NEW YEAR'S EVE
331
she might have altered and become sensible if she had only met the
right young man.
Wilhelmina's sensibility was that of an only child who for
twenty-four years has been adored, tended, and nagged by her
parents. As Mrs. Gold helped her pretty daughter to dress, she made
remarks which shifted between ruthless criticism and infatuated
admiration. She observed once again that her daughter had the legs
of a Ziegfield Follies girl and a face as refined as those she studied on
the Sunday society pages. But, given such native gifts, why, at the
age of twenty-four, a late age for an unmarried girl, did she have to
go out only with this strange author in unpressed pants? Mrs. Gold
was unable to penetrate this unpleasant fact. Her disappointment
with her husband, who was not rich and hence to her mind a failure,
united with her hope and her disappointment in her daughter, and
all these feelings, which had their beginning in the first week of her
marriage, arose to the point of compulsion. She made remarks which
she knew would enrage her daughter because they had enraged her
many times before.
"Why," she asked her daughter as she helped her to adjust her
dress, "did you discourage Herman like that? After all, he wanted to
marry you so much."
The fantastic character of this question will be understood from
the fact that Herman had been married for four years now and was
the father of three children, all girls. But more than that, Herman
was a dentist, extremely prosperous. During his suit, he had argued
long and stubbornly with Wilhelmina about her disdain for
CollierJsJ
which he read with passion from week to week, impatient for the
appearance of each new number because of the unbearable excite–
ment which the serial inevitably inspired in him. And he had pointed
out to Wilhelmina that if she married
him,
she would have no dental
bills, and when Wilhelmina had said, "What a vulgar argument
to make to a girl," he had observed that what she regarded as vul–
garity now would seem merely good sense to her when she had begun
to cope with "the facts of life," a phrase which made Wilhelmina
wince as if it were a dental drill.
Wilhelmina's detestation of Herman had a general and repres–
entative character to such an extent that the mention of his name
was enough to annoy her. When her mother, forced by a compulsion
she did not in the least understand, once more regretted Wilhelmina's
rejection of Herman, Wilhelmina donned her coat quickly and left
the house, declaring that once she was married she would have nothing
