and asked her to sit down, she noticed they were always men. She never met any of his women friends, and never met his family. Once, unexpectedly, he had pointed the car at Pasadena, and said he wanted her to see his home. She was nervous at the idea of meeting his mother, but when they got there it turned out that both mother and sister were away, with the servants off for the night. At once she hated the big stuffy mansion, hated the feeling she had been smuggled in the back door, almost hated him. There was no sex that night, and he professed to be puzzled, as well as hurt, by her conduct. She had a growing suspicion that to him she was a servant girl, an amusing servant girl, one with pretty legs and a flattering response in bed, but a servant girl just the same.
Yet she never declined his invitations, never put on the brake that her instinct was demanding, never raised the hatchet that she knew one day would have to fall. For there was always this delicious thing that he had brought into her life, this intimacy with Veda that had come when he came, that would go, she was afraid, when he went. Monty seemed devoted to Veda. He took her everywhere, to polo, to horse shows, to his mother’s, granting her all the social equality that he withheld from Mildred, so that the child lived in a horsy, streamlined heaven. Mildred lived in a heaven too, a heaven of more modest design, one slightly spoiled by wounded pride, but one that held the music of harps. She laved herself in Veda’s sticky affection, and bought, without complaining, the somewhat expensive gear that heaven required: riding, swimming, golf, and tennis outfits; overnight kits, monogrammed. If Mildred knew nobody in Pasadena, she had the consolation that Veda knew everybody, and had her picture on the society pages so often that she became quite blasé about it. And so long as this went on, Mildred knew she would put up with Monty, with his irritating point of view, his amused condescension, his omissions that cut her so badly — and not only put up with him, but cling to him.
This particular morning, however, she was in pleasant humor. She had slept well, after a romantic night; it was early fall again, with the mountain trees turning yellow, and she was pontificating amiably about Mr. Roosevelt. She pontificated a great deal now, particularly about politics. She hadn’t been in business very long before she became furiously aware of taxes, and this led quite naturally to politics and Mr. Roosevelt. She was going to vote for him, she said, because he was going to put an end to all this Hoover extravagance and balance the budget. Why the very idea, she said, of all those worthless people demanding help, and this Hoover even considering doing anything for them. There was nothing the matter with them except they were too lazy to work, and you couldn’t tell her that anybody couldn’t get along, even if there was a Depression, if they only had a little gump. In this, Monty may have detected a smug note, an allusion to what she had done with a little gump. At any rate, he listened with half an ear, and then asked abruptly: “Can I tell you something?”
“If it’s pro-Hoover I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s about Veda.”
“What’s she up to now?”
“Music... Well what the hell, it’s not up to me to give you any advice. All I know is how the kid feels.”
“She takes lessons.”
“She takes lessons from some cheap little ivory thumper over in Glendale, and she has a squawk. She doesn’t think she’s getting anywhere. Well — it’s none of my affair.”
“Go on.”
“I think she’s got something.”
“I always said she had talent.”
“Saying she has talent and doing the right thing about it are two different things. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you know more about pies than you do about music. I think she ought to be put under somebody that can really take charge of her.”
“Who, for instance?”
“Well, there’s a fellow in Pasadena that could do wonders with her. You may have heard of him — Charlie Hannen, quite well known, up to a few years ago, in the concert field. Then his lungs cracked up and he came out here. Doesn’t do much now. Organist, choirmaster, whatever you call it, at our church, leads a quiet life, but takes a few pupils. I’m sure I can get him interested in her. If he takes her on, she’ll be getting somewhere.”
“When did you learn so much about music?”
“I don’t know a thing about it. But my mother does. She’s been a patroness of the Philharmonic for years and she knows all about it. She says the kid’s really got it.”
“Of course I never met your mother.”
This slightly waspish remark Monty let pass without answering, and it was some minutes before he went on. “And another thing that makes me think she’s got it is the way she works at it. All right, all I know is horses, but when I see a guy on top of one, out there in the morning when there’s nobody else around, popping away with a mallet to improve his backhand, I think to myself, maybe one day he’ll be a polo player.”
“Isn’t that something to be.”
“It’s the same way with her. So far as I know, she never misses a day on that dry-goods box at her grandfather’s, and even when she comes over to Mother’s she does her two hours of exercises every morning, before she’ll even talk about tennis, or riding, or whatever Mother has in mind for her. She works, and you don’t even have to be a musician to figure that out.”
In spite of her almost religious conviction that Veda had talent, Mildred wasn’t much impressed: she knew Veda too well to read the evidence quite as Monty read it. Veda’s earnest practicing at Mrs. Beragon’s might mean a consuming passion for music, and it might mean a consuming passion for letting the whole household know she was around. And Mr. Hannen might have been a celebrated pianist once, but the fact that he was now organist at one of Pasadena’s swank churches cast a certain familiar color over his nomination as teacher. All in all, Mildred was sure she detected one of Veda’s fine schemes. And in addition to that, she resented what was evidently becoming a small conspiracy to tell her what she should do about her child, and the implication that what she was already doing, by Pasadena standards, wasn’t anything like good enough.
So for some time she said nothing about this subject to Veda. But it kept gnawing on her mind, setting up the fear that perhaps she was denying the child something she really ought to have. And then one night Veda broke into a violent denunciation of Miss Whittaker, the lady to whom Mildred had been paying 50¢ a week to give Veda lessons; but something about the tirade didn’t have the usual phony sound to it. Troubled, Mildred asked suddenly if Mr. Hannen, of Pasadena, would be better. This produced such excited dancing around that she knew she was in for it. So she called up, made an engagement, and on the appointed afternoon rushed through her work so she could dash home and take Veda over there.