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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8535-8.txt b/8535-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..352e9c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/8535-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14025 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters-In-Law, by Gertrude Atherton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sisters-In-Law + A Novel of Our Time + +Author: Gertrude Atherton + +Posting Date: August 29, 2012 [EBook #8535] +Release Date: July, 2005 +First Posted: July 20, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + + +THE SISTERS-IN-LAW + +A NOVEL OF OUR TIME + +BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON + + + + + + +TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO + + + + + + +Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading +characters in other novels and stories of the "California Series," +which covers the social history of the state from the beginning of the +last century. They are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel +Otis and the Hofers in ANCESTORS; the Randolphs in A DAUGHTER OF THE +VINE; Lee Tarlton, Lady Barnstable, Lady Arrowmount, Coralie Geary, the +Montgomerys and Trennahans in TRANSPLANTED and THE CALIFORNIANS; +Rezánov in the novel of that name, and Chonita Iturbi y Moncada in THE +DOOMSWOMAN, both bound in the volume, BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME; The Price +Ruylers in THE AVALANCHE. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest +crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted +even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive +in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of +the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San +Francisco's "early days," perched high on the steepest of the casual +hills in that city of a hundred hills. + +She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an +adventurous spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the +verandah at night when her legs were longer than her years, and during +the past winter to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door +when her worthy but hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was +the first time that she had been out after midnight. + +And it was five o'clock in the morning! + +She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother's pet aversion, to a party +given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if +crumbling pillar of San Francisco's proud old aristocracy, held in +pious disdain, and had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the +tireless exhilaration of her eighteen years until the weary band had +played Home Sweet Home. + +She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant, +even among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many +flowers even in California. Her own coming-out party in the dark double +parlors of the old house among the eucalyptus trees, whose moans and +sighs could be heard above the thin music of piano and violin, had been +so formal and dull that she had cried herself to sleep after the last +depressed member of the old set had left on the stroke of midnight. +Even Aileen's high mocking spirits had failed her, and she had barely +been able to summon them for a moment as she kissed the friend, to whom +she was sincerely devoted, a sympathetic good-night. + +"Never mind, old girl. Nothing can ever be worse. Not even your own +funeral. That's one comfort." + + + +II + + +That had been last November. During the ensuing five months Alexina had +been taken by her mother to such entertainments as were given by other +members of that distinguished old band, whose glory, like Mrs. Groome's +own, had reached its meridian in the last of the eighties. + +Not that any one else in San Francisco was quite as exclusive as Mrs. +Groome. Others might be as faithful in their way to the old tradition, +be as proud of their inviolate past, when "money did not count," and +people merely "new," or of unknown ancestry, did not venture to knock +at the gates: but the successive flocks of young folks had overpowered +their conservative parents, and Society had loosened its girdle, until +in this year of grace nineteen-hundred-and-six, there were few rich +people so hopelessly new that their ball rooms either in San Francisco +or "Down the Peninsula," were unknown to a generation equally +determined to enjoy life and indifferent to traditions. + +Mrs. Groome alone had set her face obdurately against any change in the +personnel of the eighties. She had the ugliest old house in San +Francisco, and the change from lamps to gas had been her last +concession to the march of time. The bath tubs were tin and the double +parlors crowded with the imposing carved Italian furniture whose like +every member of her own set had, in the seventies and eighties, brought +home after their frequent and prolonged sojourns abroad: for the +prouder the people of that era were of their lofty social position on +the edge of the Pacific, the more time did they spend in Europe. + +Mrs. Groome might be compelled therefore to look at new people in the +homes of her friends--even her proud daughter, Mrs. Abbott, had +unaccountably surrendered to the meretricious glitter of +Burlingame--but she would not meet them, she would not permit Alexina +to cross their thresholds, nor should the best of them ever cross her +own. + +Poor Alexina, forced to submit, her mother placidly impervious to +coaxings, tears, and storms, had finally compromised the matter to the +satisfaction of herself and of her own close chosen friend, Aileen +Lawton. She accompanied her mother with outward resignation to small +dinner dances and to the Matriarch balls, presided over by the newly +elected social leader, a lady of unimpeachable Southern ancestry and +indifference to wealth, who pledged her Virginia honor to Mrs. Groome +that Alexina should not be introduced to any young man whose name was +not on her own visiting list; and, while her mother slept, the last of +the Ballinger-Groomes accompanied Aileen (chaperoned by an unprincipled +aunt, who was an ancient enemy of Maria Groome) to parties quite as +respectable but infinitely gayer, and indubitably mixed. + +She was quite safe, for Mrs. Groome, when free of social duties, +retired on the stroke of nine with a novel, and turned off the gas at +ten. She never read the society columns of the newspapers, choked as +they were with unfamiliar and plebeian names; and her friends, +regarding Alexina's gay disobedience as a palatable joke on "poor old +Maria," and sympathetic with youth, would have been the last to +enlighten her. + + + +III + + +Alexina had never enjoyed herself more than to-night. Young Mrs. Hofer, +who had bought and remodeled the old Polk house on Nob Hill--the very +one in which Mrs. Groome's oldest daughter had made her début in the +far-off eighties--had turned all her immense rooms into a bower of +every variety of flower that bloomed on the rich California soil. It +was her second great party of the season, and it had been her avowed +intention to outdo the first, which had attempted a revival of Spanish +California and been the talk of the town. The decorations had been done +by a firm of young women whose parents and grandparents had danced in +the old house, and the catering by another scion of San Francisco's +social founders, Miss Anne Montgomery. + +To do Mrs. Groome full justice, all of these enterprising young women +were welcome in her own home. She regarded it as unfortunate that +ladies were forced to work for their living, but had seen too many San +Francisco families in her own youth go down to ruin to feel more than +sorrow. In that era the wives of lost millionaires had knitted baby +socks and starved slowly. Even she was forced to admit that the newer +generation was more fortunate in its opportunities. + +Alexina had not gone to Mrs. Hofer's first party, Aileen being in Santa +Barbara, but she had sniffed at the comparisons of the more critical +girls in their second season. She was quite convinced that nothing so +splendid had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. +She had had the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so +charming a young man as Mortimer Dwight. + +"Some party," she thought as she ran up the steep avenue to her +sacrosanct abode, where her haughty mother was chastely asleep, secure +in the belief that her obedient little daughter was dreaming in her +maiden bower. + +"What the poor old darling doesn't know 'll never hurt her," thought +Alexina gayly. "She really is old enough to be my grandmother, anyhow. +I wonder if Maria and Sally really stood for it or were as naughty as I +am." + +Alexina was the youngest of a long line of boys and girls, all of whom +but five were dead. Ballinger and Geary practiced law in New York, +having married sisters who refused to live elsewhere. Sally had married +one of their Harvard friends and dwelt in Boston. Maria alone had wed +an indigenous Californian, an Abbott of Alta in the county of San +Mateo, and lived the year round in that old and exclusive borough. She +was now so like her mother, barring a very slight loosening of her own +social girdle, that Alexina dismissed as fantastic the notion that even +a quarter of a century earlier she may have had any of the promptings +of rebellious youth. + +"Not she!" thought Alexina grimly. "Oh, Lord! I wonder if my summer +destiny is Alta." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +She was quite breathless as she reached the eucalyptus grove and paused +for a moment before slipping into the house and climbing the stairs. + +The city lying in the valleys and on the hills arrested her attention, +for it was a long while since she had been awake and out of doors at +five in the morning. + +It looked like the ghost of a city in that pallid dawn. The houses +seemed to have huddled together as if in fear before they sank into +sleep, to crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the +ugly dome of the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower +held up their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of +outline, of alertness, as if ready to spring. + +In that far-off district known as "South of Market Street," which she +had never entered save in a closed carriage on her way to the Southern +Pacific Station or to pay a yearly call on some old family that still +dwelt on that oasis, Rincon Hill--sole outpost of the social life of +the sixties--infrequent thin lines of smoke rose from humble chimneys. +It was the region of factories and dwellings of the working-class, but +its inhabitants were not early risers in these days of high wages and +short hours. + +Even those gray spirals ascended as if the atmosphere lay heavy on +them. They accentuated the lifelessness, the petrifaction, the intense +and sinister quiet of the prostrate city. + +Alexina shuddered and her volatile spirits winged their way down into +those dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to +plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had +never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there +any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward +like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, +vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over +this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate +with a sneer. + +Alexina, holding her breath, glanced upward. That ghost of evening's +twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the +crimson rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely +blue. It looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface +presently, and then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave +way. + + + +II + + +Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming. She barely +had time to brace herself when she saw the sleeping city jar as if +struck by a sudden squall, and with the invisible storm came a loud +menacing roar of imprisoned forces making a concerted rush for freedom. + +She threw her arms about one of the trees, but it was bending and +groaning with an accent of fear, a tribute it would have scorned to +offer the mighty winds of the Pacific. Alexina sprang clear of it and +unable to keep her feet sat down on the bouncing earth. + +Then she remembered that it was a rigid convention among real +Californians to treat an earthquake as a joke, and began to laugh. +There was nothing hysterical in this perfunctory tribute to the lesser +tradition and it immediately restored her courage. Moreover, the +curiosity she felt for all phases of life, psychical and physical, and +her naïve delight in everything that savored of experience, caused her +to stare down upon the city now tossing and heaving like the sea in a +hurricane, with an almost impersonal interest. + +The houses seemed to clutch at their precarious foundations even while +they danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the +ascending roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of +steeples, the dome of the City Hall, of brick buildings too hastily +erected, of ten thousand falling chimneys; of creaking and grinding +timbers, and of the eucalyptus trees behind her, whose leaves rustled +with a shrill rising whisper that seemed addressed to heaven; the +neighing and pawing of horses in the stables, the sharp terrified yelps +of dogs; and through all a long despairing wail. The mountains across +the bay and behind the city were whirling in a devil's dance and the +scattered houses on their slopes looked like drunken gnomes. The shot +tower bowed low and solemnly but did not fall. + + + +III + + +As the earth with a final leap and twist settled abruptly into peace, +the streets filled suddenly with people, many in their nightclothes, +but more in dressing-gowns, opera cloaks, and overcoats. All were +silent and apparently self-possessed. Whence came that long wail no one +ever knew. + +Alexina, remembering her own attire, sprang to her feet and ran through +the little side door and up the stair, praying that her mother, with +her usual monumental poise, would have disdained to rise. She had never +been known to leave her room before eight. + +But as Alexina ran along the upper hall she became only too aware that +Mrs. Groome had surrendered to Nature, for she was pounding on her door +and in a haughty but quivering voice demanding to be let out. + +Alexina tiptoed lightly to the threshold of her room and called out +sympathetically: + +"What is the matter, mother dear! Has your door sprung?" + +"It has. Tell James to come here at once and bring a crow-bar if +necessary." + +"Yes, darling." + +Alexina let down her hair and tore off her evening gown, kicking it +into a closet, then threw on a bathrobe and ran over to the servants' +quarters in an extension behind the house. They were deserted, but wild +shrieks and gales of unseemly laughter arose from the yard. She opened +a window and saw the cook, a recent importation, on the ground in +hysterics, the housemaid throwing water on her, and the inherited +butler calmly lighting his pipe. + +"James," she called. "My mother's door is jammed. Please come right +away." + +"Yes, miss." He knocked his pipe against the wall and ground out the +life of the coal with his slippered heel. "Just what happened to your +grandmother in the 'quake of sixty-eight. I mind the time I had getting +her out." + + + +IV + + +It was quite half an hour before the door yielded to the combined +efforts of James and the gardener-coachman, and during the interval +Mrs. Groome recovered her poise and made her morning toilette. + +She had taken her iron-gray hair from its pins and patted the narrow +row of frizzes into place; the flat side bands, the concise coil of +hair on top were as severely disdainful of untoward circumstance or +passing fashion as they had been any morning these forty years or more. + +She wore old-fashioned corsets and was abdominally correct for her +years; a long gown of black voile with white polka dots, and a guimpe +of white net whose raff of chiffon somewhat disguised the wreck of her +throat. On her shoulders, disposed to rheumatism, she wore a tippet of +brown marabout feathers, and in her ears long jet earrings. + +She had the dark brown eyes of the Ballingers, but they were bleared at +the rims, and on the downward slope of her fine aquiline nose she wore +spectacles that looked as if mounted in cast iron. Altogether an +imposing relic; and "that built-up look" as Aileen expressed it, was +the only one that would have suited her mental style. Mrs. Abbott, who +dressed with a profound regard for fashion, had long since concluded +that her mother's steadfast alliance with the past not only became her +but was a distinct family asset. Only a woman of her overpowering +position could afford it. + +Mrs. Groome's skin had never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or +powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at +least as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois +adjective--twin to genteel--had been synchronous with the equally +obsolete word swell, but it had never occurred to even the more modern +Mrs. Abbott and her select inner circle of friends, dwelling on family +estates in the San Mateo valley, to change in this respect at least +with the changing times. + + + +V + + +Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a +morning frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's +dressmaker but by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the +fashion of the moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at +the base of her beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, +their large irises very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, +had the favor of black lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and +very narrow black polished eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly +touched with color, although the rather large mouth with its definitely +curved lips was scarlet. Her long throat like the rest of her body was +white. + +All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes, +consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by +surprise when the little Alexina came along several years after her +mother was supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors +hurriedly and quite forgotten her usual nice proportions. + +The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, +for the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short +straight thin nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a +regularity, and the thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and +shook quite alarmingly when she was angry. + +These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality +were concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the +brilliant happy candid eyes (which she could convert into a madonna's +by the simple trick of lifting them a trifle and showing a lower +crescent of devotional white), the love of life and eagerness to enjoy +that radiated from her thin admirably proportioned body, which, at this +time, held in the limp slouching fashion of the hour, made her look +rather small. In reality she was nearly as tall as her mother or the +dignified Mrs. Abbott, who rejoiced in every inch of her five feet +eight, and retained the free erect carriage of her girlhood. + +Alexina, with a sharp glance about her disordered room, hastily +disarranged her bed, and, sending her ball slippers after the gown, ran +across the hall and threw herself into her mother's arms. + +"Some earthquake, what? You are sure you are not hurt, mommy dear? The +plaster is down all over the house." + +"More slang that you have learned from Aileen Lawton, I presume. It +certainly was a dreadful earthquake, worse than that of +eighteen-sixty-eight. Is anything valuable broken? There is always less +damage done on the hills. What is that abominable noise?" + +The cook, who had recovered from her first attack, was emitting another +volley of shrieks, in which the word "fire" could be distinguished in +syllables of two. + +Mrs. Groome rang the bell violently and the imperturbable James +appeared. + +"Is the house on fire?" + +"No, ma'am; only the city. It's worth looking at, if you care to step +out on the lawn." + +Mrs. Groome followed her daughter downstairs and out of the house. Her +eyebrows were raised but there was a curious sensation in her knees +that even the earthquake had failed to induce. She sank into the chair +James had provided and clutched the arms with both hands. + +"There are always fires after earthquakes," she muttered. "Impossible! +Impossible!" + +"Oh, do you think San Francisco is really going?" cried Alexina, but +there was a thrill in her regret. "Oh, but it couldn't be." + +"No! impossible, impossible!" + +Black clouds of smoke shot with red tongues of flame overhung the city +at different points, although they appeared to be more dense and +frequent down in the "South of Market Street" region. There was also a +rolling mass of flame above the water front and sporadic fires in the +business district. + +The streets were black with people, now fully dressed, and long +processions were moving steadily toward the bay as well as in the +direction of the hills behind the western rim of the city. James +brought a pair of field glasses, and Mrs. Groome discovered that the +hurrying throngs were laden with household goods, many pushing them in +baby carriages and wheelbarrows. It was the first flight of the +refugees. + +"James!" said Mrs. Groome sharply. "Bring me a cup of coffee and then +go down and find out exactly what is happening." + +James, too wise in the habits of earthquakes to permit the still +distracted cook to make a fire in the range, brewed the coffee over a +spirit lamp, and then departed, nothing loath, on his mission. Mrs. +Groome swallowed the coffee hastily, handed the cup to Alexina and +burst into tears. + +"Mother!" Alexina was really terrified for the first time that morning. +Mrs. Groome practiced the severe code, the repressions of her class, +and what tears she had shed in her life, even over the deaths of those +almost forgotten children, had been in the sanctity of her bedroom. +Alexina, who had grown up under her wing, after many sorrows and trials +had given her a serenity that was one secret of her power over this +impulsive child of her old age, could hardly have been more appalled if +her mother had been stricken with paralysis. + +"You cannot understand," sobbed Mrs. Groome. "This is my city! The city +of my youth; the city my father helped to make the great and wonderful +city it is. Even your father--he may not have been a good husband--Oh, +no! Not he!--but he was a good citizen; he helped to drag San Francisco +out of the political mire more than once. And now it is going! It has +always been prophesied that San Francisco would burn to the ground some +time, and now the time has come. I feel it in my bones." + +This was the first reference other than perfunctory, that Alexina had +ever heard her mother make to her father, who had died when she was +ten. The girl realized abruptly that this elderly parent who, while +uniformly kind, had appeared to be far above the ordinary weaknesses of +her sex, had an inner life which bound her to the plane of mere +mortals. She had a sudden vision of an unhappy married life, silently +borne, a life of suppressions, bitter disappointments. Her chief +compensation had been the unwavering pride which had made the world +forget to pity her. + +And it was the threatened destruction of her city that had beaten down +the defenses and given her youngest child a brief glimpse of that +haughty but shivering spirit. + + + +VI + + +Alexina's mind, in spite of a great deal of worldly garnering with an +industrious and investigating scythe, was as immature as her years, for +she had felt little and lived not at all. But she had swift and deep +intuitions, and in spite of the natural volatility of youth, free of +care, she was fundamentally emotional and intense. + +Swept from her poor little girlish moorings in the sophisticated sea of +the twentieth-century maiden, she had a sudden wild access of +conscience; she flung herself into her mother's arms and poured out the +tale of her nocturnal transgressions, her frequent excursions into the +forbidden realm of modern San Francisco, of her immense acquaintance +with people whose very names were unknown to Mrs. Groome, born +Ballinger. + +Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together, +expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires +in this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the +exaggerations of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if +her mother, masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as +elementary as the forces that had devastated San Francisco. + +But there was only dismay in Mrs. Groome's eyes as she stared at her +repentant daughter. Her heart sank still lower. She had never been a +vain woman, but she had prided herself upon not feeling old. Suddenly, +she felt very old, and helpless. + +"Well," she said in a moment. "Well--I suppose I have been wrong. There +are almost two generations between us. I haven't kept up. And you are +naturally a truthful child--I should have--" + +"Oh, mother, you are not blaming yourself!" Alexina felt as if the +earth once more were dancing beneath her unsteady feet. "Don't say +that!" + +The sharpness of her tone dispelled the confusion in Mrs. Groome's +mind. She hastily buckled on her armor. + +"Let us say no more about it. I fancy it will be a long time before +there are any more parties in San Francisco, but when there are--well, +I shall consult Maria. I want your youth to be happy--as happy as mine +was. I suppose you young people can only be happy in the new way, but I +wish conditions had not changed so lamentably in San Francisco.... Who +is this?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +As Alexina followed her mother's eyes she flushed scarlet and turned +away her head. A young man was coming up the avenue. He was a very +gallant figure, moderately tall and very straight; he held his head +high, his features were strong in outline. But the noticeable thing +about him at this early hour of the morning and in the wake of a great +disaster was his consummate grooming. + +"That--that--" stammered Alexina, "is Mr. Dwight. I met him last night +at the Hofers'." + +The young man raised his hat and came forward quickly. "I hope you will +forgive me," he said with a charming deference, "but I couldn't resist +coming to see if you were all right. So many people are frightened of +fire--in their own houses." + +"Mr. Dwight--my mother--" + +He lifted his hat again. Mrs. Groome in her chastened mood regarded him +favorably, and for the moment without suspicion. At least he was a +gentleman; but who could he be? + +"Dwight," she murmured. "I do not know the name. Were you born here?" + +"I was born in Utica, New York. My parents came here when I was quite +young. We--always lived rather quietly." + +"But you go about now? To all these parties?" + +"Oh, yes. I like to dance after the day's work. But I am not what you +would call a society man. I haven't the time." + +Mrs. Groome was not usually blunt, but she suddenly scented danger and +she had not fully recovered her poise. + +"You are in business?" She disliked business intensely. All gentlemen +of her day had followed one of the professions. + +"I am in a wholesale commission house. But I hope to be in business for +myself one day." + +"Ah." + +Still, all young men in this terrible twentieth century could not be +lawyers. Mrs. Groome knew enough of the march of time to be aware of +the increasing difficulties in gaining a bare livelihood. Tom Abbott +was a lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the +fifties. It was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she +recalled his frequent and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting +up nights these days if a man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. + +And at least this young man did not look like an idler or a wastrel. No +man could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the +morning if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she +knew the external seals. + +"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply. + +"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me +the honor to ask me to call." + +"I think the more highly of you. Judge Lawton is an old friend of mine. +His wife, who was much younger than the Judge, was an intimate friend +of my daughter, Mrs. Abbott. Alexina and Aileen have grown up together. +I find it impossible to forbid her the house. But I disapprove of her +in every way. She paints her lips, smokes cigarettes, boasts that she +drinks cocktails, and uses the most abominable slang. I kept my +daughter in New York for two years as much to break up the intimacy as +to finish her education, but the moment we returned the intimacy was +renewed, and for my old friend's sake I have been forced to submit. He +worships that--that--really ill-conditioned child." + +"Oh--Miss Lawton is a good sort, and--well--I suppose her position is +so strong that she feels she can do as she pleases. But she is all +right, and not so different--" + +"Do you mean to tell me that you approve of girls--nice +girls--ladies--painting themselves, smoking, drinking cocktails?" + +"I do not." His tones were emphatic and his good American gray eyes +wandered to the fresh innocent face of the girl who had captivated him +last night. + +"I should hope not. You look like an exceptionally decent young man. +Have you had breakfast? Alexina, go and ask Maggie, if she has +recovered herself, to make another cup of coffee." + + + +II + + +Alexina disappeared, repressing a desire to sing; and young Dwight, +receiving permission, seated himself on the grass at Mrs. Groome's +feet. He was lithe and graceful and as he threw back his head and +looked up at his hostess with his straight, honest glance the good +impression he had made was visibly enhanced. Mrs. Groome gave him the +warm and gracious smile that only her intimate friends and paid +inferiors had ever seen. + +"The young men of to-day are a great disappointment to me," she +observed. + +"Oh, they are all right, I guess. Most of the men that go about have +rich fathers--or near-rich ones. I wish I had one myself." + +"And you would be as dissipated as the rest, I presume." + +"No, I have no inclinations that way. But a man gets a better start in +life. And a man's a nonentity without money." + +"Not if he has family." + +"My family is good--in Utica. But that is of no use to me here." + +"But your family _is_ good?" + +"Oh, yes, it goes 'way back. There is a family mansion in Utica that is +over two hundred years old. But when the business district swamped that +part of the old town it was sold, and what it brought was divided among +six. My father came out here but did not make much of a success of +himself, so that he and my mother might as well have been on the Fiji +Islands for all the notice society took of them." + +He spoke with some bitterness, and Mrs. Groome, to whom dwelling beyond +the outer gates of San Francisco's elect was the ultimate tragedy, +responded sympathetically. + +"Society here is not what it used to be, and no doubt is only too glad +to welcome presentable young men. I infer that you have not found it +difficult." + +"Oh, I dance well, and my employer's son, Bob Cheever, took me in. But +I'm only tolerated. I don't count." + +The old lady looked at him keenly. "You are ambitious?" + +He threw back his head. "Well, yes, I am, Mrs. Groome. As far as +society goes it is a matter of self-respect. I feel that I have the +right to go in the best society anywhere--that I am as good as anybody +when it comes to blood. And I'd like to get to the top in every way. I +don't mean that I would or could do the least thing dishonest to get +there, as so many men have done, but--well, I see no crime in being +ambitious and using every chance to get to the top. I'd like not only +to be one of the rich and important men of San Francisco, but to take a +part in the big civic movements." + +Mrs. Groome was charmed. She was by no means an impulsive woman, but +she had suddenly realized her age, and if she must soon leave her +youngest child, who, heaven knew, needed a guardian, this young man +might be a son-in-law sent direct from heaven--via the earthquake. If +he had real ability the influential men she knew would see that he had +a proper start. But she had no intention of committing herself. + +"And what do you think of what is now called San Francisco society?" +she demanded. + +He was quite aware of Mrs. Groome's attitude. Who in San Francisco was +not? It was one of the standing jokes, although few of the younger or +newer set had ever heard of her until her naughty little daughter +danced upon the scene. + +"Oh, it is mixed, of course. There are many houses where I do not care +to go. But, well, after all, the rich people are rather simple for all +their luxury, and as for the old families there are no more real +aristocrats in England itself." + +Mrs. Groome was still more charmed. "But you were at Mrs. Hofer's last +night. I never heard of her before." + +"Her husband is one of the most important of the younger men. His +father made a fortune in lumber and sent his son to Yale and all the +rest of it. He is really a gentleman--it only takes one generation out +here--and at present he's bent upon delivering the city from this +abominable ring of grafters ... There is no water to put out the fires +because the City Administration pocketed the money appropriated for a +new system; the pipes leading from Spring Valley were broken by the +earthquake." + +"And who was she?" + +Mrs. Groome asked this question with an inimitable inflection inherited +from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had been guardians of San +Francisco society in their day. The accent was on the "who." Bob +Cheever, whose grandmother had asked or answered the same question in +dark old double parlors filled with black walnut and carved oak, would +have muttered, "Oh, hell!" but Mr. Dwight replied sympathetically: +"Something very common, I believe-south of Market Street. But her +father was very clever, rose to be a foreman of the iron works, and +finally went into business and prospered in a small way. He sent his +daughter to Europe to be educated ... and even you could hardly tell +her from the real thing." + +"And you go down to Burlingame, I suppose! That is a very nest of these +new people, and I am told they spend their time drinking and gambling." + +He set his large rather hard lips. "No, I have never been asked down to +Burlingame-nor down the Peninsula anywhere. You see, I am only asked +out in town because an unmarried dancing man is always welcome if there +is nothing wrong with his manners. To be asked for intimate week-ends +is another matter. But I don't fancy Burlingame is half as bad as it is +represented to be. They go in tremendously for sport, you know, and +that is healthy and takes up a good deal of time. After all when people +are very rich and have more leisure than they know what to do with--" + +"Many of the old set in Alta, San Mateo, Atherton and Menlo Park have +wealth and leisure-not vulgar fortunes, but enough-and for the most +part they live quite as they did in the old days." + +His eyes lit up. "Ah, San Mateo, Alta, Atherton, Menlo Park. There you +have a real landed aristocracy. The Burlingame set must realize that +they would be nobodies for all their wealth if they could not call at +all those old communities down the Peninsula." + +"Not so very many of them do. But I see you have no false values. You. +must go down with us some Sunday to Alta. I am sure you would like my +oldest daughter. She is very smart, as they call it now, but distinctly +of the old régime." + +"There is nothing I should like better. Thank you so much." And there +was no doubting the sincerity of his voice, a rather deep and manly +voice which harmonized with the admirable mold of his ancestors. + + + +III + + +Alexina appeared. "Breakfast is ready for all of us," she announced. +"We cooked it on the old stove in the woodhouse. I helped, for Maggie +is a wreck. Martha has swept the plaster out of the dining-room. Come +along. I'm starved." + +Young Dwight sprang to his feet and stood over Mrs. Groome with his +charming deferential manner, but he had far too much tact to offer +assistance as she rose heavily from her chair. + +"Are you really going to give me breakfast? I am sure I could not get +any elsewhere." + +"We are only too happy. Your coming has been a real God-send. Will you +give me your arm? This morning--not the earthquake but those dreadful +fires--has quite upset me." + +He escorted her into the dark old house with glowing eyes. He had seen +so little of the world that he was still very young at thirty and his +nature was sanguine, but he had never dared to dream of even difficult +access to this most exclusive home in San Francisco. Its gloom, its +tastelessness, relieved only by the splendid Italian pieces, but served +to accentuate its aristocratic aloofness from those superb but too +recently furnished mansions of which he knew so little outside of their +ballrooms. + +And he was breakfasting with the sequestered Mrs. Groome and the +loveliest girl he had ever seen, at seven o 'clock in the morning. + +He looked about eagerly as they entered the dining-room.. It was long +and narrow with a bow window at the end. The furniture was black +walnut; two immense sideboards were built into the walls. It looked +Ballinger, and it was. + +It was heavily paneled; the walls above were tinted a pale buff and set +with cracked oil paintings of men in the uniforms of several +generations. The ceiling was frescoed with fish and fowl. There had +been a massive bronze chandelier over the table. It now lay on the +floor, but as James had turned off the gas in the meter while the +earthquake was still in progress the air of the large sunny room was +untainted, and the windows were open. + +The breakfast was smoked but not uneatable and the strong coffee raised +even Mrs. Groome's wavering spirits. They were all talking gayly when +James entered abruptly. He was very pale. + +"City's doomed, ma'am. Thirty fires broke out simultaneous, and the +wind blowing from the southeast. A chimney fell on the fire-chief's bed +and he can't live. People runnin' round like their heads was cut off +and thousands pouring out of the city--over to Oakland and Berkeley. +Lootin' was awful and General Funston has ordered out the troops. Pipes +broken and not a drop of water. They're goin' to dynamite, but only the +fire-chief knew how. Everybody says the whole city'll go, Doomed, +that's what it is. Better let me tell Mike to harness up and drive you +down to San Mateo." + +Mrs. Groome had also turned pale, but she cut a piece of bacon with +resolution in every finger of her large-veined hands. + +"I do not believe it, and I shall not run--like those people south of +Market Street. I shall stay until the last minute at all events. The +roads at least cannot burn." + +"This house ought to be safe enough, ma 'am, standin' quite alone on +this hill as it does; but it's a question of food. We never keep much +of anything in the house, beyond what's needed for the week, and the +California Market's right in the fire zone. And the smoke will be +something terrible when the fire gets closer." + +"I shall stay in my own house. There are grocery stores and butcher +shops in Fillmore Street. Go and buy all you can." She handed him a +bunch of keys. "You will find money in my escritoire. Tell the maids to +fill the bathtubs while there is any water left in the mains. You may +go if you are frightened, but I stay here." + +"Very well, and you needn't have said that, ma'am. I've been in this +family, man and boy, Ballinger and Groome, for fifty-two years, and you +know I'd never desert you. But no doubt those hussies in the kitchen +will, with a lot of others. A lot of stoves have already been set up in +the streets out here and ladies are cookin' their own breakfasts." + +"Forgive me, James. I know you will never leave me. And if the others +do we shall get along. Miss Alexina is not a bad cook." And she +heroically swallowed the bacon. + + + +IV + + +James departed and she turned to Dwight, who was on his feet. + +"You are not going?" + +"I think I must, Mrs. Groome. There may be something I can do down +there. All able-bodied men will be needed, I fancy." + +"But you'll come back and see us?" cried Alexina. + +"Indeed I will. I'll report regularly." + +He thanked Mrs. Groome for her hospitality and she invited him to take +pot luck with her at dinner time. After he had gone Alexina exclaimed +rapturously: + +"Oh, you do like him, don't you, mommy dear?" + +And Mrs. Groome was pleased to reply, "He has perfect manners and +certainly has the right ideas about things. I could do no less than ask +him to dinner if he is going to take the trouble to bring us the news." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +That was a unique and vivid day for young Alexina Groome, whose +disposition was to look upon life as drama and asked only that it shift +its scenes often and be consistently entertaining and picturesque. + +Never, so James told her, since her Grandmother Ballinger's reign, had +there been such life and movement in the old house. All Mrs. Groome's +intimate friends and many of Alexina's came to it, some to make kindly +inquiries, others to beg them to leave the city, many to gossip and +exchange experiences of that fateful morning; a few from Rincon Hill +and the old ladies' fashionable boarding-house district to claim +shelter until they could make their way to relatives out of town. + +Mrs. Groome welcomed her friends not only with the more spontaneous +hospitality of an older time but in that spirit of brotherhood that +every disaster seems to release, however temporarily. Brotherhood is +unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that +sunrise era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was +automatic. The complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and +almost but not wholly replaced it by national and individual +selfishness. But the world as yet is only about one-third civilized. +Centuries hence a unified civilization may complete the circle, but +human nature and progress must act and react a thousand times before +the earthly millenium; and it cannot be hastened by dreamers and +fanatics. + +All Mrs. Groome's spare rooms were placed at the service of her +friends, and cots were bought in the humble Fillmore Street shops and +put up in the billiard room, the double parlors, the library and the +upper hall. Some forty people would sleep under the old Ballinger roof +that night--dynamite permitting. Mrs. Groome was firm in her +determination not to flee, and as James and Mike were there to watch, +she had graciously given a number of the gloomy refugees from the lower +regions permission to camp in the outhouses and grounds. + + + +II + + +Alexina spent the greater part of the day with Aileen Lawton, Olive +Bascom, and Sibyl Thorndyke, out of doors, fascinated by the spectacle +of the burning city. + +The valley beyond Market Street, and the lower business district, were +a rolling mass of smoke parting about pillars of fire, shot with a +million glittering sparks when a great building was dynamited. All the +windows in those sections of the city as yet beyond the path of the +fire were open, for although closed windows might have shut out the +torrid atmosphere, the explosions would have shattered them. + +"Oh, dear," sighed Olive Bascom, "there goes my building. The smoke +lifted for a moment and I saw the flames spouting out of the windows. A +cool million and uninsured. We thought Class A buildings were safe from +any sort of fire." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Alexina naïvely, "I wish I had a million-dollar +building down in that furnace. It must be a great sensation to watch a +million dollars go up in sparks." + +"I hope your mother hasn't any buildings down in the business +district," said Aileen anxiously. "I've heard dad talk about her ground +rents. She'll get those again soon enough. I fancy the old tradition +survives in this town and they'll begin to draw the plans for the new +city before the fire is out. It used to burn down regularly in the +fifties, dad says." + +"I don't fancy we have much of anything," said Alexina cheerfully. "I +think mother has only a life interest in a part of father's estate, and +I heard her tell Maria once that she intended to leave me all she had +of her own, this place and a few thousand a year in bonds and some +flats that are probably burning up right now. I gathered from the +conversation that father didn't have much left when he died and that it +was understood mother was to look out for me. I believe he gave a lot +to the others when he was wealthy." + +"Good Lord!" Aileen sighed heavily. "It won't pay your dressmakers' +bills, what with taxes and all. I won't be much better off. We'll have +to marry Rex Roberts or Bob Cheever or Frank Bascom--unless he's going +up in smoke too, Olive dear. But there are a few others." + +Alexina shook her head. Her color could not rise higher for her face +was crimson from the heat; like the others she had a wet handkerchief +on her head. "There is not a grain of romance in one of them," she +announced. "Curious that the sons of the rich nearly always have round +faces, no particular features, and a tendency to bulge. I intend to +have a romance--old style--good old style--before the vogue of the +middle-class realists. There's nothing in life but youth and you only +have it once. I'm going to have a romance that means falling wildly, +unreasonably, uncalculatingly in love." + +"You anticipate my adjectives," said Aileen drily. "Although not all. +But let that pass. I'd like to know where you expect to find the +opposite lead, as they say on the stage. Our men are not such a bad +sort, even the richest--with a few exceptions, of course. They may hit +it up at week-ends, generally at the country clubs, but they're better +than the last generation because their fathers have more sense. I'll +bet they're all down there now fighting the fire with the vim of their +grandfathers.... But romantic! Good Lord! I'll marry one of them all +right and glad of the chance--after I've had my fling. I'm in no hurry. +I'd have outgrown my illusions in any case by that time, only Nature +did the trick by not giving me any." + +"Don't you believe there isn't a man in all San Francisco able to +inspire romance." If Alexina could not blush her dark gray eyes could +sparkle and melt. "All the men we meet don't belong to that rich group." + +"Bunch, darling. Where--will you give us the pointer?--are to be found +the romantic knights of San Francisco? 'Frisco as those tiresome +Eastern people call it. Makes me sick to think that they are even now +pitying 'poor 'Frisco.' Well?--I could beat my brains and not call one +to mind." + +"Oh!" + +"What does that mean, Alex Groome? When you roll up your eyes like that +you look like a love-sick tomato." + +"Mortimer Dwight was most devoted last night," said Sibyl Thorndyke. +"She danced with him at least eight times." + +"You must have sat out alone to know what I was doing," Alexina began +hotly, but Aileen sprang at her and gripped her shoulders. + +"Don't tell me that you are interested in that cheap skate. Alexina +Groome! You!" + +"He's not a cheap skate. I despise your cheap slang." + +"He's a rank nobody." + +"You mean he isn't rich. Or his family didn't belong. What do you +suppose I care? I'm not a snob." + +"He is. A climbing, ingenuous, empty-headed snob." + +"You are a snob. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"I've a right to be a snob if I choose, and he hasn't. My snobbery is +the right sort: the 'I will maintain' kind. He'd give all the hair on +his head to have the right to that sort of snobbery. His is" (she +chanted in a high light maddening voice): "Oh, God, let me climb. Yank +me up into the paradise of San Francisco society. Burlingame, Alta, +Menlo Park, Atherton, Belvidere, San Rafael. Oh, God, it's awful to be +a nobody, not to be in the same class with these rich fellers, not to +belong to the Pacific-Union Club, not to have polo ponies, not to +belong to smart golf clubs, to the Burlingame Club. Not to get clothes +from New York and London--" + +"You keep quiet," shrieked Alexina, who with difficulty refrained from +substituting: "You shut up." She flung off Aileen's hands. "What do you +know about him? He doesn't like you." + +"Never had a chance to find out." + +"What can you know about him, then?" + +"Think I'm blind? Think I'm deaf? Don't I know everything that goes on +in this town? Isn't sizing-up my long suit? And he's as dull as--as a +fish without salt. I sat next to him at a dinner, and all he could talk +about was the people he'd met--our sort, of course. And he was dull +even at that. He's all manners and bluff--" + +"You couldn't draw him out. He talked to me." + +"What about? I'm really interested to know. Everybody says the same +thing. They fall for his dancing and manners, and--well, yes--I 'll +admit it--for his looks. He even looks like a gentleman. But all the +girls say he bores 'em stiff. They have to talk their heads off. What +did he say to you that was so frantically interesting?" + +"Well, of course--we danced most of the time." + +"That's just it. He's inherited the shell of some able old ancestor and +not a bit of the skull furniture. Nature often plays tricks like that. +But I could forgive him for being dull if he weren't such a damn snob." + +"You shan't call him names. If he wants to be one of us, and life was +so unkind as to--to--well, birth him on the outside, I'm sure that's no +crime." + +"Snobbery," said Miss Thorndyke, who was intellectual at the moment and +cultivating the phrase, "is merely a rather ingenuous form of +aspiration. I can't see that it varies except in kind from other forms +of ambition. And without ambition there would be no progress." + +"Oh, can it," sneered Judge Lawton's daughter. "You're all wrong, +anyhow. Snobbery leads to the rocks much oftener than to high +achievement. I've heard dad say so, and you won't venture to assert +that _he_ doesn't know. It bears about the same relation to progress +that grafting does to legitimate profits. Anyhow, it makes me sick, and +I'm not going to have Alex falling in love with a poor fish--" + +"Fish?" Alexina's voice rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare--and +you think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? +What do you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but +drinking and sport, whether they attend to business or not?--their +fathers make them, anyhow. And you want to marry one of them! They're +fish, if you like." + +The two girls were glaring at each other. Gray eyes were blazing, green +eyes snapping. Two sets of white even teeth were bared. They looked +like a couple of belligerent puppies. Another moment and they would +have forgotten the sacred traditions of their class and flown at each +other's hair. But Miss Bascom interposed. Even the loss of her +uninsured million did not ruffle her, for she had another in Government +and railroad bonds, and full confidence in her brother, who was an +admirable business man, and not in the least dissipated. + +"Come, come," she said. "It's much too hot to fight. Dwight is not good +enough for Alex--from a worldly point of view, I mean," as Alexina made +a movement in her direction. "We should none of us marry out of our +class. It never works, somehow. But Mr. Dwight is really quite all +right otherwise. I like him very much, Alex darling, and I don't mind +his being an outsider in the least--so long as he doesn't try to marry +one of us. He's _too_ good-looking, and his heels are fairly inspired. +No one questions the fact that he is an honorable and worthy young man, +working like a real man to earn his living. It isn't at all as if he +were an adventurer. He has never struck me as being more of a snob than +most people, and I don't see why I haven't thought to ask him down to +San Mateo for a week-end." + +"You'll certainly have a friend for life if you do," said Aileen +satirically. "Fall in love with him yourself if you choose. You can +afford it." + +"No fear. I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry a French marquis." + +"What?" Even Alexina forgot Mortimer Dwight. "Who is he? Where did you +meet him?" + +"I haven't met him yet. But I shall. I'm going to Paris next winter to +visit my aunt, and I'll find one. You get anything in this world you go +for hard enough. To be a French marquise is the most romantic thing in +the world." + +"Why not Elton Gwynne? It's an open secret that he's an English +marquis. Or that young Gathbroke Lady Victoria brought last night?" + +"He's a younger son, and he never looked at any one but Alex. And +Isabel Otis has preëmpted Mr. Gwynne. And I adore France and don't care +about England." + +"Well, that is romantic if you like!" cried Aileen, her green eyes +dancing. "You have my best wishes. Doesn't it make your Geary Street +knight look cheap--he boards somewhere down on Geary Street." + +"No, it doesn't! And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. +Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told +mother so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title." + +"I wish your mother could hear you. So--he's been getting round her has +he? Where on earth did he meet her?" + +Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the +favorable impression he had made. + +Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank +outsider--superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. +I'll put a flea in her ear--" + +"You dare!" + +Aileen lifted her shoulders. "Well, as a matter of fact I can't. +Tattling just isn't in my line. But if I can queer him with you I will." + +"I won't talk about him any more." Alexina drew herself up with immense +dignity. She had the advantage of Aileen not only in inches but in a +natural repose of manner. The eminent Judge Lawton's only child, upon +whom, possibly, he may have lavished too much education, had a thin +nervous little body that was seldom in repose, and her face, with its +keen irregular features and brilliant green eyes, shifted its surface +impressions as rapidly as a cinematograph. Olive Bascom had soft blue +eyes and abundant brown hair, and Sibyl Thorndyke had learned to hold +her long black eyes half closed, and had the black hair and rich +complexion of a Creole great-grandmother. Alexina was admittedly the +"beauty of the bunch." Nevertheless, Miss Lawton had informed her +doting parent before this, her first season, was half over, that she +was _vivid_ enough to hold her own with the best of them. The boys said +she was a live wire and she preferred that high specialization to the +tameness of mere beauty. + + + +IV + + +Said Alexina: "Sibyl, what are you going to do with your young life? +Shall you marry an English duke or a New York millionaire?" + +But Miss Thorndyke smiled mysteriously. She was not as frank as the +other girls, although by no means as opaque as she imagined. + +Aileen laughed. "Oh, don't ask her. Doubt if she knows. To-day she's +all for being intellectual and reading those damn dull Russian +novelists. To-morrow she may be setting up as an odalisque. It would +suit her style better." + +Miss Thorndyke's face was also crimson from the heat, but she would not +have flushed had it been the day before. She was not subject to sudden +reflexes. + +"Your satire is always a bit clumsy, dear," she said sweetly. "The +odalisque is not your rôle at all events." + +"I don't go in for rôles." + +And the four girls wrangled and dreamed and planned, while a city burnt +beneath them; some three hundred million dollars flamed out, lives were +ruined, exterminated, altered; and Labor sat on the hills and smiled +cynically at the tremendous impetus the earth had handed them on that +morning of April eighteenth, nineteen hundred and six. + +They were too young to know or to care. When the imagination is trying +its wings it is undismayed even by a world at war. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +That night Alexina knew that romance had surely come to her. She shared +her room with three old ladies who slept fitfully between blasts of +dynamite. But she sat at the window with no desire for oblivion. + +On the lawn paced a young man with a rifle in the crook of his arm. He +was tall and young and very gallant of bearing; no less a person than +Mortimer Dwight, who had been sworn in that morning as a member of the +Citizens' Patrol, and at his own request detailed to keep watch over +the house of Mrs. Groome. + +He had not been able to pay his promised visits during the day but had +arrived at seven o'clock, dining beside Mrs. Abbott, and surrounded by +old ladies whose names were as historic as Mrs. Groome's. The cook had +deserted after the second heavy shock, and, with her wardrobe in a +pillow case, had tramped to the farthest confines of the Presidio. It +was not fear alone that induced her flight. There was a rumor that the +Government would feed the city, and why should not a hard-working woman +enjoy a month or two of sheer idleness? Let the quality cook for +themselves. It would do them good. + +James and the housemaid had cooked the dinner, and Alexina and her +friends waited on the table. Then the girls, to Alexina's relief, went +home to inquire after their families, and she accompanied Mr. Dwight +while he explored every corner of the grounds to make sure that no +potential thieves lurked in the heavy shadows cast by the trees. + +He had been very alert and thorough and Alexina admired him consumedly. +There was no question but that he was one of those men--Aileen called +it the one hundred per cent male--upon whose clear brain and strong arm +a woman might depend even in the midst of an infuriated mob. He had an +opportunity that comes to few aspiring young men born into the world's +unblest millions, and if he made the most of it he was equally assured +that he was acting in strict accord with the instincts and +characteristics that had descended upon him by the grace of God. + + + +II + + +There was no physical cowardice in him; and if he would have preferred +a life of ease and splendor, he had no illusions regarding the amount +of "hustling" necessary to carry him to the goal of his desires and +ambitions--unless he made a lucky strike. He played the stock market in +a small way and made a few hundred dollars now and then. + +He would have been glad to marry a wealthy girl, Olive Bascom, by +preference, for he had an inner urge to the short cut, but he had found +these spoiled daughters of San Francisco unresponsive ... and then, +suddenly, he had fallen in love with Alexina Groome. + +His past was green and prophylactic. He was moral both by inheritance +and necessity, and his parents, people of fair intelligence, if rather +ineffective, stern principles, and good old average ideals, had taken +their responsibilities toward their two children very seriously. People +who talked with young Dwight might not find him resourceful in +conversation but they were deeply impressed with his manners and +principles. The younger men, with the exception of Bob Cheever, who +respected his capacity for work, did not take to him; principally, no +doubt, he reflected with some bitterness, because he was not "their +sort." + +He never admitted to himself that he was a snob, for something deep and +still unfaced in his consciousness, bade him see as little fault in +himself as possible, forbade him to admit the contingency of a failure, +impelled him to call such weaknesses as the fortunate condemned by some +one of those interchangeable terms with which the lexicons are so +generous. + +But if he would not face the word snob he told himself proudly that he +was ambitious; and why should he not aspire to the best society? Was he +not entitled to it by birth? His family may not have been prominent to +excess in Utica, but it was indisputably "old." However, he assured +himself that the chief reason for his determination to mingle with the +social elect of San Francisco was not so much a tribute to his +ancestors, or even the insistence of youth for the decent pleasures of +that brief period, but because of the opportunities to make those +friends indispensable to every young man forced to cut his own way +through life. Even if his good conscience had compelled him to admit +that he was a snob he would have reminded it there was no harm in +snobbery anyway. It was the most amiable of the vices. But he thought +too well of himself for any such admission, and his mind had not been +trained to fish, even, in shallow waters. + +Nor did he admit that if the lovely Miss Groome had been a stenographer +he would not have looked at her. He would indeed have turned his face +resolutely in the other direction if she had happened to sit in his +employer's office. Fate forbade him a marriage of that sort, and +dalliance with an inferior was forbidden both by his morals and his +social integrity. + +But that Alexina Groome should be beautiful, as exaltedly born as only +a San Franciscan of the old stock might be, with a determinate income, +however modest, with a background of friendly males, as substantial +financially as socially, who would be sure to give a new member of the +family a leg-up (he liked the atmosphere and flavor of the lighter +English novels), and, above all, responsive, seemed to him a direct +reward for the circumspect life he had lived and his fidelity to his +chosen upward path. + + + +III + + +He was free to fall in love as profoundly as was in him, and during +that early hour of the agitated night, with that pit of hell roaring +below to the steady undertone of a thousand tramping feet, he felt, +despite the fact that all business was moribund for the present and his +savings were in the hot vaults of a dynamited bank, that he was a +supremely fortunate young man. + +Moreover, this disaster furnished a steady topic for conversation. He +was aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a +dinner table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he +assured himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, +and that no one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to +sport, still there had been times when he was painfully aware that a +dinner partner or some bright charming creature whose invitation to +call he had accepted, looked politely bored or chattered desperately to +cover the silences into which he abruptly relapsed; when, "for the life +of him he had not been able to think of a thing to say." + +Then, briefly, he had felt a bitter rebellion at fate for having denied +him the gift of a lively and supple mind, as well as those numberless +worldly benefits lavished on men far less deserving than he. + +He felt dull and depressed after such revelations and sometimes +considered attending evening lectures at the University of California +with his sister. But for this form of mental exertion he had no taste, +keenly as he applied himself to his work during the hours of business; +and he assured himself that such knowledge would do him no good anyway. +It did not seem to be prevalent in society. If he had been a brilliant +hand at bridge or poker, the inner fortifications of society would have +gone down before him, but his courage did not run to card gambling with +wealthy idlers who set their own pace. On the stock market he could +step warily and no one the wiser. It would have horrified him to be +called a piker, for his instincts were really lavish, and the +economical habit an achievement in which he took a resentful pride. + + + +IV + + +On this evening he had talked almost incessantly to Alexina, and she, +in the vocabulary of her years and set, had thought him frantically +interesting as he described the immediate command of the city assumed +by General Funston, the efforts of the Committee of Fifty, formed early +that morning by leading citizens, to help preserve order and to give +assistance to the refugees; of rich young men, and middle-aged citizens +who had not spent an afternoon away from their club window for ten +years, carrying dynamite in their cars through the very flames; of wild +and terrible episodes he had witnessed or heard of during the day. + +His brain was hot from the mental and physical atmosphere of the +perishing city, the unique excitement of the day: when he had felt as +if snatched from his quiet pasture by the roots; and by the +extraordinary good fortune that had delivered this perfect girl and her +formidable parent almost into his hands. Under his sternly controlled +exterior his spirits sang wildly that his luck had turned, and dazzling +visions of swift success and fulfillment of all ambitions snapped on +and off in his stimulated brain. + +Alexina thought him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to +her own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a +romantic maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her +brilliant long eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth wore a +constant alluring smile. + +A declaration trembled on his tongue, but he felt that he would be +taking an unfair advantage and restrained himself. Besides, he wished +to win Mrs. Groome completely to his side, to say nothing of the still +more alarming because more worldly Mrs. Abbott. _She_ was a snob, if +you like! + + + +V + + +At nine o'clock, after he had given the inmates of the house and +outbuildings stern orders not to light a candle or lamp under any +circumstances--such was the emergency law--he bade Alexina a gallant +good-night, and betook himself to the lawn within the grove of sighing +eucalyptus trees, to pace up and down, his rifle in his arm, his eyes +alert, and quite aware of the admiring young princess at the casement +above. + +He did his work very thoroughly, visiting outhouses at intervals and +sharply inspecting the weary occupants, as well as the prostrate forms +under the trees. They were all far too tired and apprehensive to dream +of breaking into the house that had given them hospitality, even had +they been villains, which they were not. + +But they did not resent his inspection; rather they felt a sense of +security in this watching manly figure with the gun, for they were +rather afraid of villains themselves: it was reported that many looters +had been stood against hissing walls and shot by the stern orders of +General Punston. They asked their more immediate protector questions as +to the progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as befitted his +office. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +MRS. ABBOTT entered Alexina's room and caught her hanging out of the +window. She had motored up to the city during the afternoon, and, after +a vain attempt to persuade her mother to go down at once to Alta, had +concluded to remain over night. The spectacle was the most horrifyingly +interesting she had ever witnessed in her temperate life, and her +self-denying Aunt Clara was in charge of the children. Her husband had +driven himself to town as soon as he heard of the fire and been sworn +in a member of the Committee of Fifty. + +"Darling," she said firmly to the sister who was little older than her +first-born, "I want to have a talk with you. Come into papa's old +dressing-room. I had a cot put there, and as there is no room for +another I am quite alone." + +Alexina followed with lagging feet. She had always given her elder +sister the same surface obedience that she gave her mother. It "saved +trouble." But life had changed so since morning that she was in no mood +to keep up the rôle of "little sister," sweet and malleable and +innocent as a Ballinger-Groome at the age of eighteen should be. + + + +II + + +She dropped on the floor and embraced her knees with her arms. Mrs. +Abbott seated herself in as dignified an attitude as was possible on +the edge of the cot. Even the rocking-chairs had been taken down to the +dining-room. + +"Well?" queried Alexina, pretending to stifle a yawn. "What is it? I am +too sleepy to think." + +"Sleepy? You looked sleepy with your eyes like saucers watching that +young man." + +"Everybody that can is watching the fire--" + +"Don't quibble, Alexina. You are naturally a truthful child. Do you +mean to tell me you were not watching Mr. Dwight?" + +"Well, if I say yes, it is not because I care a hang about living up to +my reputation, but because I don't care whether you know it or not." + +"That is very naughty--" + +"Stop talking to me as if I were a child." + +"You are excited, darling, and no wonder." + +Maria Abbott was in the process of raising a family and she did it with +tact and firmness. Nature had done much to assist her in her several +difficult rôles. She was very tall straight and slender, with a haughty +little head, as perfect in shape as Alexina's, set well back on her +shoulders, and what had been known in her Grandmother Ballinger's day +as a cameo-profile. Her abundant fair hair added to the high calm of +her mien and it was always arranged in the prevailing fashion. On the +street she invariably wore the tailored suit, and her tailor was the +best in New York. She thought blouses in public indecent, and wore +shirtwaists of linen or silk with high collars, made by the same +master-hand. There was nothing masculine in her appearance, but she +prided herself upon being the best groomed woman even in that small +circle of her city that dressed as well as the fashionable women of New +York. At balls and receptions she wore gowns of an austere but +expensive simplicity, and as the simple jewels of her inheritance +looked pathetic beside the blazing necklaces and sunbursts (there were +only two or three tiaras in San Francisco) of those new people whom she +both deplored and envied, she wore none; and she was assured that the +lack added to the distinction of her appearance. + +But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, +determined as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was +alive, push the aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was +a strict conformer to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts +to enhance and preserve youth as the converse of respectable. Her once +delicate pink and white skin was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose +had never known powder; but even in the glare of the fire her skin +looked cool and pale, for the heat had not crimsoned her. Her blood was +rather thin and she prided herself upon the fact. She may have lost her +early beauty, but she looked the indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, +as her more naïve grandmothers would have phrased it. + +It sufficed. + + + +III + + +By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance +she was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress +like her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were +known, no doubt." + +In reality she was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and +sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all +events her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He +had his reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her +own old set, she was intensely loyal; and although she had a cold +contempt for the institution of divorce, if one of that select band +strayed into it, no matter at which end, her loyalty rose triumphant +above her social code, and she was not afraid to express it publicly. + +Toward Alexina she felt less a sister than a second mother, and gave +her freely of her abundant maternal reservoir. That "little sister" had +at times sulked under this proud determination to assist in the +bringing-up of the last of the Ballinger-Groomes, did not discourage +her. She might be soft in her affections but she never swerved from her +duty as she saw it. Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only +needed a firm hand to guide her along that proud secluded old avenue of +the city's elect, until she had ambled safely to established +respectability and power. + +She had been alarmed at one time at certain symptoms of cleverness she +noticed in the child, and at certain enthusiastic remarks in the +letters of Ballinger Groome, with whose family Alexina had spent her +vacations during her two years in New York at school. But there had +been no evidence of anything but a young girl's natural love of +pleasure since her début in society, and she was quite unaware of +Alexina's wicked divagations. She had spent the winter in Santa +Barbara, for the benefit of her oldest, boy, whose lungs were delicate, +and, like her mother, never deigned to read the society columns of the +newspapers. Her reason, however, was her own. In spite of her blood, +her indisputable position, her style, she cut but a small figure in +those columns. She was not rich enough to vie with those who +entertained constantly, and was merely set down as one of many guests. +The fact induced a slight bitterness. + + + +IV + + +She began tactfully. "I like this young Mr. Dwight very much, and shall +ask him down, as mother desires it. But I hope, darling, that you will +follow my example and not marry until you have had four years of +society, in other words have seen something of the world--" + +"California is not the world." + +"Society, in other words human nature, is everywhere much alike. As you +know, I spent a year in England when I was a young lady, and was +presented at court--by Lady Barnstable, who was Lee Tarlton, one of us. +It was merely San Francisco on a large scale, with titles, and greater +and older houses and parks, and more jewels, and more arrogance, and +everything much grander, of course. And they talked politics a great +deal, which bored me as I am sure they would bore you. The beauty of +our society is its simplicity and lack of arrogance--consciousness of +birth or of wealth. Even the more recent members of society, who owe +their position to their fortunes, have a simplicity and kindness quite +unknown in New York. Eastern people always remark it. And yet, owing to +their constant visits to the East and to Europe, they know all of the +world there is to know." + +"So do the young men, I suppose! I never heard of their doing much +traveling--" + +"I should call them remarkably sophisticated young men. But the point +is, darling, that if you wait as long as I did you will discover that +the men who attract a girl in her first season would bore her to +extinction in her fourth." + +"You mean after I've had all the bloom rubbed off, and men are +forgetting to ask me to dance. Then I'll be much more likely to take +what I can get. I want to marry with all the bloom on and all my +illusions fresh." + +"But should you like to have them rubbed off by your husband? You've +heard the old adage: 'marry in haste and repent--'" + +"I've been brought up on adages. They are called bromides now. As for +illusions, everybody says they don't last anyway. I'd rather have them +dispelled after a long wonderful honeymoon by a husband than by a lot +of flirtations in a conservatory and in dark corners--" + +"Good heavens! Do you suppose that I flirted in a conservatory and in +dark corners?" + +"I'll bet you didn't, but lots do. And in the haute noblesse, the +ancient aristocracy! I've seen 'em." + +"It isn't possible that you--" + +"Oh, no, I love to dance too much. But I'm not easily shocked. I 'll +tell you that right here. And I 'll tell you what I confessed to mother +this morning." + + + +V + + +When she had finished Mrs. Abbott sat for a few moments petrified; but +she was thirty-eight, not sixty-five, and there was neither dismay nor +softening in her narrowed light blue eyes. + +"But that is abominable! Abominable!" + +And Alexina, who was prepared for a scolding, shrank a little, for it +was the first time that her doting sister had spoken to her with +severity. + +"I don't care," she said stubbornly, and she set her soft lips until +they looked stern and hard. + +"But you must care. You are a Groome." + +"Oh, yes, and a Ballinger, and a Geary, and all the rest of it. But I'm +also going to annex another name of my own choosing. I'll marry whom I +damn please, and that is the end of it." + +"Alexina Groome!" Mrs. Abbott arose in her wrath. "Cannot you see for +yourself what association with all these common people has done to you? +It's the influence--" + +"Of two years in New York principally. The girls there are as hard as +nails--try to imitate the English. Ours are not a patch, not even +Aileen, although she does her best. But I hadn't finished--I even +powder my face." Alexina grinned up at her still rudderless sister. +"After mother is asleep and I am ready to slip out." + +"I thought you were safe in New York under the eyes of Ballinger and +Geary, or rather of Mattie and Charlotte. They are such earnest good +women, so interested in charities--" + +"Deadly. But you don't know the girls," + +"And I have told mother again and again that she should not permit you +to associate with Aileen Lawton." + +"She can't help herself. Aileen is one of us. Besides, mother is +devoted to the Judge." + +"But powder! None of us has ever put anything but clean cold water on +her face." + +"You'd look a long sight better if you did. Cold cream, too. You +wouldn't have any wrinkles at your age, if you weren't so damn +respectable-aristocratic, you call it. It's just middle class. And as +out of date as speech without slang. As for me, I'd paint my lips as +Aileen does, only I don't like the taste, and they're too red, anyhow. +It's much smarter to make up than not to. Times change. You don't wear +hoopskirts because our magnificent Grandmother Ballinger did. You dress +as smartly as the Burlingame crowd. Why does your soul turn green at +make-up? All these people you look down upon because our families were +rich and important in the fifties are more up-to-date than you are, +although I will admit that none of them has the woman-of-the-world air +of the smartest New York women--not that terribly respectable inner set +in New York--Aunt Mattie's and Aunt Charlotte's--_that_ just revels in +looking mid-Victorian.... The newer people I've met here--their manners +are just as good as ours, if not better, for, as you said just now, +they don't put on airs. You do, darling. You don't know it, but you +would put an English duchess to the blush, when you suddenly remember +who you are--" + +Mrs. Abbott had resumed her seat on the cot. "If you have finished +criticizing your elder sister, I should like to ask you a few +questions. Do you smoke and drink cocktails?" + +"No, I don't. But I should if I liked them, and if they didn't make me +feel queer." + +"You--you--" Mrs. Abbot's clear crisp voice sank to an agonized +whisper. For the first time she was really terrified. "Do you gamble?" + +"Why, of course not. I have too much fun to think of anything so +stupid." + +"Does Aileen Lawton gamble?" + +"She just doesn't, and don't you insinuate such a thing." + +"She has bad blood in her. Her mother--" + +"I thought her mother was your best friend." + +"She was. But she went to pieces, poor dear, and Judge Lawton wisely +sent her East. I can't tell you why. There are things you don't +understand." + +"Oh, don't I? Don't you fool yourself." + +Mrs. Abbott leaned back on the cot and pressed it hard with either hand. + +"Alexina, I have never been as disturbed as I am at this moment. When +Sally and I were your age, we were beautifully innocent. If I thought +that Joan--" + +"Oh, Joan'll get away from you. She's only fourteen now, but when she's +my age--well, I guess you and your old crowd are the last of the +Mohicans. I doubt if there'll even be any chaperons left. Joan may not +smoke nor drink. Who cares for 'vices,' anyhow? But you haven't got a +moat and drawbridge round Rincona, and she'll just get out and mix. +She'll float with the stream--and all streams lead to Burlingame." + +"I have no fear about Joan," said Mrs. Abbott, with dignity. "Four +years are a long time. I shall sow seeds, and she is a born +Ballinger--I am dreadfully afraid that my dear father is coming out in +you. Even the boys are Ballingers--" + + + +VI + + +"Tell me about father?" coaxed Alexina, who was repentant, now that the +excitement of the day had reached its climax in the baiting of her +admirable sister and was rapidly subsiding. "Mother let fall something +this morning; and once Aileen ... she began, but shut up like a clam. +Was he so very dreadful?" + +"Well, since you know so much, he was what is called fast. Married men +of his position often were in his day--quite openly. Yesterday, I +should have hesitated--" + +"Fire away. Don't mind me. Yes, I know what fast is. Lots of men are +to-day. Even members of the A. A." + +"A. A.?" + +"Ancient Aristocracy. The kind England and France would like to have." + +"I'm ashamed of you. Have you no pride of blood? The best blood of the +South, to say nothing of--" + +"I'm tickled to death. I just dote on being a Groome, plus Ballinger, +plus. And I'm not guying, neither. I'd hate like the mischief to be +second rate, no matter what I won later. It must be awful to have to +try to get to places that should be yours by divine right, as it were. +But all that's no reason for being a moss-back, a back number, for not +having any fun--to be glued to the ancestral rock like a lot of old +limpets.... And it should preserve us from being snobs," she added. + +"Snobs?" + +"The 'I will maintain' sort, as Aileen puts it." + +"Don't quote that dreadful child to me. I haven't an atom of snobbery +in my composition. I reserve the right to know whom I please, and to +exclude from my house people to whom I cannot accustom myself. Why I +know quite a number of people at Burlingame. I dined there informally +last night." + +"Yes, because it has the fascination for you that wine has for the +clergyman's son." Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the +only people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those +of the old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were +one of us. They went there to live because they were tired of being +moss-backs. Why don't you follow their example and go the whole hog? +They--and their girls--have a ripping time." + +"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the +young people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women +drink and smoke quite openly on the verandah." + +"You may bet your sweet life they do. They are honest, and quite as +sure of their position as you are. But tell me about father. How did +mother come to marry him? If he was such a naughty person I should +think she would have exercised the sound Ballinger instincts and thrown +him down." + +"Mother met him in Washington. Grandfather Ballinger was senator at the +time--" + +"From Virginia or California?" + +"It is shocking that you do not know more of the family history. From +California, of course. He had great gifts and political aspirations, +and realized that there would be more opportunity in the new +state--particularly in such a famous one--than in his own where all the +men in public life seemed to have taken root--I remember his using that +expression. So, he came here with his bride, the beauty of Richmond--" + +"Oh, Lord, I know all about her. Remember the flavor in my mother's +milk--" + +"Well, you'd look like her if you had brown eyes and a white skin, and +if your mouth were smaller. And until you learn to stand up straight +you'll never have anything like her elegance of carriage. However.... +Of course they had plenty of money--for those days. They had come to +Virginia in the days of Queen Elizabeth and received a large grant of +land--" + +"Don't fancy I haven't heard _that_!" + +"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--" + +"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his +ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!" + +"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new +community, and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that +small band of social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs. +Hunt McLane, the Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the +Gearys, the Talbots, the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom's grandmother--" + +"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother, +although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she +was a leader herself and 'money wasn't everything.' We never had so +much of it anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle +old house--" + +Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were +talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was. + +"This house and its traditions are sacred--" + +"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast +man." + +"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He +was a young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the +first year of the war and returned at once to California; of course he +had been one of the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by +no means poor. Of course in Washington he was asked to the best houses. +At that time he was very ambitious and absorbed in politics and the +advancement of California. Afterward he renounced Washington for +reasons I never clearly understood; although he told me once that +California was the only place for a man to live; and--well--I am afraid +he could do more as he pleased out here without criticism--from men, at +least. The standards--for men--were very low in those days. But when he +met mother--" + +"Was mother ever very pretty?" + +"She was handsome," replied Mrs. Abbott guardedly. "Of course she had +the freshness and roundness of youth. I am told she had a lovely color +and the brightest eyes. And she had a beautiful figure. She had several +proposals, but she chose father." + +"And had the devil's own time with him. She let out that much this +morning." + +"I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was +determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child's +brain was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at +the revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the +problem of "handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made +generalities. + +"Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time +and held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever +accused him of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes +more than one reform to his determination and ability. + +"He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, +for he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; +what men call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a +brilliant group of disreputable women here; one could not help hearing +things, for the married women here have always been great gossips. +Well--you may as well know it--it may have the same effect on you that +it did on Ballinger and Geary, who are the most abstemious of men--he +drank and gambled and had too much to do with those unspeakable +women.... + +"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he +hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in +stocks), he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, +you will only have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was +quite well off when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to +New York after marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here +when they paid us a visit in the nineties. They had money of their own +and father gave the boys a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to +Sally and me when we married. But when you came along, or rather when +you were ten, and he died--well, he had run through nearly everything, +and had lost his grip. Mother got her share of the community property, +and of course she had this house and her share of the Ballinger +estate--not very much." + + + +VII + + +"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?" + +"Mother did everything a good woman could do." + +"Maybe she was too good." + +"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good." + +"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has +different tastes." + +"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to +lower herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father." + +"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why +didn't mother get a divorce?" + +"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has +been divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very +dear friends had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I +didn't approve even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home." + +"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for +instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and +he was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I +did decide to marry Mr. Dwight--mind, I don't say I care the tip of my +little finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have +to admit that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he +doesn't drink, or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works +hard and is as steady as--I was going to say as a judge, but I've been +told that all judges, in this town at least, are not as steady as you +think. Anyhow, he is. His family is as old as ours, even if it did have +reverses or something. And you can't deny that he is a gentleman, every +inch of him." + +"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But--well, he +was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents. +He admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a +broker's office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it." + +"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what +power you have left." + +She rose and stretched and yawned in a most unladylike fashion. + +"I'm going to make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little +chat with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can +stop me, for you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! +We shall have to shout. It will be more than proper. Good night, +darling." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora Dwight with a quick turn of a strong and supple wrist flung a +folding chair up through the trap door of the roof. She followed with a +pitcher of water, opened the chair, and sat down. + +It was the second day of the fire, which was now raging in the valleys +north of Market Street and up the hills. It was still some distance +from all but the lower end of Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that +divides the eastern and western sections of the city, as Market Street +divides the northern and southern, and her own home on Geary Street was +beyond Franklin and safe for the present. It was expected that the fire +would be halted by dynamiting the blocks east of the avenue, but as it +had already leapt across not far from Market Street and was running out +toward the Mission, Gora pinned her faith in nothing less than a change +of wind. + +Life has many disparate schools. The one attended by Miss Gora Dwight +had taught her to hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be +thankful if she escaped (to use the homely phrase; one rarely found +leisure for originality in this particular school) by the skin of her +teeth. + +Gora fully expected to lose the house she sat on, and had packed what +few valuables she possessed in two large bags: the fine underclothes +she had made at odd moments, and a handsome set of toilet articles her +brother had given her on the Christmas before last. He had had a raise +of salary and her experiment with lodgers had proved even more +successful than she had dared to hope. On the following Christmas he +had given her a large book with a fancy binding (which she had +exchanged for something she could read). After satisfying the +requirements of a wardrobe suitable for the world of fashion, +supplemented by the usual toll of flowers and bon-bons, he had little +surplus for domestic presents. + +Gora's craving for drama was far deeper and more significant than young +Alexina Groome's, and she determined to watch until the last moment the +terrific spectacle of the burning city. The wind had carried the smoke +upward for a mile or more and pillars of fire supported it at such +irregular intervals that it looked like a vast infernal temple in which +demons were waging war, and undermining the roof in their senseless +fury. + +In some places whole blocks of houses were blazing; here and there high +buildings burned in solitary grandeur, the flames leaping from every +window or boiling from the roof. Sometimes one of these buildings would +disappear in a shower of sparks and an awful roar, or a row of humbler +houses was lifted bodily from the ground to burst into a thousand +particles of flying wood, and disappear. + +The heat was overpowering (she bathed her face constantly from the +pitcher) and the roar of the flames, the constant explosions of +dynamite, the loud vicious crackling of wood, the rending and splitting +of masonry, the hoarse impact of walls as they met the earth, was the +scene's wild orchestral accompaniment and, despite underlying +apprehension and horror, gave Gora one of the few pleasurable +sensations of her life. + +But she moved her chair after a moment and fixed her gaze, no longer +rapt but ironic, on the flaming hillcrests, the long line of California +Street, nucleus of the wealth and fashion of San Francisco. The Western +Addition was fashionable and growing more so, but it had been too far +away for the pioneers of the fifties and sixties, the bonanza kings of +the seventies, the railroad magnates of the eighties, and they had +built their huge and hideous mansions upon the hill that rose almost +perpendicularly above the section where they made and lost their +millions. Some wag or toady had named it Nob Hill and the inhabitants +had complacently accepted the title, although they refrained from +putting it on their cards. And now it was in flames. + + + +II + + +Gora recalled the day when she had walked slowly past those mansions, +staring at each in turn as she assimilated the disheartening and +infuriating fact that she and the children that inhabited them belonged +to different worlds. + +Her family at that time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor +Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a +sister recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less +mercurial husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, +then a rangy girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large +private school in the fashionable district. + +Gora, after all these years, ground her teeth as she had a sudden +blighting vision of the day a week later, when, puzzled and resentful, +she had walked up the steep hill with several of the girls whose homes +were on California and Taylor Streets, and two of whom, like herself, +were munching an apple. + +They had hardly noticed her sufficiently to ignore her, either then or +during the previous week, so absorbed were they in their own close +common interests. She listened to allusions which she barely could +comprehend, but it was evident that one was to give a party on Friday +night and the others were expected as a matter of course. Gora assumed +that Jim and Sam and Rex and Bob were brothers or beaux. Last names +appeared to be no more necessary than labels to inform the outsider of +the social status of these favored maidens, too happy and contented to +be snobs but quite callous to the feelings of strange little girls. + +They drifted one by one into their opulent homes, bidding one another a +careless or a sentimental good-by, and Gora, throwing her head as far +back on her shoulders as it would go without dislocation, stalked down +to the unfashionable end of Taylor Street and up to the solitude of her +bedroom under the eaves of the cottage. + +On the following day she had lingered in the school yard until the +other girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular +hill so rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a +pain in her side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the +imposing homes of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and +puzzled eyes, her young soul in tumult. It was the old inarticulate cry +of class, of the unchosen who seeks the reason and can find none. + + + +III + + +As she had a tendency not only to brood but to work out her own +problems it was several days before she demanded an explanation of her +mother. + +Mrs. Dwight, a prematurely gray and wrinkled woman, who had once been +handsome with good features and bright coloring, and who wore a +deliberately cheerful expression that Gora often wanted to wipe off, +was sitting in the dining-room making a skirt for her daughter; which, +Gora reflected bitterly, was sure to be too long on one side if not in +front. + +Mrs. Dwight's smile faded as she looked at the somber face and huddled +figure in the worn leather arm-chair in which Mr. Dwight spent his +silent evenings. + +"Why, my dear, you surely knew long before this that some people are +rich and others poor--to say nothing of the betwixts and betweens." She +was an exact woman in small matters. "That's all there is to it. I +thought it a good idea to send you to a private school where you might +make friends among girls of your own class." + +"Own class? They treat me like dirt. How am I of their class when they +live in palaces and I in a hovel?" + +"I have reproved you many times for exaggerated speech. What I meant +was that you are as well-born as any of them (better than many) only we +have been unfortunate. Your father tried hard enough, but he just +doesn't seem to have the money-making faculty like so many men. Now, +we've had a little luck I'm really hopeful. I've just had a nice letter +from your Aunt Eliza Goring--I named you for her, but I couldn't +inflict you with Eliza. You know she is many years older than I am and +has no children. She was out here once just before you were born. +We--we were very hard up indeed. It was she who furnished this cottage +for us and paid a year's rent. Soon after, your father got his present +position and we have managed to get along. She always sends me a little +cheque at Christmas and I am sure--well, there are some things we don't +say.... But this legacy from your Aunt Jane is the only real stroke of +luck we ever had, and I can't help feeling hopeful. I do believe better +times are coming.... It used to seem terribly hard and unjust that so +many people all about us had so much and we nothing, and that in this +comparatively small city we knew practically no one. But I have got +over being bitter and envious. You do when you are busy every minute. +And then we have the blessing of health, and Mortimer is the best boy +in the world, and you are a very good child when you are not in a bad +temper. I think you will be handsome, too, although you are pretty +hopeless at present; but of course you will never have anything like +Mortimer's looks. He is the living image of the painting of your +Great-great-great-grandfather Dwight that used to hang in the +dining-room in Utica, and who was in the first Congress. Now, do try +and make friends with the nicer of the children." + +But Gora's was not a conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea +of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and +humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first +position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction +of the teachers an angry emulation ensued with the gratifying result +that although the girls could not pass Gora, their weekly marks were +higher, and for the rest of the term they did less giggling even after +school hours, and more studying. + +But Gora would not return for a second term. She had made no friends +among the girls, although, no doubt, having won their respect, they +would, with the democracy of childhood, have admitted her to intimacy +by degrees, particularly if she had proved to be socially malleable. + +But for some obscure reason it made Gora happier to hate them all, and +when she had passed her examinations victoriously, and taken every +prize, except for tidiness and deportment, she said good-by with some +regret to the teachers, who had admired and encouraged her but did not +pretend to love her, and announced as soon as she arrived at home that +she should enter the High School at the beginning of the following term. + + + +IV + + +Her parents were secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future +prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her +sister Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but +unfortunately Mrs. Goring had amused herself with speculation in her +old age, and had left barely enough to pay her funeral expenses. + +Mrs. Dwight broached the subject of their immediate future to her +husband that evening. She had some time since made up her mind, in case +the school experiment was not a success, to furnish a larger house with +what remained of the legacy, and take boarders. + +"I wouldn't do it if Gora had made the friends I hoped for her," she +said, turning the heel of the first of her son's winter socks, "and +there's no such thing as a social come-down for us; for that matter, +there is more than one lady, once wealthy, who is keeping a +boarding-house in this town. Gora will have to work anyhow, and as for +Mortimer--" she glanced fondly at her manly young son, who was amiably +playing checkers in the parlor with his sister, "he is sure to make his +fortune." + +"I don't know," said Mr. Dwight heavily. "I don't know." + +"Why, what do you mean?" asked his wife sharply. + +Mrs. Dwight belonged to that type of American women whose passions in +youth are weak and anæmic, not to say exceedingly shame-faced, but +which in mature years become strong and selfish and jealous, either for +a lover or a son. Mrs. Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had +centered all the accumulated forces of her being on the son whom she +idealized after the fashion of her type; and as she had corrected his +obvious faults when he was a boy, it was quite true that he was kind, +amiable, honest, honorable, patriotic, industrious, clean, polite, and +moral; if hardly as handsome as Apollo or as brilliant and gifted as +she permitted herself to believe. + +"What do you mean?" she repeated, although she lowered her voice. It +was rarely that it assumed an edge when addressing her husband. She had +never reproached him for being a failure, for she had recognized his +limitations early and accepted her lot. But something in his tone shook +her maternal complacence and roused her to instant defense. + +Mr. Dwight took his pipe from his mouth and also cast a glance toward +the parlor, but the absorbed players were beyond the range of his +rather weak voice. + +"I mean this," he said with nothing of his usual vague hesitancy of +speech. "I'm not so sure that Morty is beyond clerk size." + +"You--you--John Dwight--your son--" The thin layer of pale flesh on +Mrs. Dwight's face seemed to collapse upon its harsh framework with the +terrified wrath that shook her. Her mouth fell apart, and hot smarting +tears welled slowly to her eyes, faded with long years of stitching; +not only for her own family but for many others when money had been +more than commonly scarce. "Mortimer can do anything. Anything." + +"Can he? Why doesn't he show it then? He went to work at sixteen and is +now twenty-two. He is drawing just fifty dollars a month. He's well +liked in the firm, too." + +"Why don't they raise his salary?" + +"Because that's all he's worth to them. He's a good steady honest +clerk, nothing more." + +"He's very young--" + +"If a man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in +his brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two--if he has been in +that forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of +this country. And employers are always on the look-out for those +qualities and only too anxious to find them and push a young man on and +up. Many a president of a great business started life as a clerk, or +even office boy--" + +"That is what I have always known would happen to Morty. I am sure, +sure, that you are doing him a cruel injustice." + +"I hope I am. But I am a failure myself and I know what a man needs in +the way of natural equipment to make a success of his life." + +"But he is so energetic and industrious and honorable and likable and--" + +"I was all that." + +"Then--" Mrs. Dwight's voice trailed off; it sounded flat and old. +"What do you both lack?" + +"Brains." + + + +V + + +Mrs. Dwight had repeated this conversation to Gora shortly before her +death, and the girl in her reminiscent mood recalled it as she stared +with somber eyes and ironic lips at the havoc the fire was playing with +those lofty mansions which had stood to her all these intervening years +as symbols of the unpardonable injustice of class. + +She recalled another of the few occasions when Mrs. Dwight, who +believed in acceptance and contentment, had been persuaded to discuss +the idiosyncrasies of her adopted city. + +"It isn't that money is the standard here as it is in New York. Of +course there is a very wealthy set these late years and they set a pace +that makes it difficult for the older families, like the Groomes for +instance--I met Mrs. Groome once at a summer resort where I was +housekeeper that year, and I thought her very typical and interesting. +She was so kind to me without seeing me at all.... But those fine old +families, who are all of good old Eastern or Southern stock--if they +manage to keep in society are still the most influential element in +it.... Family.... Having lived in California long enough to be one of +that old set.... To be, without question, one of them. That is all that +matters. I've come in contact with a good many of them first and last +in my poor efforts to help your father, and I believe the San +Franciscans to be the most loyal and disinterested people in the +world-to one another. + +"But if you come in from the outside you must bring money, or +tremendous family prestige, or the right kind of social personality +with the best kind of letters. We just crept in and were glad to be +permitted to make a living. Why should they have taken any notice of +us? They don't go hunting about for obscure people of possibly gentle +blood. That doesn't happen anywhere in the world. You must be +reasonable, my dear child. That is life, 'The World.'" + +But Gora was not gifted with that form of reasonableness. She had +wished in her darker moments that she had been born outright in the +working-class; then, no doubt, she would have trudged contentedly every +morning (except when on strike) to the factory or shop, or been some +one's cook. She was an excellent cook. What galled her was the fact of +virtually belonging to the same class as these people who were still +unaware of the existence of her family, although it had lived for over +thirty years in a city numbering to-day only half a million inhabitants. + +She was almost fanatically democratic and could see no reason for +differences of degree in the aspiring classes. To her mind the only +line of cleavage between the classes was that which divided people of +education, refinement of mind manners and habits, certain inherited +traditions, and the mental effort no matter how small to win a place in +this difficult world, from commonness, ignorance, indifference to dirt, +coarse pleasures and habits, and manual labor. She respected Labor as +the solid foundation stones upon which civilization upheld itself, and +believed it to have been biologically chosen; if she had been born in +its class she would have had the ambition to work her way out of it, +but without resentment. + +There her recognition of class stopped. That wealth or family +prominence even in a great city or an old community should create an +exclusive and favored society seemed to her illogical and outrageous. A +woman was a lady or she wasn't. A man was a gentleman or he wasn't. +That should be the beginning and the end of the social code.... When +she had been younger she had lamented her mean position because it +excluded her from the light-hearted and brilliant pleasures of youth; +but as she grew older this natural craving had given place to a far +deeper and more corrosive resentment. + +She had no patience with her brother's ingenuous snobbery. A +good-natured friend had introduced him to one or two houses where there +were young people and much dancing and he had been "taken up." Nothing +would have filled Gora with such murderous rage as to be taken up. She +wanted her position conceded as a natural right. + +Had it been in her power she would have forced her conception of +democracy upon the entire United States. But as this was quite +impossible she longed passionately for some power, personal and +irresistible, that would compel the attention of the elect in the city +of her birth and ultimately bring them to her feet. And here she had a +ray of hope. + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile it was some satisfaction to watch them being burned out of +house and home. + +Then she gave a short impatient sigh that was almost a groan, as she +wondered if her own home would go. The family had moved into it eight +years ago; and after Mr. Dwight's death his widow had barely made a +living for herself and her daughter out of the uncertain boarders. +Mortimer had paid his share, but she had encouraged him to dress well +and no one knew the value of "front" better than he. After her death, +three years ago, Gora had turned out the boarders and the last +slatternly wasteful cook and let her rooms to business women who made +their morning coffee over the gas jet. The new arrangement paid very +well and left her time for lectures at the University of California, +and for other studies. A Jap came in daily to put the rooms in order +and she cooked for herself and her brother. So unknown was she that +even Aileen Lawton was unaware that the "boarding-house down on Geary +Street" was a lodging house kept by Mortimer Dwight's sister. +Fortunately Gora was spared one more quivering arrow in her pride. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +There was a tremendous burst of dynamite that rocked the house. Then +she heard her brother's voice: + +"Gora! Gora! Where are you?" + +She let herself through the trap door and ran down to the first floor. + +Her brother was standing in the lower hall surrounded by several of +their lodgers, competent-looking women, quite calm and business like, +but dressed as for a journey and carrying suitcases and bags. + +"You are all ordered out," he was saying. "A change of the wind to the +south would sweep the fire right up this hill, and it may cross Van +Ness Avenue again at any time. So everybody is ordered out to the +western hills, or the Presidio, or across the Bay, if they can make it." + +He had no private manners and greeted his sister with the same gallant +smile and little air of deference which always carried him a certain +distance in public. "You had better take out a mattress and blanket," +he said. "I wish I could do it for you--for all of you--but I am under +orders and must patrol where I am sent. When I finish giving the orders +down here I must go back to the Western Addition." + +"Don't worry about us," said Gora drily. "We are all quite as capable +as men when it comes to looking out for ourselves in a catastrophe. I +hear that several wives led their weeping stricken husbands out of town +yesterday morning. Are you sure the fire will cross Van Ness Avenue +to-night?" + +"It may be held back by the dynamiting, but one can be sure of nothing. +Of course the wind may shift to the west any minute. That would save +this part of the city." + +"Well, don't let us keep you from your civic duties. You look very well +in those hunting boots. Lucky you went on that expedition last summer +with Mr. Cheever." + +Mortimer frowned slightly and turned to the door. The brother and +sister rarely talked on any but the most impersonal subjects, but more +than once he had had an uneasy sense that she knew him better than he +knew himself. His consciousness had never faced anything so absurd, but +there were times when he felt an abrupt desire to escape her enigmatic +presence and this was one of them. + + + +II + + +The lodgers were permitted by the patrol to cook their luncheon on the +stove that had been set up in the street, the orders being that they +should leave within an hour. After their smoky meal they departed, +carrying mattresses and blankets. + +Gora had no intention of following them unless the flames were actually +roaring up the block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. She +felt quite positive that she could outrun any fire. + +The last of the lodgers, at her request, shut the front door and made a +feint of locking it, an unnecessary precaution in any case as all the +windows were open; and as the sentries had been ordered to "shoot to +kill," and had obeyed orders, looting had ceased. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death, +she had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin +bluish green material and there were several pieces of good furniture +that she had picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered +with book shelves which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter +nights and they were filled with the books she had found in second-hand +shops. A number of them bore the autographs of men once prosilient in +the city's history but long since gone down to disaster. There were a +few prints that she had found in the same way, but no oils or water +colors or ornaments. She despised the second-rate, and the best of +these was rarely to be bought for a song even at auction. + +She sighed as she reflected that if obliged to flee to the hills there +was practically nothing she could save beyond the contents of her bags; +but at least she could remain with her treasures until the last minute, +and she pinned the curtains across the small windows and lit several +candles. + +Between the blasts of dynamite the street was very quiet. She could +hear the measured tread of the sentry as he passed, a member of the +Citizens' Patrol, like her brother. Suddenly she heard a shot, and +extinguishing the candles hastily she peered out of a window from +behind the curtains. The sentry was pounding on a door opposite with +the butt of his rifle. It was the home of an eccentric old bachelor who +possessed a fine collection of ceramics and a cellar of vintage wine. + +The door opened with obvious reluctance and the head of Mr. Andrew +Bennett appeared. + +"What you doin' here?" shouted the sentry. "Haven't all youse been told +three hours ago to light out for the hills? Git out--" + +"But the fire hasn't crossed Van Ness Avenue. I prefer--" + +"Your opinion ain't asked. Git out." + +"I call that abominable tyranny." + +"Git out or I'll shoot. We ain't standin' no nonsense." + +Gora recognized the voice as that of a young man, clerk in a butcher +shop in Polk Street, and appreciated the intense satisfaction he took +in his brief period of authority. + +Mr. Bennett emerged in a moment with two large bags and walked +haughtily up the street at the point of the bayonet. Gora stood +expectantly behind her curtain, and some ten minutes later saw him +sneak round the eastern end of his block, dart back as the sentry +turned suddenly, and when the footsteps once more receded run up the +street and into his house. She laughed sympathetically and hoped he +would not be caught a second time. + + + +II + + +Suddenly another man, carrying a woman in his arms, turned the same +corner. He was staggering as if he had borne a heavy burden a long +distance. + +Gora ran down to the first floor and glanced out of the window of the +front room. The sentry had crossed the far end of the street and was +holding converse with another member of the patrol. As the refugee +staggered past the house she opened the front door and called softly. + +"Come up quickly. Don't let them see you." + +The man stumbled up the steps and into the house. + +"You can put her on the sofa in this room." Gora led the way into what +had once been the front parlor and was now the chamber of her star +lodger. "Is she hurt?" + +The man did not answer. He followed her and laid down his burden. Gora +flashed her electric torch on the face of the girl and drew back in +horror. + +"Dead?" + +"Yes, she is dead." The young man, who looked a mere boy in spite of +his unshaven chin and haggard eyes, threw himself into a chair and +dropping his face on his arms burst into heavy sobs. + +Gora stared, fascinated, at the sharp white face of the girl, the rope +of fair hair wound round her neck like something malign and muscular +that had strangled her, the half-open eyes, whose white maleficent +gleam deprived the poor corpse of its last right, the aloofness and the +majesty of death. She may have been an innocent and lovely young +creature when alive, but dead, and lacking the usual amiable +beneficencies of the undertaker, she looked like a macabre wax work of +corrupt and evil youth. + +And she was horribly stiff. + + + +III + + +Gora went into the kitchen and made him a cup of coffee over a spirit +lamp. He drank it gratefully, then followed her up to the attic as she +feared their voices might be overheard from the lower room. There he +took the easy chair and the cigarette she offered him and told his +story. + +The young girl was his sister and they were English. She had been +visiting a relative in Santa Barbara when a sudden illness revealed the +fact that she had a serious heart affection. He had come out to take +her home and they had been staying at the Palace Hotel waiting for +suitable accommodations before crossing the continent. + +His sister--Marian--had been terrified into unconsciousness by the +earthquake and he had carried her down the stairs and out into Market +Street, where she had revived. She had even seemed to be better than +usual, for the people in their extraordinary costumes, particularly the +opera singers, had amused her, and she had returned to the court of the +hotel and listened with interest to the various "experiences." Finally +they had climbed the four flights of stairs to their rooms and he had +helped her to dress--her maid had disappeared. They had remained until +the afternoon when the uncontrolled fires in the region behind the +hotel alarmed them, and with what belongings they could carry they had +gone up to the St. Francis Hotel, where they engaged rooms and left +their portmanteaux, intending to climb to the top of the hill, if +Marian were able, and watch the fire. + +Half way up the hill she had fainted and he had carried her into a +house whose door stood open. There was no one in the house, and after a +futile attempt to revive her, he had run back to the hotel to find a +doctor. But among the few people that had the courage to remain so +close to the fire there was no doctor. The hotel clerk gave him an +address but told him not to be too sure of finding his man at home as +all the physicians were probably attending the injured, helping to +clear the threatened hospitals, or at work among the refugees, any +number of women having embraced the inopportune occasion to become +mothers. + +The doctor whose address was given him not only was out but his house +was deserted; and, distracted, he returned to his sister. + +He knew at once that she was dead. + +He sat beside her for hours, too stunned to think.... It was some time +during the night that the roar of the fire seemed to grow louder, the +smoke in the street denser. Then it occurred to him that the +inhabitants of this house as well as of the doctor's, which was close +by, would not have abandoned their homes if they had not believed that +some time during the night they would be in the path of the flames. And +he had heard that the pipes of the one water system had been broken by +the earthquake. + +He had caught up the body of his sister and walked westward until, worn +out, he had entered the basement of another empty house, and there he +had fallen asleep. When he awakened he was under the impression for a +moment that he was in the crater of a volcano in eruption. Dynamite was +going off in all directions, he could hear the loud crackling of flames +behind his refuge; and as he took the body in his arms once more and +ran out, the fire was sweeping up the hill not a block below. + +In spite of the smoke he inferred that the way was clear to the west, +and he had run on and on, once narrowly escaping a dynamiting area +where he saw men like dark shadows prowling and then rushing off madly +in an automobile ... dodging the fire, losing his way, once finding +himself confronting a wall of flames, finally crossing a wide avenue +... stumbling on ... and on.... + + + +IV + + +Gora decided that blunt callousness would help him more than sympathy. +He had recovered his self-control, but his eyes were still wide with +pain and horror. + +"Cremation is a clean honest finish for any one," she remarked, +lighting another cigarette and offering him her match. "I should have +left her if she had been my sister in that first house...." + +"I might have done it--in London. But ... perhaps I was not quite +myself.... I couldn't leave her to be burned alone in a strange +country. Besides, the horror of it would have killed my mother. Marian +was the youngest. I felt bound to do my best.... Perhaps I didn't think +at all.... If this house is threatened I shall take her out to the +Presidio, where I happen to know a man--Colonel Norris. Thanks to your +hospitality I can make it." + +"But naturally you cannot go very fast ... and these sentries ... I am +not sure.... I don't see how you escaped others ... the smoke and +excitement, I suppose.... I think if you are determined to take her it +would be better if I helped you to carry her out to the cemetery. We +can put her on a narrow wire mattress and cover her, so that it will +look as if we were rescuing an invalid. Out there you can put her in +one of the stone vaults. Some of the doors are sure to have been broken +by the earthquake." + +The young man, who had given his name as Richard Gathbroke, gratefully +rested in her brother's room while she kept watch on the roof. It was +night but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well +as the approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks +fell on the roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making +him welcome to her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious +water. When he joined her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and +she saw that he looked both older and younger than Americans of his +age; which, he had told her, was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled +face was now composed and his hazel eyes were brilliant and steady. He +had a tall trim military body, and very straight bright brown hair; a +rather conventional figure of a well-bred Englishman, Gora assumed; +intelligent, and both more naif and more worldly-wise than young +Americans of his class: but whose potentialities had hardly been +apprehended even by himself. + +They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a +spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small +tins of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the +smaller bedrooms to the front room on the first floor. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +The patrol had been relieved by another, an older man, and sober. He +merely reproved them for disobeying orders, glanced sympathetically at +the presumed invalid, and directed them to one of the temporary +hospitals some blocks farther west. + +Gora, like all imaginative people, had a horror of the corpse, and +averted her eyes from the head of the dead girl outlined under the veil +she had thrown over it, Gathbroke was obliged to walk backward, and as +both were extremely uncomfortable, there was no attempt at conversation +until they reached the gates of the old cemetery the great pioneers had +called Lone Mountain and their more commonplace descendants +rechristened Laurel Hill. + +The glare of the distant fire illuminated the silent city where a +thousand refugees slept as heavily as the dead, and as they ascended +the steep path they examined anxiously the vaults on either side. +Finally Gora exclaimed: + +"There! On the right." + +The iron doors of a once eminent resident's last dwelling had been half +twisted from their rusty hinges. Gathbroke threw his weight on them and +they fell at his feet. He and Gora carried in the body and lifted it to +an empty shelf. + +"Good!" Gora gave a long sigh of relief. "Nothing can happen to her +now. Even the entrance faces away from the fire and there is nothing +but grass in the cemetery to burn, anyhow." She held her electric torch +to the inscription above the entrance. "Better write down the +name--Randolph. There's one of the tragedies of the sixties for you! An +Englishman the hero, by the way. Nina Randolph is a handful of dust in +there somewhere. Heigho! What's the difference, anyway? Even if she'd +been happy she'd be dead by this time--or too old to have a past." + +Gathbroke replaced the gates, for he feared prowling dogs, and they +walked down to the street and sat on the grass, leaning against the +wall of the cemetery, as dissociated as possible from the rows of +uneasy sleepers. + + + +II + + +They slept a little between blasts of dynamite, the snoring of men and +women and cries of children; finally at Gora's suggestion climbed to +the steep bare summit of Calvary to observe the progress of the fire. + +The unlighted portion of the city beneath them looked like a dead +planet. Beyond was a tossing sea of flame whose far-reaching violent +glare seemed to project it illimitably. + +"Nothing can stop it!" gasped Gora; and that terrific red mass of +energy and momentum did look as if its only curb would be the Pacific +Ocean. + +They talked until morning. He was very frank about himself, finding no +doubt a profound comfort in human companionship after those long hours +of ghastly communion down in that flaming jungle. + +He was a younger son and in the army, not badly off, as his mother made +him a goodish allowance. She had come of a large manufacturing family +in the North and had brought a fortune to the empty treasury of the +young peer she had--happily for both--fallen in love with. + +He had wanted to go into business--politics later perhaps--after he +left Eton, feeling that he had inherited some of the energy of his +maternal grandfather, but his mother had insisted upon the army and as +he really didn't care so very much, he had succumbed. + +"But I'm not sure I shan't regret it. It isn't as if there were any +prospect of a real war. I'd like a fighting career well enough, but not +picayune affairs out in India or Africa. I can't help thinking I have a +talent for business. Sounds beastly conceited," he added hastily. It +was evident that he was a modest youth. "But after all one of us should +inherit something of the sort. Perhaps, later, who knows? At least I +can thank heaven that I wasn't born in my brother's place. He likes +politics, and his fate is the House of Lords. A man might as well go +and embalm himself at once. Do you know Gwynne? Elton Gwynne? John +Gwynne he calls himself out here." + +"I've heard of him. He's been written up a good deal. I don't know any +one of that sort." + +"Really? Well, don't you see? he inherited a peerage; grandfather died +and his cousin shot himself to cover up a scandal. Gwynne was in the +full tide of his career in the House of Commons and simply couldn't +stand for it. He cut the whole business and came out here where he and +his mother had a large estate--Lady Victoria's mother or grandmother +was a Spanish-Californian. Of course he chucked the title. He's a sort +of cousin of mine and I looked him up, and dined with him the other +night. He was born in the United States, by a fluke as it were, and has +made up his mind to be an American for the rest of his life and carve +out a political career in this country. I'd have done the same thing, +by Jove! First-class solution ... although it's a pretty hard wrench to +give up your own country. But when a man is too active to +stagnate--there you are.... I wish I had known where to find him +to-day, but he lives on his ranch and I've only seen him once since. +Lady Victoria took me to a ball night before last--Good God! Was it +only that? ... and we were to have met again for lunch to-day." + +"It is very easy and picturesque to renounce when you possess just +about everything in life! If I attempted to renounce any of my +privileges, for instance. I should simply move down and out." + + + +III + + +He turned his head and regarded her squarely for the first time. +Heretofore she had been simply a friend in need, a jolly good sport, +incidentally a female. If she had been beautiful he should have noted +that fact at once, for he could not imagine the circumstances in which +beauty would not exert an immediate and powerful influence, however +transitory. + +Miss Dwight was not beautiful, but he concluded during that frank stare +that her face was interesting; disturbingly so, although he was unable +at the moment to find the reason. It was possible that in favorable +conditions she would be handsome. + +She had a mass of dark brown hair that seemed to sink heavily over her +low forehead until it almost met the heavy black eyebrows. She had +removed her hat and the thick loose coils made her look topheavy; for +the face, if wide across the high cheek-bones and sharply accentuated +with a salient jaw, was not large. The eyes were a light cold gray, +oval and far apart. Her nose was short and strong and had the same +cohibitive expression as the straight sharply-cut mouth--when not +ironic or smiling. Her teeth were beautiful. + +She had put on her best tailored suit and he saw that her "figger" was +good although too short and full for his taste. He liked the long and +stately slenderness that his own centuries had bred. But her hands and +well-shod feet were narrow if not small, and he decided that she just +escaped possessing what modern slang so aptly expressed as "class," +Possibly it was the defiance in her square chin, the almost angry poise +of her head, that betrayed her as an unwilling outsider. + +"Bad luck!" he asked sympathetically. + +She gave him a brief outline of her family history, overemphasizing as +Americans will--those that lay any claim to descent--the previous +importance of the Dwights and the Mortimers in Utica, N.Y. +Incidentally, she gave him a flashlight picture of the social +conditions in San Francisco. + +He was intensely interested. "Really! I should have said there would be +the complete democracy in California if anywhere. Of course no +Englishman of my generation expects to find San Franciscans in cowboy +costume; but I must say I was astonished at the luxury and fashion not +only at those Southern California hotels, where, to be sure, most of +the guests are from your older Eastern states, but at that ball Lady +Victoria took me to. It was magnificent in all its details, originality +combined with the most perfect taste. Of course there were not as many +jewels as one would see at a great London function, but the toilettes +could not have been surpassed. And as for the women--stunning! Such +beauty and style and breeding. I confess I didn't expect quite all +that. Miss Bascom, Miss Thorndyke, and an exquisite young thing, Miss +Groome--" + +"Oh, those are the haute noblesse." Gora's tipper lip curled +satirically. "No doubt they lay claim that their roots mingle with your +own." + +"Well, we'd be proud of 'em." + +"That was the Hofer ball, wasn't it! Do you mean to say that Alexina +Groome was there? Mrs. Groome, who is the most imposing relic of the +immortal eighties, is supposed to know no one of twentieth-century +vintage." + +"I am sure of it. I danced with her twice and would have jolly well +liked to monopolize her, but she was too plainly bowled over by a +fellow--your name, by Jove--Dwight. Good-looking chap, clean-cut, fine +shoulders, danced like a god--if gods do dance. I'm an awful duffer at +it, by the way." + +"Mortimer? Is it possible? And he--was he bowled over?" + +"Ra--ther! A case, I should say." + +"How unfortunate. Of course he hasn't the ghost of a chance. Mrs. +Groome won't have a young man inside her doors whose family doesn't +belong root and branch to her old set. Fine prospect for a poor clerk!" + +"Jove! I've a mind to stay and try my luck. Oh!" He dropped his face in +his hands. "I'm forgetting!" + +"Well, forget again." Gora's voice expressed more sympathy than she +felt. She deeply resented his immediate acceptance of her social +alienage, even relegating her personal appearance to another class than +that of the delicate flora he had seen blooming for the night against +the most artful background of the season. + +However ... he was the first man she had ever met in her limited +experience who seemed to combine the three magnetisms.... Who could +tell.... + +"I should be delighted if you would cut my brother out before it goes +any further," she said untruthfully. "It will save him a heartache.... +Where could you meet her now? Society is disrupted here. But of course +Mr. Gwynne visits down the peninsula. He could take you to any one of +those exclusive abodes where you would be likely to meet the little +Alexina. She is only eighteen, by the way." + +"That is rather young," he said dubiously. "I don't fancy her +conversation would be very interesting, and, after all, that is what it +comes down to, isn't it? I've been disappointed so often." He sighed +and looked quite thirty-five. "Still, she has personality. Five or six +years hence she may be a wonder.... I don't think I'd care about +educating and developing a girl--I like a pal right away.... What an +ass I am, rotting like this. Tour brother has as much chance as I have. +Younger sons with no prospect of succession are of exactly no account +with the American mamma. I've met a few of them." + +"Oh, I fancy birth would be enough for Mrs. Groome. She's quite dotty +on the subject, and the people out here are simpler than Easterners, +anyhow. Simpler and more ingenuous." + +"How is it you know so much about it, all, if you are not, as you +say--pardon me--a part of it?" + +"I wonder!" She gave a short hard little laugh. "I don't know that I +could explain, except that it all has seemed to me from birth a part of +my blood and bones and gristle. An accident, a lucky strike on my +father's part when he first came out here, and they would know me as +well to-day as I know them. And then ... of course ... it is a small +community. We live on the doorsteps of the rich and important, as it +were. It would be hard for us not to know. It just comes to us. We are +magnets. I suppose all this seems to you--born on the inside--quite +ignominious." + +"Well, my mother would have remained on the outside--that is to say a +quiet little provincial--if her father hadn't happened to make a +fortune with his iron works. I can understand well enough, but, if you +don't mind my saying so, I think it rather a pity." + +"Pity?" + +"I mean thinking so much about it, don't you know? I fancy it's the +result of living in a small city where there are only a few hundred +people between you and the top instead of a few hundred thousand. I +express, myself so badly, but what I mean is--as I make it out--it is, +with you, a case of so near and yet so far. In a great city like London +now (great in generations--centuries--as well as in numbers) you'd just +accept the bare fact and go about your business. Not a ghost of a show, +don't you see? Here you've just missed it, and, the middle class always +flowing into the upper class, you feel that you should get your chance +any minute. Ought to have had it long ago.... I can't imagine, for +instance, that if my mother had married the son of my grandfather's +partner that I should have wasted much time wondering why I wasn't +asked to the Elizabethan Hail on the hill. Of course I don't mean there +isn't envy enough in the old countries, but it's more passive ... +without hope...." + +He felt awkward and officious but he was sorry for her and would have +liked to discharge his debt by helping her toward a new point of view, +if possible. + +She replied: "That's easy to say, and besides you are a man. My +brother, who is only a clerk in a wholesale house, has been taken up +and goes everywhere. They don't know that I even exist." + +"Well, that's their loss," he said gallantly. "Can't you make 'em sit +tip, some way? Women make fortunes sometimes, these days, And they're +in about everything except the Army and Navy. Business? Or haven't you +a talent of some sort? You have--pardon me again, but we have been +uncommonly personal to-night--a strong and individual face ... and +personality; no doubt of that." + +Gora would far rather he had told her she was pretty and irresistible, +but she thrilled to his praise, nevertheless. It was the first +compliment she had ever received from any man but the commonplace and +unimportant friends her brother had brought home occasionally before he +had been introduced to society; he took good care to bring home none of +his new friends. + +Her heart leapt toward this exalted young Englishman, who might have +stepped direct from one of the novels of his land and class ... even +the stern and anxious moderns who had made England's middle-class the +fashion, occasionally drew a well-bred and attractive man from life.... +She turned to him with a smile that banished the somber ironic +expression of her face, illuminating it as if the drooping spirit +within had suddenly lit a torch and held it behind those strange pale +eyes. + +"I'll tell you what I've never told any one--but my teacher; I've taken +lessons with him for a year. He is an instructor in the technique of +the short story, and has turned out quite a few successful magazine +writers. He believes that I have talent. I have been studying over at +the University to the same end--English, biology, psychology, +sociology. I'm determined not to start as a raw amateur. Oh! Perhaps I +have made a mistake in telling you. You may be one of those men that +are repelled by intellectual women!" + +"Not a bit of it. Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't +like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that +are so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder +sister--she's thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, +although she doesn't pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any +but clever and exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents +hate it--she lives alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. +My grandfather Doubleton liked her a lot and left her two thousand a +year. I wish you knew her. She is charming and feminine, as much so as +any of those I met at the ball; and so are many of the women that go to +her flat--" + +"Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way +of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under +her fingernail. + +Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes. + +"Well ... not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the +fighter ... but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he +added hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns +were lowering at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit." + +Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have +said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I +had worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair +marcelled like every other woman present--except those embalmed relics +of the seventies, who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a +great ball is given, and appear in a built-up red-brown wig.... And a +string of pearls round my throat? My neck and arms are quite good; +although I've never possessed an evening gown, I know I'd look quite +well in one ... my best." + +He laughed. "It does make a difference. I wish you had been there. I am +sure you are as good a dancer as you are a pal. But still ... I think I +should have recognized the fighter, even if you had been born in the +California equivalent for the purple. I fancy you would have found some +cause or other to get your teeth into once in a while. Tell me, don't +you rather like the idea of taking Life by the throat and forcing it to +deliver?" + +"I wonder? ... perhaps ... but that does not mitigate my resentment +that I am on the outside of everything when I belong on the in. I +should never have been forced to strive after what is mine by natural +right." + +"Well, don't let it make a socialist of you. That is such a cheap +revenge on society.... Confession of failure; and nothing in it." + + + +IV + + +He looked at his watch: "Eight o'clock. I'll be getting on to the +Presidio. Why don't you come with me?" + +Gora's feminine instincts arose from a less perverted source than her +social. She shook her head with a smile. + +"I don't want to go any farther from my house. I shall slip down my +first chance; and I have plenty to eat. Perhaps you will come to see me +before you go if my house is spared." + +"Rather. What is the number? And if the house goes I'll find you +somehow." + +He took her hand in both his and shook it warmly. "You are the best pal +in the world--" + +"Now don't make me a nice little speech. I'm only too glad. Go out to +the Presidio and get a hot breakfast and attend--to--to your affairs. I +am sure everything will be all right, although you may not be able to +get away as soon as you hope." + +"I don't like leaving you alone here--" + +"Alone?" She waved her hand at the hundreds of recumbent forms in the +cemeteries and on the lower slopes of Calvary. "I probably shall never +be so well protected again. Please go." + +He shook her hand once more, ran down the hill, turned and waved his +cap, and trudged off in the direction of the Presidio. + + + +V + + +She slept in her own house that night, for dynamiting by miners +summoned from Grass Valley by General Funston, and a change of wind, +had saved the western portion of the city. For the first time in her +life Gora experienced a sense of profound gratitude, almost of +happiness. She felt that only a little more would make her quite happy. +Her lodgers, even her absorbed brother, noticed that her manner, her +expression, had perceptibly softened. She herself noticed it most of +all. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +Gathbroke met Alexina Groome again a week later. + +On Saturday, when the fire was over, and she could retreat decently and +in good order, Mrs. Groome, to her young daughter's secret anguish, had +consented to rest her nerves for a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's +home in Alta. + +As Gora had predicted, Gathbroke found that it would have been hardly +more difficult to move his sister's body, now at an undertaker's in +Fillmore Street, out of the state in war-time than in the wake of a +city's disaster, which was scattering its population to every point of +the railroad compass. He had refused the space in the baggage car +offered to him by the company; it should: be a private car or nothing; +and for that, in spite of all the influence Gwynne and his powerful +friends could bring to bear, he must wait. + +Meanwhile Gwynne had asked him to stay with himself and his mother, +Lady Victoria Gwynne, at the house of his fiancée, Isabel Otis, on +Russian Hill; a massive cliff rising above one of the highest of the +city's northern hills, whose old houses, clinging to its steep sides +had escaped the fire that roared about its base. To-day it was a green +and lofty oasis in the midst of miles of smoking ruins. + +Gathbroke was as nervous as only a young Englishman within his +immemorial armor can be. Gwynne, who had gone through the same +nerve-racking crisis, although from different causes, understood what +he suffered and pressed him into service in the distribution of +government rations, and garments to the different refugee camps. But +Gathbroke had the active imagination of intelligent youth, and he never +forgot to blame himself for lingering in New York with some interesting +chaps he had met on the _Majestic_, and afterward in Southern +California, seduced by its soft climate and violent color. +Unquestionably, if he had stayed on his job, as these expressive +Americans put it, his sister would have been in New York, possibly on +the Atlantic Ocean when San Francisco shook herself to ruin. + +"But not necessarily alive," said Lady Victoria callously, removing her +cigar, her heavy eyes that looked like empty volcanos, staring down +over the smoldering waste. "People with heart disease don't invariably +wait for an earthquake to jolt them out of life. Assume that her time +had come and think of something else or you'll become a silly ass of a +neurotic." + +Gwynne, more sympathetic, continued to find him what distraction he +could, and one day drove him down the Peninsula with a message from the +Committee of Fifty to Tom Abbott; who had caught a heavy cold during +those three days when he had driven a car filled with dynamite and had +had scarcely an hour for rest. He was now at home in bed. + + + +II + + +The Abbott's place, Rincona, stood on a foothill behind the other +estates of Alta and surrounded by a park of two hundred acres set thick +with magnificent oaks. Gathbroke had never seen finer ones in England +or France. Gwynne before entering the avenue drove to an elevation +above the house and stopped the car for a moment. + +The great San Mateo valley looked like a close forest of ancient oaks +broken inartistically by the roofs of houses shorn of their chimneys. +Beyond, on the eastern side of a shallow southern arm of the Bay of San +Francisco, was the long range of the Contra Costa mountains, its waving +indented slopes incredibly graceful in outline and lovely in color. +Gwynne had pointed out their ever changing tints and shades as they +drove through the valley; at the moment they were heliotrope deepening +to purple in the hollows. + +Behind the foothills above Rincona rose the lofty mountains which in +Maria Abbott's youth had seemed to tower above the valley a solid wall +of redwoods; but long since plundered and defaced for the passing needs +of man. + +"Great country--what?" said Gwynne, starting the car. "You couldn't pry +me away from it--that is, unless I have the luck to represent it in +Washington half the year. You'll be coming back yourself some day." + +"I? Never. I hate the sight of its grinning blue sky after the red +horror of those three days. I haven't seen a cloud as big as my hand, +and in common decency it should howl and stream for months." + +"Well, forget it for a day. Perhaps you will be placed next the fair +Alexina at luncheon--" + +"Alexina...?" + +"Groome. You must have met her at the Hofer ball." + +"She--what--possible--" + +Gwynne looked at his stuttering and flushed young cousin and burst into +laughter. + +"As bad as that, was it? Well, she's not bespoken as far as I know. +Wade in and win. You have my blessing. She is almost as beautiful as +Isabel--" + +"She's quite as beautiful as Miss Otis." + +"Oh, very well. No doubt I'd think so myself if I hadn't happened to +meet Isabel first, and if I were not too old for her anyway." + +Gwynne could think of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a +flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a +living companion for his trying journey to England so much the better. + +Gathbroke's excitement subsided quickly. He was in no condition for +sustained enthusiasm. He felt as if quite ten years had passed since he +had half fallen in love with Alexina Groome in a ball room that was now +a charred heap in the sodden wreck of a city he barely could conjure in +memory. + +Besides, he had half fallen in love so often. And she was too young. He +had really been more drawn to that strange Miss Dwight; upon whom, +however, he had not yet called. + +He felt thankful that the girl _was_ too young for his critical taste. +He wanted nothing more at present in the way of emotions. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Rincona had been named in honor of Rincon Hill, where Tom Abbott's +grandmother had reigned in the sixties; a day, when in order to call on +her amiable rival, Mrs. Ballinger, her stout carriage horses were +obliged to plow through miles of sand hills, and to make innumerable +détours to avoid the steep masses of rock, over which in her grandson's +day cable car and trolley glided so lightly until that morning of April +eighteen, nineteen hundred and six. + +When her husband, in common with other distinguished citizens, bought +an estate in the San Mateo Valley, she named it Rincona, to the secret +wrath of other eminent ladies who had not thought of it in time. + +The house had as little pretensions to architectural beauty as others +of its era, but it was a large compact structure of some thirty rooms, +exclusive of the servants' quarters, and with as many outbuildings as a +Danish, farm. Long French windows opened upon a wide piazza, whose +pillars had disappeared long since under a luxuriant growth of rose +vines and wistaria. At its base was a bed of Parma violets, whose +fragrance a westerly breeze wafted to the end of the avenue a quarter +of a mile away. All about the house, breaking the smooth lawns, were +beds and trees of flowers, at this time of the year a glowing exotic +mass of color; but in the park that made up the greater part of the +estate exclusive of the farms, the grass under the superb oaks was +merely clipped, the weeds and undergrowth removed. The oaks had been +evenly shorn of their lower branches, which gave them a formal and +somewhat arrogant expression, as of cardinals and kings lifting their +skirts. + +Alexina hated the enormous rooms with their high frescoed ceilings and +heavy Victorian furniture; but Maria Abbott loved and revered the old +house, emblem that it was of a secure proud family that had defied that +detestable (and disturbing) old phrase: "Three generations from shirt +sleeves to shirt sleeves." The Abbotts, like the Ballingers and Groomes +and Gearys and many others of that ilk, had not come to California in +the fifties and sixties as adventurers, but with all that was needed to +give them immediate prestige in the new community; and, among those +that still retained their estates in the San Mateo Valley, at least, +there was as little prospect of their reversion to shirt sleeves as of +their conversion to the red shirt of socialism. Their wealth might be +moderate but it was solid and steadfast. + + + +II + + +The entertaining of the Abbotts, Yorbas, Hathaways, Montgomerys, +Brannans, Trennahans, and others of what Alexina irreverently called +the A.A., had always been ostentatiously simple, albeit a butler and a +staff of maids had contributed to their excessive comfort. In the +eighties, evening toilettes during the summer were considered immoral; +but by degrees, as time tooled in its irresistible modernities, they +gradually fell into the habit of wearing out their winter party gowns +at the evening diversions of the country season. Burlingame, that +borough of concentrated opulence founded in the early nineties as a +fashionable colony, began its career with a certain amount of +simplicity; but its millions increased to tens of millions; and what in +heaven's name, as Mrs. Clement Hunter, a leader and an individual, once +remarked, is the use of having money if you don't dress and entertain +as you would dream of dressing and entertaining if you didn't have a +cent? + +Mrs. Hunter, who had formed an incongruous and somewhat hostile +alliance with Mrs. Abbott, knew that her valuable friend, like others +of that "small and early" band, resented the fact that their standards +no longer counted outside of their own set. Mrs. Abbott had turned a +haughty shoulder to Mrs. Hunter for a time, for she remembered her as, +in their school days, the socially obscure Lidie McKann; now, however, +her husband turning all he touched to gold, she had, incredibly, become +one of the most important women in San Francisco and Burlingame. + +When Maria Abbott finally succumbed she assured herself that curiosity +to see the more ambushed glitter of that meretricious faubourg had +nothing to do with it; it was easy to persuade herself that she hoped, +being an indisputably smart woman herself, gradually to impose her +simpler and more appropriate standards upon these people who sorely +threatened the continued dominance of the old régime. + +Mrs. Hunter soon disabused her of any such notion, and during the early +days of their acquaintance, after Mrs. Abbott came to one of her +luncheons attired in a pique skirt and severe shirtwaist, impeccably +cut and worn, but entirely out of place in an Italian palace, where +forty fashionable women, some of whom had motored sixty miles to attend +the function, were dressed as they would be at a Newport luncheon, Mrs. +Hunter attended the next solemn affair at Rincona so overdressed and +made up that the outraged Altarinos (as Alexina irreverently called +them) were reduced to a horrified silence that was almost hysterical. + +But one morning Mrs. Abbott caught Mrs. Hunter digging in her private +vegetable garden behind the palace, and wearing a garment that her +second gardener's wife would have scorned, her unblemished face beaming +under a battered straw hat. Both women had the humor to laugh, and +their intimacy dated from that moment, Mrs. Hunter confessing that +stuff on her face made her sick; but adding that she adored dress and +thought that any rich woman was a fool who didn't. + +After that there was a compromise on both sides. Mrs. Hunter lunched or +dined at Rincona in her simplest frocks and Mrs. Abbott wore her best +when honoring Mrs. Hunter and others at Burlingame. She even went so +far as to have some extremely smart silk voiles (the fashionable +material of the moment) and linens made, and when asked to a wedding, a +garden party, or a great function given to some visitor of distinction, +complimented the occasion to the limit of her resources. + + + +III + + +Mrs. Hunter, in white duck, a sailor hat perched above her angular +somewhat masculine face, was sitting on the Abbott verandah as the two +Englishmen drove up. She waved her cigarette and cried gayly in her +hearty resonant voice: + +"Two men! What luck! And in time for lunch. I've hardly seen a man +since the first day of the fire. Leave your car anywhere and come in +out of the sun. I'll call Maria, and, incidentally, mention whiskey and +soda." + +"The whiskey and soda is all right," said Gwynne mopping his brow; +Nature, having wreaked her worst on California, seemed determined to +atone by unseasonably brilliant weather, and the day under the blazing +blue vault was very hot. + +Mrs. Abbott appeared in a few moments, smiling, cool, in immaculate +white, the collar of her shirtwaist high and unwilted. Her +weather-beaten face looked years older than Mrs. Hunter's, who, +although plain by comparison with the once beautiful Maria Groome, had +treated her clean healthy skin with marked respect. + +But as the butler had preceded her with whiskey and soda and ice, Mrs. +Abbott might already have achieved the mahogany tints of her mother and +she would have been regarded as enthusiastically by two hot and dusty +men. + +"Of course you will stay to luncheon," she said as naturally as she had +said it these many years, and as two hospitable generations had said it +on that verandah before her. She turned to young Gathbroke with a +smile, for Mrs. Hunter, who was in her confidence, had detained her for +a moment with a few sharp incisive words. "I have a very bored little +sister, who will be glad to sit next to a young man once more." + +And although Gathbroke almost frowned at this fresh reminder of the +callow years of the girl whose sheer loveliness had haunted his +imagination, he went off with a not disagreeable titillation of the +nerves, at Mrs. Abbott's suggestion, to find her in the park and bring +her back to luncheon in half an hour. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +He was light of step and made no sound on the heavy turf; he saw her +several minutes before she was aware of his presence and stood staring +at her, feeling much as he had done during the progress of the +earthquake. + +She was standing under one of the great oaks whose lower limbs had been +trimmed so evenly some seven feet above the ground that they made a +compact symmetrical roof above the dark head of the girl, who, being +alone, had abandoned the limp curve of fashion and was standing very +erect, drawn up to her full five feet seven. Alexina had no intention +of being afflicted with rounded shoulders when the present mode had +passed. + +But her face expressed no guile as she stood there in her simple white +frock with a bunch of periwinkles in her belt, her delicate profile +turned to Gathbroke as she gazed at the irregular majesty of the Coast +Range, dark blue under a pale blue haze. He had retained the impression +of starry eyes and vivid coloring and eager happy youth, a body of +perfect slenderness and grace, whose magnetism was not that of youth +alone but personal and individual. + +Now he saw that although her fine little profile was not too regular, +and as individual as her magnetism, the shape of her head was classic. +It was probable that she was not unaware of the fact, for its perfect +lines and curves were fully revealed by the severe flatness of the +dusky thickly planted hair, which was brushed back to the nape of her +neck and then drawn up a few inches and flared outward. The little head +was held high on the long white stem of the throat; and the pose, with +the dropping eyelids, gave her, in that deep shade, the illusion of +maturity. Gathbroke realized that he saw her for the moment as she +would look ten years hence. Even the full curved red lips were closed +firmly and once the nostrils quivered slightly. + +The narrow black eyebrows following the subtle curve of her eyelids, +the low full brow with its waving line of soft black hair, seemed to +brood over the lower part of the face with its still indeterminate +curves, over the wholly immature figure of a very young girl. + +Gathbroke surrendered then and there. This radiation of mystery, of +complexity, this secret subtle visit of maturity to youth, the hovering +spirit of the future woman, was unique in his experience and went +straight to his head. He forgot his sister, dismissed the thought of +Dwight with a gesture of contempt. He might be modest and rather +diffident in manner, owing to racial shyness, but he had a fine +sustaining substructure of sheer masculine arrogance. + + + +II + + +As he walked forward swiftly Alexina turned; and immediately was the +young thing of eighteen and of the early twentieth century. Her spine +drooped into an indolent curve, her soft red lips fell apart, her +black-gray eyes opened wide as she held out her hand to the young +Englishman. + +"How nice! I never really expected to see you again. I understood Lady +Victoria to say you were merely passing through." + +Alexina had not cast him a thought since the night of the ball but she +was hospitable and feminine. + +"I was detained." + +She noted with intense curiosity that his bright color paled and his +sparkling hazel eyes darkened with a sudden look of horror; but the +spasm of memory passed quickly, and once more he was staring at her +with frank capitulation. + +Alexina's head went up a trifle. She was still new to conquest, and +although she had met more than one pair of admiring eyes in the course +of the past season, and received as many compliments as the vainest +girl could wish, few men had had the courage to storm the stern +fortress on Ballinger Hill, or to sit more than once in a drawing-room +so darkly reminiscent of funeral ceremonies that a fellow's nerves +began to jump all over him. + +Nor had her fancy been even lightly captured until Mortimer Dwight, +that perfect hero of maiden dreams, had swept her off her dancing feet +on the most memorable night of her life. + +She had quite made up her mind to marry him. The indignant silent +hostility of the family (even Mrs. Ballinger, her moment of weakness +passed, having been swung to the horrified Maria's point of view) had +been all that was necessary to convince the young Alexina that fate had +sent her the complete romance. She hoped the opposition would drive her +to an elopement; little dreaming of the horror with which Mr. Dwight +would greet the heterodox alternative. + +Mrs. Abbott had had a valid excuse for not asking him down: provisions +were scarce, and, so Tom said, he was doing useful work in town. But +Olive Bascom, whose country home was in San Mateo, had invited him for +the next week end, and he had accepted. Alexina was to be one of the +small house party, and there were many romantic walks behind San Mateo. +A moon was also due. + + + +III + + +Still Gathbroke might have entered the race with an even chance, for +maidens of eighteen are merely the blind tools of Nature, had not the +family made the mistake of displaying too warm an approval of the +eligible young Englishman. Mrs. Groome, Mrs. Abbott, Aunt Clara, +reënforced even by the more worldly Mrs. Hunter, who, however, had no +children of her own, treated him throughout the luncheon with an almost +intimate cordiality and a lively personal interest; whereas, if Mrs. +Abbott had been driven to keep her word and invite Mortimer Dwight to +her historic board she would have depressed him with the cool pleasant +detachment she reserved for those whom she knew slightly and cared for +not at all; Mrs. Groome, automatically gracious, would have retired +within the formidable fortress of an exterior built in the still more +exclusive eighties; Aunt Clara would have sat petrified with horror at +the desecration; and Mrs. Hunter, free from the obligations of +hospitality, would have been brusque, frankly supercilious, made him as +uncomfortable as possible. + +All this Alexina angrily resented, not knowing that their amiability +was in part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of +his cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him +as a possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them +all, even Mrs. Hunter, acute anxiety. + +Young Gathbroke was handsomer than Dwight. He was younger, and his +circumstances were far more romantic, if romance Alexina must have. It +was plain that he was fascinated by the dear silly child, who, in her +turn, would no doubt promptly forget the ineligible Dwight if the +Englishman proved to be serious and paid her persistent court. + +Nevertheless Gathbroke, before the luncheon was half over, felt that he +was making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on +one of those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive +mind, that these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all +its harrowing details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his +own consciousness with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits +and extinguishing a natural gayety and light chaff that had come back +for a moment. + +Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and +knew that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the +girl, who, he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, +was making a desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man. + +Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous +orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris +and revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to +add a British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's +possible torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather +despised him for his surrender before battle, or at all events for +hauling down his flag publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine +satisfaction to the calm smiling dominance, combined with utter +devotion, of the man who had won her as easily as she had conquered +Richard Gathbroke. That the young Englishman's nature was hot and +tempestuous, with depths that even he had not sounded, and her ideal +knight's more effective mien but the expression of a possibly meager +and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart was a well-trained +organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that young +Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower +girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was +far too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge +would have affected her had she possessed it. She was in the obstinate +phase of first youth, common enough in girls of her sheltered class, +where the opportunities to study men and their behavior are few. Having +persuaded herself that she was far more romantic than she really was, +and that there would be no possible happiness or indeed interest in +life after youth, she had conceived as her ideal mate the dominant +male, the complete master, and easily persuaded herself that she had +found him in Mortimer Dwight.... If she married Gathbroke he would be +her slave (so little did she know him.). Dwight would be her master. +(So little did she know him, or herself.) + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +After luncheon, grinning amiably when Mrs. Abbott hinted that +Englishmen liked to be out of doors, she led Gathbroke to the confines +of the park, where they sat down under one of the oaks that reminded +him of England; for which he was in truth desperately homesick, and +never more so than at this moment. + +Everything combined to make him realize uneasily his youth. In England +a man of twenty-three was a man-of-the-world if he had had the proper +opportunities; but this girl who had infatuated him, and even the far +more sympathetic Miss Dwight, made him feel that he was a mere boy; and +so had this entire family, however unwittingly. + + + +II + + +He spoke of Miss Dwight suddenly, for Alexina, who had been duly +enlightened while the men were smoking with Tom, had tactfully conveyed +her sympathy, her eyes almost round with fascinated horror and +curiosity. + +He set his teeth and gave a rapid but graphic account of the whole +dreadful episode, willing to interest her at any price; and Alexina, +sitting opposite on the ground, her long spine curved, her long arms +embracing her knees, listened with a breathless interest, spurring him +to potent words, even to stressing of detail. + +"My goodness gracious me!" she ejaculated when he paused. "I should +have gone raving mad. You are a perfect wonder. I never heard of +anything so gor--perfectly thrilling. And that girl, what did you say +her name was?" + +Gathbroke, who had purposely withheld it, said explosively: + +"Dwight." + +"Dwight?" + +"I think she is a sister of a friend of yours." And he was made as +miserable as he could wish by a crimson tide that swept straight from +her heart pump up to her widow's peak. + +"Dwight? Sister? I didn't know he had one. I saw him several times +during the fire and he didn't mention her." + +"I suspect he was too absorbed." Gathbroke muttered the words, but +man's instinct of loyalty to his own sex is strong. "A city doesn't +burn every day, you know." + +"Still ... what is she like? Like him?" + +"I do not remember him at all ... She? Oh, she has a tremendous amount +of dark hair that looks as if falling off the top of her head and down +her face. Uncommonly heavy eyebrows, and very light gray--Ah, I have +it! I have been groping for the word ever since--sinister eyes.... That +is the effect in that dark face. She has a curious character, I should +think. Not very frank. She--well, she rather struck me as having been +born for drama; tragic drama, I am afraid." + +"Not a bit like her brother. How old is she?" + +"Twenty-two, she told me." + +"What--what does she do? They are not a bit well off." + +He hesitated a moment. "Well--as I recall it, she is studying something +or other at the University of California." + +"And of course she boards down there with her brother, who takes care +of her while she is studying to be a teacher or something." Alexina +having arranged it to her satisfaction dismissed the subject. She had +no mind to betray herself to this good-looking young Englishman who had +been sent to her providentially on a very dull day. He would, no doubt, +have been frantically interesting if he had not been so idiotic as to +fall head over ears the first shot. + +Still ... Alexina examined him covertly as he transferred his gaze for +a moment to the mountains across the distant bay, swimming now in a +pale blue mist with a wide banner of pale pink above them.... If she +had met him first, or had never met the other at all ... who knew? + + + +III + + +Alexina, for all her passion for romance, had a remarkably level head. +She was quite aware that there had been a certain amount of +deliberation in her own headlong plunge, convinced as she was that high +romance belonged to youth alone, and fearful lest it pass her by; aware +also that a part of Dwight's halo, aside from his looks and manners and +chivalrous charm, consisted in his being a martyr to an unjust fate, +and, as such, under the ban of her august family. It was all quite too +perfect.... But if Gathbroke had come first his qualifications might +have proved quite as puissant, and no doubt Tom Abbott, who retained +his school-history hatred of the entire English race, would have +provided the opposition and perhaps influenced the family. + +She swept her intoxicating lashes along the faint bloom high on her +olive cheeks and then raised her eyes suddenly to the tormented ones +opposite. She also smiled softly, alluringly, as little fascinating +wretches will who know nothing of the passions of men. + +"I think you should follow Mr. Gwynne's example and stay here with us." +He thought of silver chimes and contrasted her voice with Gora Dwight's +angry contralto: he always thought of Gora in phrases. "So many +Englishmen live out here and adore it." + +"I'm perfectly satisfied with my own country, thank you." + +Alexina, who was feeling intensely American at the moment, curled her +lip. "Oh, of course. We have had plenty of those, too. Scarcely any of +them becomes naturalized. Just use and enjoy the country and give as +little in return as possible." + +"Really? I fancy they must give rather a lot in return or they would +hardly be tolerated. No native has worked harder than Elton these last +days. I understand most of them are in business or ranching and have +married California girls." + +"Oh, they have redeeming points." And then having satisfied her +curiosity as to how hazel eyes looked when angry she gave him a +dazzling smile. "We love them like brothers, and that is a proof that +we are not snobbish, for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's +class--just middle-class business people at home." + +"Well, you are a business nation, so why not? I have met hardly any but +business men out here and I feel quite at home with them. My mother's +family are in trade and I enjoy myself immensely when I visit them." + +"Oh!" His halo slipped.... Still, what did it matter? "I suppose you +told me that to let me know you didn't need to come out here in search +of an heiress. But many of our most charming girls are not. Just now it +seems to me that more young men in California have money than girls ... +but they are so uninteresting." + +She looked pathetic, her mouth drooped; then she smiled at him +confidingly. + +He knew quite as well as if he had not been hard hit that she was +flirting with him, but as long as she gave him his chance to win her +she might do her transparent little best to make a fool of him. + +"Have you ever been in love?" asked Alexina softly. + +"Oh, about half-way several times, but always drew back in time ... +knew it wasn't the real thing ... Youth fools itself, you know, for the +sake of the sensation--or the race. Have you?" + +"Oh--" Alexina lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time +her color did not flow. "How is one to tell ... a girl in her first +season ... when all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with +them, when you have been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a +glimpse of life even in vacation. My New York relatives are terribly +old-fashioned. It's great fun to give one man all the dances and watch +the dado of dowagers look disapproving." And once more she gave him the +quick smile of understanding that springs so spontaneously between +youth and youth. + +"Well ... you might have given all those dances to me the other night, +instead of to that fellow Dwight." + +"Oh, but you see, I had already promised them to him. Lady Victoria +always comes so late." + +"That's true enough." His spirits rose a trifle. + +"When do you go--back to England, I mean? Not for a good long time, I +hope. We have awfully good times down here. Janet Maynard and Olive +Bascom live at San Mateo in the summer, and Aileen Lawton at +Burlingame. They are my chums and we'd give you a ripping time. We'd +like to have you take away the pleasantest possible memory of +California instead of such a terrible one. I don't mean anything very +gay of course. You mustn't think I'm heartless." And she showed the +lower pearl of her eyes and looked like a madonna. + +"I'm afraid I must go soon. I've had an extension of leave already, and +Hofer told me just before we left to-day that he thought he could let +me have his private car inside of a week. They've been using it." + + + +IV + + +There was not a dwelling in sight. The quiet of that old park with its +brooding oaks was primeval. Behind her was the pink and blue glory of +sky and mountain. Her eyes were like stars. + +He burst out boyishly: "If I only had more time! If only I could have +met you even when I first came to San Francisco ... before ... before +... I'd--I'd like to marry you. It's fearfully soon to say such a +thing. I feel like a fool. But I'm not the first man to fall madly in +love at first sight ... and you ... you ... If I tell you now instead +of waiting it's because there's so little time. Would you ... do you +think you could marry me?" + +"Oh! Ah!" (She almost said Ow.) After all it was her first proposal. +She was thrilled in spite of the fact that she was in love with another +man, for she felt close to something elemental, hazily understood ... +something in her own unsounded depths rushed to meet it. + +But he was too young, and too "easy," and she didn't like his gray +flannel shirt; which, laundry being out of the question, he had bought +in Fillmore Street almost opposite the undertaker's. + +"Suppose we correspond for a year? That is, if you must really go so +soon." + +"I must. I want you to go with me." + +His eyes had turned almost black and he had set his jaw in a way she +didn't like at all. In nerving himself to go through the ordeal he had +worked up his fermenting mind into a positively brutal mood. + +"Oh--mercy! I couldn't do that. My people are the most conventional in +the world." + +The situation was getting beyond her. She had not intended to make him +propose for at least a week and then he would have been abject and she +majestic. She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that +made her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at +bay as it were, looked at him with a little frown. + +He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less. + +"Are you refusing me outright?" he demanded. "That would be only fair, +you know, if I have no chance." + +"Well.... I think so. That is--" + +"Do you love another man?" + +Coquetry flashed back. Nevertheless, she told the exact truth little as +she suspected it. + +"I love myself, and youth, and life, and liberty. What is a man in +comparison with all that?" + +"This." And before she could make another leap he had her in his arms; +and under the fire of his lips and eyes she lay inert, intoxicated, her +first flash of young passion completely responsive to his. + +But only for a moment. + +She wrenched herself away, her face livid, her eyes black with fury. +She beat his chest with her fists. + +"You! You! How I hate you! To think I should have given that to you ... +to think that another man should have been the first to kiss me ... I'm +in love with another man, I tell you. Why don't you go? I hate myself +and I never want to lay eyes on you again. Go! Go! Go!" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +During the retreat from Mons and again in those black days of March, +nineteen-eighteen, Gathbroke's tormented mind snapped from the present +and flashed on its screen so startling a resurrection of himself during +those last dreadful days in San Francisco that for the moment he was +unconscious of the world crashing about him. + +He saw himself in long days and nights of anguish and despair, of +embittered love and baffled passion: youth enjoying one of its divine +prerogatives and the fullness thereof! + +Pacing the floor of his room on Russian Hill, tramping over the +mountains across the Bay, doggedly awaiting that sole alleviation of +mental suffering in its early stages, a change of scene. + +Finally the Hofer car was placed at his disposal and he started on his +four days' journey to New York; and this brief chapter, that his +friends thought so gruesome, was the least of his afflictions. The +memory of his twenty-four hours or more of close physical association +with his sister's corpse made any subsequent adventure with the dead +seem tame. And at least he was leaving behind him a State which seemed +to have magnetized him across six thousand miles to experience the +horror and misery she had in pickle for him. He reveled in the audible +rush of the train that was carrying him farther every moment from the +girl who had cut down into the core of his heart and left her indelible +image on a remarkably good memory. + + + +II + + +He had asked himself one day--it was his last in California and he had +taken his courage in his teeth and was on his way to call on Gora +Dwight at last, picking his steps through, the still smoking ruins down +to Van Ness Avenue--whether it would be possible for any man to suffer +twice in a lifetime as he had suffered since that hideous moment at +Rincona, coming as it did on top of an uncommon and terrible experience +that had racked his nerves and soul as it might not have done had he +been seasoned by war or even a few years older. At all events it had +left him with no reserves even in his pride to fight his failure and +his loss. + +In that shrieking hell of August twenty-sixth, or again when lying +abandoned and gassed in a way-side hut during that ominous retreat of +the Fifth Army, when he had a sudden close vision of himself, trousers +tucked into a pair of Gwynne's hunting boots, swearing now and again as +he stepped on a hot brick; and heard his groping ego whisper the +question through his prostrate mind, he was tempted to answer aloud, to +shout "No" above the shrieking of shells and the groans of men fallen +about him. + +He might no longer love Alexina Groome after twelve or even eight years +of complete severance; and, indeed, save in flashing moments like these +he had seldom thought of her after the first two or three years; but at +least she had taken the edge from his power to suffer. + +He had lost his mother soon after his return with the body of her +youngest child, his father had died three years later, and he had +accepted these griefs with the composure of maturity. Although he had +had some agreeable adventures (not that he had had much time for either +women or society) he had taken devilish good care not to get in too +deep--even if he still possessed the power to love at all, which he +doubted. + +He remembered also, what he had almost forgotten, that during that walk +it had come to him with the sharpness of surprise that the image of the +girl who clung to his mind with the tentacles of a devil-fish, was as +he had seen her standing under the oak tree while unaware of his +presence: older, a more dignified and thoughtful figure, a woman old +enough to be his mate in something more than youthful passion, the +ideal woman of vague sweet dreams; not as the thoughtless little +coquette who had tempted him to ruin his chances by acting like a cave +brute. + +Given a fortnight longer, during which he remained master of himself +instead of a young fool with a smashed temperament, and the unfledged +woman in her, whose subtle projection he had witnessed during that +moment of his capitulation, would have recognized him as her mate; as +for the moment she had in his arms. + +Not the least of his ordeals during those last days was the inevitable +call on Gora Dwight. He felt like a cad, after what she had been to him +at the end of an appalling experience, to have let, nearly three weeks +go by with no apparent recognition of her existence. But he had been +unable to find a messenger, there was no post; and then, after his +ill-starred visit to Rincona, he had forgotten her until his final +visit to the undertaker; when she had seemed to stand, an indignant and +reproachful figure, at the head of the casket. + + + +III + + +He had a note in his pocket and hoped she would be out. But she opened +the door herself, and her dark face, thinner than he recalled it, +flushed and then turned pale. But she said calmly as she extended her +hand: "Come in. I wondered what had become of you." "I'm sorry. +But--perhaps--you can understand--it was not easy for me to come here!" + +"Of course. Come up to my diggings." + +He followed her up to the attic studio, where as before he took the +easy chair and accepted one of her cigarettes; which he professed to be +grateful for as his were exhausted and every decent brand in town had +gone up in smoke. + +Gora was deeply disappointed that she had received no warning of his +call, for she possessed an extremely becoming and richly embroidered +silk Chinese costume, as red as the flames that had devoured Chinatown +a few days after she had bought it at a bankrupt sale. She had put it +on every afternoon for a week, hoping and expecting that he would call; +and now that she had on her second-best tailored suit, and a darned if +immaculate shirtwaist, he had chosen to turn, up! ... But at least the +lapels of the jacket had recently been faced with red, and it curved +closely over her beautiful bust. Moreover, she had just finished +rearranging the masses of her rich brown hair when the bell rang. + +And she had him for a time, perhaps for an hour! She set out the tea +things as an intimation of the refreshment he would get at the proper +time.... + +She too had suffered during this past interminable fortnight, but Gora +was far more mature than the young Englishman, upon whom life until the +last few weeks had smiled so persistently. She was too complex, she had +suffered in too many ways, from too many causes, not all of them +elevating, to be capable upon so short a notice, even after a night of +unique companionship, of such whole-souled agony and despair. In her +imagination, her sense of drama, her vanity, in the fading of vague +dazzling hopes of a future to which he held the key, and perhaps a +little in her stormy heart, she had felt a degree of harsh +disappointment, but she had already half-recovered; and as she sat +looking at his ravaged face she wondered that the death of a sister, no +matter how harrowing the conditions, could make such a wreck of any man. + +He told her of his difficulties in finding some one to remove the body +from the vault to the undertaker's, of the delay in obtaining a private +car, gave her some idea of his disorganized life since they had parted, +but made no mention of Alexina Groome or Rincona. Then he politely +asked her if she had any new plans for the future. Nobody seemed to +look forward to the same old life. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders with a movement expressive of irritation. +"My brother, who is engaged to Alexina Groome, insists that I give up +this lodging house." + +"Oh, so they are engaged?" Gathbroke lit another cigarette, and his +hand did not tremble; he felt as if his nerves had been immersed in ice +water and frozen. + +"Yes--marvelously. The family, as might be expected, is furious. But +the girl is mad about him and of age. She is just a foolish child and +should be locked up. My brother is not in the least what she imagines +him. She wrote me a letter. Good heaven! One would think she had +captured the prince of a fairy tale, or the hero of an old romantic +novel. There should be a law prohibiting girls from marrying before +they are twenty-two at least.... However, the thing is done. And my +brother is terribly afraid they'll find out that I keep a lodging +house. He's given them to understand we both board here. They are prime +snobs and so is he. I never dreamed it was in him until he began to go +about in society, but then you never know what is in anybody. +Otherwise, he is harmless enough, and a good industrious boy, but he'll +never make the money to keep up with that set, and she won't have much. +It's a stupid affair all round...." + +"I've refused to budge until he finds me a job. He certainly cannot +support me, even if I were willing to be supported by any one. As far +as I am concerned they could know I kept a lodging house and welcome. +It is honest and it gives me a good living; and, what I value more, +many hours of freedom. But Mortimer is not only positively terrified +they'll find it out, but he is as obstinate over it as--well, as that +kind of man always is. He's looking about, and I fancy my fate is +stenography or bookkeeping: I took a course at a business college +shortly before my mother died. I don't know that he'd like that much +better; he hinted that I might be a librarian in a small town. But I'll +be hanged if I fall for that." + +Gathbroke smiled. "Not that. You don't belong to the country town. But +I fancy you'll have to give up the lodging house. Elton Gwynne took me +down the Peninsula one day, and--well--I don't fancy they would stand +for it. Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over. They may talk +democracy, and really modify themselves a bit, but there are certain +things they'd choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't +even try. Better give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I +don't fancy you'd stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. +You've got to know and be more or less intimate with them all--" + +"I'll not be patronized by them. I don't know that I'll go near them. +For years I've resented that I was not one of them, but I don't fancy +tagging in after my brother, treated with pleasant courteous +resignation, invited once a year to a family dinner, and quite +forgotten on smart occasions." + +"Quite so. I like your spunk. Have you thought of being a nurse? All +work is hard and I should think that would be interesting. Must meet a +jolly lot of people. You should see the becoming uniforms the London +nurses wear. Prettiest women on the street, by Jove." + +Her heart sank but she replied evenly: "Not a bad idea. I've quite +enough saved to take the course comfortably--" + +He had a flash of memory. "And that would give you time to win your +reputation as a writer. Then the nursing would be merely one more +resource." + +"It was nice of you to remember that. I'll consider the nursing +proposition, and when you have your next war I'll go over and nurse +you. That part of it--a war nurse--would be mighty interesting." + +The words were spoken idly, merely to avert a pause, and forgotten as +soon as uttered. But as a matter of fact the next time they met was +when he looked up from his cot in the hospital after he had been +retrieved from the hut by two of his devoted Tommies, and saw the odd +pale eyes of Gora Dwight close above his own. + + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Gora closed the door of Mrs. Groome's room as the clock struck two, the +old Ballinger clock that had seemed to toll the hours on a deep note of +solemn acquiescence for the past six weeks. + +She crossed the hall and entered Alexina's room without knocking. +Mortimer, during the past fortnight, had moved from the room adjoining +his wife's to one at the back of the house, lest it should be necessary +to call Alexina in the night. He worked very hard. + +Alexina still occupied her old room in the front of the house where the +creaking eucalyptus trees sometimes brushed the window pane. It had +been refurnished and fitted in various elusive shades of pink by Mrs. +Abbott as her wedding present. There was a dim point of light above a +gas jet and Gora saw that Alexina was asleep. The pillows were on the +floor. She was lying flat, her arms thrown out, the dusky fine mass of +her hair spread over the low head board. Her clear olive cheeks were +pale with sleep and her eyelashes looked like two little black clouds. + +Gora watched her for a moment. Why awaken the poor child? She was +sleeping as peacefully as if that tall old clock of her forefathers had +not tolled out the last of another generation of Ballingers. Her soft +red lips were half parted. + +It was now three years since her marriage but she still looked like a +very young girl. Gora always felt vaguely sorry for her although she +seemed happy enough. At all events it was quite obvious that she did +little thinking except when she remembered to wish for a baby. + +Gora wore the white uniform of a nurse, and a little cap with wings on +the coronet of her heavy hair. It was a becoming costume and made her +eyes in their dark setting look less pale and cold. + +She had a secret contempt for most of the old conventions but she had +given her word to awaken Alexina the moment any change occurred, and +she reluctantly shook her sister-in-law's shoulder. + + + +II + + +Alexina sprang out of bed on the instant. + +"Mother?" she cried. "Is she worse?" + +Gora nodded. + +Alexina made a dart for the door, but Gora threw a strong arm about +her. Those arms had held more than one violent man in his bed. "Better +wait," she said softly. + +Alexina's body grew rigid as she slowly drew back on Gora's arm and +stared up at her. In a moment she asked in a hard steady voice: "Is my +mother dead?" + +"Yes. It was very sudden. I had no time to telephone for the doctor; to +call you. She was sleeping. I was sitting beside her. Suddenly I knew +that she had stopped breathing--" + +"Would you mind telephoning to Maria and Sally? Maria will never +forgive herself--but mother seemed so much better--" + +"I will telephone at once. Shall I call Mortimer?" + +"No. Why disturb him?" + +Gora, watching Alexina, saw a curious remoteness enter the depths of +her eyes, and her own narrowed with something of her old angry +resentment. In this hour of profound sorrow, when the human heart is +quite honest, Alexina, however her conscious mind might be averted from +the fact, regarded Mortimer Dwight as an outsider, an agreeable alien +who had no permanent place in the immense permanency of the +Ballinger-Groomes. She wanted only her own family, her own inherent +sort. Sally had hastened to California as soon as her mother's illness +had been pronounced dangerous, and had stayed in the house until a week +ago when she had been ordered by the doctor to Santa Barbara to get rid +of a heavy cold on her chest. She had telegraphed the day before that +she was threatened with pneumonia, and Maria, assured that her mother +was in no immediate danger, had gone down to spend two days with her. + +Possibly Alexina caught a flash from the mind of this strange and +interesting sister-in-law, for she added hastily: + +"You know how hard Mortimer works, poor dear. And I do not feel in the +least like crying. I shall write telegrams to Ballinger and Geary: my +brothers, you know." (Gora ground her teeth.) "It was too sad they +could not get here, but Ballinger is in South America and Geary on a +diet. I must also write a cablegram to an old friend of mine who has +married a Frenchman, Olive de Morsigny. She was always so fond of +mother. Would you also mind telephoning to Rincona about seven?" + +"I'll do all the telephoning. Go back to bed as soon as possible. It is +only a little after two." As Gora turned to leave the room Alexina put +her hand on her arm and summoned a faint sweet smile. + +"I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Gora dear, how grateful we all +are. You have been simply wonderful--" + +"I am a good nurse if I do say it myself," said Gora lightly. "But you +must remember there are others quite as good; and that I--". + +"I know you would do your duty as devotedly by any stranger." Alexina +interrupted her with sweet insistence. "But it has been wonderful to be +able to have you, all the same. It has also given me the chance to know +you at last, and I shall never quite let you go again." + +Gora, to her secret anger, had never accustomed herself to the +unswerving graciousness of these people, and all that it implied, but +her sharp mind had long since warned her that as she had neither the +position nor the training to emulate it, at least she must not betray a +sense of social inferiority by open resentment. + +Her voice was deep and naturally abrupt but she achieved a fair +imitation of Alexina's sweet cordiality. "It has meant quite as much to +me, Alexina, I can assure you. And now that I am on my own and shall +have a day or two between cases I know where I shall spend them. I am +only too thankful that I graduated in time to take care of dear Mrs. +Groome. Write your telegrams and I will give them to the doctor when he +comes. I must telephone to him at once." + + + +III + + +After she had gone Alexina wrote not only her telegrams and cablegrams, +but the "letters to follow." It was nearly four o'clock when she +finished. Old Dr. Maitland had not yet come and she put her bulletins +on the table in the hall. + +She heard Gora moving about her mother's room and retreated into her +own. She did not want to go to her mother yet nor did she care +particularly to see Gora again, although she had certainly been very +nice and a great comfort to them all. + +Alexina was quite unaware that her attitude to her sister-in-law was +one of unconsicous condescension, of a well-bred determination never to +wound the pride of a social inferior. She found Gora an "interesting +personality" and quite extraordinarily efficient. + +It had been the greatest relief to all the family when that very +capable Miss Dwight--Gora, that is; one must remember--had been brought +by Dr. Maitland to take charge of the case after Mrs. Groome's cardiac +trouble became acute and she demanded constant attention. + +Gora had slept in Mrs. Groome's bedroom for six weeks, relieved for +several hours of the afternoon by a member of the family or one of Mrs. +Groome's many anxious friends. It was her first case and it interested +her profoundly. Moreover, her personal devotion placed her for the +moment on a certain basis of equality with a family whose mental +processes were quite transparent to her contemptuous mind. She was +excessively annoyed with herself for still caring, but the roots were +too deep, and there had been nothing in her life during the past three +years to diminish her fierce sense of democracy as she interpreted it. + +Alexina had never given a thought to her sister-in-law's psychology, +although the sensitive plates of her brain received an impression now +and again of a violent inner life behind that business-like exterior. +But she had seen little of her until lately, and during the past six +weeks her mind had been too concentrated upon her mother's sufferings +and possible danger to have any disposition for analysis. + +She certainly did not feel the least need of her now. She wished, +indeed, that she had asked Aileen to remain in the house last night. +Aileen was her own age, they had been intimate since childhood, often +without the slightest regard for each other's feelings, and was more +like a sister than even dear Sally and Maria. + +Suddenly she determined to go to her. She had her own latch key and +would disturb no one but Aileen. She dressed herself warmly and slipped +down stairs and out of the house. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +The city below--the new solid city--was obliterated under a heavy fog, +pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged +dark rocks in that white and tranquil sea. + +On Angel Island and on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells +were tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond +the Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. +The bells sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other +sound in the sleeping city. + +Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the +hood over her head. + +As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with +something of a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she +had expressed to Gora her reluctance to disturb him. + +She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the +house at four o'clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl +friend when any other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) +would have flown to her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms. + +And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as +irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He +assuredly would have said just the right things to her and not have +resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest. + +On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only +was he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was +unorthodox, and he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly. + +Well, she didn't want him and that was the end of it. He didn't fill +the present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had +quite measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made +love charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager +spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o'clock every evening +never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately +afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that +they made a "stunning couple" and that people commented upon their good +looks, their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in +nature's coloring. + + + +II + + +Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her +mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she +knew that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the +suddenness of her mother's death, and that her emotions would be fluid +a few hours hence. + +They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother's +illness. As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent +him the insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a +modest exporting and importing house, that being the only business of +which he had any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested +that he open an insurance office, or start himself in any business +where little capital besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs. +Groome's advisors they were averse to launching any of her moderate +fortune on a doubtful venture. But Dwight had insisted that he was more +likely to succeed in a business he understood than in one of which he +knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed with him. Judge Lawton and +Abbott paid over the insurance money with the worst grace possible. + +And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His +aunt Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore +soon after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been +recapitalized and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring's executor had +sold her stock for something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering +the proceeds, as directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, +Mortimer and Gora Dwight. + +Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever +Harrison and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a +department in time and safely anchored for life; but he had taken the +step, and she reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a +business with which he had been associated for fourteen years, she knew +his energy and powers of application, and she resented the attitude of +"the family." Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had +consented to invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to +make immediate restitution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his +"stock did go up" with the family, particularly as he seemed to be +doing well and had the reputation of working harder than any young man +on the street. As he had anticipated, a good deal of business was +thrown his way. + +He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome's invitation to live +with her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the +current expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would +she be lonely without the child of her old age, but she must desire +that Alexina continue to live in the conditions to which she was +accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome consented to accept would not have kept +them in a fashionable family hotel, much less an apartment with several +servants. + +Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live +across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their +offspring never ceased. + +Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed "simply +great," and had continued to feed from her mother's hand even in the +matter of pin money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to +put his surplus profits back in his business; all he could spare he +needed for "front," to say nothing of pleasant little dinners at +restaurants to their hospitable young friends; who thought it no +adequate return to be asked to dine on Ballinger Hill. + +Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have +done, considering the "hard times;" or at least she would have +preferred that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly +allowance; she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure +supported by her husband. + +However, she and her mother assured each other that he was bound to +make a fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large +as that of Sibyl Thorndyke, who had married Frank Bascom. + +It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete +words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no +responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her +imagination on that plane sometimes called the fool's paradise. + + + +III + + +She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for +children. They would have been the real thing, given a serious +translation to life. + +But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and +with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long +chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have +asked for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his +working hours were over. + +Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to +watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they +spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter's magnificent "villa" at Burlingame. +Even Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they +had spent the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on +equal terms with many millionaires. + + + +IV + + +It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona +during their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family +had grimly surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement. + +Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on +the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, +Susan Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott's sisters, whose homes +were in Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now +Atherton) who had married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as +one united family. They met every day, wandering in and out at all +hours, and although they had many healthy disagreements they agreed on +all the fine old fundamentals, and they stood by one another through +thick and thin. + +The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished +asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and +smart as Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt +Clara, who was only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, +and her face was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as +loosely as her old wrapper. + +All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new +refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the +awful pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and +stuffed an infant's flannel petticoat into her mouth to muffle her +giggles. + +Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the +Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, +which was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts +to be "nice" of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he +arrived, and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings +must be spared, every moment. + +Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from +under the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court. + +In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their +gracious civil "kind" attitude had never varied, save only when their +consciences hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they +were not only heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice. + +Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking +his after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines +had been planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of +the park where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of +England, the guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the +eighties who faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott +and Coralie Geary. + +From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he +played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given +them in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he +was duller. + + + +V + + +Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, +Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling. + +For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied +topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely +painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an +attempt merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the +mayor, and his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably +resolved itself into a declaration of war, with State's Prison as its +goal, upon some of the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco. + +The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, +bent upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, +and the basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter +of course that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in +private their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to +the board of supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be +only too glad to expose the malefactors. + +But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of +admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and +bribery. They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or +renounce their great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law +had technical terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so +had the public. + +All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city +administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of +which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred +thousand dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. +Supervisors, by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand +Jury indicted not only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of +eminent citizens. + +Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now +and again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand +Thornton, at a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, +and Mrs. Hofer gave a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament. + +The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his +historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the +court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his +cell. There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would +reinstitute the lynch law of the fifties. + +Nothing came of it all but such a prolonged exposure of general +vileness that it was possible to effect a certain number of reforms +later by popular vote. The system remained inviolate, even during the +mayorship of a fine old citizen too estimable to build up a rival +machine; and the men of the prosecution, after many bitter harassed +months, when they walked and slept with their lives in their hands, +resigned themselves to the fact that no San Francisco jury would ever +convict a man who had the money to bribe it. + +All this had given Mortimer abundant material for conversation and he +had entertained Mrs. Groome and Alexina night after night with a report +of the day's events and the gossip of the street. Mrs. Groome had been +intensely interested, for this upheaval reminded her of personal +episodes in the life of her husband and father, the latter having been +a member of the vigilance committees of the fifties. + +She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to +bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina +to invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle +were accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, +nothing could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to +follow the example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer. + +Alexina had never been interested in the details of the prosecution; +the large moments of the drama and the social convulsions were enough +for her. She refused to cut Mrs. Hofer, although she ceased to call on +her, as her mother and her husband made such a point of it; but she +gave little thought to the sorrows of that ambitious young matron. She +had other fish to fry. + +Two great hotels whose interiors had been swept by the fire were +renovated and furnished and their restaurants and ballrooms eagerly +patronized. The Assembly balls were resumed. There were dinners and +dances in the Western Addition, where many of the finest homes in the +city had been built during the past ten or twenty years; and +entertaining Down the Peninsula had not paused for more than two months +after the disaster. + +Nevertheless, she had exulted in the fact that the husband of her +choice was able to please and entertain her mother-no easy feat. +Moreover, as time went on and interest in the Graft Prosecution wore +thin, it was evident that Mortimer had established himself firmly in +his mother-in-law's graces. He was not only the perfect husband but the +son of her old age. + +She had lost Ballinger and Geary in her comparative youth, and Tom was +rarely in the house when she visited Rincona. But Mortimer was as +devoted to her in the little ways so appreciated by women of any age as +he was to his wife, and he was noiseless in the house and as prompt as +the clock. During her illness his devotion touched even Mrs. Abbott, +although Mrs. Groome was the only member of the family he ever won over. + + + +VI + + +Poor Morty. In a way he was a failure, after all. The men of her set +did not seem to care any more for him than they did before her +marriage, although they were always polite and amiable; and the promise +of those old family friends to throw business in his way seemed to be +forgotten as time went on. + +No doubt they had thought he was able to stand on his own feet after a +while, but he had often looked depressed during the panic of +nineteen-seven and the long period of business drought that had +followed. Still, he had managed to hold his own, and his constitutional +optimism was unshaken. He _knew_ that when times changed he would soon +be a rich man, and Alexina shared his faith. Not that she had ever +cared particularly for great wealth, but he talked so much about it +that he had excited her imagination; after all money was the thing +these days, no doubt of that, and she had heard "poor talk" all her +life and was tired of it. + +Moreover, nothing could be more positive than that if Morty's father +had made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and +administered it with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons +of rich men to-day from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he +would be as logically intimate with those young capitalists who were +the renewed pillars of San Francisco society, as she was with the most +aloof and important of her own sex. + +She had heard Judge Lawton and other men say that if a man were still a +clerk at thirty he was hopeless. The ruts were packed with the mediocre +whose destiny was the routine work of the world, whatever might be +their secret opinions of their unrecognized abilities and their +resentment against a system that anchored them. + +The young man of brains and initiative, of energy, ambition, vision and +balance, provided he were honorable as well, and temperate in his +pleasures, was the man the eager world was always waiting for. + +Alexina knew that the United States was almost as prolific in this fine +breed of young men as she still was in opportunities for the +exceptional of every class. + +And it was possible that Mortimer was not one of them. + +Once more she put a fact into bald words. She knew that her butterfly +youth had come to an end with her mother's death, and for a year she +should be very much alone, to say nothing of her new burden of +responsibilities. Thinking during that period was inevitable. She might +as well begin now. + +Mortimer had some of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was +ambitious and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his +brain was clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that +it lacked originality. + +Did it also lack initiative, resource, that peculiar alertness and +quick pouncing quality of which she had heard? She wished she knew, but +she had never discussed her husband with any one. Certainly he had +stood still. Or was that merely the fault of the hard times? She had +heard other men complain as bitterly. + +"Fate handed you a lemon, old girl." + +Alexina could almost hear Aileen's mocking voice. She even gave a +startled glance down the quiet avenue. Well, she would never discuss +him with Aileen or any one else. + +Did she love him any longer? Had she ever loved him? What was love? She +had been quite happy with him in her own little way. What did girls of +eighteen know of love? Deliberately in her youthful arrogance and +unlicensed imagination she had manufactured a fool's paradise; and, a +hero being indispensable, had dragged him in after her. + +Perhaps she still loved him. She had read and seen enough to know that +love changed its character as the years went on. She respected his many +admirable qualities and she would never forget his devotion to her +mother. + +She certainly liked him. And the family attitude roused her obstinate +championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good +friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately +selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. +He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not +the masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate +enough to have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving +devotion to her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received +Bob Cheever one afternoon when she was alone, and had forbidden her +ever to receive a man in the daytime again. If men wanted to call on a +married woman they could do so in the evening. She no longer danced +more than twice with any man at a party, and he refused to read her +favorite books, new or old, and chilled any attempt to discuss them in +his presence. + + + +VII + + +Well, after all, what did it matter? She had dreamed her dream and he +was better than most. She sprang to her feet and ran down the hill and +across the street to the house of Judge Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Gora waited until her brother had finished his bath and returned to his +room. When she was admitted he had a brush in either hand polishing his +pale brown immaculately cut hair. He turned to her, startled, his good +American gray eyes showing no trace of sleep. He always awoke with +alert mind and refreshed body. + +"What is it? Not--" + +Gora nodded. "At two this morning. Alexina wouldn't let me call you--" + +His wide masculine eyebrows met. It was correct to be angry and he was. +"I never heard of such a thing--" + +"She was not a bit overcome and wrote letters to her brothers and +friends for at least two hours. It really wouldn't have been worth +while to disturb you--I must say I was astonished; thought she'd go to +pieces--but you never know." + +"I'll go to her at once." + +"I'd dress first. Aileen Lawton is with her." + +Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned +half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and +never descended to small game. + +"Oh, of course!" Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out +a pair of black socks. "I like Aileen well enough, but she has +altogether too much influence over Alexina. She'd have more than myself +if I didn't keep a close watch." + +"I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as +time goes on. She hasn't that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean +things in some people." + +He gave her a quick suspicious glance, but her pale gray eyes were +fixed on the windmill beyond the window, that odd old landmark in a now +fashionable quarter of San Francisco. + +"I shall always control her," he said, setting his large finely cut +lips. "I wish her to remain a child as long as possible, for she is +quite perfect as she is. She is bright and all that, but of course she +has no intellect--" + +Gora forgot her message of death and laughed outright. + +"Men--American men, anyhow--are really the funniest things in the +world. Even intellectual men are absurd in their patronizing attitude +toward the cleverest of women; but when it conies to mere masculine +arrogance ... don't you really respect any woman's brains?" + +"I never denied that some women were clever and all that, but the best +of them cannot compare with men. You must admit that." + +"I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste +any time in argument--" + +"My type?" + +She longed to reply: "The smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his +mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's shell +or the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But +she never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion +of his endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of +secret amusement. + +"Oh, you're all alike," she said lightly, and added: "Don't be too sure +that Alexina hasn't intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from +this beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it +might escape her, and begins to think--" + +"I'll do her thinking." + +"All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job.... I'll +clear out; you want to dress--" + +"Wait a moment." He sat down to draw on his socks. "I'm really cut up +over Mrs. Groome's death. She was my only friend in this damn family, +and I coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on +for twenty years." + +"I wondered how you liked them as time went on." + +He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. "I hate the whole +pack of superior patronizing condescending snobs, and it is all I can +do to keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by +God!"--he brought down his fist on his knee--"I'll beat them at their +own game yet. I simply live to make a million and build a house at +Burlingame. They really respect money as much as they think they don't; +I've got oil to that. When I'm a rich roan they'll think of me as their +equal and forget I was ever anything' else." + +"Well, don't speculate," said Gora uneasily. "Remember that luck was +left out of our family." + +"My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to +wait until this period of dry rot passes--" + +"But you're not speculating?" + +He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own. + +"I answer questions about my private affairs to no one." + +"They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital." + +"You have received your interest regularly, have you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well +as the man's opportunities, and you do not." + +"I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you +are doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand--" + +"What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?" + +"Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a +fling. I shall want to go to New York and Europe." + +"And you would throw away your capital!" + +"Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will +find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction +writing for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything +published, and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York +magazines: one of the old group and two of the best of the popular +magazines." + +He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to +alarm. "I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think +themselves so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and +all that as about on a level with the working class--" + +"I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They worship +success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for +people engaged in any of the art careers--with whom they practically +never come in contact, by the way--is partly an instinctive distrust of +anything they cannot do themselves and partly because they have an +Elizabethan idea that all artists are common and have offensive +manners." + +"I don't like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may +unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living--and that you shall +never do when I am rich--but they have no business putting their names +up before the public like men." + +Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim +fathers, of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact +from old John Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American +classic face that is passing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the +last drop from a long forgotten "tar brush," or the sly recurrent +Biblical profile. + +"We will make a bargain," she said calmly. "I will ask you no more +questions about your business for a year--when, if convenient, I should +like my money--and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to +have. It won't do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions +about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina. +You've got your hands full there. See you at breakfast." And she shut +the door on an indignant worried and disgusted brother. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife's door, was bidden to enter he +found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears +running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had +given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took +his wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical +in its reaction from the insensibility of the morning. + +"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his +sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--" + +"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the +office for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; +Sally is better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an +hour. Tom and I will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not +to think." + +"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it. +But I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!" + +But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of +morning starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by +degrees and sent him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her +grief was over. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's +bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with +her father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear +old thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the +days when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel +Hill was called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they +both should have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the +English say. Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as +fond of your father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine +that he is your father from this time forth, and come to him when you +are in doubt about anything." + +Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. "I have sometimes thought +uncle daddy didn't like Mortimer." + +"On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard +work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But +of course Mortimer is young--in business, that is; and father +thinks--but you had better talk with him." + +"No. Why should I? But I don't mind you. At least I could not discuss +Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me +to put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as +trustees--ignoring Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria's +fortune has been kept intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, +but that men in business are likely to get into tight places and use +their wife's money. Nothing would induce Mortimer to touch my money, +but he would feel pretty badly cut up if I let any one else look after +my affairs. Of course I wouldn't even discuss the matter with Tom. And +if Morty does need money at any time I'll lend it to him. Why not? What +else would any one expect me to do?" + +"Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot. +No one doubts Mortimer's good faith, but the times are awful, money has +paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the +stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes +you will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see--the +times are so abnormal, Mortimer hasn't had time to prove his abilities +yet; he's just been able to hold on; and if things don't mend and he +should lose out, why--if you still have your own little fortune, at +least you'll not be any worse off than, you are now. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. +They always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able +to hold on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of +course we shall live here and run the house--as mother did. I couldn't +bear to live anywhere else, and Morty adores it too." + +"Oh, rather. I couldn't imagine you anywhere else." + +"Geary and Ballinger sent me ten thousand dollars for a wedding present +and Morty bought some bonds for me, but I'm going to sell a few and +refurnish the lower rooms. I love the old house but I like cheerful +modern things. The poor old parlors and dining-room do look like +sarcophagi." + +"Good. I'll help. We'll have no end of fun." + + + +II + + +There was a pause and then Alexina said: "Mortimer is so determined to +be a rich man and thinks of so little else and works so hard, that he +is bound to be. Otherwise, such gifts would be meaningless." + +She made the statements with an unconscious rising inflection. Aileen +did not answer and turned her sharp revealing green eyes on the +eucalyptus grove which concealed Ballinger House from the vulgar gaze, +and incidentally shut off a magnificent view. + +"I don't know whether I like Gora Dwight or not," she remarked. + +"Neither do I. But I admire her. She is a wonder." + +"Oh, yes, I admire her, and I've a notion she's got something big in +her, some sort of destiny. But those light eyes in that dark face give +me the creeps. It isn't that I don't trust her. I believe her to be +insolently honest and honorable--and just, if you like. But--perhaps +it's only the accident of her queer coloring--she gives me the +impression that while she might go to the stake for her pride, she'd +murder you in cold blood if you got in her way." + +"Poor Gora! You make her all the more interesting." + +"Did she ever tell you that she corresponds with that Englishman who +was out here at the time of the earthquake and fire and had that +ghastly adventure with his sister? We all met him at the Hofer +ball--Gathbroke his name was." + +Alexina was staring at her with an amazed frown. "Correspond--Gora? ... +I remember now he told me she helped him to carry his sister's body out +to the old cemetery. Is he interested in her?" + +"I shouldn't wonder. They've corresponded off and on ever since. I +walked, home with her one afternoon before I went south--she interests +me frantically--and she invited me up to her quite artistic attic in +Geary Street, where she still lives, and gave me the most vivid +description of that night. It made me crawl. She stared straight before +her as she told it. Her eyes were just like gray oval mirrors in which +it seemed to me I saw the whole thing pass.... + +"Then she showed me a photograph he had recently sent her--stunning +thing he is, all right, and looks years older than when he was here. +She also alluded to things he had said in a letter or two. So my +phenomenally quick wits inferred that they correspond. Perhaps they are +engaged. Pretty good deal for her." + + + +III + + +Alexina, to her surprise, felt intensely angry, although she had the +presence of mind to cast up her eyes until the white showed below the +large brilliant iris and she looked like a saint in a niche. + +She had kept Gathbroke out of her thoughts for nearly four years, +deliberately. For a time she had hated him. Mortimer's love-making had +seemed tame in comparison with that primitive outburst, and never had +she felt any such fiery response to the man she had loved and chosen as +during those few moments when she had been in that impertinent, +outrageous, loathsome young Englishman's arms. At first she had +wondered and resented, loyally concluding that it was her own fault, or +that of fate for endowing her with such a slender emotional equipment +that she used it all up at once on the wrong man. Finally, she found it +wise not to think about it at all and to dismiss the intruder from her +thoughts. + +Now she felt outraged in her sense of possession.... Unconsciously she +had enshrined him as the secret mate of her inmost secret self ... a +self she was barely conscious of even yet ... lurking in her +subconsciousness, the personal and peculiar blend of many and diverse +ancestors.... Sometimes she had glimpsed it ... wondered a little with +a not unpleasant sense of apprehension.... + +But for the most part Circumstance had decreed that she abide on the +abundant surface of her nature and enjoy a highly enjoyable life as it +came. Now, she had experienced her first grief, which at the same time +was her first set-back. She did not go out at all. She saw much of +Mortimer and little of any one else. It was the summer season and all +her friends were in the country or in Europe. + +She had given Mortimer her power of attorney (largely a gesture of +defiance, this) and he had attended to all details connected with her +new fortune. Between the inheritance tax, small legacies, and +depreciations, she would have a little over six thousand dollars a +year; which, however, with Mortimer's contribution, would run the old +house, and keep her wardrobe up to mark after she went out of mourning. +She knew nothing of the value of money, and was accustomed to having +little to spend and everything provided. But her mind regarding +finances was quite at rest. Even if Mortimer remained a victim of the +hard times, they would be quite comfortable. + +The cares of housekeeping were very light. She discussed the daily +menus with James, but he had run Ballinger House for years, little as +Mrs. Groome had suspected it. Mortimer, shortly after his +mother-in-law's death, and while Alexina was passing a fortnight at +Rincona, had given James orders to collect all bills on the first of +every month and hand them to him, together with a statement of the +servants' wages. Mrs. Dwight was not to be bothered. + +Alexina, when she returned, had made no protest. The details of +housekeeping did not appeal to her. But the arrangement left her +without occupation, and much time for thought. After a long walk +morning and afternoon she had little to do but read. She was an early +riser and her mind was active. + + + +IV + + +Dwight had not the least intention of using his wife's money, for he +had perfect confidence in his change of luck, and in his ability to do +great things with his business as soon as the period of depression had +passed. But he had no faith in any woman's ability to invest and take +care of money, he had fixed ideas in regard to a man being master in +his own house, and he had asked Alexina for her power of attorney more +to flaunt her confidence in him and to annoy her damnable relatives +than because there might possibly be a moment when he should have need +of immediate resources. Like many Americans he chose to keep his wife +in ignorance of his business life, and it would have annoyed him +excessively to go to her with an explanation of temporary difficulties +and ask for a loan. + +Moreover, he wished to keep Alexina young and superficial, ignorant of +money matters, indifferent to the sordid responsibilities of life. Not +only was the present Alexina no embarrassment whatever to a man full of +schemes, aside from the slow march of business, for getting rich, but +she was infinitely alluring. + +He detested business women, intellectual women, women with careers; +they tipped the even balance of the man's world; moreover, they had no +accepted place in the higher social scheme. For women wage-earners he +had no antipathy and much sympathy and consideration, although he +underpaid them cheerfully when circumstances would permit. It was an +abiding canker that his sister was obliged to support herself; he was +not ashamed of it, for nursing was an honorable (and altruistic) +profession, and several young women in his new circle bad taken it up; +but he hated it as a man and a brother. As for her turning herself into +an authoress, however, he only hoped he would make his million before +she got herself talked about. + +As for Alexina she was the perfect flower of a system lie worshiped and +nothing should mar or change her if his fond surveillance could prevent +it. + +On the whole he was quite happy at this time, despite his passionate +desire for wealth and his natural resentment, at the attitude of the +Abbotts and their intimate circle of old friends who were so like them +that he always included them in his mind when speaking of "the family." +Although he was making barely enough to pay his sister the monthly +interest on her money, the salaries of his employees, and, until +recently, a monthly contribution to the household expenses, he had a +comfortable and delightful home with not a few of the minor luxuries, +an undisputed position in the best society, an honorable one in the +business world, and a beautiful wife. Now that the conventions forced +them to live the retired life, they could economize without attracting +attention; as he paid the bills Alexina would not know whether he still +contributed his share or not; (in time he meant to pay the whole and +give his wife, with the grand gesture, her entire income for pin money) +and, with Alexina's cordial assent, he had sold the old carriage, and +the horses, which were eating their heads off, dismissed the +coachman-gardener, and found a young Swede to take care of the garden +and outbuildings. + +Later, they would have their car like other people, but there was no +need for it at present, and it was neither the time nor the occasion to +exhibit a tendency to extravagance. In the matter of "front" he knew +precisely where to leave off. + +In a certain small anxious bag-of-tricks way he was clever. But not +clever enough. He knew nothing of Alexina beneath her shining surface. +If he had he would have sought to crowd her mind with the details of +the home, encouraged her to join in the frantic activities of some one +of the women's clubs he held in scorn, persuaded her to play golf daily +at the fashionable club of which they were members, even though she ran +the risk of talking, unchaperoned by himself, with other men. + +He never would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books +for companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in +psychology, or in revelations of the many phases of life of which she +was personally so ignorant); and only his own companionship evening +after evening. + +But he had known all the Alexina he was ever to know. Such flashing +glimpses as he was destined to have later so bewildered him that he +reacted obstinately to his original estimate of her, ... just a child +under the influence of her family or some of those friends of hers who +had always hated him ... erratic and irresponsible like all women ... a +man never could understand women because there was nothing to +understand ... merely a bundle of contradictions.... + +In some ways his mental equipment was an enviable one. + + + +VI + + +Some of all this Alexina guessed, and although she was nettled at times +that he took no note of her maturing mind and character, she was, on +the whole, more amused. + +Indulgent by nature, and somewhat indolent, she had been more than +willing that Morty should enjoy his new authority, should even delude +himself that he was footing all the bills, poor dear; and she listened +raptly to his evening visions of their future life in Burlingame, +alternated with visits to New York and England, the while she puzzled +over the intricacies of some character portrayed by a master analyst. + +Sometimes he did not talk at all, utterly fagged by a strenuous day in +which he had accomplished precisely nothing. But the more transparent +and truncated and dull he grew the more spontaneous the "niceness" and +almost effusive courtesy of his wife. Insensibly she was veering to the +family attitude, but he had tagged her once for all and never saw it. + +Until this moment, however, when Gathbroke had been jerked from his +deep seclusion within her ivory tower by Aileen's unwelcome news, she +had never had a moment of complete self-revelation.... She knew +instantly that she had never loved her husband: he was not her mate and +Gathbroke was. She had had three years of rippling content and light +enjoyment with Mortimer, they had never quarreled seriously, and they +had never taken their parts in one moment of real drama. + +If she had married Gathbroke they would have quarreled furiously, they +would have thrown courtesy and behavior to the winds often enough, +particularly while they were young, for neither would have been in the +least apprehensive of wounding the rank-pride of the other, and such +mutual and passionate love as theirs naturally gave birth to a high +state of irritability; they would have loved and hated and made +constant discoveries about each other ... there would have been depths +never to be fully explored but always luring them on ... and the +perfect companionship ... the complete fusion.... + +How Alexina knew all this after less than three hours' association with +Gathbroke, let any woman answer. She was not so foolish as to imagine +herself the victim of a secret passion, or that she had ever loved the +man, or ever would. She had merely had her chance for the great +duodrama, and thrown it away for a callow dream. She had no passing +wish, even in that moment of visualizing him interlocked with her own +wraith in that sacred inner temple where even she had never intruded +before, to meet him again. She had no intention of passing any of her +abundant leisure in dreaming dreams of him and the perfect bliss. But +he had been hers ... and utterly ... he had loved her ... he had wanted +her ... he had precipitately begged her to marry him ... he had offered +her the homage of complete brutality. + +Something of him would always be hers. + +And even though she renounced all rights in him because she must, she +did not in the least relish that any one so close to her as Gora Dwight +should have him. She might have heard of his marriage to a girl of his +own land and class with only a passing spasm, but his continued and +possibly tender friendship with her sister-in-law shook her out of the +last of her jejunity and its illusions.... She was not exactly a dog in +the manger ... she was a maturing woman looking back with anger and +dismay not only upon the fatal mistake of her youth, but upon the +inexorable realities of her present life.... + +The reaction was a more intense feeling of loyalty to Mortimer than +ever. She was entirely to blame. He not only had been innocent of +conscious rivalry, even of pursuit--for she could quite easily have +discouraged him in the earlier stages of his courtship--but he was +dependent upon her in every way: for his happiness, for the secure +social position that meant so much to him, for the greater number of +his valuable connections, for even his comfort and ease of living. + +Something of this had passed through her stunned mind on the morning of +her mother's death. Now it was all as sharply outlined as the etching +at which she was raptly gazing, and she vowed anew that she would never +desert him, never deny him the assistance of the true partner. She had +signed a life contract with her eyes open and she would keep it to the +letter. + +Only she hoped to heaven that Gathbroke was not serious about Gora. She +wished never to be reminded of his existence again. + +And, as Aileen talked of Santa Barbara, she wondered vaguely why there +was not a law forbidding girls to marry until they were well into their +twenties.... until they had had a certain amount of experience.... knew +their own minds.... Maria had been right.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +The darkness had come early with the high rolling fog that shut out the +stars. The fog horn and the bells were silent but the wind had a thin +anxious note as if lost, and the long creaking eucalyptus trees angrily +repelled it as if irritated beyond endurance by its eternal visitations. + +Alexina, who had been reading in her bedroom, realized that it must be +quite half an hour since she had turned a page. She lifted her +shoulders impatiently. She was in no humor for reading. + +It was only eight o'clock. Far too early for bed. Mortimer had gone to +Los Angeles on business. He had been gone a week, and she admitted to +herself with the new frankness she had determined to cultivate--that +she might meet, with the clearest possible vision, whatever +three-cornered deals Life might have in store for her--that she had not +missed him at all. His absence had been a heavenly interlude. She and +Aileen had gone to the moving pictures unescorted every night (a +performance of which he would have disapproved profoundly), and they +had lunched downtown every day until Alexina had suddenly discovered +that she had no more money in her purse; and, knowing nothing whatever +even of minor finance, was under the impression that having given +Mortimer her power of attorney she would not be able to draw from the +bank. + +Aileen had gone down to Burlingame to visit Sibyl Bascom for a few +days. Alexina had declined to go, although it was a quiet party; it +would be embarrassing not to tip the servants. + +The wind gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the +house and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who +shook it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the +window severely for good measure. + +Alexina was used to San Francisco in all her many moods, but to-night, +the wind and the high gray fog shutting out the stars, the silent +house--silent that is but for the mice playing innocently between the +walls--her complete solitude, made her restless and a little nervous. + +What could she do? + +She knew quite well that she had wanted to go to see Gora for a week. +She had not indulged in any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was +curious to see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her +mind that April day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he +had outgrown his hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, +and the inability to conceal the asinine condition to which she had +immediately reduced him, she might have given him an equal chance with +Morty. + +Aileen had said that he looked older. She had a quite natural curiosity +to decide for herself if, had he been born several years earlier, he +would have proved the successful rival in that foundational period of +their youth.... Or perhaps she was the reason of his rather sudden +maturity. After all there was no great chasm between twenty-three and +twenty-six and three-quarters. She looked little if any older. Neither +did Morty, nor any one she knew. + +This idea thrilled her, and, grimly determined upon no compromise or +evasion, she admitted it. + +Moreover, she wanted to sound out Gora. + +Somehow she had no real belief that he had transferred his affections +to her dissimilar sister-in-law, but her interest in Gora was growing. +She wanted to know her better. + +Besides, although she had often invited her to tea on her free +afternoons, and to dinner whenever possible, and had occasionally +dropped in to see her while she was still in the hospital, she had +never called on her in her home. As Gora only slept there after a +killing day's or night's work, visitors were anything but welcome; +nevertheless she felt that she had been negligent, rude--three +years!--and as Gora was not on a case for a day or two, now was the +time to atone. + +Moreover, she had never been out quite alone at night, except to run +down the avenue and across the street to Aileen's. It was a long way +down to Geary Street, and Fillmore Street at night was "tough." +Mortimer would be furious. + +She hastily changed her dinner gown to a plain walking suit of black +tweed and pinned on a close hat firmly, prepared to defy the wind and +thoroughly to enjoy her little adventure. Not since she had stolen out +to go to forbidden parties with Aileen had she felt such a sense of +altogether reprehensible elation. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Fillmore Street, its low-browed shops dark, but with great arcs of +white lights spanning the streets that ran east and west, long shafts +of yellow light shining across the sidewalk from the restaurants, the +candy stores and the nicolodeons--where the pianola tinkled +plaintively--was thronged with saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious +glances at them as she walked rapidly along. In front of every saloon +was a group of young men almost fascinatingly common to Alexina's +cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over their foreheads at an +indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners of their mouths, +or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at "bunches" of +girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, making +strident or stage-whispered comments. + +A great many girls had cavaliers, and these walked with their heads +tossed, unless drooping toward a padded, shoulder; and they wore +perhaps a coat or two less of make-up than their still neglected +sisters. These were vividly earmined, although most of them were young +enough to have relied on cold water and a rough towel; their hair was +arranged in enormous pompadours and topped with "lingerie" or +beflowered hats. Their blouses were "peek-a-boo" and cut low, their +skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated straight front +corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced the +débutante slouch and their jaws worked automatically. + +Not all of them were "bad" by any means. Fillmore Street was a +promenade at night for girls who were confined by day: waitresses, shop +girls of the humbler sort, servants, clerks, or younger daughters of +poor parents, who would see nothing of life at all if they sat +virtuously in the kitchen every night. + +The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to +ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and +they were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, +the dead white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, +ignoring the "bums" and "cadets" lounging at the corners or before the +saloons, directed intent long glances at every passing man who looked +as if he had the "roll" to treat them handsomely in the back parlor of +a saloon, or possibly stake them at a gaming table. The town, still in +its brief period of insufferable virtue, was "closed," but the lid was +not on as irremovably as the police led the good mayor to believe; and +these girls, who traveled not in "bunches" but in pairs, if they had +not already begun a career of profitable vice, were anxious to start +but did not exactly know how. Fillmore Street was not the hunting +ground of rich men; but men with a night's money came there, and many +"boobs" from the country. + +Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated +everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that +many of these girls were "decent enough"; "much more decent than I +would be in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no +place to see a beau but the street. I'd go straight to the devil and +play the only game I had for all it was worth." + +But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in +"badness." She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the +great juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. +Moreover, she could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars +above the fog, and she had drawn herself up to her full five feet +seven, thrown her shoulders back, lifted her chin and lowered her +eyelids the merest trifle. She fancied that the patrician-beauty type +would have little or no attraction for the men who frequented Fillmore +Street. Certainly the bluntest of these males could see that she was +not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum. + +Moreover she was in mourning. + +But she had reckoned without her youth. + + + +II + + +"Say, kid, what you doin' all alone?" + +A hand passed familiarly through her arm. + +Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn +upon him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help? + +Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all +terrified; nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark +of the sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: "When a +man is even half way drunk he doesn't know a lady from a trollop, and +ten to one the lady's a trollop anyhow." + +She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present +moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature? + +She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish +attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and +one girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the +situation, laughed aloud and cried after her: "Don't be frightened, +kid. He's not a slaver." + +Irrepressible curiosity made her send him a swift glance from the +corner of her eye. He was a young man, thick set, with an aggressive +nose set in a round hard face. His small, hard, black eyes were steady, +and so were his feet. He did not look in the least drunk. + +"I think you have made a mistake," she said quietly, and with no +pretense at immense dignity (she could hear Aileen say: "Cut it out. +Nothing doing in that line here"). "I, also, have made a mistake--in +walking at night on this street. Would you mind letting go my arm? I +think I'll take a car." + +"No, I think you'll stay just where you are," he said insolently. "You +don't belong here all right, but you've come and you can stand the +consequences. You're just the sort that needs a jolt and I like the +idea of handing it." + +Alexina gave him a coldly speculative glance. "I wonder why?" + +"You would? Well, I'll tell you. Never been out alone at night before, +I'll bet, like these other girls, that ain't got no place on earth to +have any fun but the streets. Never even rubbed against the common +herd? Generally go about in a machine, don't you?" + +"It is quite true that I have never been out alone at night before. I +certainly shall not go again." + +"No, you don't have to! That's the point, all right. And if you weren't +such a beauty, damn you! I'd hate you this minute as I hate your whole +parasite class." + +"Oh, you are a socialist!" Alexina looked at him with frank curiosity. +"I never saw one before." + +He was obviously disconcerted. Then his face flushed with anger. "Yes, +I'm a socialist all right, and you'll see more of us before you're many +years older." + +"You might tell me about it if you _will_ walk with me. I am a long way +from my destination, and that would be far more interesting than +personalities." + +"I've got more personalities where those came from. It makes me sick to +see the difference between you and these poor kids--ready to sell their +souls for pretty clothes and a little fun. There's nothing that has +done so much to inflame class hatred as the pampered delicate +satin-skinned women of your class, who have expensive clothes and +'grooming' to take the place of slathers of paint and cheap perfume. +Raised in a hot house for the use of the man on top. It's the crowning +offense of capitalism, and when the system goes, they'll all be like +you, or you'll be more like them. You'll come down about a thousand +pegs, and the ones down below will be shoved up to meet you." + +Alexina stood still and faced him. + +"Are you poor?" she asked. + +"What a hell of a question. Have I been talkin' like a plutocrat?" + +"Oh, there are, still, different grades. I was wondering if you would +be so inconsistent as to earn a little money from me and two friends of +mine. We have read socialism a bit, but, we don't understand it very +well. I am in mourning and it would interest me immensely." + +He had dropped her arm and was staring at her. + +"You are not afraid of me, then?" His voice was sulky but his eyes were +less hostile. + +"Oh, not in the least. I fully appreciate that you merely wished to +humiliate me, not to be insulting, as some of these other men might +have been. My name is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. I live on Ballinger +Hill--do you know it? That old house in the eucalyptus grove?" + +"I know it, all right." + +"Then you probably know, also, that I am not rich and never have been. +My husband is a struggling young business man." + +"That cuts no ice. You train with that class, don't you? You're class +yourself, reek with it. You had rich ancestors or you wouldn't be what +you are now." + +"Well, we can discuss that point another time. One of my friends is a +daughter of Judge Lawton--" + +"Hand in glove with every rich grafter in 'Frisco." + +Alexina shuddered. "Please say San Francisco. I am positive you never +heard a word against Judge Lawton's probity, nor that he ever rendered +an unjust decision." + +"He's a wise old guy, all right. But it would be wastin' time tryin' to +make you understand why I have no use for him." + +"Of course you would have no use for the husband of my other friend, +Mrs. Frank Bascom." + +She fully expected that the young millionaire's name would be the final +red rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the +benefit of all Fillmore Street. But he surprised her by saying +reluctantly: + +"He's dead straight, all right. He's not a grafter. I've nothing +against him personally, but he's part of a damnable system and I'd +clean him out with the rest." + +"Well, there you have three of us to your hand. Who knows but that you +might convert us? Why not give us the chance? If you will give me your +address I will write to you as soon as my friends come back to town." + +"I don't know whether I want to do it or not. You may be makin' game of +me for all I know." + +"I am quite sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you +something too--what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of +socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask what your +occupation is?" + +"I'm just a plain working-man--housebuilding line." + +"Then you could only come in the evening?" + +"Not at all; I get off at five. You don't have your dinner until eight +in your set, I believe," This with a sneer that curled his upper lip +almost to the septum of his nose. + +"Seven. My husband works until nearly six. He rarely has time for lunch +and comes home very hungry." + +Once more he looked puzzled and disconcerted, but his small steady eyes +did not waver. + +"My name's James Kirkpatrick." He found the stub of a pencil in his +pocket and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it +over. Maybe I'll do it. I dunno, though." + +"I do hope you will. I'm sure we can learn a good deal from each other. +Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don't the socialist +tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?" + +"Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight +better, but I guess there's nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your +car." + +He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and +as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself +on having had the last word. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on +the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young +sister-in-law left the car at the corner. + +Gora walked up to meet her guest. "Where on earth have you, been?" she +demanded. "I supposed of course that you'd take a taxi. You should not +go out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest +ideas; and you--" + +"Haven't. Not, any more. I'm tired of being kept in a glass case--being +a parasite." She laughed gayly at Gora's look of amazement. "I've had +an adventure. Almost the first I ever had." + +She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps +and stairs to the attic. + +Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. "Shall you tell Mortimer?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done." + +"But if you study with this man?" + +"There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself +as Morty's partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over +anything yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many +things whether he happens to like it or not. Possibly without +consulting him." + +"You've had time to think these past three months for the first time in +your life," said Gora shrewdly. "Here we are. I hope you don't hate +stairs. I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can't give up +the old place.... And I've lit the candles in your honor." + + + +II + + +"Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!" + +Thought Gora: "I do hope she's not going to be gracious. I've never +liked her so well before." + +But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome +tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from +respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the +impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had +caught sight immediately of Gathbroke's picture framed and enthroned on +the mantelpiece. + +She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old +Chinese lanterns that held the candles. + +"I am going to refurnish our lower rooms," she said. "If you have time +do help me. Heavens! I wish I could work off some of that old furniture +on you. I like the Italian pieces well enough, but there are too many +of them. That rather low Florentine cabinet in the back parlor would +just fit in this corner...." + +She gave a little girlish exclamation and ran forward. + +"Isn't that young Gathbroke, who was out here at the time of the +earthquake and fire ... or an older brother, perhaps?" + +She had taken the photograph from the mantel and was examining it under +one of the lanterns. Her alert ear detected the deeper and less steady +note in Gora's always hoarse voice. + +"It is the same. Did you meet him? ... Oh, I remember he told me he met +you at the Hofer ball. He rather raved over you, in fact." + +"Did he? How sweet of him. I met him again, I remember. Mr. Gwynne +brought him down to Rincona one day." + +"Oh?" + +And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit. + +"But he looks much much older." + +"He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey +on him more and more. + +"Oh." + +He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, +two weeks after the fire. + +Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a +coaxing smile. "Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me." + +"No," said Gora, shortly. "We are not engaged. Good friends, that is +all, and write occasionally." + +"Well, he must be very much interested--and you must be a very +interesting correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What +does he do, anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something +about the army." + +"He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone +into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me--oh, it +must be nearly two years ago--that if there should be a war he would +enlist as a matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and +he was sick of idleness--his good middle-class energetic blood +asserting itself, he said,--he was going to amuse himself with work, +incidentally try to make a fortune. His mother left a good deal of +money, but there are several children and I guess the present earl +needs most of it to keep up his estates, to say nothing of his +position. Fotten law, that--entail, I mean." + +Alexina came and sat down on the divan beside Gora, piling the cushions +behind her. "Are you a socialist?" + +"I am not. I believe in sticking to your own class, whether you have a +grudge against it or not, or even if you think it far from perfection." + +She shot a quick challenging glance at her admittedly aristocratic +sister-in-law, but Alexina had lifted the lower white of her eyes just +above their soft black fringe and looked more innocent than any new +born lamb. As she did not answer Gora continued: + +"I remember that night I sat out with Gathbroke on Calvary he said +something about socialism ... that it was a confession of failure. I +may feel so furious with destiny sometimes that I could go out and wave +a red flag, or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers +me is the thought that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a +reasonable fortune I'd have no more use for socialism than for a +rattlesnake in my bed. Why are you interested?" + +"Only as in any subject that interests a few million people. I haven't +the least intention of being converted, but I don't want to be an +ignoramus. Aileen and Sibyl and I did start Marx's _Das Kapital_--in +German! We nearly died of it. But I felt sure that this man, +Kirkpatrick, had studied his subject, if only because his language +changed so completely when he talked about it. It was as if he were +quoting, but intelligently. Of course the poor man had little or no +education to begin with. Somehow he struck me as a pathetic figure. +Perhaps when every one is educated--and there must be many thousands of +naturally intelligent men in the working class whose brains if trained +would be mighty useful in Washington--well, all having had equal +opportunities they would surely arrive at some way to improve +conditions without struggling for anything so hopeless as socialism. I +know enough to be sure that it is hopeless, because it antagonizes +human nature." + +"Rather. The trend under all the talk is more and more toward +individualism, not self-effacing communism. As for myself I like the +idea of the fight--for public recognition, I mean; and I don't think +I'd be happy at all if things were made too smooth for me; if, for +instance, in a socialized state it were decided that I could devote all +my time to writing, and that the state would take care of me, publish +my work, and distribute it exactly where it was sure to be appreciated. +I haven't any of the old California gambling blood in me, but I guess +the hardy ghost of those old days still dominates the atmosphere, and I +have not been one of those to escape." + +"It's in mine! Not that I care for gambling, really, like Aileen and +Alice. But I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking long +chances, and I have had inklings that I'll be rather more than less +fascinated as I grow older.... When are your stories to be published? I +am simply expiring to read them." + +"Are you?" + + + +III + + +Alexina had thrust her slim index finger unerringly through Gora's +bristling armor and tickled her weakest spot. The fledgling author +smiled into the dazzling eyes opposite and a deep flush rose to her +high cheek bones. + +"Rather!" + +"Then..." Gora rose and took a magazine from the table beside her bed. +She spread it open on her lap, when she had resumed her seat, and +handled it as Alexina had seen young mothers fondle their first-born. + +"It's here. Just out." + +"Oh!" Alexina gave a little shriek of genuine anticipation. "Read it to +me. Quick. I can't wait." + +Gora led a lonely life outside of her work, a lonely inner life always. +She had never had an intimate friend, and she suddenly reflected that +there had been a certain measure of sadness in her joy both when her +manuscripts were accepted and to-day when for the first time she had +gazed at herself in print.... She had had no one to rejoice with +her.... She felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to Alexina. + +But she gave this young wife of her brother whom she knew as little as +Alexina knew her, another swift suspicious glance.... No, there was +nothing of Alexina's usual high and careless courtesy in that eager +almost excited face. + +"I'd love to have your opinion.... I read very badly.... Make +allowances...." + +"Oh, fire away. If I'd written a story and had it accepted by that +magazine I'd read it from the housetops." + +Gora read the story well enough, and Alexina's mind did not wander even +to Gathbroke. It was written in a pure direct vigorous English. A +little less self-consciousness and it would have been distinguished. +The story itself was built craftily; she had been coached by a clever +instructor who was a successful writer of short stories himself; and it +worked up to a climax of genuine drama. But this was merely the +framework, the flexible technique for the real Gora. The story had not +only an original point of view but it pulsed with the insurgent +resentful passionate spirit of the writer. + +Alexina gave a little gasp as Gora finished. + +"Many people won't like that story," she said. "It shocks and jars and +gives one's smugness a pain in the middle. But those that do like it +will give you a great reputation, and after all there are a few +thousand intelligent readers in the United States. How on earth did +that magazine come to accept it?" + +Gora was staring at Alexina with an uncommonly soft expression in her +opaque light eyes. She felt, indeed, as if her ego would leap through +them and make a fool of her. + +"The editor wrote me something of what you have just said. He wanted +something new--to give his conservative old subscribers a shock. +Thought it would be good for them and for the magazine. You--you--have +said what I should have wanted you to say if I could have thought it +out.... I think I should have hated you if you had said, 'How +charming!' or 'How frantically interesting!'" + +"Well, it's the last if not the first. Aileen will say that and mean +it. I'll telephone to the bookstore the first thing Monday morning and +get a copy. Now I must go. It's late." + + + +IV + + +"Let me telephone for a taxi." + +Alexina laughed merrily. "You'll never believe it, but I've just thirty +cents in my purse. I forgot to ask Morty for something before he +left.... You see, I happened to find quite a bit in mother's desk and +so I've never thought to ask him for an allowance. But I shall at once." + +"An allowance? But you have your own money? Or is it because the estate +isn't settled? What has Morty to do with that?" + +"I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I +gave my power of attorney to Morty." + +"Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it." + +"Could I? Well! I'll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M." + +"Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?" + +"Oh ... why ... he asked me to ... I know nothing about business, and +he naturally would attend to my affairs." + +"But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And +the executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign +such papers as they advise.... Don't be angry, please. I am not +insinuating anything against Morty. He's never bad a dishonest thought +in his life ... has always been, the squarest ... but..." + +"Well?" + +Alexina's head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott +and Judge Lawton ... but for his sister ... + +"It's this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, +are just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some +are stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they +make up for it by being weaker in others.... I am talking particularly +of the money question, the struggle for existence, which the vast +majority of men are forced to make.... + +"Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have +any, to force success--in one way or another--out of her until the hour +they are able to lay down the burden.... Some are too strong and too +firm in their ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and +generally they are strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their +way against the most overwhelming odds.... Many are too clever not to +find some way of compromising and circumventing.... Others just peg +along and barely make both ends meet.... Others go under and down and +out. + +"Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and +high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a +duck takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and +steady worker he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market +before he was married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He +is frantic to get rich ... for more reasons than one." + +"But he never would do anything dishonorable." + +"No. Nothing he couldn't square with his conscience if it turned out +all right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little +difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the +possession of the women of his family, is his if he needs it. + +"Moreover, no doubt you have discovered that Morty is the sort of man +who looks upon women as man's natural inferiors, that if there is any +question of sacrifice the woman is not to be considered for a moment +... especially where no public risk is involved. That sort of man only +thinks he is too honest to refrain from taking some unrelated woman's +money, but as a matter of fact it is because she would send him to +State's Prison as readily as a man would. One's own women are safe. + +"I lent Morty my small inheritance with my eyes open. But he knows a +good deal of that particular business, and I did not dream the times +were going to be so bad.... I doubt if I ever see it again.... But you +must not run the risk of losing yours. I want you to promise me that on +Monday morning you will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power +of attorney. And as much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose +your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies +of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely +failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. +Then he could get a position again, and you would have your own income." + +"But do you mean to say that if I did revoke my power of attorney and +he asked me later for money to save his business that I should not give +it to him?" + +"Yes, I mean just that. Morty will never take any of the prizes in the +business world. He may hold on and make a living, that is all. He has +plenty to start with, and tells me he is doing fairly well, in spite of +the times. But he would do better in the long run as a clerk. In time +he might get a large salary as a sort of general director of all the +routine business of some large house--" + +Alexina curled her lip. "I do not want him to be a clerk." + +"No, of course you don't! But you'd like it still less if he cleaned +you out. You--would have to sell or rent your old home and live on a +hundred and fifty dollars a month in a flat in some out-of-the-way +quarter. You might have to go to work yourself." + +"I shouldn't mind that so much, except that I'm afraid I'd not be good +for much. Perhaps it was snobbish of me to object lo Morty's being a +clerk. But ... well, I'm not so sure that it is snobbish to prefer what +you have always been accustomed to--I mean if it is a higher standard. +And after all I married him when he was only a clerk." + +"You are surprisingly little of a snob, all things considered; but you +are a hopeless aristocrat." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"I think the line between the aristocratic and the snobbish attitude of +mind is almost too fine to be put into words. But they are often +confused by the undiscriminating. Will you revoke that power of +attorney on Monday?" + +"Shouldn't I wait until Morty is home? ... tell him first? It seems +rather taking an advantage ... and he will be very angry." + +"That doesn't matter." + +"What excuse shall I give him?" + +"Any one of a dozen. You are bored and want to take care of your money +... intend to learn something of business, as all women should, and +will in time.... Ring in the feminist stuff ... wife's economic +independence ... woman's new position in the world.... That will make +Morty so raving angry that he will forget about the other. Will you do +it?" + +"Yes, I will. I believe you are right. So were the others ... there +must be something in it." + +She told Gora of the advice of Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton. Gora nodded. + +"They meant more than they said. And merely because they are men of the +world, not because they like and trust Morty any the less." + +Alexina did not hear her. She was staring hard at the floor.... A year +ago ... three months ago ... she couldn't have done this thing. She had +been still under the illusion that she loved her husband, that her +marriage was a complete success. She would have sacrificed her last +penny rather than hurt his feelings. Now she only cared that she didn't +care.... She had admitted to herself that she did not love her husband +but that was different from committing an overt act that proved it.... +She felt something crumbling within her.... It was the last of the +fairy edifice of her romance ... of her first, her real, youth.... What +was to take its place? The future smugly secure on six thousand a year +and an inviolate social position ... a good dull husband ... not even +the prospect of travel.... + + + +V + + +She sprang to her feet and turned away her head. + +"Why don't you come and live with us?" she asked abruptly. "Why should +you keep this on? There are so many vacant bedrooms up there. You could +have one for your study. I'd love to have you. You'd have the most +complete independence. Do." + +Gora shook her head. "I've always this to fall back on." + +"Fall back on?" + +"Oh! I never meant to let that out. However.... Perhaps it is as +well.... Morty--you know his pride--everybody has his prime weakness +and that is his. Transpose it into snobbery if you like.... We did not +board down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid +well, but Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it +up. He was afraid you'd be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, +I did. One of my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I +entered the hospital, but kept on my room as I had to have one +somewhere. Eight months later she married, and I took it back. I found +I could run it as well as ever with the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman +she had discovered. But I never told Morty." + +Alexina laughed. "Better not. But you could run it and live with us all +the same." + +"No. I have too little time. I'd waste it coming back and forth, for I +must be here some time every day.... Besides..." + +"Your own precious atmosphere?" + +"You do understand!" + +"Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice." + +"You bet. And now, I'll see you to your car; stay with you until you +are safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don't assert your +independence in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore +Street are not spiteful socialists." + +As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to +Gathbroke's picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into +fists. + +"Oh ... you ... you.... Why weren't you.... Why didn't you...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his +day on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could +always summon at will, even when all was not well with him. + +To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had +been a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated +itself into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken +order, been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that +the retail merchants of San Francisco bought very sparingly; but he had +found in Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming +Japanese population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure. + + + +II + + +It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury +before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a +cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She +looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure +and her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in +France on a balmy day. But she quaked inside. + +She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile. +"I'm afraid you will be rather cross with me," she said softly. "But I +went down to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney +to you." + +"You did what?" The slow blood rose to Dwight's hair. He mechanically +took the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation +of falling through space ... out of somewhere.... + +Alexina repeated her statement. + +He recovered himself. "Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or +Judge Lawton." + +"Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own. +I did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up +from Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced +Mrs. Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down +there--those that read the serious new books and go to lectures when +there are any worth while--to join a class in economics. One of the +professors at Stanford is going to teach us. Aileen has lost +frightfully at poker lately and wants a new interest; she put Sibyl up +to it--who was delighted with the suggestion as she hasn't been +intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a practical streak; +so that studying economics appealed to her. + +"I jumped at the idea. It was a God-send. I have had so little to do. I +don't care for poker and one can't read all the time.... But after they +left I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying +economies in the abstract if I didn't have sense and 'go' enough to +manage my own affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn't draw +any money from the bank because I had given you my power of attorney. +Aileen has an allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually +comes out about even at poker in the course of the month, and if she +doesn't she pawns something. I've been with her to pawn shops and it's +the greatest fun. I don't mind telling you, as I know you never betray +a confidence. The Judge would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and +water. + +"Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some +stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs +over it. You know how she entertains. + +"I should never dare admit to them--or to the professor if he asked my +opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out--that I was too +lazy and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went +down first thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I +simply couldn't wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me +I shall attend to everything and not bother you, Morty dear." + + + +III + + +Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina +thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into +a saint. + +"I don't like it. I don't like it at all." + +Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate +to express his feelings. + +"I may be old-fashioned--" + +"You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school +of American husbands--" + +"There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world." + +"So there are, poor dears. It's going to be so hard for them--" + +"Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?" + +"Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my +old-fashioned family. I'd be much the same if I'd never taken any +interest in all these wonderful modern movements." + +"It's those chums of yours--Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly +approve of them." + +"Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference." + +"Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me ... disobey me?" + +"Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had +at the rehearsal. You haven't noticed, these three years, that I've had +my way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be +your way too. We've been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just +playing about, with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has +changed. We must look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole +burden on your shoulders--" + +"I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs." + +Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn't done any more. No +woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole +burden of life on her husband's shoulders. You have your own daily +battle in the business world. I will do the rest." + +"What damned emancipated talk." + +"What a funny old-fashioned word. We don't even say advanced or new any +more." + +"It's nonsense anyhow. You're nothing but a child." + +"You may just bet your life I'm not a child. Nor have I awakened all of +a sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of +modern science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always +discussing everything that interests the public; I have even read the +newspapers for two years." + +"Much better you didn't. There is no reason whatever for a woman in +your position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from +your charm." + +"Maybe, but we'll find more charm in Life as we grow older." + +His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something +that looked like a bogey. + +"May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got +everything down to a fine point.... It seems too bad you should +bother...." + +"Bother? I've been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little +good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James +and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its +elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up +when I pore over monthly bills and 'slips' and sign cheques." + +She hesitated. "You mustn't think for a minute that I want to make you +feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come, +... Of course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could +simply go on along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, +shortly after the first of the month, and you'll give me half." + + + +IV + + +Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but +in that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this +sheltered creature, with whom her mother had never discussed household +economics, and from whom he had purposely kept all knowledge of his +business, took for granted that he could pay his share of the monthly +expenses, merely because all the men she knew did twice as much, +however they might grumble. For the matter of that she never saw Tom +Abbott that he did not curse the ascending prices, but there was no +change whatever in his bountiful fashion of living. Alexina knew that +the times were bad and that her husband was having something of a +struggle, and, as a dutiful wife, was anxious to help him out for the +present, but it was simply beyond her powers of comprehension to grasp +the fact that he was in no position to pay half the expenses of their +small establishment. + +If he told her ... tried to make her understand ... even if she did, +how would he appear in her eyes? + +Of all people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina ... he +had never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at +their worst than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to +and precariously achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she +craved luxury and pomp, but because she would be forced to look up to +him with admiration and a lively gratitude. He had, in this spirit, +given her; in the most casual manner, handsome presents, or brilliant +little dinners at fashionable restaurants, in all of which she took a +fervent young pleasure. He had dipped into his slender capital, but of +this she had not even a suspicion ... he had made some airy remark +about celebrating a "good deal" ... no wonder ... he had her too well +bluffed. + +For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But +he did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl +that short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide +astonished eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set +his teeth and vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand +would last several months, even if he made no more than his expenses +meanwhile. + +He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a +lingering and malodorous death. + +"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young +and carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is +your own look-out." + +"Thank you, Morty dear." + +She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the +announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen +and Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of +economics with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had +been tutoring in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to +him whom Aileen disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, +Mrs. Francis Leslie Bascom and Miss Aileen Livingston Lawton. + +His reasons for coming to Ballinger House--which even he knew was +inaccessible to the common herd--were separate and tabulated. Alexina +had fascinated him against his best class principles; but he not only +jumped at the chance of meeting her again, he was excessively curious +to understand a woman of her class, to watch her in different moods and +situations. He was equally curious to meet other women of the same +breed; he had never brushed their skirts before, but he had often stood +and gazed at them hungrily as they passed in their limousines or +driving their smart little electric cars. + +He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so +much about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different +homes. He was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and +he had a good healthy class-consciousness and class-hatred. But he also +had a large measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to +have the opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner +circles, and when it came he had only hesitated long enough to search +his soul and assure himself that he was in no danger of growing +compliant and soft. Moreover he might possibly make converts, and in +any case it was not a bad way, society being still what it was, of +turning an honest penny. + +But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist +serene in his faith could be. + +The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one +elbow on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair +of fixed and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was +only vaguely aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent +streams of concentrated light. They looked like three little +sea-monsters, slim, flexible, malignant, ready to spring. + +He exaggerated in his embarrassment, but he was not so very far wrong. + +"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach +'em, all right." + +As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice +too loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that +you don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some." + +"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her +high light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing +that makes us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_." + +"And ain't you?" + +"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although +he is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in +Europe had meant middle-class. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no +right to pervert an honest historic old word into something so +different and so obnoxious." + +"To Marx all capitalists were in the same class. I suppose what you +mean is that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when +you have less capital than some of them that can't get in." + +"Sure thing. Take it from me." + +He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather +heavy sarcasm. + +"Even when they use slang." + +"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-class--bourgeois. +Too sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us." + +Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr. +Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little, +but as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the +naughtiness of Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken +a cigarette from a gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and +was asking him for a light. He gave her measure for measure, for he +lifted his heavy boot and struck a match on the sole. + +"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and +leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious +dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices, +which, however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping +everything from these lessons." + +"Do _you_ smoke?" + +"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve +of my friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots, +as Miss Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke. +I'll get you a cigar." + +She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room. + + + +II + + +Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the +evening paper. + +"Give me a cigar, Morty dear." + +"A cigar? What for?" + +"It would be too mean of those girls to smoke unless Mr. Kirkpatrick +did too, and I am sure we couldn't stand his tobacco. Even a whiff of +bad tobacco makes me feel quite ill." + +"I'll be hanged if I give my cigars to that bounder. The kitchen is the +place for him." + +"But not for us. And our minds are quite made up, you know. We are +going to study with him just to find out what these strange animals +called socialists are like. He is queer enough, to begin, with. And the +knowledge may prove useful one of these days.... If you won't give me +one I'll send James out--" + +Mortimer handed over one of his choice cigars with ill grace, and +Alexina returned to the library. Aileen was informing Mr. Kirkpatrick +how intensely she disliked Marx's beard, not only as she had seen it in +a photograph, but as she had smelt it in Spargo's too vivid description. + +He rose awkwardly as she entered, but he rose. She handed him the cigar +and struck a match and held it to one end while he drew at the other. +Their faces were close and she gave him a smile of warm and spontaneous +friendliness. + +Thought Mr. Kirkpatrick: "Oh, Lord, she's got me. I'd better make +tracks out of here. If she was a vamp like that Bascom woman she +wouldn't get me one little bit. Plenty of them where I come from. But +she's plain goddess with eyes like headlights on an engine." + +Perturbed as he was, however, he resumed his seat and drew +appreciatively at the finest cigar that had ever come his way. It had +the opportune effect of causing his class-hatred to flame afresh. No +fear that he would be made soft by teaching in the homes of these +pampered cats. For the moment he hated Alexina, seated in a carved +high-back Italian chair like a young queen on a throne. + +"Well," he growled. "Let's get to business. I've brought Spargo. Marx +is too much for me. He's terrible dull and involved. He was so taken up +with his subject, I guess, that he forgot to learn how to write about +it so's people without much time and education could understand without +getting a pain in their beans. Of course I've heard him expounded many +times from the platform, but there must have been about fifty Marxes, +for I've heard--or read--just about that many expounders of him and no +two agree so's you'd notice it. That, to my mind, is the only stumbling +block for socialism--that we have a prophet who's so hard to understand. + +"So, I've settled on Spargo. He has the name of being about the best +student of Marx and of socialism generally--it's split up quite a +bit--and he's easy reading. I fetched him along." + +He produced "Socialism" from his hat and hesitated. "I don't know +noth--a thing about teaching." + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," drawled Sibyl Bascom in her low +voluptuous voice and transfixing him with narrow swimming eyes; then as +he refused to be overcome, she continued more humanly: "We've been to +lots of classes, you know. There are all sorts of methods. Suppose one +of us reads the first chapter aloud and then you expound. That is, +we'll ask you questions." + +"That's fine," said Mr. Kirkpatrick with immense relief. "Fire away." + +And Alexina, who always read prefaces and introductions last, began +with "Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit." + + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Mr. Kirkpatrick realized his ambition to see with his own sharp +puncturing little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a +sewing-machine needle playing staccato) several of the most flagrant +examples of capitalistic extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled +away their useless lives and servitors battened. In other words the +extremely comfortable or the shamelessly luxurious homes built for the +most part by still active business men whose first real period of rest +would be in a small stone residence in a certain silent city Down the +Peninsula. + +Several were already occupied by their widows. In a climate where a man +can work three hundred and sixty-five days of the year the temptation +to do so is strong, and not conducive to longevity. + +The Ferdinand Thorntons, Trennahans, Hofers and others who had lost +their city homes on Nob Hill had not rebuilt, but lived the year round +in their country houses at Burlingame, San Mateo, Alta, Menlo Park, +Atherton, or "across the Bay," using the hotels when they came to town +for dances, but motoring home after the theater. + +Fortunately the finest and all of the newest mansions had been built in +the Western Addition and escaped the fire. Sibyl Bascom's father-in-law +had erected, shortly before his death, a large square granite palace +more or less in the Italian style, and as his widow preferred to live +in Santa Barbara, Frank Bascom had taken it over for himself and his +bride. + +Olive had carried her millions to France and found her marquis. (As he +was wealthy himself they contributed little to the current gossip of +San Francisco.) + +Janet Maynard lived with her mother, another widow of unrestricted +means, in a large low Spanish house with a patio, built by a famous +local architect with such success that Rex Roberts when he married +Polly Luning, had bought the nearest vacant lot and ordered a romantic +mansion as nearly like that of his wife's intimate friend as possible. +He would live in it as soon as the idiosyncrasies of The Architect and +Labor would permit. + +Mrs. Clement Hunter had another pale gray stone palace, supported in +front by noble pillars and commanding a superb view of the Bay, the +Golden Gate, and Mount Tamalpais. + +Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade +of stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted +geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other +nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and +innocent youth. + +Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square +bow-windowed mansard-roofed double house, built in +eighteen-seventy-eight, and unreclaimed. With it went a moderate +income, and Alice lived on under the ugly old roof chaperoned by an +aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal assortment of relatives +because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so terrified of draughts +that her absence when convenient could always be counted on. + + + +II + + +All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined +the class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits +among them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be +expected of "parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress, +poker, and some absorbing creature of the other sex. + +Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen, +Mrs. Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently +adopted by California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of +curiosity, having read a certain amount of socialism, but never met a +socialist. + +She confided to Mrs. Thornton that she was not acutely anxious to meet +another, and Mrs. Thornton replied tartly: + +"What do you want to belong to such a class for? It's rank hyprocrisy +to pretend interest in a question we all hate the very name of, and to +give the creature money that he no doubt turns over to the 'cause' with +his tongue in his cheek. I'd never give one of them the satisfaction of +knowing that I recognized his existence." + +Said Maria Abbott firmly: "Exactly. We should ignore them, just as we +ignore envious and spiteful and ill-bred outsiders of any sort." + +"But we may not be able to ignore them," said Mrs. Hunter. "Their +organization is the best of any party even if their numbers are not +overwhelming. If they are content to advance slowly and by purely +political methods there is no knowing who will own this or any +government fifty years hence. For my part I'd rather they all turn +raging anarchists; then we could turn machine guns on them and clean +'em out. I hate them, for I was too long getting where I am now, and I +want to stay. But I don't make the mistake of ignoring them, and I +rather like having a squint at them at close quarters. Kirkpatrick has +taken us to several socialist meetings ... we borrow the servants' +coats and mutilate our oldest hats.... Socialism seems to me rather +more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick is about +the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and +one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere.... That +would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor California is +a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the riff-raff and +derelicts.... My other hope is that even they--that is to say the least +unbalanced of them--will come in time to realize that socialism is +economically unsound--" + +"Do you mean to say," cried Mrs. Abbott, "that Alexina has gone to +socialist meetings?" + +"Rather. She's very keen--" + +"Believes in it?" + +"Rather not. But she is naturally thorough--has a really extraordinary +tendency, for a San Franciscan of her sex and status, to finish +anything she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick +she sticks out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it +is. She has him pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the +rest of us alive she can smooth him down like a regular lion tamer." + +"Well, you're nothing but a lot of parlor socialists," said Mrs. +Thornton disgustedly. "And just as ridiculous as any other hybrids. But +I'm relieved that it hasn't spoiled your taste for the simpler +pleasures of life. Maria, as you don't play poker we'll have a game of +bridge, Ladie, ring for cocktails, will you--or would you rather have a +gin fizz? Don't look so horrified, Maria. We're better than socialists, +anyhow; if they did win out you'd have farther to fall than we, for +you're a moss-backed old conservative who hates change of any sort, +while we not only love change of all sorts but are regular anarchists: +do as we please and snap our fingers at the world. Here we are." + +The three were in Mrs. Thornton's Moorish palace half way between San +Mateo and Burlingame, a situation that symbolized the connecting bridge +between the old and new order for Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Thornton was a +lineal descendant of the Rincon Hill of the sixties and had made her +début with Maria Groome in the eighties. But she had married an +immoderately rich man and had a barbaric taste for splendor that formed +the proper setting for her own somewhat barbaric beauty, and imperious +temper. Her dark and splendid beauty was waning, for in the matter of +giving aid to nature with secrecy or with art she was faithful to the +old tradition. But she was always an imposing figure and as close to +being the first power in San Francisco society as that happy-go-lucky +independent class would ever tolerate. + + + +III + + +Kirkpatrick liked Mrs. Hunter, regarding her as "an honest plain-spoken +dame without any frills." This estimate applied not only to her +temperament but to her costumes. He admired her severe tailored suits +(although he sensed their cost) and her smart, plain, hard, little hats. + +The "frills and furbelows" of the younger "spenders" irritated the +group of nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond +endurance; but he managed to stand it by reminding himself that +irritation of all such was a healthy sign and vastly preferable to +insidious tolerance. + +Mrs. Hunter was also as regular in her attendance as Mrs. Dwight, Miss +Lawton and Mrs. Price Ruyler, and asked fairly intelligent questions. +The others floated in and out, and one by one dropped from the class, +until toward the middle of the second winter none remained but Alexina, +Aileen, Mrs. Hunter and Hélène Ruyler, who, like Aileen, found in the +"frantic interest" of the materialistic creed which antagonized every +instinct in them, a distraction from the excessive gambling which had +threatened to wreck their nerves, purses, and peace of mind. They +confided this artlessly to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who replied dryly that they +were the best argument he had in stock. + +But if the major part of his fashionable class deserted him in due +course he had meanwhile seen the inside of their homes; and in each +case, Alexina, who divined his interest, arranged to have him shown +over the house from the kitchens and pantries straight up to the +servants' quarters. + +These he found unexpectedly comfortable and complete. In fact, they +were so much more modern and adorned than the little cottage in the +Mission where he lived with his mother that he longed for the immediate +installation of a system that would teach these workers what real work +was. What enraged him further was their "airs." They too obviously +looked upon him as an alien intruder, whereas their mistresses, until +socialism bored them, were, for the most part, as charmingly courteous +as his one reliable friend, Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. + + + +IV + + +During the first winter and spring while his pupils were still fairly +regular in their attendance, he was both incensed and grimly amused by +their various idiosyncrasies. He soon became accustomed to their vanity +boxes and their public application of powder and lip stick, the frank +crossing of their knees that exhibited more diaphanous silk than he had +ever seen in his life before, the polite excitement that any new +article of attire worn by one seemed to induce in all, the wicked but +on the whole good-natured baiting of Aileen Lawton and Polly Roberts, +the alternate insolence and Circean glances of Mrs. Bascom, who amused +herself "practicing on him," and the constant smoking of most of them. + +But what he could neither understand nor accept was their attitude +toward one another. They would all rush at the hostess of the day as +they entered, or at late comers, with the excited enthusiasm of loved +and loving intimates who had not met for months; and Kirkpatrick, who +missed nothing, knew that they met once a day if not oftener. + +In spite of their intimacy their warm enraptured greetings carried a +patent measure of admiration and even respect. It was always at least +fifteen minutes before they would settle down for "work" and meanwhile +they chattered about their common interests, but always with the air of +relating long-delayed information and a frank desire to give of their +best. He could have understood "gush," and sentimentalism, but this +attitude of which he had neither heard nor read bothered him until one +day he had a sudden, flash of enlightenment. + + + +V + + +"Is it class-consciousness?" + +He asked the question of Gora, who dropped in upon a class at Alexina's +or Aileen's sometimes on a free afternoon, and with whom he was walking +down to the trolley car. + +"Something like that. Caste they would call it if they thought about it +at all, which to do them justice they don't.... It used to be the +fashion in San Francisco for everybody to 'knock' everybody else. Then +came a revulsion and everybody began to praise and boost. You see it in +all circles, but the way it has taken that crowd is to show their +intense loyalty to one another by a constant reminder of it in manner, +and in refraining from criticism of one another, no matter how much +they may gossip about others outside of their particular set. Once, +just to try my sister-in-law, I told her that in my nursing I had +stumbled across evidence of an illicit love affair going on between one +of her friends and a married man, the husband of my patient. My sister +became so remote that I had the impression for a few moments that she +really wasn't there. Once it would have infuriated me, but I have +improved my sense of humor and developed my philosophy, so I merely +turned the conversation, as she wouldn't speak at all. She had quite +withdrawn--still further into the sacred preserves, I suppose.... + +"They are not only loyal but really seem to have the most exalted +admiration for one another because they are all of the same heaven-born +stock.... That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that +they get so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not +cultivate as many kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as +their wits are equal to. When they can, they vary the monotony of life +with summers in Europe and winters in New York--or Santa Barbara, where +they meet many interesting people from the East or England; but some of +them won't leave their busy husbands or the husbands won't be left; or +parents are not amenable; so they try to create an atmosphere of high +spirits and sheer delight in youth and one another, and the result is +almost a work of art. I rather respect them, but I envy them a good +deal less than before I knew them so well." + +"Oh, you envied them? They should envy you." + +"Well, they don't! Yes, I envied them because it is my natural right to +be one of them and fate slammed the door before I was born. It +embittered my first youth, and it might have become an obsession after +my brother married into society if I had not found the right kind of +work. That and the boring Sundays I've spent at Rincona, and the +experiences I have had with that young set, who are always at Mrs. +Dwight's more or less; besides a profound satisfaction in accomplishing +literary work that not one of them could do to save their lives--all +this has routed a good deal of my old bitterness of spirit. I am not +sorry that I had it and indulged it, however. Discontent and resentment +put spurs on the soul. Anything is better than smugness." + +"It's made you different enough from these others, all right. Even from +Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself.... I'd rather you'd stayed +discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've +suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're +jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention +to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as +they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't +give my eye teeth to see hanging out the wash or running a machine in a +factory."' + +Gora turned to him with a smile. At this time she was as nearly happy +as was possible for that insurgent too aspiring spirit. + +"Nevertheless, they've made you over in a way--Oh, don't flame! I don't +mean your principles ... other ways that won't hurt you in the least. +You cut your hair differently. You wear better shoes. You have your +clothes pressed--the suit you wear up here anyhow. You've reformed your +speech somewhat, and you know a good deal more about many things than +you did a few months ago. I am expecting any day to see you wearing a +'boiled' shirt." + +"Oh, no, not that! It'd never do. It's true enough I got to feeling +self-conscious about my rough clothes and boots, especially after I met +that dude brother of yours one day in the hall and he gave me a +once-over that made me feel like a tramp." + +"Oh! ... But he was snubbed himself not so very long ago, and I suppose +it gives him a certain pleasure to snub some one else, I am ashamed of +him.... But tell me, don't you like them rather better than you +expected? Find them rather a better sort? You must see that there is +practically no leisure class as far as the men are concerned--" + +"They have time enough to go chicken chasing--" + +"Well, aside from that? At least they do work. And the younger women? +You knew before that they were frivolous because they had too much +money and too few responsibilities. Many of the older women have a +serious and useful side, even if they do waste an unholy amount of time +at cards." + +"Well, if you ask me, their manners, when they remember to use 'em, are +better than I expected. Only that Miss Thorndyke is cold and haughty, +but perhaps that's because she's poor (for her), or is covering up +something, or is just plain stupid.... Mrs. Dwight's manners are always +perfect. She's my idea of a lady--just! And in the new system there'll +be a long sight more ladies than is possible now, only no +aristocrats.... Yes, they're decent enough considering they're rotten +poisoned by money and thinkin' themselves better'n the mass; and I like +their affection for one another. But they could be all that in the +socialist state and more too. They'd have to cut out drink and +gambling, and a few other diversions some of 'em'll drift into, if one +or two of 'em haven't already--just through being bored to death." + +"Do you honestly think socialism means universal virtue?" + +"No, I don't. I'm no such greenhorn; though there's some that does, or +pretends to.... But I mean there'd be no _drifting_ into vice like +there is now, no indulgence of any old weakness because temptation was +always following them about or just round the corner. That's the +trouble now.... But in the most perfect state some would be watching +out for their chance, just because the old Adam was too strong in spite +of the fact that all the old reminders had disappeared." + +"More likely they'd all murder one another because they were some ten +thousand times more bored than that poor little group whose brains you +are addling." + +"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Miss Gora. You ought to give +that pen of yours to socialism. There would be all the revenge you +could want--and it's what you're entitled to. Then I could call you +Comrade Gora." + +"Call me Comarade by all means if it hurts you to say Miss to a fellow +worker.... You admit then that envy of a society you were not born into +and which refuses to acknowledge you as an equal, is the secret of your +desire to pull it down?" + +"Partly that." he admitted cooly. "Not that I'd change places with any +of those fat millionaires I see shuffling down the steps of the +Pacific-Union Club--although I'll admit to you what I wouldn't to these +young devils in my class, that I know some socialists who would. I hate +the sight of 'em. But I want to do away with class-rights and +class-distinctions, not only because I just naturally have no use for +them but because I want to put an end to the misery of the world." + +"You mean the material misery. What would you do with the other seven +hundred different varieties?" + +"Well.... I guess each case would have to take care of itself. Perhaps +we'd get round to it after a while. Get power and class-envy out of the +world, and some genius, like as not, would invent a post-graduate +course of colleges for human nature. All things are possible." + +"You are an optimist! Here's our car. Come home with me and share the +supper that I pay for with the tainted money of a plutocrat. Only we +haven't any real plutocrats in San Francisco. Only modest millionaires. +Will you?" + +"Yes." said Mr. Kirkpatrick. "And thank you kindly." He even smiled, +for he was developing a latent heavily overlain seed of humor; +inherited from the full bay tree that had flourished in his +grandfather, born in County Clare, where men sometimes indulged in +rebellion but did not take themselves too seriously withal. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +That winter and the following seasons for the next few years passed +very rapidly for Alexina. Besides her classes and the constant +companionship of her friends (to say nothing of the excitement of +helping one or two of them out of not infrequent scrapes), she had for +a time the absorbing interest of refurnishing the best part of her +house. + +The square lower hall which had been scantily furnished with the +grandfather's clock, a hat-rack, and a settee, and whose walls were +covered with "marble paper," was painted, walls and wood, a deep ivory +white, and refurnished with light wicker furniture, palms, and growing +plants. The hat-rack was abolished, and the small library on the left +of the entrance turned into a men's dressing-room. The folding doors +were removed from the great double parlors, the "body brussels" +replaced by hardwood floors, the walls tinted a pale gray as a +background for the really valuable pictures (including the proud and +gracious and beautiful Alexina Ballinger, dust long since in Lone +Mountain), and the splendid pieces of Italian furniture which had +always seemed to sulk and bulge against the dull brown walls. The rep +and walnut sets were sent to the auction room and replaced by +comfortable chairs and sofas whose colors varied, but harmonized not +only with one another but with the rugs that Alexina under Gora's +direction had bought at auction. In fact she bought many of her new +pieces at auction and with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over +the advertisements and then go down to the crowded rooms and bid. + +The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her +mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with +bookcases to the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken +tables against an expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a +wedding gift from Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art) +that had despoiled a desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise. + +The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had +been removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den +for long rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer +when she remained in the city. + +The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and +gold wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the +sideboards were built into the wails end could be replaced only at +great cost; they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties, +and no doubt exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs +which had been merely recovered. + +As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced +by electricity. + +All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her +brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to +achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable +people would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative. +Moreover, entertaining at home would be far cheaper for him than at the +restaurants. + +He was doing fairly well at this time, for he had learned what +commodities the retail men were likely to buy of a firm as small as +his, and he had got into touch with one or two foreign markets not +monopolized by the older houses. Moreover, he had been speculating a +little in the new Nevada mines, and successfully. He presented Alexina +with a Victrola which included the music for all the new dances, and a +long coat of baby lamb lined with her favorite periwinkle blue. To his +sister he returned a thousand dollars of her money. + +Alexina knew nothing of these speculations and felt that her original +faith in him was justified. He did not offer even yet to pay all the +monthly expenses of the house, explaining casually that the greater +part of his profits went back into the business; but he handed over his +share promptly, and such fleeting doubts and anxieties as may once have +visited his still inexperienced wife faded and finally disappeared. + + + +II + + +They began to entertain a little during the second winter, Mrs. Groome +having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large +drawing-room had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a +habit, when there was "nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and +announcing they were coming up to take a whirl. This led to more +telephoning, and some twenty couples would dance in the long-silent old +house at least once and often three times a week. + +The new order delighted James, who felt young again, and his hastily +improvised suppers were models of unpretentious succulence. There were +always sherry and whiskey in the handsome old decanters on the +sideboards; and, at the equally perfect little dinners, for a time, two +bottles of Alexander Groome's favorite brand of champagne (which he had +remembered with satisfaction on his deathbed that he had not outlived) +were brought up from the cellar by the beaming James. + +When, almost with tears, he informed his mistress' husband that the +last bottle had been served Mortimer could do no less than order up a +case. He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent +native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to +appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler. + +He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business." +Nearly all the young men, married or otherwise, that came to his house +(Alexina subtly encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or +less importance or standing in the world of business and finance (two +were lawyers in their first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne), +and the more prosperous he appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the +extent of Alexina's income) the more apt would business be to flow his +way, the less likely they would be to suspect him of playing the stock +market. At all events it enhanced his standing and gave him intense +pleasure. + +Moreover, as time passed it became evident to his sensitive ego that he +was no longer looked upon as an outsider. He was accepted as a matter +of course. He was one of them. Neither men nor women (not even Aileen) +continued to ask themselves whether they liked him or not. He was there +and to stay and that was the end of it. They had always liked his +manners; he made a charming host, and, as ever, he danced like "a god +with wings on his heels." + +Quite naturally in due course some one offered to put him up at the +most exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to +which every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance +belonged as a matter of course. Old men whose names had once been +potent in the great banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed +with sad and rheumy eyes down upon the new city in which there was +barely a familiar landmark to remind them of their youth or the years +of their power and their pride. They sat there all day long, day after +day; and tourists went away with the impression that the imposing brown +stone mansion on the sacred crest of Nob Mill was a sumptuously endowed +retreat for the incurably aged. + +But the majority of its members were very much alive and still +well-padded; and, far from being on a pale diet, were deeply +appreciative of the famous culinary resources of the chef, and showed +it. + +When the offer was made to Mortimer he accepted with a bright: "Oh, +thanks, old chap. I'd like it immensely," But when, on the first day of +his membership, he stood in one of the front windows and gazed out at +the ruins opposite--the Pacific Union Club and the Fairmont Hotel were +still two oases in the rubbled waste of Nob Hill--he felt so exultant +and so happy that he dared not open his lips lest he betray himself. He +could mount no higher socially. All that he had to strive for now was +his million--or millions. When he had half a million he would build a +house at Burlingame that could be enlarged from time to time. + +Only with the "Rincona crowd" he had made no headway. Maria did not +hesitate to comment on the extravagance of doing the house over, the +membership at the club with all it entailed, Alexina's little electric +car, and above all the constant entertaining. A moderate amount was due +Alexina's position; but open house--nothing made money fly so quickly. +Prices were getting higher every day (there came a time, in the wake of +the great war, when she looked back with sad amazement at the morning +of her discontent) and rich people were getting richer while poor +people like themselves (she meant what Alexina still called the A. A.) +were growing poorer. + +Tom Abbott had not put Mortimer up at the club. He happened to know +that although his brother-in-law was doing fairly well he was not +making a fortune, and suspected that he dabbled in stocks. But he said +nothing of this to his wife, and as he knew that Alexina had long since +revoked her power of attorney (she had given him to understand that +this was done at Mortimer's suggestion) he believed that her money at +least was safe. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Alexina, although she would have found it impossible, even if she had +so desired, to relapse into the incognitance of the years preceding her +mother's death, had nevertheless locked and sealed and cellared her +ivory tower, those depths of her nature where, she suspected, her true +ego dwelt. It was an ego she had forfeited the right to indulge, nor +had she at this time any desire to know more of herself than she did. +Life after all was very pleasant; she managed to fill it with many +little and even a few absorbing interests; and once she spent a month +at Santa Barbara chaperoning Janet Maynard, where her duties sat +lightly upon her and she would have responded naturally if addressed as +Miss Groome, so completely did Mortimer fade into the background. In +the summer of nineteen-thirteen Judge Lawton and Aileen overcame all +protests and took her with them to Europe, where, after a month in +Paris, she visited Olive de Morsigny in her renaissance château on the +Loire. The memory of Gathbroke revisited her and she half-wished the +Judge would go to England, but the climate did not agree with him, and +after a few more enchanted weeks, in Italy and Spain, she returned to +Mortimer, who was distinctly duller than ever. + +But she had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her +life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in +the face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as +ever attempted to stand between a girl and her fate. + +Nevertheless, immediately after her return from Santa Barbara in the +late autumn of nineteen-eleven, and wholly without, analysis or +pondering, she made a significant change in the order of her life. +Mortimer, who had, during her absence, occupied a large room at the +back of the house visited by the afternoon sun, found himself invited +to retain it.... They must avoid the least possibility of a family +until they were better off.... She had been hearing the subject +discussed ... the most economical baby cost fifty dollars a month. With +a permanent trained nurse, and of course they would have one, the cost +would easily be doubled ... thousands were required for the proper +education of a child ... even if she had girls she should wish them to +go to college; she was not half educated herself ... and boys, with +their extravagances, their debts, they cost a mint; it was better for +children to be born outright in the humbler classes than to be born +into a rich set without riches themselves ... it all put her in a panic +every time she thought of it.... Morty was so sensible and had such a +high sense of responsibility, of course he understood ... children, +even when small, would hamper him fearfully, especially as he had not +even begun to make his million.... As for herself she would be more +economical than ever and help him like the good pal she was. + +Mortimer had the sensation of being trussed up with invisible but +inflexible silken thongs. His thoughts need not be recorded. + + + +II + + +Alexina refurnished her bedroom in her favorite periwinkle blue; a low +graceful day-bed with a screen before the stationary washstand helped +to create the atmosphere of a boudoir. It had an intensely personal +atmosphere in which man, more particularly a lawful husband, had no +place. + +When Alexina stood on the threshold and surveyed this room, chaste, +cool, proud, and exquisitely lovely, she lifted her hand and blew off a +kiss, out of the window, wafting away the memory of the room as it had +been. She had remarkable powers of obliteration, a sort of River of +Lethe among the backwaters of her mind, where she held below the +surface all she wished to forget until it ceased to struggle. She never +again gave a thought to her early relationship with her husband; not +even to the indifference or distaste which had followed so quickly upon +her curiosity and her determination to feel romantic at all costs. + + + +III + + +Subtly she felt she was happier than she had ever been even in those +first weeks, when she had barred the gates of her fool's paradise +behind her; she felt as free and happy as the birds skimming over the +beds of periwinkle below her window, and (miraculously finding her +second youth quite as productive as her first) took no pains to +conceive of anything better. She looked neither forward nor back, and +all was well. + +She even flirted a little, that being the fashion, and, having had +enough of business men, encouraged the devotions of Bascom Luning and +Jimmie Thorne. She saw them when they chose to call in the daytime, and +regaled the glowering Mortimer at the dinner table with scraps of their +sapience. + +Mortimer had resigned himself long since to the sacrifice of several of +his bourgeois ambitions, among them to be master in his own house; but +not an iota of his convictions. Although it would not have occurred to +him to distrust his wife if she had chosen to sit up all night with a +man, he made frozen comments upon the impropriety of a woman having men +in the house when her husband was not there, sitting out dances with +men, taking long tramps through Marin County with three men and no one +for chaperon but Alice Thorndyke and Janet Maynard--shocking +flirts--whole Sundays--with lunch heaven knew where, and himself, who +hated tramping, not included. + +But these grim remonstrances were met in so gay a spirit of badinage +that he felt ridiculous, particularly as no powers of badinage or of +repartee had been included in his own mental equipment; and he usually +relapsed into a polite and bored silence. + +He never had had much to say at the dinner table when they were alone, +and, as time went on, his comments on the day were exhausted before the +soup had given place to the entrée, and Alexina fell into the habit of +bringing her Italian text-book to the table--the study of Italian just +then being the rage in her set--and whatever interesting book she had +on hand. Mortimer made no protest. His brain was fagged at night. It +was a relief not to be expected to talk when they dined alone; those +long silences had been oppresive even to him; he rather welcomed the +books. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +This complete new freedom, and personal privacy, entailed in time a +result which Alexina would have been the last to anticipate even if she +had disposed of her husband by death or divorce. + +Owing to the thoroughness of her mental methods she was psychologically +free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been +transposed by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will +when it is strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, +thought; but it has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and +in that mysterious region are the subtle inheritances of mind and +character, the springs and the direction, of all functional life; a +fate with a thousand threads on her wheel, filaments from the souls and +the bodies, the minds and the acts, of every ancestor straight back to +that vast impersonal ocean where, unthinkable millions of years ago +proemial life awaited the call of the worlds. + +This aged untiring fate at the wheel battles unceasingly with the +conscious mind above, for age is prone to live by law and rote. These +fates, the oldest daughters of the Earth-Mother, Nature, know nothing +of morals or manners, assume that men and women are as naïve in their +normality as the denizens of forest and field. And so they are while +children. + + + +II + + +The eternal pull between civilizing Mind (Oh, centuries yet from being +civilized!) and the memoried but obstinate old lady at the wheel (who +laughs when a man of powerful will and too active mind "wills" sleep; +forcing him finally to choose between the horrors of insomnia, the +insidious tyranny of drugs, and the doubtful and wearisome alternative +of psychotherapeutics)--this pull, automatic in people of low estate, +becomes bitter and often appalling where the mind is highly developed +and attuned besides to the codes and customs of the best that +civilization has so far accomplished. + +The most vital of all these functions, for without it Mother Earth +would be like an ant hill without ants, and all these ancient norms of +daughters as homeless as the rest of the fates, is what man in a spirit +of social compromise has labeled an instinct--the sex-instinct. It is +no more an instinct than recurring sleep, lymphatic action, hunger, +thirst, alimentation. It is a primal function for which Mind, wisely +foreseeing the consequences of too much Nature, long since created laws +both civil and social to curb. There are many impulses, Inherited, from +ten thousand ancestors and constantly jogged by Earth's busy agent, +human nature, that may logically be called instincts (their roots lying +in the ancient social groups and their struggle to exist) but not a +function that governs the law of reproduction, as appetite governs the +law of renewing the vital necessities of the body. + + + +III + + +In the Latin races the conscious war between the brain above and the +sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere +excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect +body, is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence, +their practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to +life, psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple +question of hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of +that modern, development, called romance, which has given birth to a +peculiar form of personal imagination, too often without foundation or +logic--all these preclude that most active of all mental aids to the +matter of fact needs of the body--glamour. + +But it is far otherwise with the English-speaking races--loosely called +Anglo-Saxon, They are powerfully sexed; their feelings and sentiments +go deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but +fatal clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is +perhaps the most precious of their achievements, and they have +established a code which not only demands rectitude of act but +suppression of thought and desire where there is no lawful outlet. + +Nothing, possibly, has more infuriated the old lady at the methodically +performing wheel than this. She takes her revenge and squirts poison +into the physical structure of the brain, obscures the soul with dark +and brooding clouds, and subtly reduces the blood system to such a +state that any germ is welcome. + + + +IV + + +Once more Mind uses its highest faculties and outwits her, having no +intention that civilization shall drop below the plane to which it has +been raised through long laborious centuries of time. Life becomes more +diverse, more complex. The middle classes work harder to live; they +have little leisure for thoughts, for introspection. Punishment is +dire.... Those that have leisure and yet not enough to command the more +brilliant and special forms of distraction are supplied with public +libraries, gymnasiums, free medical advice regarding the laws of +hygiene in places where they cannot fail to see it, new forms of cheap +amusement; they are subtly encouraged to take up useful work or study; +or there are increasing pressures which may force even this +semi-leisure class to work for luxuries if not for bread. Tens of +thousands of women are led into the passionate diversions of club life. +For them, too, politics with its fierce championships and hatreds and +frictions; the necessity of concentration of thought on the impersonal +plane if only in the matter of getting the best of rivals within the +fold; and if hair flies souls are saved. + +Over the Oldest Profession Mind still scratches its head in vain. It is +ever hopeful, and hamstrings a sovereign patron, like alcohol, now and +again; but the lady at the wheel smiles, for here, in addition to the +unquenchable maternal instinct, the ignorance of the poor, and the +glamour that the men of certain races have learned to give to love, she +has her clearest field. + +Aside from the women of commerce there are, of course, many secret +rebels--now and then only does one make her exit from society through +the courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or +capital, suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies--which +are vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding +genius is more than commonly out of patience--and rise to serene +heights or grow morbid and irritable according to the strength or the +meagerness of their equipment; or the nature of their resources. A +cultivated resource is a persistent fiction that life is as it ought to +be, not as it is, and it is no plan of theirs to read books or witness +plays that might carve and populate a new groove in their brains. + +Let no one imagine that this class will become more "enlightened," +"broader," as time goes on. Not for a century at least. Mind has made +too great a success of this product; she has practically achieved a +complete triumph over the lady at the wheel. It is this class that has +made civilization progress, the solid thing it is to date. The +excrescences, the deserters from the normal, scintillating or subtle, +may be tolerated for the spice they give to life but they will never +rule. + +Possibly they do not mind. Life Is made up of compromises and +compensations. + + + +V + + +American women in youth, of the visibly reputable world, may be freely +divided into two classes, the oversexed and those that seem cold to +themselves and others until they are well into the period of their +second youth--between twenty-four and thirty; and a not inconsiderable +number are so and permanently. In the first case they either +precipitate themselves into matrimony or have one or more intrigues +until they find the man they wish to marry, when they settle down and +make excellent wives. The others, if they are imaginative and +high-minded, fall in love romantically and marry far too soon; or they +capitalize their youth or beauty and marry to the best advantage; or +they elect to live a life of serene spinsterhood like Alexina's Aunt +Clara, and bring up the family children. A not inconsiderable number +take their fling late. + +When the American girl of the super-refined class, and whose baleful +norm in the crypt was asleep at the wheel in her first blind youth, +finds herself disappointed in the most intimate partnership that +exists, the complaisance, voluntary at the beginning, drifts into +habit, more and more grimly endured. Some have the moral courage to put +an end to it as they would to any false situation, but if individuals +were not rare in this world we should have chaos, not a civilization of +sorts which is a pleasant place to plant the feet, however high into +the clouds the head may poke its investigating nose. + +It is natural that with such women during the period of endurance all +love should seem distasteful, and the mind dwell upon any other +subject. But remove the cause of sex-inertia and there is likely to be +the stir and awakening of spring after a long monotonous winter of hard +frost and blanketing snow. Or a homelier simile: remove the cause of +chronic indigestion and the appetite becomes fresh and normal. + +Thus Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +San Francisco, commencing in September, has three or four months of +perfect weather. The cold fogs and winds cease to pay their daily +visits, the rainy season awaits the new year. The skies are a deep and +cloudless blue, the air is warm and soft and alluring, never too hot, +although the overcoats of summer are discarded. + +The city lies bathed in golden sunlight or the sharp jeweled light of +stars, when the moon is not blazing like a crystal bonfire. Then Mount +Tamalpais and other mountains across the Bay and behind the city take +on a chiseled outline that, particularly at night, makes them look +curiously new, as if but yesterday heaved from the deep, and Nature too +busy to provide them with a background and the soft blurs of time for +centuries to come. This primeval look of bare California mountains on +clear nights has something sinister and menacing in its aspect as if at +any moment they might once more brood alone over the earth. + + + +II + + +Alexina returned from abroad early in November and stood one morning +outside her eucalyptus grove, revolving slowly on one heel, schoolgirl +fashion, as she gazed up at the steep densely populated hill that rose +from the street below her own private little hill, and cut off her view +of the hills of Berkeley and the mountains beyond; at the broad crowded +valleys on the south; the range of hills that hid the Pacific Ocean, +and included Mount Calvary with its cross and the symmetrical mass of +Twin Peaks; the bare brown mountains of the north piling above the +green sparkling bay with its wooded and military islands. + +Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she +had seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it +to art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she +had returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving +off the disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her +to admit it. + +San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that +compact mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with +sudden palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the +impression that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike +Genoa. But it seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had +just paid her first brief visit to the old world, an interval, +moreover, that had been without a responsibility, cut her off so +completely from her general life that when variously addressed +"Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Señorita," she ceased almost at once to +feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not forbidden herself to +dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with a future to sketch +with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her pleasure. + +But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in +Europe. She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert +Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary +bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he +intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social +prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the +totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into +the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife +were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and +many small dinners, not avowedly bridge or poker parties, were as +inevitable as crab in season; but there were too many young men whom +girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony of crab à la +poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as little to say +as poor Morty. She had known dèbutantes who flatly refused to dance +with married men or even to be introduced to them. + +California was her fate. No doubt of that. She might never see Europe +again, for while it was all very well to be a guest once it would be +quite impossible another time. She certainly could not afford it +herself and keep Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as +she might if her home were in New York. + +Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not. +Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him +so depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven. His eyes +were as lifeless as slate, his voice was flat, although for that matter +he was almost dumb. When at home he sat brooding heavily by the open +western windows of the drawing-room, or moved restlessly about. To all +her questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse +than ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As +she had not been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself, +and had paid few week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about +and the men talked of nothing but the business depression.... Alexina +had shrugged her shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle +reproach for leaving him to the dull cares of business while she +enjoyed herself in Europe. + +She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly +comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money +which with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the +household expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club +by the ocean, and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of +his idolatry on Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was +and it was now two years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a +luxurious bachelor at the back of the house with an always amiable +companion at breakfast and dinner. + + + +III + + +Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and +watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty +had consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying +him. She hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be +happy in his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his +divagations from the world--and she could trust him to do that! Now +that she had ceased to be the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves +and torpid imagination she would be the last to condemn him. Human +Nature was an ever opening book to her these days, and she wondered +what would happen to herself if any of several men she liked were +capable of making her love him, whipping up a personal storm in those +emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly intruded themselves +upon her consciousness. + +She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the +old world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are +or not, and where life looks to the American the quintessence of +romance.... She had concluded that the most satisfactory experience +that could come to her would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a +man who possessed all the requirements to induce it, but who would +either be the unsuspecting object, or, reciprocating, would continue to +love her with the world between them. + +For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did +not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might +for a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she +recalled the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were +put to meet their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole +drama of man and woman. + +Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and +society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often +laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when +circumstances have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness +even the blind urge of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go +on sullenly feeding the fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for +the astrological moment. + + + +IV + + +Alexina shrugged her shoulders impatiently and went into the house. She +would go down to the bank and clip her coupons. She cultivated +assiduously the practical side of life, making the most of it, +delighted when repairs were needed on her flats, regretting that the +greater part of her income came from ground rents, collected, as ever, +by Tom Abbott, and bonds, from which she still experienced a childish +pleasure in cutting the coupons. Her flats, which were in a humbler +part of the western division of the city, she had never visited, but +she received a call every month from the agent, who brought her the +rents and complaints. + +She had made a heroic effort to turn herself into a business woman but +the material had been too slender; and she sometimes wished for a large +independent fortune that would tax her powers to the utmost. But she +never even had any surplus to invest. Her wardrobe was no +inconsiderable item; living prices rose steadily; there were repairs +both on her own house and the flats to be anticipated every year, to +say nothing of the fiendish sum that must be set aside for taxes. But +she managed to save the necessary amount; and if they lived somewhat +extravagantly, at least she had never disturbed her capital. + +On the whole she knew they had managed very well for young people who +lived so much in the world, and she had no intention of economizing +further. They had no children. Her husband was young and energetic and +healthy. Her own little fortune was secure. She purposed to enjoy life +as best she could; and as she could not have done this quite selfishly +and been happy, she included among her yearly expenditures a certain +admirable charity presided over by her equally admirable sister, and +even visited it occasionally with her friends when a serious mood +descended abruptly upon them.... She was now on the threshold of her +second beautiful youth, and found herself and life far more interesting +than when, a silly girl of eighteen, she had believed that all life and +romance must be crowded into that callow period. She had no idea of +sacrificing this new era vibrating with unknown possibilities (it was +on the cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory tomb; +lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it +difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a +sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the +same time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott +(when Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a----fool, but +she was not a----fool. + + + +V + + +She dressed herself in a black velvet suit made by her New York +tailors. She had spent, a fortnight with her brother Ballinger on her +way home, and he had given her a set of silver fox: a large muff and +two of those priceless animals head to head to keep a small section of +her anatomy at blood heat in a climate never cold enough for furs. + +The day was hot. It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side +of the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and +fortunate woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women +everywhere with a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn +is the time to display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San +Francisco woman of fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in +the glorious spring weather of November if she perished in her furs. + +The coat, bound with silk braid, was lined with periwinkle blue, and +there was a touch of the same color in her large black velvet hat. +Nothing could make the great irises of her black-gray eyes look blue, +but they shone out, dazzling, under the drooping brim; and if she was, +perchance, too warm above, her scant skirt, her thin silk stockings and +low patent leather shoes struck the balance like a brilliant paradox. + +Alexina nodded approvingly at her image in the pier glass, found the +key of her safe deposit box in the cabinet where she had left it, and +went down to the smart little electric car which the gardener had +brought to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Alexina stood alone in the strong room of the bank leaning heavily +against the wall with its endless rows of compartments from one of +which she had taken the dispatch box in which she had kept her bonds. + +The box had fallen to the floor. If there had been any one in the room +with her he would have started and turned as the box clanged with a +hollow echo on the steel surface. + +The box was empty. + +It was a large box. It had contained forty thousand dollars' worth of +bonds, nearly a third of her fortune. The securities were among the +soundest the country afforded, for Alexander Groome, wild as he may +have been when relieving the monotony of life with too many diversions, +not the least of which was speculation, never made a mistake in his +permanent investments; and others had been bought with equal prudence +by Judge Lawton or Tom Abbott. + +But the bonds had been negotiable. She recalled Tom Abbott's warning to +keep them always in her safe deposit box and the key hidden. They might +be traced if stolen, but State's Prison for the thief would be cold +comfort if the bonds had been cashed and the money spent. + +She had always had one of the lighter Italian pieces in her bedroom, a +beautiful cabinet of carved and gilded oak nearly black with age. Like +all such it had a secret drawer and here she had kept her keys, and her +jewels during the winter. + +Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain +little gilded face on the panel? ... All her friends, of course: +Aileen, Sibyl, Alice, Olive, Janet, Hélène.... Unthinkable to have a +secret drawer in an old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some +Borgia or other, and not exhibit it to one's chosen friends. + +She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had +kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was +applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They +had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had +remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and +jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe +under the stairs. + +It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable +stones, reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine +pieces she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of +the family out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished +but more opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother +slept. Her pearl necklace had been the present of her more intimate +group of friends. + +Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although +she seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went +abroad, in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified +glance in the coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat. + +But her attention riveted itself once more on the empty box at her +feet. A third of her fortune, and gone beyond redemption. Her stunned +mind grasped that fact at once. No one stole bonds to keep them. But +who was the thief? + +Not any of her old friends. They might gamble, or drink, or deceive +their legal guardians, but they drew the line at stealing. Certain sins +lie within the social code and others do not. Women of her class, +unless kleptomaniac, did not steal. It wasn't done. With reason or +unreason they classed thieves of any sort with harlots, burglars, +firebugs, embezzlers, forgers, murderers, and common people who +overdressed and drank too much in public; and withdrew their skirts. + +Moreover, Aileen had been with her in Europe. Olive lived there. Janet +and Sibyl had more money than they could spend. The Ruylers were +ranching, and Hélène was in Adler's Sanatorium with a new baby. Alice +had gone to Santa Barbara before she left and had not returned. + +It was insulting even to pass them in review, but the mind works in +erratic curves under shock. + +Gora had taken the thousand dollars Mortimer had returned to her and +gone first to Lake Tahoe and then to Honolulu to write a novel. She +would return on the morrow. + +Mortimer. + +It was incredible. Monstrous. She was outrageous even to link his name +with such a deed. He was the soul of honor. He might not be a genius +but no man had a cleaner reputation. She had lived with him now for +over six years and she had never ... never ... never ... + +And she knew, unconsentingly, infallibly, that Mortimer had stolen the +bonds. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Alexina drew the jewel coffer from the depths of the compartment and +opened it with fingers that felt swollen and numb. But the jewels were +there, and she experienced a feeling of fleeting satisfaction. They +were no part of her fortune, for she believed that only want would ever +induce her to sell them, but at least they were her own personal +treasure and a part of the beauty of life. + +She returned the fallen box to its place and locked the little +cupboard, then took herself in hand. Neither the keeper outside the +door of the vault nor those she met above must suspect that anything +was wrong with her. What she should do she had no idea at the moment, +but at all events she must have time to think. + +She left the bank with her usual light step and her head high, and then +she motored down the Peninsula. As she passed the shipyards she saw +crowds of men standing about; some of them turned and scowled after +her. They were on strike and took her no doubt for the wife or daughter +of a millionaire; and in truth there was never any difference +superficially in her appearance from that of her wealthier friends. She +had one ear instead of several hut it was perfect of its kind. Her +wardrobe was by no means as extensive as Sibyl's or Janet's or a +hundred others, but what she had came from the best houses, that use +only the costliest materials. Her face was composed and proud. There +was not a signal out, even from her brilliant expressive eyes, of the +storm within. + +Her mind was no longer stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury. +How dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and +separate.... She felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if +her jewel coffer instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was +the instinct of possession that had been outraged. What was hers was +hers as much as the hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind ... an +instinct that harked back to the oldest of the buried civilizations ... +she wondered if any socialist really had cultivated the power to feel +differently. She was quite certain that if Kirkpatrick should see a +thief fleeing with his purse he would chase him, collar him, and either +chastise him then and there or drag him to the nearest police station. + +And the thief was her husband, the man of her choice. Alexina felt that +possibly if a brother had stolen her money she would have been less +bitter because less humiliated; one did not select one's brothers.... +And if she had still loved Mortimer it would have been bad enough, +although no doubt with the blindness of youthful passion she would +immediately have begun to make excuses for him, reeling a blow as it +would have been. But the one compensation she had found in her +matrimonial wilderness was her pride in the essential honor of her +chosen partner, and her complete trust. If there had been any necessity +for giving a power of attorney when she went to Europe she would have +drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so completely had she +forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution.... If she had, no +doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless. + +Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate +himself from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had +lost it; that was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his +powers of bluff failed him matters were serious indeed. + +He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the +last was unpardonable. + +And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his +parents' had they been alive, because however they might lash him with +their contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in +society unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had +had forty thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it +would have been safe no matter what his predicament. He would have +accepted the alternative of bankruptcy without hesitation. + +But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered +something that Gora had once said to the same effect.... Yes, she could +have forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be +spared this sickening suffocating sensation of contempt. It was +demoralizing. She hated herself as much as she hated him. Moreover +there would have been some compensation in sending an outsider to San +Quentin. + +And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand +dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she +was visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid +half the household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to +pay any. They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay +taxes, subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay +the doctor and the dentist ... a hundred and one other incidentals ... +out of four thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They +would have to change their mode of living. + +However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a +plain talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even +had she wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have +things out and over with. But it would be horrible ... horribly +intimate. She had always deliberately lived on the surface with her +family and friends, respected their privacies as she held hers +inviolate. As her mind flashed back over her life she realized that +this would be the first really serious personal talk she would ever +have held with any one. Or, if her family, and occasionally, Mortimer, +had insisted upon being serious she had maintained her own attitude of +airy humor or delicate insolence. + +She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the +soul. Some day ... perhaps ... but never yet. + + + +II + + +She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries +would run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this +time having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy. +She knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of +Mr. James Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other +thoughtful men, that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty +equally divided; greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and +class hatred and the itch for power on the part of labor leaders; and a +stupidity in the mass that was more pardonable than the short-sighted +stupidities of capital.... But what would you? A few centuries hence +the world might be civilized, but not in her time. Nothing gave her +mind less exercise. One thing at least was certain and that was that +when strikes lasted too long the laborers and their families went +hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the question for her +and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet the fashion +to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless between +these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.) + +But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her +own.... The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life, +had been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she +was bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not +noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in +its wake.... She had had enough left, more than many women who had made +the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony.... And +now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a +liner about to sail through the Golden Gate ... but she would no doubt +have to live on ... and on ... in changed, possibly humble, conditions +... despising the man she must meet sometime every day.... Yes, she did +wish she never had been born. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +She concluded, while she dressed for dinner, that she must be a coward. + +Alexina was far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have +liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power +in the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the +national gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction--racial rather +than individual ... qualities that have made the United States lag far +behind the greater European nations in all but material development and +a certain inventiveness; both of which in some cases are outclassed in +the older world. + +A California woman of her mother's generation had become a great and +renowned archæologist and lived romantically in a castle in the City of +Mexico. She bad often wished, since her serious mental life had begun, +that this gift had descended upon her--the donee had also been a member +of the A. A., and this striking endowment might just as well have +tarried a generation and a half longer. + +She was by no means avid of publicity--people seldom are until they +have tasted of it--but she would have enjoyed a rapid and brilliant +development of her mental faculties with productiveness of some sort +either as a sequel or an interim. It was impossible to advance much +farther in her present circumstances. + +No, she was far from perfect, and willing to admit it; but she had +always assumed that courage, moral as well as physical, was an +accompaniment of race, like breeding and certain automatic impulses. +But her hands were trembling and her cheeks drained of every drop of +color because she must have a plain and serious talk with a guilty +wretch. She had nothing to fear, but she could not have felt worse if +she had been the culprit herself. What was human nature but a bundle of +paradoxes? + +At least she had the respite of the dinner hour. Only a fiend would +spoil a man's dinner--and cigar--no matter what he had done. That would +make the full time of her own respite about an hour and twenty minutes. + +In a moment of panic she contemplated telephoning to Aileen and begging +her to come over to dinner. She also no doubt could get Bascom Luning +and Jimmie Thorne. Then it would not be possible to speak to Mortimer +before to-morrow as he always fell asleep at ten o'clock when there was +no dancing.... To-morrow it would be easier, and wiser. One should +never speak in anger.... + +But she was quite aware that her anger had burnt itself out. Her mind +felt as cold as her hands. Better have it over. She put on a severe +black frock, not only suitable to the occasion but as a protection from +disarming compliments. Mortimer, who dressed so well himself that it +would have been as impossible for him to overdress as to be rude to a +woman, disliked dark severity in woman's attire. He never criticized +his wife's clothes, but when they displeased him he ignored them with +delicate ostentation. + + + +II + + +Alexina had begun to feel that she should scream in the complete +silence of the dining-room when Mortimer unexpectedly made a remark. + +"Gora arrives to-morrow. Will you meet her? I shall not have time." + +"Of course. I shall be delighted to see her again. It would have been +an ideal arrangement if I could have left her here with you when I went +to Europe." + +"Yes. She was here for a week. I missed her when she left." + +"W-h-at? When was she here? You never told me." + +"I forgot. It was soon after you left. The ship was disabled--fire, I +think,--and put back. I asked her to stay here until the next sailing." + +"How jolly." + +Again there was a complete silence. But Alexina did not notice it. Her +brain was whirling. After all, she might be mistaken! Mortimer! He +might be innocent.... To think of Gora as a thief was fantastic ... was +it? ... Was she not Mortimer's sister? ... Why he rather than she? ... +And what after all did she know of Gora? ... She inspired some people +with distrust, even fear.... That might be the cause of Mortimer's +depression.... He knew it.... + +At all events it was a straw and she grasped it as if it had been a +plank in mid-ocean. With even a bare chance that Mortimer was innocent +it would be unpardonable to insult and wound him.... Nor was it quite +possible to ask him if his sister were a thief. She must wait, of +course. + +And if Gora had taken the bonds they might be recovered. It would be +like a woman to secrete them in a reaction of terror after having +nerved herself up to the deed. + +She wished that Gora had gone to Hong Kong. Bolted. Then she could be +certain. But at least she had a respite, and she felt so ebullient that +she almost forgot her loss, and swept Morty over to the Lawtons after +dinner; and the Judge took them all to the movies. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Alexina would listen to no remonstrance. Gora might send her trunks to +Geary Street if she liked, but she must come home to Ballinger House +and spend at least one night with her brother and sister, who had +missed her quite dreadfully. Gora wondered how Alexina could have +missed her so touchingly in Europe, but accepted the invitation, as a +note from the surgeon to whom she had written by the previous steamer +asked her to hold herself in readiness for an operation a week hence. + +Gora was looking remarkably well, and Alexina assumed it was not only +the six months of mountain life and the three months in the tropics. +She had an air of assured power, rarely absent in a woman who has found +herself and achieved a definite place in life. Besides being one of the +best nurses in San Francisco, in constant demand by the leading doctors +and surgeons, her short stories had attracted considerable attention in +the magazines, although no publisher would risk bringing them out in +book form. But they were invariably mentioned in any summary of the +year's best stories, one had been included in a volume of selected +short stories by modern authors, and one in a recent text-book compiled +for the benefit of aspirants in the same difficult art. The +remuneration had been insignificant, for her stories were not of the +popular order, and she had not yet the name that alone commands the +high reward; but she had advanced farther than many another as severely +handicapped, and she knew through her admiring sister-in-law and Aileen +Lawton that her stories were mentioned occasionally at a San Francisco +dinner table and even discussed! She was "arriving." No doubt of that. + + + +II + + +"When will the novel come out? I can't wait." + +"Not until the spring." + +They were sitting in Alexina's room and Gora had been placed directly +in front of the cabinet, which she did not appear even to see. She had +taken off her hat and coat and was holding the heavy masses of hair +away from her head. + +"Do you mind? I feel as if I had a twenty-pound weight...." + +"What a question! Do what you want." + +Gora took out the pins and let down her hair. It was not as fine as +Alexina's, but it was brown and warm and an unusual head of hair for +these days. It fell down both sides of her face, and her long cold +unrevealing eyes looked paler than ever between her sun-burned cheeks +and her low heavy brows. + +Alexina knew that she had an antagonist far worthier of any weapons she +might find in her armory than poor Morty, but she believed she could +trap her if she were guilty.... And she must be ... she must.... + +"Didn't you find it too hot in the tropics for writing?" + +"I only copied and revised. The book was finished before I left Lake +Tahoe-an ideal place for work. Some day I shall have a log cabin up +there. May I smoke?" + +"Of course." + +"It is almost a shame to desecrate a flower.... I used to come in here +sometimes and look round ... the week I spent here.... The room is a +poem ... like you.... Or rather the binding of the prose poem that is +Alexina." + +"I'd love it if you made me the heroine of one of your novels." + +"You'll have much more fun living it yourself." + +"Fine chance. I don't suppose I'll ever get out of California again.... +I am afraid that Morty is doing quite badly." + +Gora shrugged her strong square shoulders. "I never expected anything +else. I asked him for another thousand dollars of my money when I was +here and he looked as if he had forgotten he owed me any. Just like a +man and Morty in particular. Then he said he expected to make an +immense profit on something or other he had ordered from the Orient and +would pay me off when I returned. Has he condescended to tell you +anything about his affairs?" + +"Not a word. Did you need the money badly? If I had been here I could +have lent it to you." + +"Thanks. I am sure you would. But I dislike the idea of borrowing. It +must be so depressing to pay back.... I was in no particular need of +it, for of course I've saved quite a bit. I merely have a natural +desire for my own and thought it was a good opportunity to strike +Morty.... I suppose he's been speculating. Fortunes have been made in +Tonopah, but he would be sure to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong +mine.... Has he ever asked you for money?" + +"Never. He knows, too, that I have quite a sum in bonds that I could +convert into cash at once." + +"Well, take my advice and hold on to them--to every cent you have. +Where do you keep them?" + +"In the bank ... in a safe-deposit vault--Oh, how careless of me! I've +left the key out on the table! I usually keep it ... you remember ... +in the secret drawer of the cabinet." + +"How I wish I had the courage to write a story about a secret drawer of +an old Italian cabinet! ... I wouldn't leave it lying about; although, +of course, no one could use it without a pass also." + +"A what?" + +"They use every precaution. I know, because when I nursed old Mrs. +Beresford for eight months, I was sent down to the vault twice." + +Alexina's head was whirling. The blood burned and beat in her face. + +"Even with her signature I couldn't get by the keeper the first time +because he didn't know me. I had to be identified by her lawyer." + +"I like to feel so well taken care of. What shall you do if your novel +is a great success? Of course it will be. You would never go on being a +nurse." + +"I am not so sure it will be a success. Neither is my publisher. He +wrote me a half-whimsical half-complimentary letter saying that I must +remember the average reader was utterly commonplace, with no education +in the higher sense, no imagination, had an extremely limited +vocabulary and thought and talked in ready-made phrases, composed for +the most part of the colloquialisms of the moment. Style, distinction +of mind, erected an almost visible wall between the ambitious writer +and this predominant class. If they found this sort of book +interesting-which as a rule they did not--they felt a sullen sense of +inferiority; and if there were too many unfamiliar words they pitched +it across the room with the ultimate adjective of their +disapproval--'highbrow.' But it is more the general atmosphere they +resent--would resent if the book were purposely written with the most +limited vocabulary possible." + +"Our national self-sufficiency, I suppose. Also the fetish of equality +that still persists. We are the greatest nation on earth, of course, +but it isn't democratic for any one of us to be greater than the other." + +"Exactly. I don't say I wouldn't write for the mob if I could. Nice +stories about nice people. Intimate life histories of commonplace 'real +Americans,' touched with a bit of romance, or tragedy-somewhere about +the middle--or adventure, with a bad man or woman for good measure and +to prove to the highbrows that the author is advanced and knows the +world as well as the next, even if he or she prefers to treat of the +more 'admirable aspects of our American life.' Unluckily I cannot read +such books nor write them. I was born with a passion for English and +the subtler psychology. I should be hopeless from any editor's or +publisher's standpoint if I didn't happen to have been fitted out with +a strong sense of drama. If I could only set my stage with commonplace, +people no doubt I'd make a roaring hit. But I can't and I won't. Who +has such a chance as an author to get away from commonplace people? +Fancy deliberately concocting new ones!" + +"Not you! But you'll have some sort of success, all the same." + +"Yes, there are publics. Perhaps I'll hypnotize one of them. As for the +financial end what I hope is that the book will give me a position that +will raise my prices in the magazines." + +"You could live abroad very cheaply." Alexina raised her eyes a trifle +and looked as guileless as her words. + +"Oh, be sure I'll go to Europe and stay there for years as soon as I +see my way ahead. I should find color in the very stones or the village +streets." + +"I am told that you can find most comfortable quarters in some of those +English village inns, and for next to nothing. By the way, do you still +correspond with that Englishman who was here during the fire?" + +"Gathbroke? Off and on. T send him my stories and he writes a humorous +sort of criticism of each; says that as I have no humor lie feels a +sort of urge to apply a little somewhere." + +"How interesting. He didn't strike me as humorous." + +"I fancy he wasn't more than about one-fifth developed when he was +here. Men like that, with his advantages, go ahead very rapidly when +they get into their stride. He has already developed from business into +politics--he is in Parliament--and that is the second long stride he +has taken in the past seven years." + +"How interesting it will be for you two to meet, again." Alexina spoke +with languid politeness. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders, "If we do." She might not be able to show +the under-white of her eyes arid look like a seraph, but she had her +voice, her features, under perfect control, and she had never been +quick to blush. She did not suspect that Alexina was angling, but the +very sound of Gathbroke's name was enough to put up her guard. + +"You must have had several proposals, Gora dear. Your profession is +almost as good as a matrimonial bureau. And you look too fetching for +words in that uniform and cap." + +"I've had just two proposals. One was from an old rancher who liked the +way I turned him over in bed and rubbed his back. The other was--well, +a nice fellow, and quite well off. But I'm not keen on marrying any +one." + +"Still, if it gave you that much more independence and leisure ... +travel ... a wider life...." + +"I'd only consider marrying for two reasons: If I met a man who had the +power to make me quite mad about him, or one who could give me a great +position in the world and was not wholly obnoxious. Otherwise, I prefer +to trot alone. Why not? At least I escape monotony; I have what after +all is the most precious thing in life, complete personal freedom; and +if I succeed with my writing I can see the world and attain to position +without the aid of any man. If I don't, I don't, and that is the end of +it. I'm a bit of a fatalist, I think, although to be sure when I want a +thing badly enough I forget all about that and fight like the devil." + +Alexina looked at the square face of her strange sister-in-law, so +unlike her brother; at the high cheek bones, the heavy low brows over +the cold light eyes, the powerful jaw, the wide firm but mobile mouth. + +"Have you any Eussian blood?"' she asked. "'Way back?" + +"Not that I know of. But after all I know little about my family, +outside of the one ancestor that anchors us in the Revolutionary era. +He or his son or his son's son may have married a Russian or a +Mongolian for all I know. Perhaps some one of my old aunts may have +worked out a family tree in cross-stitch, but if so I never heard of +it. Well, I'm off to clean up for dinner." + +Alexina for the first time in their acquaintance flung her arms round +Gora's neck and kissed her warmly. Truth to tell her conscience was +smarting, although she was able to assure herself that not for a moment +had she really believed her sister-in-law to be guilty; she had merely +grasped at a straw. Gora returned the embrace gratefully and without +suspicion. As ever, she was a little sorry for Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina felt only an intolerable ennui. Gora had gone in the morning; +she sat alone in her room. Of course she must have that explanation +with Mortimer, but any time before the first of the month would do. She +was far less concerned with that now than with the problem: what to do +with her life. How was she to continue to live in the same house with +him? Perhaps in far smaller quarters than these? For she could not +leave him. She had no visible excuse, and no desire to admit to the +world that she had made woman's superlative mistake. + +She scowled at the lovely room in which she had expected to find +compensation in dreams, the setting for an unreal and enchanted world. + +Dreams had died out of her. For the first time in her sheltered +existence she appreciated the grim reality of life. She was no longer +sheltered, secluded, one of the "fortunate class." Ways and means would +occupy most of her time henceforth. And it was not the privations she +shrank from but the contacts with the ugly facts of life; a side she +had found extremely picturesque in novels, but knew from, occasional +glimpses to be merely repulsive and demoralizing. + +And of whom could she ask advice! She must make changes and make them +quickly. Four thousand dollars a year! ... and taxes--besides the new +income tax--to be paid on the downtown property, the fiats, the land on +which her home stood, Ballinger House itself and all its contents. + +She knew vaguely that many girls these days were given special training +of some sort even where their parents were well off; but more +particularly where the father was what is known as a high-salaried man; +or even a moderately successful professional or business man--all of +whose expenses arid incomes balanced too nicely for investments. + +Not in her set! Joan, bored after her third season with dancing in +winter and "sitting round Alta" in summer, had asked permission to +become a trained nurse like Gora, or go into the decorating business, +"any old thing"; and Maria Abbott had simply stared at her in horror; +even her father had asked her angrily if she wished to disgrace him, +advertise him as unable to provide for his family. No self-respecting +American, etc. + +But something must be done. She wished to live on in Ballinger House if +possible, not only because she loved it, or to avoid the commiserations +of the world; she had no desire to live in narrow quarters with her +husband.... And she knew nothing, was fit for nothing, belonged to a +silly class that still looked upon women workers as de-classed, +although to be sure two or three whose husbands had left them penniless +had gone into business and were loyally tolerated, if deeply deplored. + +The day after her return from Europe Alice Thorndyke had come into this +room and thrown herself down on the couch, her long, languorous body +looking as if set on steel springs, her angelic blonde beauty distorted +with fury and disgust, and poured out her hatred of men and all their +ways, her loathing for society and gambling and all the stupid vicious +round of the life both public and secret she had elected to lead.... +She had had enough of it.... After all, she had some brains and she +wanted to use them. She wanted to go into the decorating business. +There was an opening. She had a natural flair for that sort of thing. +See what she had managed to do with that old ark she had inherited, and +on five cents a year.... When she had asked her sister to advance the +money Sibyl had flown into one of her worst rages and thrown a gold +hair brush through a Venetian mirror. Didn't she give her clothes by +the dozen that she hadn't worn a month? Did any girl have a better time +in society? Was any girl luckier at poker? Was any girl more popular +with men--too bad it was generally the married ones that lost their +heads.... Better if she stopped fooling and married. By and by it would +be too late. + +But she didn't want to marry. She was sick of men. She wanted to get +out of her old life altogether and cultivate a side of her mind and +character that had stagnated so far ... also to enjoy the independent +life of a money-earner ... life in an entirely different world ... +something new ... new ... new. + +Alexina had offered to lend her the capital, for Alice had a hard cool +head. But she had refused, saying she could mortgage her old barrack if +it came to that ... but she didn't know ... it would be a break.... Sib +might never speak to her again ... people were such snobs ... and she +mightn't like it ... she wished she had been born of poor but honest +parents and put to work in a canning factory or married the plumber. + +She had done nothing, and Alexina wondered if she would have the +courage to go into some sort of business with herself ... they could +give out they were bored, seeking a new distraction ... save the +precious pride of their families. + +She leaned forward and took her head in her hands. If she only had some +one to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in +any one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, +even in a roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet +and the other girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. But +her head would burst if she didn't consult some one. She was too +horribly alone. And after all she was still very young. She had talked +largely of her responsibilities, but as a matter of fact until now she +had never had one worth the name. + +Suddenly she thought of James Kirkpatrick. + + + +II + + +The lessons in socialism had died a natural death long since. But +Alexina and Aileen and Janet had never quite let him go. Whenever there +was a great strike on, either in California or in any part of the +nation, they invited him to take tea with them at least once a week +while it lasted and tell them all the "ins." This he was nothing loath +to do, and waived the question of remuneration aside with a gesture. He +was now a foreman, and vice-president of his union, and it gave him a +distinct satisfaction to confer a favor upon these "lofty dames," whom, +however, he liked better as time went on. Alexina he had always +worshiped and the only time he ceased to be a socialist was when he +ground his teeth and cursed fate for not making him a gentleman and +giving him a chance before she was corralled by that sawdust dude. + +He had also remained on friendly terms with Gora, who had +cold-bloodedly studied him and made him the hero of a grim strike +story. But as he never read polite literature their friendship was +unimpaired. + + + +II + + +He came to tea that afternoon in response to a telephone call from +Alexina. She had put on a tea gown of periwinkle blue chiffon and a +silver fillet about her head, and looked to Mr. Kirkpatrick's +despairing gaze as she intended to look--beautiful, of course, but less +woman than goddess. Exquisite but not tempting. She was quite aware of +the young workman's hopeless passion and she managed him as skillfully +as she did the more assured, sophisticated, and sometimes "illuminated" +Jimmie Thorne and Bascom Luning. + +She received him in the great drawing-room behind the tea-table, laden +with the massive silver of dead and gone Ballingers. + +"I've only been home a week," she said gayly. "See what a good friend I +am. I've scarcely seen any one. Did you get my post cards?" + +"I did and I've framed them, if you don't mind my saying so." + +"I hoped you would. I picked out the prettiest I could find. They do +have such beauties in Europe. Just think, it was my first visit. I was +wildly excited. Wouldn't you like to go?" + +"Naw. America's good enough for me. 'Fris--oh, Lord! San Francisco--for +that matter. I'd like to go to the next International Socialist +Congress all right--next year. Maybe I will. I guess that would give me +enough of Europe to last me the rest of my natural life." + +"I met a good many Frenchmen, and I have a friend married to a very +clever one. He says they expect a war with Germany in a year two--" + +"There'll never be another war. Not in Europe or anywhere else. The +socialists won't permit it." + +"There are a good many socialists--and syndicalists--in France, and +it's quite true they're doing all they can to prevent any money being +voted for the army or expended if it is voted; but I happen to know +that the Government has asked the president of the Red Cross to train +as many nurses as she can induce to volunteer, and as quickly as +possible. My friend Madame Morsigny was to begin her training a few +days after I left." + +"Hm. So. I hadn't heard a word of it." + +"We get so much European news out here! America first! Especially in +the matter of murders and hold-ups. Who cares for a possible war in +Europe when the headlines are as black as the local crimes they +announce?" + +"Sure thing. Great little old papers. But don't let any talk of war +from anywhere at all worry you. And I'll tell you why. At the last +International Congress all the socialists of all the nations were ready +to agree that all labor should lay down its tools--quit work--go on a +colossal strike--the moment those blood-sucking capitalists at the top, +those sawdust kings and kaisers and tsars--or any president for that +matter--declared war for any cause whatsoever. All, that is, but the +German delegates. They couldn't see the light. Now they have. When we +meet next August the resolution will be unanimous. Take it from me. +You've read of your last war in some old history book. Peace from now +on, and thank the socialists." + +"I should. But suppose Germany should declare war before next August?" + +"She won't. She ain't ready. She'd have done it after that there +'Agadir Incident' if she'd dared. That is to say been good and ready. +Now she's got to wait for another good excuse and there ain't one in +sight." + +"But you believe she'd like to precipitate a war in Europe for her own +purposes?" + +"She'd like it all right." And he quoted freely from Treitschke and +Bernhardi, while Alexina as ever looked at him in wonder. He seemed to +be more deeply read every time she met him, and he remained exactly the +same James Kirkpatrick. "What an adventitious thing breeding was! +Mortimer had it!" + +"Well, I am glad I spoke of it. You have relieved my mind, for you +speak as one with authority.... There is something else I want to talk +to you about.... A friend of mine is in a dilemma and I don't quite +know how to advise her.... We're all such a silly set of moths--" + +"No moth about you!" interrupted Mr. Kirkpatrick firmly. "Some of +them--those others, if you like. The only redeeming virtue I can see in +most of them is that they are what they are and don't give a damn. But +you--you've got more brains and common sense than the whole bunch of +women in this town put together." + +"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to +cultivate them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my +common sense." She spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, +and curve of lip, that neither then nor later did he suspect that she +was the heroine of her own tale. + +"Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you +anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me." + +"Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you +smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad +for my curtains.... This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had +a terrible experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part +of her little fortune whose income enabled them to do something more +than keep alive. You see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he +had always been the most honest creature in the world; and that's as +much of a blow as the loss of the money." + +"What'd he do it for?" + +"Oh, I know so little about business ... he wanted to get rich too +quickly I suppose ... speculated or something ... perhaps got into a +hole. This has been a bad year." + +"Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively. + +"You're not commiserating _him_?" + +"Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper, +hasn't he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and +temptations of the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he +wanted to, you can bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim +of a vicious system. A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in +the middle! Not capital enough. Hard times and the little man goes +under, no matter if he's a darn sight better fellow than the bloated +beast on top--" + +"You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go +under?" + +"I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--" + +"Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and +has always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he +were he wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good +start, far better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country +had in their youth." + +"Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever +in chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's +our job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in +which the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to +work will have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have +to work anyhow or starve.... One of the thousand things the matter with +the present system is that the square man is so often in the round +hole. In the socialized state every man will be guided to the place +which exactly fits his abilities. No weaker to the wall there." + +"You think you can defy Nature to that extent!" + +"You bet." + +"Well. I'm too much distracted by my friend's predicament to discuss +socialism.... I rather like the idea though of the strong man having +the opportunity to prove himself stronger than Life ... find out what, +he was put on earth and endowed with certain characteristics for ... +rather a pity all that should atrophy.... However--what shall my friend +do? Continue to live with a man she despises?" + +"She's no right to despise him or anybody. It's the system, I tell you. +And no doubt she's just as weak in some way herself. Every man jack of +us is so chuck full of faults and potential crime it's a wonder we +don't break out every day in the week, and if women are going to desert +us when the old Adam runs head on into some one of the devilish traps +the present civilization has set out all over the place, instead of +being able to sidestep it once more, well--she'd best divorce herself +from the idea of matrimony before she goes in for the thing itself. +Would I desert my brother if he got into trouble? Would you?" + +"N--o, I suppose you are right, and I doubt if she would leave him +anyway. However ... there's the other aspect. What can a woman in her +position do to help matters out? You have met a good many of her kind +here. Fancy Miss Lawton or Mrs. Bascom or Miss Maynard forced to work--" + +"I can't. If I had imagination enough for that I'd be writin' novels +like Miss Dwight." + +"I believe they'd do better than you think. Well, this friend isn't +quite so much absorbed in society and poker and dress. She's more +like--well, there's Mrs. Ruyler, for instance. She was very much like +the rest of us, and now we never see her. She's as devoted to ranching +as her husband." + +"There was sound bourgeois French blood there," he said shrewdly. "And +she wasn't brought up like the rest of you. Don't you forget that." + +"Then you think we're hopeless?" + +"No, I don't. Three or four women of your crowd--a little older, that's +all--are doin' first-rate in business, and they were light-headed +enough in their time, I'll warrant. And you, for instance--if you came +up against it--" + +"Yes? What could I do?" cried Alexina gayly. "But alas! you admit you +have no imagination." + +"Don't need any. You'd be good for several things. You could go into +the insurance business like Mrs. Lake, or into real estate like Mrs. +Cole--people like to have a pretty and stylish young lady showin' 'em +round flats. Or you could buy an orchard like the Ruylers--that'd +require capital. If we had the socialistic state you'd be put on one of +the thinking boards, so to speak. That's the point. You've got no +training, but you've got a thinker. You'd soon learn. But I'm not so +sure of your friend. Somehow, you've given me the impression she's just +one of these lady-birds." + +"I'm afraid she is," said Alexina with a sigh. "But you're so good to +take an interest.... Suppose you had the socialistic state +now--to-morrow, what would you do with all these--lady-birds?" + +"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up, +and then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal +physical condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one +of 'em." + +"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?" + +"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of +the great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in +their beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers +and civilians were armed to the teeth. + +"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No +wonder some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course +they're fools, just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but +you can't blame 'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If +Marx had been a good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day. +Things didn't turn out according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat +ain't proletariat any longer, instead of overrunning the earth; and in +place of a handful of great capitalists to fight we've a few hundred +thousand little capitalists, or good wage earners with white collars +on, that have about as much use for socialism as they have for +man-eating tigers. I'm thinking about this country principally. Too +much chance for the individual. Trouble is, the individual, like as +not, don't know what's good for him and goes under, like the man you've +been telling me about." + +"There's only one thing I apprehend in your socialistic state," said +Alexina, who always became frivolous when Kirkpatrick waxed serious, +"and that is universal dissolution from sheer ennui. Either that or +we'll go on eternally rowing about something else. Earth has never been +free from war since the beginning of history, and there is trouble of +some sort going on somewhere all the time--" + +"All due to capitalism." + +"Capitalism hasn't always existed." + +"Human greed has, and the dominance of the strong over the weak." + +"Exactly, and socialism if she ever gets her chance will dominate all +she knows how. Remember what you said just now about forcing the +pampered women to work when they were the underdog. But the point is +that Nature made Earthians a fighting breed. She must have had a good +laugh when we named another planet Mars." + +"Well, we'll fight about worthier things." + +"Don't be too sure. We fight about other things now. All the trouble in +the world isn't caused by money or the want of it. And what about the +religious wars--" + + + +III + + +It was at this inopportune moment that they met Mortimer. If Alexina +had remembered that this was his homing hour she would have parted from +her visitor at the drawing-room door; but in truth she had dismissed +Mortimer from her mind. + +He halted some paces off and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume +to the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue +sloped abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to +keep from grinding his teeth. + +Alexina went forward and placed her hand within his arm, giving it a +warning pressure. + +"Now, at last, you and Mr. Kirkpatrick will meet. You've always so +snubbed our little attempts to understand some of the things that men +know all about, that you've never met any of our teachers. But no one +has taught, me as much as Mr. Kirkpatrick, so shake hands at once and +be friends." + +Mortimer extended a straight and wooden hand. Kirkpatrick touched, and +dropped it as if lie feared contamination, Mortimer ascended a few +steps and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated +disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the +speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle +skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out +his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. +Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice, +and continued to look like a stage lord dismissing a varlet. + +Kirkpatrick caught Alexina's imploring eyes and turned abruptly on his +heel, "So long," he said. "Guess I'd better be getting on." + + + +IV + + +"I won't have that fellow in the house," said Mortimer, in a low tone +of white fury. "To think that my wife--my wife--" + +"If you don't mind we won't talk about it." + +Alexina was on the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the +air. She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop +and when she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to +elongate like the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever +happened to have incurred her wrath. + +Mortimer glowered at her. He had many grievances. For the moment he +forgot that she might have any against him. + +"And out here in broad daylight, almost on the street, in that tea +gown--" + +"I have often been quite on the street in similar ones. Going over to +Aileen's. You forget that the Western Addition is like a great park set +with the homes of people more or less intimate." + +Mortimer made no further remarks. He had never pretended to be a match +for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him +temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for +although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more +relish. As he settled himself to his cigar in a comfortable wicker +chair on the terrace and she was about to return to the house he spoke +abruptly in a faint firm voice. + +"Will you stay here? I've got something to say to you." + +"Oh?" + +She wheeled about. His face was a sickly greenish white in the heavy +shade of the trees. + +"It's--it's--something I've been wanting to say--tell you ... as well +now as any time." + +"Oh, very well. I must write just one letter." + +She ran into the house and up the stairs and shut herself in the +library, breathless, panic-stricken. He was going to confess! How +awful! How awful! How could she ever go through with it? Why, why, +hadn't she spoken at once and got it over? + +She sat quite still until she had ceased trembling and her heart no +longer pounded and affected her breathing. Then she set her teeth and +went downstairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Mortimer was walking up and down the hall. + +"Come in here," he said. He entered the drawing-room, and Alexina +followed like a culprit led to the bar. Nevertheless, it crossed her +mind that he wanted the moral support of a mantelpiece. + +She almost stumbled into a chair. Mortimer did not avail himself of the +chimneypiece toward which he had unconsciously gravitated, but walked +back and forth. Two electric lights hidden under lamp shades were +burning, but the large room was rather somber. + +Alexina composed herself once more with a violent effort and asked in a +crisp tone: "Well? What is this mystery? Are you in love with some one +else? Been, making love--" + +"Alexina!" + +He confronted her with stricken eyes. "You know that I am literally +incapable of such a thing. But of course you were jesting." + +"Of course. But something is so manifestly wrong with you, and ... well +... of course you would be justified." + +"Not in my own eyes. Besides, I shall never give up the hope of winning +you back again. I live for that ... although now! ... that is the whole +trouble.... How am I going to say it?" + +"Well, let me help you out. You took the bonds." + +"You've been to the bank! I wanted to tell you first ... the day you +came back.... I couldn't...." + +"There is only one thing I am really curious about. How did you get in? +Of course you knew where I kept the key, but--" + +"I--" His voice was so lifeless that if dead men could speak it must be +in the same flat faint tones. "I had the old power of attorney." + +"But I revoked it." + +"I mean the instrument--the paper. You did not ask for it. I did not +think of it either.... I trusted to the keeper taking it on its face +value, not looking it up. He didn't. You see--" He gave a dreadful sort +of laugh. "I am well known and have a good reputation." + +"Why didn't you cable and ask me to lend you the money?" + +"There wasn't time. Besides, you might have refused. I was desperate--" + +"I don't want to hear the particulars. I am not in the least curious. +What I must talk to you about--" + +"I must tell you the whole thing. I can't go about with it any longer. +Then, perhaps, you will understand." + +His voice was still flat and as he continued to walk he seemed to draw +half-paralyzed legs after him. Alexina set her lips and stared at the +floor. He meant to talk. No getting out of it. + +"I--I--have only done well occasionally since the very first. It didn't +matter so long as your mother was alive, and for a little while after. +But when you took things into your own hands ... after that it was +capital I turned over to you nearly every month--hardly ever profits." + +"What? Why didn't you tell me?" + +"I hadn't the courage. I was too anxious to stand well with you. And I +always hoped, believed, I would do better as times improved. I had +great hopes of myself and I had a pretty good start. But as time went +on I grew to understand that my abilities were third-rate. I should +have done all right with a large capital--say a hundred and fifty +thousand dollars--but only a man far cleverer than I am could have got +anywhere in that business with a paltry sixteen thousand to begin on. I +got one or two connections and did pretty well, off and on, for a time; +but if I hadn't made one or two lucky strikes in stocks my capital +would simply have run away in household expenses long ago." + +"Then why did you join that expensive club?" + +"It was good business," he said evasively. "I meet the right sort of +men there. That's where I got my stock pointers." + +"Did you take the bonds to gamble with?" + +"No. I'd never have done that. I gambled in another way, though. I +thought I saw a chance to sell a certain commodity at that particular +time and I plunged and sent for a large quantity of it. It looked sure. +I have a friend over there and got it on credit. I banked on an +immediate sale and a big profit. But something delayed the shipping in +Hong Kong. When it arrived the market was swamped. Some one else had +had the same idea. I had to pay for the goods, as well as other big +outstanding bills, or go into bankruptcy. So I took the bonds. It +wasn't easy. But there was nothing else to do.... There were about ten +thousand dollars left and I tried another coup. That failed too." + +"How is it possible to go on with the business?" + +"It isn't. I have closed out. But I have escaped bankruptcy. People on +the street think that I wanted to get into the real estate +business--with Andrew Weston, a young man who has recently come here +from Los Angeles. He's doing fairly well and has a good office. He +wanted a hustler and a partner who had good connections. But it is slow +work. There are the old firms, again, to compete with. I wouldn't have +looked at it if I'd had any choice, but it was a case of a port in a +storm." + +"Well? Is that all? There is another matter to discuss. Our future mode +of living." + +"No, it isn't all. I wish you would tell Gora something. I can never go +through this again. While she was away--in Honolulu--that lawyer of my +aunt sent out ten thousand dollars' worth more of stock, that had been +looked upon as so much waste paper, but suddenly appreciated--some +little railroad that was abandoned half finished, but has since been +completed. This had been left to Gora alone. We had some correspondence +and he sent it to me as Gora was traveling. It came at the wrong time +for me ... on top of everything else.... I plunged in a new mine Bob +Cheever and Baseom Luning were interested in. It turned out to be no +good. We lost every cent." + + + +II + + +Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it +had turned to stone. + +He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together. + +"If you knew ... if you knew ... what I have been through.... At first +it was only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over +... when there was nothing left to speculate with ... then I realized +what I had done ... I ... a thief ... a thief.... I had been so proud +of my honor, my honesty. I never had believed that I could even be +tempted. And I went to pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its +first storm. There's nothing, it seems, in being well brought up, when +circumstances are too strong for you." + +Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad," +she said, rather at a loss. + +"No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken +long chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in +too deep. But if I could have repaid it all I'd feel nearly as +demoralized. That I should have stolen ... and from women...." + +Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on. + +"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn't seem to me that I +had the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest +sense of right and wrong ... It does not seem possible even now." + +Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she +should be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him +that she quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She +wished that she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of +the physical demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared +to defend him if need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that +she would willingly die rather than touch him.... She wondered if souls +in dissolution subtly wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too +close.... + +"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I'll tell Gora and +engage that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now +let us discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to +contribute anything to the household expenses?" + +"I'm afraid not. It takes time to work up a business." + +"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I +suppose I had better look for a job." + +"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her +incredulously. "You?" + +"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the +decorating business." + +"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I +could fool them then!" + +"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have +stuck to the old business if it had paid." + +"It isn't the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go +out to earn money--why, I'd be a laughing stock." + +"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this +lot--" + +"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to +your old home ... and after fixing it up...." + +"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can't go on." + +"My brain seems to have stopped. I can't do much thinking. But ... well +... you might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my +business begins to pay." + +"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if +you can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--" + +"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that +when you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why +couldn't Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know +anything about Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your +family have let me stay where I was? I should have been head clerk with +a good salary by this time, and we would have arranged our expenses +accordingly when your mother died. Why can't men give a young fellow a +better chance when he goes into business for himself? Every man trying +to cut every other man's throat. What chance has a young fellow with a +small capital?" + +"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However ... +perhaps you are right.... Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I +feel more inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all +the ancestral inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are +made and our characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at +least resign from the club?" + +He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of +character his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the +first Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in +two ways: they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in +the same way the men who can give me a leg up in business." + +"Are you sure those are the only reasons?" + +To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you +shall go on speculating?" + +"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can +help me in business." + +"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However ... At least +I'll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom +no one will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over. +To-morrow I shall do something. I don't know what it will be, yet." + +He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, +"that you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell +this house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had +recovered his usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes +were as stern as his lips. + +Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that +apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to +understand. She nodded amiably. + +"No doubt I'll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner +time. Don't expect me at breakfast. Good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the +following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park +and signaling to her to stop. + +"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one +ill?" + +"Not so's you'd notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak +after me quietly and don't say a word." + +Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece +by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she +had fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with +the "fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the +small group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly +disapproved of, who entertained in some form or other every day and +every night, played poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of +the new dances, made up brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent +stimulants. Two of Joan's former schoolmates belonged to this active +set, but she was only permitted to meet them at formal dinners and +large parties. She had rebelled at first, but her mother's firm hand +was too much for her still undeveloped will, and later she had +concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the whole tiresome +society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she was socially as +conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and although full +of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no prince +having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound +Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and +she had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She +worked off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be +indulged in California for eight months of the year, rode horseback +every day, used all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the +society of such uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided +her time. Sooner or later she was determined to "get out and +hustle,"--"shake a leg." That would be the only complete change from +her present life, not matrimony and running with fast sets. She wanted +more money, she wanted to live alone, and, while devoted to her family, +she wanted interests they could not furnish, "no, not in a thousand +years." + + + +II + + +Joan's slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached +the rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy +fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah +did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a +generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground. +A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a +gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit +and peered through the outside shutters, which had been carefully +closed. + +The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and +shone down upon an amazing sight. + +Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the +floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was +evidently talking rapidly. Alexina's mouth opened as widely as her +eyes. She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that +took place at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition +been brought to chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter +or Mrs. Thornton, or any of those fortunate Californians who visited +the headquarters of fashion and sin once a year? They would do a good +deal to vary the monotony of life. But that they should have corrupted +Maria ... the impeccable, the superior, the unreorientable Maria! +Maria, with whom contentment and conservatism were the first articles +of the domestic and the socio-religious creed! + +For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face +was a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid +floor, were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, +another old friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom's sister, Susan Delling, +austere in her virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a +fine mahogany complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel +not so much a harlot as a social inferior. + +What on earth ... what on earth.... + +The thin loquacious stranger clapped her hands. Up went six pairs of +legs. Two remained in mid-air, Mrs. Geary's and Mrs. Brannan's having +met an immovable obstacle shortly above the hip-joints. Three bent +backward slowly but surely until they approached the region of the +neck. Maria's flew unerringly, effortlessly, up, back, until they +tapped the floor behind her head. Alexina almost shouted "Bravo." Maria +was a real sport. + +Six times they repeated this fascinating rite, and then, obeying +another peremptory command, they rolled over abruptly and balanced on +all fours. Alexina could stand no more. She dropped down the ladder and +ran after Joan, who was disappearing round the corner of the house. + + + +III + + +"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Maria! Your mo--" + +"She gained three pounds, for the first time in her life, and you know +her figure is her only vanity. This woman came along and the whole +Peninsula is crazy about her. She's taken the fat off every woman in +New York, and came out with letters to a lot of women. Mother fell for +her hard. I nearly passed away when I peeked through that shutter the +first time. Mother! She's the best of the bunch, though. But they're +all having a perfectly grand time. New interest for middle-age--what?" + +"Don't be cruel. Heavens, how hot they all looked! I could hear them +gasp. Hope their arteries are all right. Are they going to stay to +lunch?" + +"No. There's a big one on in Burlingame. Mother's not going, though. +It's at that Mrs. Cutts', new Burlingame stormer, that Anne Montgomery +coaches and caters for and who gives wonderful entertainments. Mother +and Aunt Susan won't go, but nearly all the others do." + +"Anne Montgomery. I haven't seen her since mother died." + +"You look as if an idea had struck you. She's useful no end, they say; +is now a social secretary to a lot of new people, and sells the 'real +lace' and other superfluous luxuries of some of our old families for +the cold coin that buys comforts." + +"Fine idea. But I'm glad your mother will be alone. I've come down to +have a talk with her." + +"Thanks. I'll take the hint." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +Alexina went up to Joan's room to remain until the gong sounded for +luncheon, when she drifted down innocently and kissed the somewhat +furtive-looking Maria, who was in chaste duck and fresh from a bath. + +"So glad to see you, darling," she murmured almost effusively. "I hope +you haven't waited long. A number of my friends have a lesson every +Thursday morning, and meet at one house or another." + +"Irregular French verbs, I suppose. So fascinating, and one does forget +so. I thought I'd never brush up my French." + +Not for anything would she have forced Maria into the most innocent +equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people +are expected to do after their first visit to Europe. + +No time could have been more propitious for this necessary +understanding with Maria, who was feeling amiable, apologetic, as +limber as Joan, and almost as warm. She had also lost two-thirds of a +pound. + + + +II + + +Alexina began as soon as Joan left them alone on the shady side of the +wide piazza. + +"I have a lot of things to tell you," she said nervously. "I have to +make certain economies and I want the benefit of your advice." + +Mrs. Abbott looked up from her embroidery. "Of course, darling. I was +afraid you were going a little too fast for young people." + +"That is not it. I always managed well enough.... You know we've never +gone the limit: polo at Burlingame and Monterey, gambling, big parties +and all the rest of it. I've never run into debt or spent any of my +capital. But..." + +Maria began to feel anxious and took off the large round shell-rimmed +spectacles that enlarged stitches and print. "Yes?" + +"You know I had bonds--about forty thousand dollars' worth--those that +mother left: I spent those that Ballinger and Geary gave me on the +house and one thing and another." + +"Yes?" Mrs. Abbott was now alarmed. She had a very keen sense of the +value of money, like most persons that have inherited it, and was +extremely conservative in its use. + +"Well, you see, I thought I saw a chance to treble it--we never really +had enough--and I speculated and lost it." + +Alexina was a passionate lover of the truth, but she could always lie +like a gentleman. + +Maria Abbott readjusted her spectacles and took a stitch or two in her +linen. She was aghast and did not care to speak for a moment. She was +no fool and Tom had told her that Mortimer had changed his business and +might bluff the street, but could never bluff him. She knew quite as +well as if Alexina had confessed it that Mortimer had lost the money, +either in his business or in stocks; although of course she was far +from suspecting the whole truth. + + + +III + + +"That is dreadful," she said finally. "I wish you had consulted Tom. He +understands stocks as he does everything else." + +"I thought I had the best tips. However--the thing is done, and the +point is that I must make great changes. Mortimer is not making as much +as he was, either; he came to the conclusion that he couldn't get +anywhere in that business on so small a capital, and has gone into real +estate. It will be some time before he makes enough to keep things +going in the old way. I made all my plans last night and came down to +ask you if you could take James. He has been with us so long; I can't +let him go to strangers. Then I shall turn out all those high-priced +servants and get a woman to do general housework. Alice says her aunt +always gets green ones from an agency and breaks them in. They are +quite cheap. I shall help her, of course, and if she doesn't know much +about cooking I know a little and can learn more. I shall shut up the +big drawing-room, put everything into moth balls, and give out that the +doctor has ordered me to rest this winter, to go to bed every night at +eight. That will stop people coming up three or four times a week to +dance. And I can sell the new clothes I brought from Paris and New York +to Polly Roberts. She's just my height and weight. Of course I must +tell the girls the truth--that I'm economizing; but wild horses +wouldn't drag it out of them. I don't care tuppence, but Morty says it +would hurt his business. I rather like the idea of working. I'm tired +of the old round, and would like to get a job if Morty wasn't so +opposed--says it would ruin him." + +"I should think so. At least let us wash our dirty linen at home.... I +have been thinking while you talked. I've only spent two whole winters +in town since I married, end I've always thought I'd love to live in +the old house. I've rather envied you, Alexina, dear ... it is so full +of happy memories for me. I did have such a good time as a girl ... +such a good, simple time.... I'm wondering if Tom wouldn't rent it for +the winter and spring. He's been doing splendidly these last two or +three years, and he owned some of the property west of Twin Peaks that +is building up so fast. I know he sold it for quite a lot.... And I +sometimes wonder if he doesn't get as tired of living in the same place +year after year as I do. He could play golf at the Ingleside.... I am +sure he will.... It would be the very best thing all round. Then we +could run the house, and you and Mortimer would pay something--never +mind what.... People would think it was the other way, if they thought +anything about it. Families often double up in that fashion." + +"Maria! I can't believe it. It would be too perfect a solution, +provided of course that we pay all we cost. I should insist upon +keeping the slips as usual. You are an angel." + +"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The +Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our +parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and +I know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day +as he used to be of the train." + +"It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect +sincerity. She had not faltered before the prospect of work, but that +of Mortimer's society unrelieved for an indefinite time had filled her +with something like panic. It had been the one test of her powers of +endurance of which she had not felt assured. + +"That will give us time, too, to get on our feet again. Morty is very +hopeful of this new business. I shall go out very little, and as Joan +will be the natural center of attraction it will be understood that her +friends, not mine, have the run of the house." + +Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She +worries me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for +the winter and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If +you want to be housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like +better than a rest from ordering dinner, after all these years." + +"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure +I wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and +I'd like to drink your health." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the +immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria +Abbott; there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic +wife's presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs. +Moreover he feared Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered +word and he might as well have told the whole story. Well, he never +talked much anyhow; he would merely talk less. + +When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was +forced to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of +resignation. When she told him what her original plan had been he was +so appalled, so humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a +servant's apron (to say nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he +almost warmed to the Abbotts. + + + +II + + +Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of +spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of +something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, +received a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand +dollars and asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where +she kept her savings. + +"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper +so heavily freighted. + +"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus +whose husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy +and Anne advises her." + +"What did you sell? Your jewels?" + +"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste +to wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard +to buy now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people +always think it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest +and clumsiest of the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told +her that they were as good as a passport." + +Mortimer sprang to the only, the naïve, the eternal masculine +conclusion. + +"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the +sudden rejuvenation of his heavy body. "I never really believed you had +ceased to care.... you were capricious like all women ... a little +spoilt. I knew that if I had patience ... Only a loving wife would do +such a thing." + +Alexina made a wry face at the banality of his climax, although the +fatuous outburst had barely amused her. + +"No, I don't love you in the least, Mortimer, and never shall. Make up +your mind to that. Love some one else if you like.... I did this for +two reasons: I did not have the courage to tell Gora the truth--and +that I was too unjust and penurious to restore the money you had taken; +and as your wife it would have hurt my pride unbearably." + +"And you are not afraid to trust me with this money?" he asked, his +voice toneless. + +"Not in the least. There's no other way to manage it and I fancy you +know what would happen if you didn't hand it over. There is such a +thing as the last straw." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +It was a week later. Alexina was changing her dress. Maria had asked a +number of her girlhood friends in for luncheon, and they were to +exchange reminiscences in the old house over a table laden as of yore +with the massive Ballinger silver, English cutglass, and French china. +Alexina was about to take refuge with Janet Maynard. + +Her door opened unceremoniously and Gora entered. + +Alexina caught her breath as she saw her sister-in-law's eyes. They +looked like polar seas in a tropical storm. + +"Why, Gora, dear," she said lightly. "I thought you were on an +important case." + +"Man died last night. I have just been to see Mortimer. When I got his +note--just three lines--saying that he had received a cheque from Utica +and deposited it to my account I knew at once--as soon as I had time to +think--there was something wrong. The natural thing would have been to +call me up--couldn't tell me the good news too soon.... And there was a +hollow ring about that note.... Well, as soon as I woke up to-day I +went straight down to his office. I had to wait an hour. When he came +in and saw me he turned green. I marched him into a back room and +corkscrewed the truth out of him--the whole truth. Then I blasted him. +He knows exactly what one person in this world thinks of him, what +everybody else would think of him if he were found out. I gathered that +you had let him down easy. Your toploftical pride, I suppose. Well, I +must have a good plebeian streak in me somewhere and for the first time +I was glad of it. When I left him he looked shrunken to half his +natural size. His eyes looked like a dead fish's and all the muscles of +his face had given Way. He looked as if he were going to die and I wish +he would. Faugh! A thief in the family. That at least we never had +before." + +"Don't be too sure. Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and +everybody'll go on thinking he's honest. Half our friends may be +thieves for all we know, and as for our ancestors--what are you doing?" + + + +II + + +Gora had taken a roll of yellow bills from her purse. She counted them +on the table; ten bills denominating a thousand dollars each. + +"I won't take them." said Alexina stiffy. "I think you are horrid, +simply horrid." + +"And do you imagine I would keep it? I What do you take me for?" + +"I am in a way responsible for Mortimer's debts--his partner." + +"That cuts no ice with me--nor with you. That is not the reason you +sold your jewels and laces and those superb--Oh, you poor child! If I'm +furious, it's more for you than on any other account. You don't deserve +such a fate--" + +"I don't deserve to have you treat me so ungratefully. I can't get my +things back. I wanted you to have the money more than I eared for those +things, anyhow. I have no use for the money. I don't owe anything and +the rent Tom pays me for six months will help me to run the house for +the rest of the year and pay taxes besides. So, you just keep it, Gora. +It's yours and that's the end of it." + +"This is the end of it as far as I'm concerned." She opened the secret +drawer of the cabinet and stuffed in the bills. "They're safe from any +sort of burglars there. But not from fire. Bank them to-morrow." + +"I'll not touch them." + +"Nor I either." + + + +III + + +Gora threw her hat on the floor and sitting down before the table +thrust her hands into her hair and tugged at the roots. "I always do +this when I'm excited--which is oftener than you think. What dreams I +had that first night--I got his note late and was too tired to reason, +to suspect.... I just dreamed until I fell asleep. I'd start for +England a week later--for England!" + +Goose flesh made Alexina's delicate body feel like a cold nutmeg +grater. "England?" + +"Yes! ... ah ... you see, it's the only place where literary +recognition counts for anything." + +"Oh? I rather thought the British authors looked upon Uncle Sam in the +light of a fairy godfather. Our recognition counts for a good deal, I +should say. I never thought you were snobbish." + +"I'm not really. Only London is a sort of Mecca for writers just as +Paris is for women of fashion.... Just fancy being feted in London +after you had written a successful novel." + +"I'd far rather receive recognition in my own country," said Alexina, +elevating her classic American profile. She was not feeling in the +least patriotic, however. "You'd see your friend Gathbroke, though. +That would be jolly. Do take the money, Gora, and don't be a goose." + +"That subject's closed. Don't let me keep you. James told me that Maria +is having a luncheon, and I suppose that means you are going out. I'll +rest here for awhile if you don't mind." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +I + + +Mortimer went off that night and got drunk. It was the first time in +his life and possibly his last, but he made a thorough job of it. He +took the precaution to telephone to the house that he was going out of +town, but when he returned two days later he experienced a distinct +pleasure in telling Alexina what he had done. Alexina, who still hoped +that she would always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather +sympathized with him, and assured him that he would have nothing to +apprehend from Gora in the future: she had no more fervent wish than to +keep out of his way. + + + +II + + +He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most +kind, Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as +well as she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at +home he undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly +grateful; it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully +preserved that the Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and +that all expenses were equally shared. In time he came to believe it, +and his hours of deep depression, when he had pondered over his +inexplicable roguery, grew rarer and finally ceased. After all he had +had nothing to lose as far as Alexina was concerned; one's sister +hardly mattered (Did women matter much, anyhow?); and his sense of +security, which he hugged at this time as the most precious thing he +had ever possessed, at last made him a little arrogant. He had done +what he should not, of course, but it was over and done with, ancient +history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison for less, he +had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew that he +would never do it again and that his position in life was as assured as +it ever had been. + + + +III + + +He spent a good many evenings at the club, and Maria found him a +willing cavalier when Tom "drew the line" at dancing parties. Alexina, +who had sold her car to Janet and her new gowns to Polly, had announced +that she was bored with dancing and should devote the winter to study. +She spent the evenings either in her library upstairs or with her +friends. Mortimer saw her only at the table. + +He wondered if Tom Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant +feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. +He made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to +hand anything over when the first of the month came round--a date that +had haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend +it on himself, and he felt an increasing pleasure in doing so. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +I + + +Gray naked trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after +mile. Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden +fruit. Tall accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms +shivering against a gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with +forest trees, their crests filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains +lifting their bleak ridges above bare brown hills thirsting for rain. + +The heavy rains were due. It was late in January. Alexina and several +of her friends were motoring back to the city through the Santa Clara +Valley, after luncheon with the Price Ruylers at their home on the +mountain above Los Gatos. As it was Sunday there was an even number of +men in the party, and Alexina, maneuvered into Jimmie Thorne's +roadster, was enduring with none of the sweet womanly graciousness +which was hers to summon at will, one of those passionate declarations +of love which no beautiful young woman out of love with her husband may +hope to escape; and not always when in. Alexina had grown skillful in +eluding the reckless verbalisms of love, but when one is packed into a +small motor car with a determined man, desperately in love, one might +as well try to wave aside the whirlwind. + +Jimmie Thorne was a fine specimen of the college-bred young American of +good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this +biography save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's +being, and he fell at Château-Thierry. + + + +II + + +Alexina lifted her delicate profile and gave it as sulky an expression +as she could assume. She really liked him, but was annoyed at being +trapped. + +"I don't in the least wish to marry you." + +"Everybody knows you don't care a straw for Dwight. You could easily +get a divorce--" + +"On what grounds! Besides, I don't want to. I'd have to be really off +my head about a man even to think of such a thing. Our family has kept +out of the divorce courts. And I don't care two twigs for you, Jimmie +dear." + +"I don't believe it. That is, I know I could make you care. You don't +know what love is--" + +"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and +that if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man +hasn't come along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth. +I suppose men will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what +is the limit these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't." + +"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts. +God! I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of +studying law at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won +you!" + +"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances +favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even +if I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in +love with you." + +"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all." + +Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming, +magnetic, companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She +could feel the warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats, +and her own trembled a little.... It suddenly came to her that she no +longer owed Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved +by his own act. If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something +beyond the agreeable response of the mating-season (any season is the +mating season in California) ... that was the trouble. He was not +individual enough to hold her. Life had been too kind to him. Save for +this unsatisfied passion he was perfectly content with life. Such men +do not "live." They may have charm, but not fascination.... Perhaps it +was as well after all that she had married Mortimer. Another man might +not have been so easily disposed of. + +"Jimmie dear, if it were a question of a few months, and I made a cult +of men as some women do, it would be all right. But marry another man +that I am not sure--that I know I don't want to spend my life with. Oh, +no." + +He looked somewhat scandalized. Like many American men he was even more +conventional than most women are; he was, moreover, a man's man, +spending most of his leisure in their society, either at the club or in +out-of-door sports, and he divided women rigidly into two classes. +Alexina was his first love and his last; and as he went over the top +and crumpled up he thought of her. + +"I wouldn't have a rotten affair with you. You're not made for that +sort of thing--" + +"Well, you're not going to have one, so don't bother to buckle on your +armor." She relented as she looked into his miserable eyes, and took +his hand impulsively. "I'm sorry ... sorry.... I wish ... you are worth +it ... but it's not on the map." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +I + + +Gora's novel was published in February. Aileen Lawton, Sibyl Bascom, +Alice Thorndyke, Polly Roberts, and Janet Maynard organized a campaign +to make it the fashion. They went about with copies under their arms, +on the street, in the shops, at luncheons, even at the matinée, and +"could talk of nothing else." Sibyl and Janet bought a dozen copies +each and sent them to friends and acquaintances with the advice to read +it at once unless they wished to be hopelessly out of date: it was "all +the rage in New York." + +As a matter of fact, with the exception of Aileen and possibly Janet, +the book almost terrified them with its pounding vigor and grim +relentless logic, even its romantic realism, which made its tragedy +more poignant and sinister by contrast; and, again with the exception +of Aileen, they were little interested in Gora. But they were loyally +devoted to Alexina and obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to +help her make the book a success. They worked with the sterner +determination as Alexina in her own efforts was obliged to be extremely +subtle. + +Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but +almost to have her in the family as it were. Their industrious sowing +bore an abundant harvest and Gora's novel became the fashion. Whether +people hated it or not, and most of them did, they discussed it +continually, and when a book meets with that happy fate personal +opinions matter little. + + + +II + + +Maria thought the book was "awful" and forbade Joan to read it. Joan +thought (to Alexina) that it was simply the most terribly fascinating +book she had ever read and made her despise society more than ever and +more determined to light out and see life for herself first chance she +got. Tom Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have +written; a man might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice. +Mortimer declined to read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover, +although his social position was now planetary, it annoyed him +excessively to hear his sister alluded to continually as an author. +Even the men at the club were reading the damned book. + + + +III + + +Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned +that Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as +she had been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred +that, like many another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough +to acquire material. When they learned the truth, and particularly +after her inescapable novel appeared, they were indignant that she had +not sought her muse at Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of +mutual admiration; affiliated herself; announced herself, at the very +least. There was a very sincere feeling among them that any attempt on +the part of a rank outsider to achieve literary distinction was +impertinent as well as unjustifiable.... It was impossible that he or +she could be the real thing. + +When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with +fashionable society, nurse though she might be, and that those +frivolous and negligible beings were not only buying her book by the +ton but giving her luncheons and dinners and teas, their disgust knew +no bounds and they tacitly agreed that she should be tabû in the only +circles where recognition counted. + + + +IV + + +But Gora, who barely knew of their existence, little recked that she +had been weighed, judged, and condemned. Her old dream had come true. +Society, the society which should have been her birthright and was not, +had thrown open its doors to her at last and everybody was outdoing +everybody else in flattering and entertaining her. + +Not that she was deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success +with the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the +social heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for +the original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco +and its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her +youthful bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued +from obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph rang hollow, and +that she really cared very little about it; but the strength and +tenacity of her nature alone would have forced her to quaff every drop +of the cup so long withheld. Even if she had been desperately bored she +would have accepted these invitations to houses so long indifferent to +her existence, and as a matter of fact she welcomed the sudden lapse +into frivolity after her years of hard and almost unremitting work. She +had played little in her life; and a year later when she was working +eighteen hours a day without rest, in conditions that seemed to have +leapt into life from the blackest pages of history, she looked back +upon her one brief interval of irresponsibility, gratified vanity, and +bodily indolence, as at a bright star low on the horizon of a dark and +terrible night. + + + +V + + +There was one small group of women, Gora soon discovered, that stood +for something besides amusement, sharply as some of them were +identified with all that was brilliant in the social life of the city. +They read all that was best in serious literature and fiction as soon +after it came out as their treadmill would permit, and they gave +somewhat more time to it than to poker. It was this small group, led by +Mrs. Hunter, that in common with several wealthy and clever Jewish +women, with intellectual members of old families that had long since +dropped out of a society that gave them too little to be worth the +drain on their limited means, and with one or two presidents of women's +clubs, made up the small attendance at the lectures on literary and +political subjects, delivered either by some local light, or European +specialist in the art of charming the higher intelligence of American +women without subjecting it to undue fatigue. + +This small but distinguished band discussed Gora separately and +collectively and placed the seal of approval upon her. With them her +arrival was genuine and permanent. + +It was hardly a step from their favor to the many women's clubs of the +city, and she was invited to be the luncheon or afternoon guest at one +after another until all had entertained the rising star and she had +learned to make the little speeches expected of her without turning to +ice. + + + +VI + + +The local intelligenzia, those that assured one another how great were +each and all, and whose poems or stories found an occasional +hospitality in the eastern magazines, who toiled over "precious" +paragraphs of criticism or whose single achievement had been a play for +the mid-summer jinks of the Bohemian Club; these and their associates, +the artists and sculptors, still held aloof, more and more annoyed that +Gora Dwight should have had the bad taste to be discovered by the +Philistines, and should be flying across the high heavens in spite of +their tabû. + +Gora had gradually become aware of their existence, and their attitude, +which both amused and piqued her. She knew now that if she had been one +of them they would have beaten the big drum and proclaimed to the world +(of California) that she was "great," "a genius," the legitimate +successor of Ambrose Bierce, whom she remotely resembled, and Bret +Harte, whom she did not resemble at all. This they would have done if +only to prove that California no longer "knocked" as in the mordant +nineties, nor waited for the anile East to set the seal of its dry +approval before discovering that a new volcano was sending forth its +fiery swords in their midst. + +But it was extremely doubtful if society and upper club circles would +have taken any notice of her. Both had acquired the habit, however +unjustly, of regarding their local intelligenzia (with the exception of +the few who kept themselves wholly apart from all groups) as worshipers +of small gods, and preferred to take their cues from London or New +York. They plumed themselves upon having discovered Gora Dwight and +sometimes wondered how it had happened. + +But Bohemia is hardly a trades union; it is indeed anarchistic and +knows no boss. Gora might not be invited to Carmel this many a day, nor +yet to Berkeley, nor to sundry other parnassi, but there was one club +in San Francisco whose curiosity got the better of it, and she was +invited to be the guest of the evening at the home of the Seven Arts +Club on the twentieth of April in the fateful year of nineteen-fourteen. + + + +VII + + +The Seven Arts Club had been organized by a group of painters, +architects, authors, sculptors, musicians, actors and poets, most of +whom had long since found various degrees of fame and moved to New +York, Europe, or the romantic wilderness. + +It still had seventy times seven votaries of the seven arts on its list +and few had found fame as yet outside their hospitable state--where +log-rolling is as amiable as the climate--but all save the elders were +expecting it and many made a fair living. They met once a week, and a +part of the evening pleasure of the literary wing was to "place" +authors. They were willing to swallow the British authors whole (they +did in fact "discover" one or two of them, as the musical critics had +discovered such a rara avis as Tetrazzini, or the dramatic critics many +a now famous player); but they were excessively critical of all who +owed their origin to the United States of America, and particularly of +those who had loved and lost the sovereign state of California. + +Naturally all were more or less radical (except the cynical and now +somewhat anæmic elders who gave up hope for a world that had ceased to +hold out hope to them). The artists were disturbed by futurism and +cubism, although as neither paid they were forced to devote the greater +part of their inspiration to the marketable California scenery. + +But the writers: potential or locally arrived novelists, playwrights, +poets, essayists, were the real intelligenzia! They went about with the +radical weeklies of the East (or Berkeley) under their arms and +discoursed under their breath (when foregathered in small and ardent +groups) upon The Revolution, the day of Judgment for all but honest +Labor, and hissed their hatred of Capital. And if they had much in +common with those "intellectuals" to be found in every land who caress +the chin of radicalism with one hand and plunge the other into the +pocket of capital as far as permitted, who shall blame them? One must +live and one must have something to excite one's intellect when sex, +the stand-by, takes its well-earned rest. + +Several of these ardent ladies and gentlemen, with the sanction of the +Club's President, a business man whose contributions were the financial +mainstay of the Seven Arts, and who sincerely envied the gifted +members, denying them nothing, invited James Kirkpatrick to be the +guest of an evening and deliver an address on Socialism and the +Proletariat. He replied that he would come and spit on them if they +liked but that he had as much use for parlor socialists as he had for +damned fools and posers of any sort. Life was too short. As for Labor +it knew how to take care of itself and had about as crying a need of +their "support" as a healthy human body had of lice and other parasites. + +They were not discouraged however, merely pronouncing him a "creature," +and were not at all flattered or surprised when Gora Dwight accepted +their invitation and asked permission to bring her friends, Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight and Miss Aileen Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +I + + +The wildflowers were on the green hills: the flame-colored velvet +skinned poppy, the purple and yellow lupins, the pale blue "babyeyes," +buttercups, dandelions and sweetbrier, fields of yellow mustard. The +gardens about the Bay and down the Peninsula were almost licentious in +their vehement indulgence in color. Every flower that grows north, +south, east, west, on the western hemisphere and the eastern, was to be +found in some one of these gardens of Central California; the +poinsettia cheek by jowl with periwinkle and the hedges of marguerite; +heavy-laden trees of magnolia above beds of Russian violets. +Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, bridal wreath and camellia, begonia, +fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, roses, roses, +roses.... Little orchards of almond trees, their blossoms a pink mist +against a clear blue sky.... The mariposa lily was awake in the +forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet for the feet +of the deer and the puma.... In the old Spanish towns of the south, the +Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and poignant as +when Rezánov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of +eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on +the hearts of men in Monterey.... From end to end of the great Santa +Clara Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres +and more of pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took +Alexina over it one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from +above it looked like a scented sea that was all foam. + +But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the +season for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the +compass at once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets +of the city, abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking +warmth; abruptly deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights, +always searching, searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San +Francisco, for something lost and never found. + + + +II + + +"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said +Aileen, as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, +down to the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending +to prove in public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast +to Bohemia, that I'm nearly frozen." + +"Keep your wrap on," said Alexina. "Who cares? I have always been wild +to get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead +the most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all, +anyhow. That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and +powerful--" + +"Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to +meet to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--" + +"What do you know about them?" + +"I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know +more or less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York +I was taken several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich +Village. I could only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This +must be a sort of chromo of it.... Gora, are you as wildly excited as +Alex is? I know she is because her spine is rigid; and she is probably +colder than I am." + +"Well, anyhow," said Alexina defiantly, "it will be something I never +saw before." + +"It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you anticipate?" + +Gora laughed. "I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The +circumstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my +imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of +taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this, +one way or another." + + + +III + + +The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the +city. The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor, +apparently very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to +be crowded, were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under +the eaves. + +"Looks like the loft of a barn," grumbled Aileen. There was no +attendant to hear. "Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several +reasons--only one of which is that if this room is a sample my +ill-covered bones will rattle together downstairs." + +She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band +of green in her fashionably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft +white satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim +and round, the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her +hair was done in a classic knot and held with a comb--a present from +Aileen--designed from periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling +dew-drops. + +Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black +satin, very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort. +To-night she wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out +the warm browns of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and +shoulders and bust, and the skin of her body was a delicate honey color +that melted imperceptibly into the deeper tones of her throat and face. + +"Alexina," she said, "let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your +arms and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born +again. Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid...." + +She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the +discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the +keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered +room they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a +new standard. + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," Aileen began. + +A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came +forward almost panting. "I just ran up those stairs," she cried. "But I +was bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down +on Bush Street--dear Minnie Morrison!" + +She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed button, +eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side. + +"But my mother never went to school in San Francisco," said Gora +stiffly, and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual +world with profound disfavor. + +"Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that +dear Minnie's daughter--" + +"Her name was not Minnie Morrison--" + +"Oh, yes, it was--" + +"Don't mind her so much, Gora dear." Aileen did not trouble to lower +her voice. "She's drunk. Let's go down." + +Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a +stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such +a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of +the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs. + +"I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up +here," she said apologetically. "She is not always herself, poor thing. +Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but ... +well, you know ... all people do not have the good fortune to have +their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes +disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, +and--and--your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared +to think no further explanation necessary. + +"Oh, yes," murmured the bewildered Gora. "It was you who wrote to me." + +"Exactly. I am chairman of the reception committee." She looked +expectant, then piqued, and added hastily: "Will you come downstairs? +What lovely gowns. I should like to paint you all." + +She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen +wickedly), and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from +the same bolt as the gown. + +"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't +know--I thought..." + +"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming, +what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody +criticizes anybody else." + +"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. "You will admit we never +found anything like that before." + +"Just you watch and catch them criticizing us.... Rather +effective--what?" + +They were descending a staircase that led directly into the crowded +room below, and they looked down upon a mass of upturned expectant +faces, Gora was ahead with Miss Halsey, and as she reached the floor +the faces changed their angle; it was apparent that they were not +interested in her satellites. + +"Let's stop here for a moment and watch," said Alexina. "It's too +interesting. They look as if they'd eat her alive." + +The whole company seemed to be seething about Gora, and as they were +rapidly presented by Miss Halsey and passed on they produced the +effect, in the inner circles, of a maelstrom. On the outer edge the +women frankly stood on chairs to get a better look at the new lion, or +pushed forward with frenzied determination to the fixed center of the +whirlpool, whose gracious smile was becoming strained. + +"Poor Gora!" said Aileen. "We do it better. A few picked souls at a +time; or, even when it's a tea, just casual introductions at decent +intervals, and not too many references to the immortal work." + +"It's simply great for Gora, anyhow; for, big or little, they're her +own sort. And they're not snobs, They don't care tuppence for us." + +"You're right there. I went to a big reception of all the arts in Paris +once and the only people any one kowtowed to were two disgustingly rich +New York women who had never done anything. But no one can be blamed +for national characteristics. Heavens! What an olla podrida!" + +Some of the men were in evening dress, but the greater number were not. +They were of all ages, shaves, neckties and haircuts. The women wore +every variety of hat, from an immense sailor perched above an immense +fat face, above an immense shirtwaist bust, to minute turbans and +waving plumes. They wore tailored suits, high "one piece" frocks of any +material from chiffon to serge, symphonic confections like Miss +Halsey's, and flowing robes presumably artistic. None wore full evening +dress except the guests of honor. All, however, did not wear hats, and +they arranged their hair as individually as Alexina. + + + +IV + + +"This may be our chance to see the art exhibit," said Aileen. "They'll +remember us in time, or Gora will...." + +They descended into the room but had waited too long. Miss Halsey, +turning the guest of honor over to the second in command, a woman of +portentous seriousness, made her way hastily to the mere butterflies; +who endeavored vainly to slink away under cover of the rotating crowd. + +"You won't think me rude, I hope," she cried, "but I had to start +things going, and it is awkward for all to introduce three people at a +time." + +"You were most considerate," said Alexina amiably. "But we only came to +witness Gora's triumph, and we enjoy looking on, anyhow.... We were +about to look at the pictures...." + +"You must meet some of our more brilliant members," said Miss Halsey +firmly. "They would never forgive me, and have been almost as excited +at meeting two such distinguished members of society as at meeting Miss +Dwight herself. Now, if you ... if you ... that is..." + +"Our names are Jane Boughton and Mamie Featherhurst," supplied Aileen, +transfixing the lady with her wicked green eyes. + +"Oh, yes, to be sure ... there has been so much to think of ... but +your names are so often in the society columns ... it seems to me I +recall that one of you is the daughter of a famous judge--" + +"Boughton. He's under indictment, you know, for graft, bribery, and +corruption." + +"Oh ... ah ... how unfortunate," Miss Halsey's jaw fell. Even she had +heard--vaguely in her studio--of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she +wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his +family to the club. + +"You see," said Aileen coolly. "I am not fit to associate with your +members, and as Miss Featherhurst is still my loyal friend, we'll just +go over and sit in a corner--" + +"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind. You are our guests, +and--please for this evening forget everything else." + +"You nasty little beast," hissed Alexina into Aileen's discomforted +ear. "She's worth two of you." + +"So she is," said Aileen contritely, "I'll behave better." + +Miss Halsey, who had been signaling several members and rounding up +others, returned, Alexina blazed her eyes at Aileen, who murmured +hastily to the hostess: "I was just joking. I am Judge Lawton's +daughter, and this is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Gora's sister-in-law. I'd +never have told such a whopper but I'm so nervous and shy. I didn't +think I could go through the ordeal." + +"Oh, you poor child. Well, you'll find we're not terrible in the least. +Now, don't try to remember names. They'll remember yours--better than I +did!" + +Another small eddying circle formed about the luminaries from a lower +sphere. This proved to be much like similar performances in any stratum +of society. All murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be +original or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves +and were making their way toward the pictures that turned the four +walls into a harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering +up. He had bright, eyes and a pleasant face. + +"Which is Mrs. Dwight?" he asked eagerly. Alexina bent her lofty head +and smiled down upon him. + +"Of course. Little Alexina. I remember you when you were a dear little +girl and I used to see you playing about the house when I went up to +have a good powwow with that clever grandfather of yours, Alex +Groome--one of the ablest politicians this town ever had; and straight, +damn straight." + +"Alexander Groome was my father." + +"Oh, no, he wasn't. He was your grandfather. You are the daughter ... +let me see ... there were two or three young ladies.... I remember when +they came out in the eighties ... and a boy or two...." + +"I am sorry to be rude, but Alexander Groome was my father. I came +along rather late." + +"Impossible! ... Well, I suppose you know best..." and he drifted off. + +"This seems to be a home for incurables," said Aileen. "I am sure I +don't know how I shall get through the evening. Gora has a slight sense +of humor, you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively +fiendish.... Oh, Lord!" + +Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of +another woman. + +"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up +to look like Carmen." + +The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been +considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had +evidently expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of +Nature. Her unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck +with immense pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade +rings dangled in tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of +colored beads covered the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, +beaded gown. She had a haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, +but something, an emanation perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was +still young. + +"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with +whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week +but was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of +the east to our new daughter of the west." + +Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted +forward and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how +wonderful I think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been +watching you!" She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a +child, which, oddly, made her look like a very old woman. + +"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave. + +"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You +look like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh, +I do think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid +artists here will want to paint you." + +Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and +unbridled admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if +rather queer. But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and +rushed on. + +"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over +her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style +are unique and she suggests tragedy--with those marvelous pale eyes in +that dark face--those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have +suggested that Folkes--your greatest portrait painter, you know,--paint +her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be +of her!" + +"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in +America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?" + +"I? I am not an artist--with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey +Smith." + +"Oh!..." Aileen's voice trailed off vaguely, "What do you write? Plays? +Essays?..." + +"I--why, I'm one of the best--my stories appear constantly in the best +magazines." Miss Smith, who had been deserted some time since by Miss +Halsey, looked abject, helpless, and infuriated. + +"Oh! We only read the worst. It must be wonderful to be famous. Come, +Alex, we must see the pictures. They're going to have music and supper +later." + + + +V + + +"Nevertheless," said Alexina, "they are real as far as they go, and +they really do things, good or bad. They work, they aspire; they dream, +and perhaps with reason, of a glorious future, when they will be as +famous and successful as the founders of the club. Even if they fail +they will have had the wonderful dream. Nothing can take that from +them. I envy them--envy them!" + +They were standing in a far corner of the room, after having examined +three or four admirable and many passable paintings. Aileen looked at +her in surprise. They had both been remarking upon the comic aspects of +the intellectual life, and Alexina's outburst was unexpected. Aileen +had seldom seen her vehement since they had outgrown their youthful +habit of wrangling. She was still more astonished when she turned from +a view of the Latin-seeming roofs of San Francisco from Twin Peaks, to +Alexina's face. It looked drawn and desperate. + +"Well, most of them will fail," she said lightly. "Look at these +pictures! That is what is the matter with California--too much talent. +You must be as individual as a talking monkey to get your head above +the crowd. All these poor devils are doomed to the local reputation." + +"Even so they have something to live for, mean something, do something. +What do I mean to myself or anyone? What have I accomplished? The man I +married is a dummy-husband; means nothing to me nor I to him. I have no +children. Even my housekeeping for Maria is a farce; James really does +it all. I mean nothing to society now that I can no longer entertain +it. I haven't even a decent vice. I don't smoke and gamble like you, +nor have lovers like some of the others. I'm simply a +nonentity--nothing!" + +"You have personality ... beauty...." Aileen was completely at a loss. +"I hate being banal like that Smith idiot ... but you are the +perfection of a type. That is something. And you cultivate your mind--" + +"My mind! What does it amount to? Anybody can pack a brain. I'd like +one of those that gives out something, however little. But I can't help +that. The point is I don't live. I don't care a hang about personality +that doesn't get anywhere, and I care still less about being a finished +type--that's the work of dead and gone ancestors, anyhow, not mine.... +I wish I could fall in love with James Kirkpatrick. I'd feel more +justified in my own eyes if I were living with him over in the +Mission--" + +"His old mother would chase you out with a broom and use Biblical +language. Of course I know you must be bored, Alex dear. Can't you +manage to go abroad and live for a time?" + +"No, I can't, and I don't see what difference that would make. But I'll +tell you what I shall do. If Tom and Maria want to rent the house next +year they can have it but I'll not live there. I'll not be 'held up' +any longer. I'll stand on my own feet--in other words get a job. +No--I've some loose money, I'll start in business." + +"Good for you. Perhaps dad'll let me go in with you. Don't imagine I +don't get sick of my racketing life; and when I have a spasm of reform +I nearly take seriously to drink, I'm so bored. Would you have me for +partner?" + +"Wouldn't I? That is if you would be serious about it. I am, let me +tell you. The whole family can perform suttee for all I care. I'm going +to do something that will give me a place in the main stream of life." + +"Trust me. I have been considering Bob's fifteenth proposal--Mr. +Cheever has promised him a full partnership the day he marries, and it +wouldn't be so bad. Bobby is a good sport, and we'd live the out-door +life at Burlingame instead of the in--sports ... tournaments ... polo +... cut out dissipation. We've both really had enough of it. But I +believe business would be more interesting. After all that's what you +marry for unless you want children--which I don't--to be interested. +What'll we be? Decorators?" + +"I suppose so. But all this has only just come to a head, although I +know now that it has been slowly gathering force in my deepest deeps. +If we do I'll take Alice on. She's sick of the game too and she has +simply ripping ideas." + +"Perfect. 'Dwight, Thorn--', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm +too excited--convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and +get out. It will be our real, our first adventure." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +I + + +But two weeks later Aileen told Alexina that although she had cannily +waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her +father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She +stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a +cent nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had +supported woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed +the franchise and no fair-minded man would withhold it; and if for no +other reason he would forbid his daughter to go out and compete with +women who must work whether they wanted to or not. + +But that was only one point. + +What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher +plane to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died +for? It was their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go +up not down. + +Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing +their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and +undermined society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his +way not a woman in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service, +should work. He'd tax every male in the land, according to his income +or wage, to say nothing of the rich women, and keep every last one of +the unportioned in idleness rather than risk the downfall of male +supremacy in the world. + +He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had +his way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the +public press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be +handed on, not lowered.... Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps, +but no further exposure to the vulgar gaze ... he was glad she had +never gone in for the last. + +Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top +that proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the +refinements of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of +leisure, of pleasure--quite as much an art as writing books or painting +pictures. + +If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able +to prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and +protected were second to none on this planet, at least. + +If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the +world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization.... +He was not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a +disgrace for a lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane +and compete with men for laurels.... But when it came to stripping off +the delicate badges that only the higher civilization could confer, and +struggling tooth and nail with the mob for no reason whatever--it was +disloyal, ungrateful and monstrous. + +He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different, +yes.) But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his +father before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his +convictions. + +That was all. + + + +II + + +"In short, he's modern but not too modern. My twentieth-century +arguments were brushed aside as mere fads. And yet there's probably not +an important case tried in any court in either hemisphere that he +doesn't read--learn something from if he can. He takes in the leading +newspapers and reviews of America and Europe and even reads the best +modern novels as carefully as he ever read Thackeray and Dickens--says +they are the real social chronicles. He's a profound student of +history, and the history of the present interests him just as much--he +has those Balkans under a microscope; and collects all the data on +every important strike here and elsewhere. And yet where women are +concerned he is a fossil. An American fossil--worst sort. Some of the +young ones are just as bad ... I'll have to give in. I can't break his +heart. I suppose I'll marry Bobby." + + + +III + + +Alice Thorndyke also shook her head. "I'd like to, Alex, but frankly I +haven't the courage. Your friends all stick to you like perfect dears +when you step down and out and set up shop, and are so kind you feel +like a street walker in a house of refuge. But secretly they hate it +and they don't feel toward you in the same way at all. They may not +know enough to express it, but what they really feel is that you have +threatened the solidity of the order and lowered yourself as well as +them. One day they may have more sense but not in our time, I am +afraid." + +Nevertheless, Alexina persisted in her determination. One could succeed +alone. She would not be the first. She was by no means sure, however, +what she wanted to do, and made up her mind to take no step before the +following winter. When the Abbotts returned to Rincona in May they took +James with them. Alexina closed Ballinger House, although Mortimer +slept there and a Filipino came in every morning to make his breakfast +and bed; and took a cottage in Ross with Janet Maynard whose mother had +gone south to visit old lady Bascom, and who craved the wild peace of +Marin County after too much San Francisco and Burlingame. + +Marin, with its magnificent redwood forests on the coast, fed by the +fogs of the Pacific, its ancient sunlit woods of oak and madroño and +manzanita, its mountains and rocky hills and peaceful fertile valleys, +is perhaps the most beautiful county in California, and its towns and +villages are still almost primitive in spite of the many fashionable +residents whose homes are close to or in them. The ocean pounds its +western base, Mount Tamalpais is its proudest possession, it has a +haunted looking lake; and a part of it embraces one of the many +ramifications of the Bay of San Francisco, and commands a superb view +of city and island and mountain. But it has a heavy brooding peace that +seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is intermittent, and +its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco deeply +refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a stark +little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San +Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh +are Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries. + + + +IV + + +Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the +sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in +the late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or +Belvedere, perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet +was now twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as +seriously to consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She +had great wealth, she was blasée as a result of doing everything she +chose to do, in public or in private, and she was nearly two +generations younger than Judge Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no +allurement in the business world, and the only alternative seemed +marriage. Not in California, however. No surprises there. She might +take her fortune to London and become a peeress of the realm. When +change became imperative better go up than down. + +Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not +afflicted with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and +brooding and intimate personal contacts. She wanted the deep +refreshment of the summer before girding up for the winter--before +making her plunge into the world of business and toil. + +But she was soon to discover that she had girded up her loins, or at +all events brightened up her corpuscles and reposed her brain cells, +for a far different purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +I + + +It is possible that only two people in California, barring German +spies, leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a +European War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and +knew his modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because +she recalled conversations she had had in France the summer before with +people close to the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions +in the letters of Olive de Morsigny; who may have thought it wise not +to trust all she knew to the post, or may have been too busy with her +intensive nursing course to enter into particulars. + +Janet shrugged her large statuesque shoulders when Alexina communicated +her fears. What was war to her? England at least would have sense +enough to keep out of it. Aileen came over after a convincing talk with +her father looking as worried as if some nation or other were training +their guns on the Golden Gate. + +"Dad says it's the world war ... that we'll be dragged in ... that +Germany has had it up her sleeve for years ... believes that bomb was +made in Berlin ... nothing under heaven could have averted this +impending war but a huge standing army in Great Britain ... hasn't Lord +Roberts been crying out for it?.... Dad and I dined at his house one +night in London and the only picture in the dining-room was an oil +painting of the Kaiser in a red uniform, done expressly for Lord +Roberts ... funny world ... and now Britain's got a civil war on her +hands and mutinous officers who won't go over and shoot men of their +own class in Ulster.... Russia hasn't built her strategic railways--all +the money used up in graft.... Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! who'd have thought +it? ... Twentieth century and all the rest of it." + +"Twentieth century ... war ... how utterly absurd.... I don't wish to +be rude ... but really..." + +This from every one to whom Alexina and Aileen, or even Judge Lawton, +communicated their fears. + + + +II + + +One day Alexina and Aileen met in San Francisco by appointment and +telephoned to James Kirkpatrick, asking him to lunch with them at the +California Market. He accepted with alacrity, and laughed genially at +their apprehensions. War? War? Not on your life. There'll never be +another war. Socialists won't permit it. The kaiser? To hell with the +kaiser. (Excuse me.) He, James Kirkpatrick, was in frequent +correspondence with certain German socialists. They would declare +themselves in the coming International Congress for the general strike +if any sovereign--or President--dared to try to put over a war on the +millions of determined socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, and +communists in Great Britain and Europe; he'd get the surprise of his +life. Socialism was determined there should never be another war--the +burden and life-toll of which was always borne by the poor man. He +didn't believe any of those fool sovereigns, not even the crazy kaiser, +would attempt it, knowing what they did; but if they turned out to be +deaf and blind, well, just watch out for the Great Strike. That would +be the most portentous, the most awe-inspiring event in history. + +And then he dismissed a prospective European war as unworthy of further +attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the +Great Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the +miserable make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a +horror in the very heart of a great and prosperous nation. But with the +new system ... the new system ... there would not be even these +abominable little civil wars ... for that was what we had right here in +our own country ... no need to use up your gray matter bothering about +European states.... + +He was so convincing that Alexina and Aileen thanked him warmly and +went to their respective destinations lulled and comforted. + +Nevertheless, the war made its grand début on August first, and Mr. +Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New +York for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously +over the side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug. + + + +III + + +Two letters came from Olive to Alexina and one to each of her other old +friends, imploring them to come over and help. They could nurse. They +could run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her +friends, her countrywomen, could do. + +But the war would be over in three months.... Only Judge Lawton +believed it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a +war at all.... Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that +wondrous smiling land could think upon war anywhere?) ... It would be +too funny if it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian +refugees.... Poor things.... Maria and other good women immediately +began knitting for them ... sat for hours on the verandahs, all in +white, knitting, knitting ... but talking of anything of war.... It +simply was a horrid dream and soon would be over.... Their husbands all +said so ... three months.... German army irresistible ... modern +implements of war must annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the +Germans had the most and the best.... Rotten shame (said Burlingame) +and the Germans not even good sportsmen. + +James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with +the thought that at least Britain would be licked ... she'd get what +was coming to her, all right, and Ireland would be free.... Anyhow it +would soon be over.... When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the +socialist party for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an +American first, wasn't I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag ... +oh, hell! (Excuse me.)" + + + +IV + + +In December, nineteen-fourteen, Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who +grasped the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went +to France. Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a +passionate good-by to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever. +Jimmie Thorne went to France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning +to join the Lafayette Escadrille. Gora sailed six months later to offer +her services to England. In the case of a nurse there was much red tape +to unravel. + +A fair proportion of the women left behind continued to knit. As time +went on branches of certain French war-relief organizations were +formed, and run by such capable women as Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Hunter, +who had many friends among the American women living in France; now +toiling day and night at their oeuvres. + +Alexina and Olive de Morsigny, after a year of nursing, when what +little flesh they had left could stand no more, founded an oeuvre of +their own, and Sibyl Bascom and Aileen Cheever did fairly well with a +branch in San Francisco, Alexina's relatives quite wonderfully in New +York and Boston; although they were already interested in many others. + + + +V + + +Certain interests in California, notably the orchards and canneries, +were violently anti-British during the first years of the war, as the +blockade shut off their immense exports to Germany, and those that +failed, or closed temporarily, realized the incredible: that a war in +Europe could affect California, even as the Civil War affected the +textile factories of England. To them it was a matter of indifference, +until nineteen-seventeen, who won the war so long as one side smashed +the other and was quick about it. + +Owners and directors of copper mines--but let us draw a veil over the +sincere robust instincts of human nature. + +The Club of Seven Arts was proudly and vociferously pro-German. Not +that they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far +more original attitude than all this sobbing over France ... and then +there was Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl. +And the atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president +resigned, but no one else paid any attention to them. + +In nineteen-seventeen a few declared themselves pacifists and +conscientious objectors, and, little recking what they were in for, +marched off triumphantly to a military prison, feeling like Christ and +longing for a public cross. + +The others, those that were young enough, shouldered a gun and went to +the front with high hearts and hardened muscles. Democracy über alles. +The women enlisted in the Red Cross and the Y.W.C.A., and worked with +grim enthusiasm, either at home or in France. + + + +VI + + +By this time California, almost on another planet as she was, with her +abundance unchecked, and her skies smiling for at least three-fourths +of the year, admitted there was a real war in the world, as bad (or +worse) as any you could read about in history. The war films in the +motion picture houses were quite wonderful, but too terrible. + +They also discussed it, especially on those days when the streets +echoed with the march of departing regiments in khaki, or one's own +son, or one's friend's son enlisted or was drafted, or it was their day +at Red Cross headquarters. + +All the older women were at work now, and all but the most +irreclaimably frivolous of the young ones. Even Tom and Maria Abbott +made no protest against Joan's joining the Woman's Motor Corps; and, +dressed in a smart, gray, boyish uniform, she drove her car at all +hours of the day and night. She was not only sincerely anxious to +serve, but she knew, and sheltered girls all over the land knew,--to +say nothing of the younger married women--that this was the beginning +of their real independence, the knell of the old order. They were +freed. Even the reënforced concrete minds of the last generation +imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly modernized in the +rebuilding. + +A good many of the women, old and young, continued to gamble furiously +out of their hours of work; but the majority of the girls did not. +Those with naturally serious minds were absorbed, uplifted, keen, +calculating. They did not even dance. They realized that they had +wonderful futures in a changing world. It was "up to them." + + + +VII + + +Mortimer was beyond the draft age, but, possibly owing to his gallant +fearless appearance, it was rather expected that he would enlist. He +did not, however, nor did he join the Red Cross or the Y.M.C.A., nor +volunteer for some Government work, as so many of the men of his age +and class were doing as a matter of course. + +War news bored him excessively. He was making two or three hundred +dollars a month; he lived at the Club when Maria Abbott occupied +Ballinger House--Tom went to Washington--and he was extremely +comfortable. In the Club he always felt like a blood, forgot for the +time being that he was not a rich man, like the majority of its +members, and there was always a group of nice quiet contented fellows, +glad to play bridge with him in the evening. On the whole, he +congratulated himself, he had not done so badly, although he had +resigned all hope of being a millionaire--unless he made a lucky +strike.... But it did not make so much difference in California ... and +when Alexina had had enough of horrors they would settle down again +very comfortably to the old life.... There was very good dancing at the +restaurants (upstairs) where one met nice girls of sorts who didn't +care a hang about this infernal war ... one of them ... but he was +extremely careful ... he would never be divorced; that was positive ... +as for society he did not miss it particularly ... the dancing at the +restaurants was better and he didn't have to talk ... whether people +stopped asking him or not, now that his wife was away, or whether they +entertained or not, didn't so much matter. He had the Club. That was +the all important pivot of his life, his altar, his fetish ... a lot he +cared what went so long as he had that. + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the +upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of +legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to +celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with +an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, +obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be +intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he +had invested money in North and South America, and was able to +entertain his sovereign out of his private purse. He had made up his +mind to give the first brilliant function following the sudden end of +La Grande Guerre and one that it would be difficult for even Paris to +eclipse. + +All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after +nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and +her eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of +her room, blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the +Marquis and Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long +receiving line where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside +the resplendent ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to +a group of acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling +munificence that seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance. + +They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of +the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her +insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the +greatest function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the +long monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four +years, and the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last +year when avions dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha +struck terror to each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene +recalled one's most extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and +Alexina felt like a very young girl. Even the almost constant sensation +of fatigue, mental and bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had +worked from nine until six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking +the miles to and from her hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains; +the distasteful food; the tremors that had shaken even her tempered +soul when the flashing of the German guns, drawing ever nearer, could +be seen at night on the horizon. + +And Paris had been so dark! + +She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast, +quite unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date. +For that matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this +year's fashion. Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the +Armistice was declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion +to its ideal of duty, but that the American officers should have the +opportunity to discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden, +the women had not yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only +gowns in the room less than four years old were worn by the newly +arrived Americans of the Peace Commission and the ladies of the +Embassy. The most striking figures were the French Generals in their +horizon blue uniforms and rows of orders on their hardy chests. + +Of jewels there were few. When the German drive in March seemed +irresistible, jewels had been sent to distant estates, or to banks in +Marseilles and Lyons, and there had been no time to retrieve them after +the ambassador sent out his sudden invitations. Alexina smiled as she +recalled Olive de Morsigny's lament over the absence of her tiara. +European women of society take their jewels very seriously, and there +was not a Frenchwoman present who did not possess a tiara, however +old-fashioned. + +But the cold luminosity of jewels would have been extinguished to-night +under this really terrific down-pour of light. The tall candelabra +against the tapestried or the white and gold walls were relieved of +duty; Paris had had enough of candlelight; the four immense chandeliers +of this reception room, either of which would have illuminated a +restaurant, had been rewired and blazed like suns. Suspended from the +ceiling, festooned between the candelabra and the chandeliers, were +clusters and loops of glass tupils and roses, each concealing an +electric bulb. Alexina reflected that the soft haze of candles might be +more artistic and becoming, but was grateful nevertheless for this +rather tasteless fury of light, symptomatic as it was; and understood +the ambassador's revolt against the enforced economies of a long war, +his desire to do honor to his unassuming little sovereign. + + + +II + + +The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three +massive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly. +Every embassy was represented, all the grande noblesse of Paris and +even a stray Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more +distinguished American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out +of date if as inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked +as hard. But Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that +two American officers, standing still closer to the window, were +talking. One of them had parted the curtains and was looking out. + +"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows +opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one +of them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist." + +"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the +room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls ... feel it a +sort of duty to increase the rapport and all that ... but although the +married women and the other sort of girls are a long sight more +fascinating than ours, the upper--" + +"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of +carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about +that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home +town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun +didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that +he looked about rather apprehensively when he arrived, at the station +yesterday? No wonder, poor devil." + + + +III + + +Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to +halt near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door +at the fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond, +when, without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went +out. + +Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar +cry of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people +in real life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to +relieve her lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!" + +She waited to hear screams from the women, wild ejaculations from the +men. But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and +exalted the strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor +Alexina heard nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and +that was abysmal; she could not see the white of her gown. + +All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a +groan as the King fell with a knife in his back. + +Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the +crowd; she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later +she knew that a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed +him up the room to place him in front of the central pillar, but at the +moment she believed that they were either carrying out his body, or +that a group of anarchists was escaping. + + + +IV + + +Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving +excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, +then another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and +these burned with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and +lit them. All over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, +Alexina saw face after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were +invisible. The faces hung, pallid disks, in the dark. + +Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady +flame of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an +officer recently discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic +and unperturbed and his eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively +curiosity. An Englishman, probably; nothing there of the severity of +the American military countenance; although, to be sure, that had +relaxed somewhat these last weeks under the blandishments of Paris. +Nevertheless ... quite apart from the military, there was the curious +unanalyzable difference between the extremely well-bred American face +and the extremely well-bred English face. It might be that the older +civilization did not take itself quite so seriously.... + + + +V + + +Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the +sudden reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, +she took a match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it +and held it below her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly, +opened a little wider, then narrowed. + +She looked at him steadily ... interested ... something ... somewhere +... stirring. The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished. +At the same time she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond +the pillars and that people were moving on, some retreating toward the +hall. She was carried forward and a little later turned her head, +forgetting for a moment the humorous face that still had seemed to +beckon above the white disks that inspired her with no interest +whatever. + +Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him +two officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a +great candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches +had been lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless +face of the King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old +cathedral window. + +The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left +the room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his +ambassador, whose face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase. + + + +VI + + +A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of +the dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had +been no attempt at assassination. A lead fuse had melted; the +ambassador, who had taxed his imagination to honor his King, had +forgotten to give the order that electricians remain on guard to avert +just such a calamity as this. + +As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter +rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria. +But although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the +mild exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get +away. Many still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the +assassins were lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel. + +Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white +and shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of +strong nerves as well as of untiring effort. + +"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap. +"If he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought André would faint. +His last wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who +knows? ... In Paris!..." + +Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent +friends in the porte cochère the certainty grew that some one was +watching her. That officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the +crowd about her, then into the densely packed hall behind. But she +encountered no pair of eyes even remotely humorous, no face in any +degree familiar.... Later she whirled about again.... There was a +pillar ... easy to dodge behind it.... At this moment André took her +elbow and gently piloted her into the car. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her +pension in Passy. + +Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left +her free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the +great hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a +canteen in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the +Armistice in a comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de +Morsigny, and found much solace together. But their hotel had been +commandeered for one of the Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with +her sister-in-law, and Alexina, Janet, and Alice had found with no +little difficulty vacant rooms in a second-rate pension in Passy. The +food was even worse than at the hotel, the rooms were barely heated, +and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless and jammed, and taxicabs +in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with drivers of an unsurpassable +effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles a day in all weathers. +It is true that she could have rented a limousine for a thousand francs +a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of her class to +economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre of their +devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply +camions of the Y.M.C.A. + + + +II + + +Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door and +inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many +cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard +day's work and the next. She was in no mood for talking. + +Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had +probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of +the long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly +in flood after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and +many long banners of light from the almost festive banks. + +It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved +about her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to +discomforts and thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco, +which is seldom warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts +nevertheless. During the war she had sustained herself with the thought +of the men in the trenches, but now that their lot was ameliorated she +felt that she had a right to what comforts she could find. The +difficulty was to find them. With Paris overflowing. Generals sleeping +in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, even officers, picking up +women on the streets if only to have a bed for the night, and hotel +after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace Commissions and +their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow worse. Olive +de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she preferred her +independence. + +To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months. +Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of +hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now +that the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil +stove. + +Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her +restless. The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a +shock to-night and not from the imagined assassination of a king. + +She went suddenly to her mirror and looked at herself intently ... +shook her head with a frown. She had always been slim; she was now very +thin. The roundness and color had left her cheeks. They were +pale--almost hollow. Janet and Alice had rejoiced in the lack of fats +and sweets, both having a tendency to plumpness had achieved without +effort the most fashionable slenderness that anxious woman could wish. +But she had not had a pound to lose. It seemed to her that she was +almost plain. Her eyes retained their dazzling brilliancy, a trick of +nature that old age alone no doubt could conquer, but there were dark +stains beneath the lower lashes. + +She let down her hair. It was the same soft dusky mass as ever. Her +teeth were as even and bright; her lips had not lost their curves, but +they were pink, not red. She was anæmic, no doubt. Why, in heaven's +name, shouldn't she be? Even Olive, whose major domo, driving a Ford, +had paid daily visits to the farms and brought back what eggs, chickens +and other succulences the peasants would part with for coin, had lost +her brilliant color and the full lines of her beautiful figure. She had +rouged to-night and looked as lovely as when Morsigny had captured her, +but her magnificent gown had been too hastily taken in by an elderly +inefficient maid--her young one having patriotically deserted her for +munitions long since, and sagged on her bones as she expressed it. +Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered to lend her one of the +new ones she had had the forethought to buy in New York before sailing, +and was only a year old, but Olive had feared the critical eyes of +French women who had not replenished their evening wardrobe since +nineteen-fourteen. + +Alexina did not feel particularly consoled because others had looked no +better than she. Until to-night she had given little thought to her +looks, but she now felt a renewed interest in herself, and the frown +was as much for this revival as for her wilted beauty. + +Her evening wrap was very warm and she sat down in the hard arm-chair +and huddled into its folds, covering the lower part of her body with a +hideous brown quilt. No doubt the sheets were damp, and she knew that +she could not sleep. Why shiver in bed? + + + +III + + +Was it Gathbroke? It was long since she had thought of him. She had not +even seen his photograph for four or five years. If it were, he had +changed even more since that photograph had been taken than after she +had dismissed him at Rincona. + +She was by no means sore that it was he. The light of a briquet was not +precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than +one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in +Paris.... It was something in the eyes ... she could have vowed they +were hazel ... their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat +ironic man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the +piercing alertness of a man of action ... but after ... was it perhaps +an emanation of the personality that had so impressed her angry young +soul and refused to be obliterated? + +But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers +and soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not +already supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they +may have been before.... Life seemed shorter every time they went back +to the front. + +And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her +for a moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite +youth. That was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty, +to-day, was but the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks +in the California sunshine and nourished by the California abundance +would restore her looks, no doubt of that. But she would look no better +as long as she remained in Paris.... Nor did she wish to return to +California ... and beyond all question he must have forgotten, lost all +interest in her long since. + +Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes ... was it +recognition? ... merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match +and a briquet? ... No doubt she would never see him again. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Did she want to? + +She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years +of close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as +precisely different from the first twenty-six years of her life as +peace from war. + +During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in +hospitals close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage +of her nature which she had inherited from a long line of men who had +fought in the Civil War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars +before that, and the tribal wars that came after, and all that she had +inherited from those foremothers whose courage, as severely tested, had +never failed either their men or their country; in short, the +inheritance of the best American tradition; had risen automatically to +sustain her during that period of incessant danger and horror. She had +been firm and smiling for the consolation of wounded men when under +direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity for the mutilated +patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every selfish impulse +fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many helpless +bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of the +eternal motherhood of the world. She had once thrown herself over the +bed of a politely protesting poilu, covering his helpless body with her +own, as a shell from a taube came through the roof. + +That had been a wonderful, a noble and exalted (not to say +exhilarating) period; a period that made her almost grateful for a war +that revealed to her such undreamed of possibilities in her soul. She +might smile at it in satiric wonder in the retrospect, but at least it +was ineradicable in her memory. + +If it could but have lasted! But it had not. Insensibly she accepted +suffering, sacrifice, pity, as a matter of course, even as danger and +death. It had been the romance of war she had experienced in spite of +its horrors, and no romance lives after novelty has fled. For months +nothing seemed to affect her bodily resistance to fatigue, and as +exaltation dropped, as the monotony of nursing, even of danger, left +her mind more and more free, as war grew more and more to seem, the +normal condition of life, more and more she became conscious of herself. + + + +II + + +Life at the front is very primitive. Social relations as the world +knows them cease to exist. The habits of the past are almost forgotten. +It is death and blood; shells shrieking, screaming, whining, jangling; +the boom of great guns as if Nature herself were in a constant +electrical orgasm; hideous stench; torn bodies, groans, cries, still +more terrible silences of brave men in torment; incessant +unintermittent danger. Above all, blood, blood, blood. She believed she +should smell it as long as she lived. She knew it in every stage from +the fresh dripping blood of men rushed from the field to the evacuation +hospitals, to the black caked and stinking blood of men rescued from No +Man's Land endless days and nights after they had fallen. + +All that was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, +full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the +surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter +inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished +at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything +else could ever have mattered. + +Civilization--by which men meant the varied and pleasant times of +peace--seemed incredibly insipid and out of date. It had no more +relation to this war-zone than her youth to this swift and terrible +maturity. + +She was in many hospitals--rushed where an indomitable and tireless +auxiliary nurse was most in demand--some under the direction of the +noblesse division of the Red Cross, others under the bourgeois; and in +more than one were English and American girls, long resident in France, +or, in the latter case, come from America like herself to serve the +country for which they had a romantic passion. The majority, of course, +were Frenchwomen, young (in their first freedom), middle-aged, elderly. + +Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently +noble, selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every +thought and deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land. + +But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off +after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day, +accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might +turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly +readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is +the quintessential carnality. Renan once wrote a story of the French +Revolution, "The Abbess Juarre," in which his thesis was that if +warning were given that the world would end in three days the entire +population of the globe would give itself over to an orgy of sex; sex +being life itself. It is the obsession of the doomed consumptive, the +doomed spinster, the last thought of a man with the rope round his neck. + +How much more under the terrific stimulation of war, the constant +heedless annihilation of life in its flower and its maturity? Man's +inveterate enemy, death, shrieking its derision in the very shells of +man's one inviolable right, the right to drift into eternity through +the peaceful corridors of old age. War is a monstrous anachronism and a +monstrous miscarriage of justice. The ignorant feel it less. It is the +enlightened, the intelligent, accustomed to the higher delights of +civilization, to the perfecting of such endowments, however modest, as +their ancestors have transmitted and peace has encouraged, with +ambitions and hopes and dreams, that resent however sub-consciously the +constant snarling of death at their heels. All the forces of mind and +body and spirit become formidable in a reckless hatred of the gross +injustice of a fate that individually not one of them has deserved. + +But the moment remains. They compress into it the desires of a +lifetime. After years of proud individualism they have learned that +they are atoms, cogs, helpless, the sport of iron and steel and powder +and the ambitions and stupidities of men whose lives are never risked. +Very well, turn the ego loose to find what it can. If all they have +learned from civilization is as useless in this shrieking hell, as +impotent as the dumb resentment of the clod, they can at least be +animals. + +To talk of the ennobling influences of war is one of the lies of the +conventionalized mind anxious to avoid the truths of life and to +extract good from all evil--worthy but unintelligent. How can men in +the trenches, foul with dirt and vermin, stench forever in their +nostrils, callous to death and suffering, wallowing like pigs in a +trough, compulsorily obscene, be ennobled? Courage is the commonest +attribute of man, a universal gift of Nature that he may exist in a +world bristling with dangers to frail human life; never to be +commended, only to be remarked when absent. If men lose it in the city, +the sedentary life, they recover it quickly in the camp. The +exceptions, the congenital cowards, slink out of war on any pretext, +but if drafted are likely to acquit themselves decently unless +neurotic. The cases of cowardice in active warfare are extremely rare; +a mechanical chattering of teeth, or shaking of limbs, but practically +never a refusal to obey the command to advance. But it is this very +courage which breeds callousness, and, combined with bestial +conditions, inevitably brutalizes. + +When good people (far, oh far, from the zones of danger) can no longer +in the face of accumulating evidence, cling to their sentimental theory +that war ennobles, they take refuge in the vague but plausible +substitute that at least it makes the good better and the bad worse. +Possibly, but it is to be remembered that there is bad in the best even +where there is no good in the worst. + +Indubitably it leaves its indelible mark in a collection of hideous +memories, on the just and the unjust, alike; as it is more difficult +(Nature having made human nature in an ironical mood) to recall the +pleasant moments of life than the poignantly unpleasant, so is it far +more difficult to recall the moments of exaltation, of that intense +spiritual desire which visits the high and low alike, to give their all +for the safety of their country and the honor of their flag. Moreover, +the sublime indifference in the face of certain death often has its +origin in a still deeper necessity to relieve the insufferable strain +on scarified nerves, and forever. As for the much vaunted recrudescence +of the religious spirit which is one of the recurring phenomena of war, +it is merely an instinct of the subtle mind, in its subtlest depths +called soul, to indulge in the cowardice of dependence since the body +must know no fear. + +If men who have been temperate and moral all their lives, or at the +worst indulging in moderation, spend their leaves of absence from the +front like swine, it is not a reaction from the monotony of trench +life, or from the nerve-racking din of war, but merely an extension of +the fearful stimulation of a purely carnal existence, even where the +directing mind is ever on the alert. + +The aggressors of war should be pilloried in life and in history. Men +must defend their country if attacked; to do less would be to sink +lower than the beasts that defend their lairs; and for that reason all +pacifists, and conscientious objectors, are abject, mean, and shabby. +In times of national danger no man has a right to indulge his own +conscience; it merges, if he be a normal courageous man, into the +national conscience. But that very fact lowers the deliberate seekers +of war so far below the high plane of civilization as we know it, that +they should be blotted out of existence. + + + +III + + +As regards women Alexina was not likely to remain shocked for long at +any erratic manifestations of temperament. Pride and fastidiousness and +the steel armor fused by circumstances had protected her heretofore +from any divagations of her own; nor had crystallized temptation ever +approached her. + +But her education had been liberal. Several of her intimate friends and +more that she associated with daily made what she euphemistically +termed a cult of men. The naïve deliberate immorality of young things +not only in the best society but in all walks of life is far more +prevalent than the good people of this world will ever believe. Those +with much to lose seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection +envelops them as a mantle; although in small towns, where concealments +are less simple, the majority of scandals are not about married women +as in a less sophisticated era, but about girls. + +Alexina had possessed numerous confidences, helped more than once to +throw dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she +was philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact +stood out that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, remained always her +favorite friend. + +An individualist, she felt it no part of her philosophy to criticize +the acts of women with different desires, weaknesses, temptations, +equipment from her own; all other things being equal. That was the +point. These girls who made use of their most secret and personal +possession as they saw fit were as well-bred as herself, honorable in +all their dealings with one another and with society at large, +generous, tolerant, exquisite in their habits, often highly intelligent +and studious. Sex was an incident. + +With the peccadillos of married women who were wives she had little +tolerance as they were a breach of faith, a deliberate violation of +contract, and indecent to boot. She was quite aware that Sibyl for all +her posturings, and avidness for sex admiration, and "acting oriental" +as the phrase went, was entirely devoted to Frank. Such of her married +friends as had severed all but the nominal and public bond with their +legal husbands, she placed in the same category as girls as far as her +personal attitude toward them went. + + + +IV + + +Therefore not only did she understand these young women driven by the +horrid stimulus of war; women (or girls) heretofore sheltered, +virtuous, romantic, sentimental, now merely filled with the lust of +life. They were, like herself, devoted and meticulous nurses, brave, +high-minded, tender; practically all, if not from the upper, at least +from the educated ranks of life. But they lived under the daily shadow +of death. Even when safe from the shells of the big guns, the murderous +aircraft paid them daily visits, singling out hospitals with diabolical +precision. They were in daily contact with young torn human bodies from +which had gone forever the purpose for which one generation precedes +another. Life was horror. Blood and death and shattered bodies were +their daily portion. No matter how brave, they heard death scream in +every shell. The world beyond existed as a mirage. No wonder they +became primeval. + +Alexina had met Alice Thorndyke in one of these hospitals and observed +her with some curiosity. But Alice was, to use her own vernacular, the +best little bourgeoise of them all. She had had her fling. Men repelled +her. She never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was +over she should live the completely independent life. Nobody would care +what economic liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had +liberalized the most conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was +ever inflicted with. + + + +V + + +As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which +she was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle +in itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that +savage lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and +powerful passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect +after she dismissed her husband. + +What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance +than most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud +instinct of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control. + +She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still +lurking desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the +complete mating which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly +not in the mere zone of death. + +She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they +had but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious +mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened +and cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle +raging behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that +vulgar blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the +death throe as incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius. + +This internal silent warfare between her long reed-like body as little +sensible to fatigue as if made of flexible steel and her extremely cold +proud chaste-looking head had grown to be of such absorbing interest +that the knowledge of its cessation was almost a shock. It was after a +prolonged experience in a hospital where they were short of nurses and +rest was almost unknown and the inroads upon her vitality so severe and +menacing that she was finally ordered to Paris to rest, and there found +a complete change of habit in an oeuvre founded by the equally +exhausted but always valiant Olive de Morsigny, that she suddenly +realized that somewhere sometime the battle had finished and mind and +body were acting in complete harmony. + + + +VI + + +To-night she wondered if her imagination, turned loose, stimulated, had +not missed the whole point. There had been no man who had made the +direct irresistible appeal. No concrete temptation.... She had after +all been a degree too civilized ... or ... romantic idealism? + +There had been little to stimulate and excite since she had settled +down to office work in the summer of nineteen-sixteen. Her nerves, +always strong, had become too case-hardened to be affected by avions or +the immense uncertainties of Big Bertha; although the light on the +horizon at night during the last German Drive and the bellow of the +guns had shaken her with a sort of reminiscent excitement. + +But for the most part she had felt frozen, torpid, a cog in the vast +military machine of France, dedicating herself like hundreds of other +women to the succor of men she never saw. That extraordinary abominable +experience at the front was overlaid, almost forgotten. And such news +as one had in Paris was quite enough to exercise the mind.... There had +been the downfall of the Russian dynasty ... the still more sinister +downfall of the true revolutionists ... the Bolshevik monster +projecting its murderous shadow over all Europe, exposing the +instability of the entire social structure.... + + + +VII + + +Was it? Could such an experience ever be forgotten? The grass might +grow over the dead on the battlefields, but the corruption fed the +wheat, and the peogle of France ate the bread. This uninvited thought +had intruded itself the first time she had driven by the Marne +battlefields and seen the numberless crosses in the rich abundant +fields. + +She smiled, a small, secret, ruthless smile.... That was her residue: +ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone +the savage elementary lust for living at any cost, but she had +ineradicably learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still +more tragic brevity of youth; she had a store of hideous memories which +could only be submerged first in the performance of duty if duty were +imperative; then, duty discharged and finished, in the one thing that +during its brief time gave life any meaning, made this earthly sojourn +bearable. If she met the man she wanted she would have him if she had +to fight for him tooth and nail. + +It was four o 'clock. She went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +The next day Alexina found herself suddenly free of office duty, A very +handsome and wealthy American woman who had not been able to visit her +beloved Paris since the beginning of the World's War, and finding the +State Department obdurate to the whims of pretty women, had induced +Mrs. Ballinger Groome, on one of whose committees she had worked +faithfully, to ask her sister-in-law to inform the Department of State +that her services at the oeuvre in Paris were indispensable. + +Alexina had passed the letter on to the President, Madame de Morsigny, +and forgotten the incident. Olive wrote the necessary letter promptly. +Not only did she believe that the time had come for Alexina to rest, +but she longed for a fresh access of energy in the office that would in +a measure relieve herself. Moreover, Mrs. Wallack was wealthy and had +many wealthy friends. That meant more money for the oeuvre, always in +need of money. Olive had given large sums herself, but the president of +a charity is yet to be found who will not permit its constant demands +to be relieved by the generous public. Mrs. Wallack had not only +promised a substantial donation at once, but a monthly contribution. +This had not been named, but Madame de Morsigny meant that it should be +something more than nominal. She could do so much for Mrs. Wallack +socially, now that it was possible to entertain again, that she felt +reasonably confident of rousing the enthusiasm of any ambitious New +Yorker. Moreover, Olive had a very insinuating way with her. + + + +II + + +Mrs. Wallack presented herself at the imposing headquarters of the +oeuvre, radiant, fresh, energetic, beautifully dressed. The war had +interested her and commanded her sympathies to some purpose, but +nothing short of personal affliction could subdue that inexhaustible +vitality, and she seemed to bring into the dark and solemn rooms +something of the atmospheric gayety and sunshine of a land that had +done much but suffered little. + +By no one was she received with more warmth of welcome than by Alexina. +The sudden release made her realize sharply her lowered vitality. +Moreover, the semi-yearly income which had just arrived from California +was her own now and she could replenish her wardrobe and feel feminine +and irresponsible once more. The reaction was so violent that after +inducting Mrs. Wallack into the mysteries of her desk she remained in +bed, prostrate, for two days. Then, feeling several years younger, she +sallied forth in search of many things. + + + +III + + +There is no such antidote to the migraines of the woman soul as +clothes. Their only rival is travel and there are cases where they know +none. Sometimes women remember to pity men, that have no such happy +playground. + +Alexina for all her ramifications, some of them too deep, had a light +and feminine side. During the following fortnight she gave it full +rein; she was absorbed, almost happy. She spent quite recklessly and +after the years of economy and self-denial this alone gave her an +intense satisfaction. In addition to her income forwarded by Judge +Lawton, who had charge of her affairs, her brother Ballinger, who was +as fond of her as of his own children, and very proud of her--she had +received two decorations--sent her a large check with the mandate to +spend it on herself. + + + +IV + + +Even so, she was not always in the shops and the dressmakers' ateliers. +She found much amusement in strolling up and down the arcades of the +Rue de Rivoli, watching the odd throngs at which Paris herself seemed, +to bend her head and stare. + +Some poet had called Paris the mistress of Europe. She looked like an +old trollop. She was dirty and dreary, unpainted and unwashed. The rain +was almost incessant and the shop windows were soon denuded of the few +attractive novelties scrambled together to meet the sudden demand after +the long drought. + +But under the long arcades the curious sauntering throngs were +sheltered from the rain and found all things in Paris novel. Men in the +American khaki, from generals to striplings, were there by the hundred; +endless streams of young women in the uniform of the Red Cross, the +Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army; British and American nurses; members of +the fashionable oeuvres artlessly watching this novel phase of Paris; +the beautiful violet uniform of Le Bien-Être du Blessé; girls with worn +faces and relaxed bodies fresh from the front, hundreds of them, +arriving daily in camions and cars, thanking heaven for the sudden +cessation of work, sleeping heaven knew where. The American women of +the Commission, and others who, like Mrs. Wallack, had invented a +plausible excuse to get to Paris and looked almost anachronistic in +their smart gowns, their fresh faces, their bright, curious, glancing +eyes. + +There were also officers in the uniform of Britain, and Alexina +regarded them frankly, with no effort to deceive herself. The spirit of +adventure was awake in her, now that the dark mood had passed, or +slept. She hoped to meet the man of the embassy again, whether he were +Gathbroke or another. She had liked his eyes. + +She had met many charming and interesting men during the last two and a +half years at Olive de Morsigny's table, especially when André, +convalescent, was at home. But their eyes had said nothing to her +whatever, if not for the want of trying. Alexina's imagination, torpid +for many months, ran riot. This man might disappoint her, might have +nothing in him for her, but she refused for more than a moment to +contemplate anything so flat. Something must come of that adventure, +that vital intensely personal moment when their eyes had met above +flames so tiny the wonder was they could see anything but a white blur +on the dark. She was as sure of meeting him again as that she trod on +air after she had ordered a new gown or brought an inordinately +becoming hat. She had forgotten Mortimer's existence. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +One day at the Hotel Crillon she thought she had found him. + +She had passed the portals of that fortress with some delay, for the +American Commission protected itself as if it dwelt under the shadow of +imminent assassination and theft; whereas it was merely exclusive. The +sentries at the door demanded her permit, and passed her in with +intense suspicion to the inner guard. This was composed of three polite +but very young lieutenants in smart new uniforms with no blight of war +on them, and flagrantly of the American aristocracy. + +With these she had less trouble, for they recognized her social status +and accepted her explanation that she had been invited for tea with one +of the ladies of the Commission. Nevertheless, they knew their duty and +Alexina was followed up to the door of her hostess' suite by another +young guardian who watched her entrance through the sacred door as +carefully as if he suspected her of carrying a bomb in her muff. + + + +II + + +The party numbered about thirty, and Alexina, after chatting with the +few she knew, was standing apart by a small table drinking a cup of tea +with three lumps of sugar in it and consuming cakes like a greedy +boarding-school girl home for the holidays, when she caught sight of a +man in the British khaki, a major by his insignia, a tall man, thin and +straight, standing with his back to her at the opposite end of the +room. He was talking to the host and a small group of men. She glimpsed +something like half of his profile when he turned from the host for a +moment. Like all men in khaki, when not pronounced brunettes, his +complexion and hair looked the same color as his uniform. + +Nevertheless ... if she could only see his eyes ... he turned his full +profile ... she had never glanced at Gathbroke's profile; he had given +her no opportunity! ... Certainly she had not the faintest idea whether +the man of the embassy had had a snub nose or the thin straight feature +of this man who would have attracted her attention in any ease if only +because he did not carry his shoulders with the disillusioning +obliquity of the British Army ... why did he not turn round? Alexina +felt an impulse to throw her cup straight across the room at the back +of that well-shaped head. + +Suddenly he shook hands with his host, nodded to the others and left +the room. + + + +III + + +Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt +her hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid +questions, and walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a +primitive instinct in woman to chase the male; but civilization having +initiated her into the art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was +merely bent upon giving this man his chance if the interest had been +mutual and existed beyond the moment. + +One lift was descending as she reached the outer corridor and the other +was closed. She ran down the wide staircase as rapidly as a woman in +fashionable skirts may. There was no British uniform in the hall below. + + + +IV + + +She stood for a quarter of an hour under the arcade before the Crillon +waiting for a taxi, staring out into the dreary mist of rain, at the +round soft blurs of light in the Place de la Concorde, but in no wise +depressed. What did it matter if she had not met him to-day? The +conviction that she should meet him before long was as strong as if she +were ever hopeful sixteen.... That was the real secret of her elation. +She felt very young and entirely carefree. She reflected that if she +had met Gathbroke, or whoever he might be, during the last three years +of the war she would have felt neither joy nor elation, however +interested she might have been. To love and dream and enjoy when men +were falling every minute, writhing in agony, gasping out their life, +would have seemed to her grossly unæsthetic if nothing worse. It was +not in the picture. The primal impulses she had experienced at the +front to that harsh music of Death's orchestra were natural enough; but +safe (comparatively!) in Paris, certainly quiet, the romance of love +would have been as incongruous and heartless as to go out to the great +hospital at Neuilly and tango through a ward of dying men. + +But now! She had done her part. She could do no more. Men still must +die, but in every comfort, with every consolation. And there would be +no more recruits. + +She was free. She was young, young, young again. + +And at this moment her heart emptied itself of song and sank like lead +in her breast. She pressed her muff against her face to hide the sudden +grimace she was sure contorted it; there had been few moments in her +life when she had not been mistress of her features, but this was one +of them. + +Gora Dwight was walking rapidly toward her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Gora did not see her sister-in-law for a moment and Alexina had time to +recover her poise and make sharp swift observations. She had not seen +Gora for four years, nor exchanged a line with her. She had almost +forgotten her. The changes were more striking than in herself, who had +been always slight. Gora's superb bust had disappeared; her face was +gaunt, throwing into prominence its width and the high cheek bones. Her +eyes were enormous in her thin brown face; to Alexina's excited +imagination they looked like polar seas under a gray sky brooding above +innumerable dead. There were lines about her handsome mouth, closer and +firmer than ever. How she must have worked, poor thing! What sights, +what suffering, what despair ... four long years of it. But she had +evidently had her discharge. She wore an extremely well-cut brown +tailored suit, good furs, and a small turban with a red wing. + +What was she in Paris for? ... What ... what ... + + + +II + + +Gora saw her and almost ran forward, that brilliant inner light that +had always been her chief attraction breaking through her cold face ... +sunlight sparkling on polar seas ... oh, yes, Gora had her charm! + +"Alexina! It isn't possible! I was going to ask at the American Embassy +for your address. I only arrived last night." + +Alexina had lowered her muff and her face expressed only the warmest +surprise and welcome. "Gora! It's too wonderful! But I suppose you +couldn't go home without seeing Paris?" + +"Rather not! It's the first chance I've had, too. Where can we have a +talk?" + +"It's too late for tea. Come out to my pension and spend the night. +Janet and Alice have gone to Nice for a few days' rest. You'll be +hideously uncomfortable--" + +"Not any more than where I am--sharing a room with three others. Where +can I telephone? In here?" + +"Good heavens, no. Take a liberty with a duke, but with the American +aristocracy, never. Come down to the Meurice. Perhaps we can find a cab +there. This seems to be hopeless. Everybody comes to the Crillon in a +private car or a military automobile. Taxis appear to avoid it." + + + +III + + +It only took half an hour to get the telephone connection and another +to seize by force a taxi, which, however, deposited them at the Étoile. +The driver explained unamiably that he wanted his dinner; and a bribe, +unless unthinkable, would have been useless. In these days taxi drivers +made fifty francs a day in tips, and, as a Frenchman knows exactly what +he wants and calculates to a nicety when he has enough, valuing rest +and nutriment above even the delights of gouging foolish Americans, +Alexina knew that it would be useless to argue and did not even waste +energy in announcing her opinion of him for taking a fare under false +pretenses. There was no other cab in sight and they walked the rest of +the way. But both were inured to hardships and took their mishap +good-naturedly, trudging the long distance under their umbrellas. + + + +IV + + +After a very bad dinner in an airless room as frugally lighted they +made themselves comfortable in Alexina's room over the oil stove she +had bought, and supplied through Olive's influence with the higher +powers. She took off her street clothes and put on a thick dressing +gown, giving her sister-in-law a quilted red wrapper of Janet's, which +threw some warmth into Gora's pale cheeks. She looked comfortable, +almost happy, as she smoked her cigarette in the arm-chair. + +Alexina curled up on the bed. + +"Now, Gora," she said brightly, "give an account of yourself." + +Gora did not reply for a moment and Alexina examining her again came to +the conclusion that she had been spared some of the horrors of the +front. As a head nurse her responsibilities had been too heavy for +philanderings, and having the literary imagination rather than the +personal she had no doubt consigned it to a water-tight compartment and +converted herself into a machine. + +"I don't know that I can talk about it," she said. "I feel much like +the men. It is too close. I am thankful that I Had the experience: not +only to have been of actual service, indispensable, as every good nurse +was, but to have been a part of that colossal drama. But I am even more +thankful that it is over and if I can possibly avoid it I'll never +nurse again." + +"I suppose you have had no time to write?" + +"I should think not! During the brief leaves of absence I spent most of +the time in bed. But I have an immense amount of material. I have no +idea how much fiction has been written about the war; there might have +been none, so far as I have had time to discover. I've barely read a +newspaper." + +"The only reason I want to go back to America is to hear the news. I +see a New York newspaper once in a while, and it is plain they have it +all. We have next to none in Europe, in France at all events. Shall you +write your stories here or go back to California? That would give you +the necessary perspective, I should think." + +Alexina's eyes were fixed upon an execrable print many inches above the +footboard, and Gora, glancing at her, reflected that she was as +beautiful as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one +would be with eyes that were like stars when they looked at you and a +Murillo madonna's when she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute +as she was she had never penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor +suspected the use she made of those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an +abundance of surface it occurred to few people that she might be both +subtle and deep. + +"I ... don't know.... I rather fear losing the atmosphere ... the +immediate stimulation. Shall you go home, now that you are free?" + +"I wonder. Could I stand it? I have longed for a rest--ached would be a +better word.... This last year has been full of both nervous strain and +desperate monotony. Nineteen-seventeen was bad enough in another way: +the internal defeatist campaign, the constant menace of mutiny, soviets +in the army, strikes in the munition towns,--all the rest of it.... But +could one stand California after such an experience? I know they have +done splendid work since we entered the war, but I know also that they +will immediately subside into exactly what they were before, settle +down with a long sigh of relief to enjoy life and forget that war ever +was. It could not be otherwise in that climate. With that abundance. +That remoteness.... There seems no place out there for me. A decorator +after this! What funny little resources we thought out in those +days.... I do not see myself fitting in anywhere. Tom wants to buy +Ballinger House for Maria and I fancy I'll let him have it. I can't +keep it up unaided and I might as well sell as rent it. He and Judge +Lawton would invest the money and I should have quite a decent income. +As for Mortimer I never want to see him again. He has not done one +thing for this war--he is utterly contemptible-- + +"I've long since given up criticizing Mortimer. My father once sized +him up. He hasn't an ounce of brain. He'd like to be quite different, +but you can stretch Nature's equipment so far and no farther. He +stretched his until it suddenly snapped back and found itself shrunken +to less than half its natural size. Vale Mortimer. Let him rest. Why +don't you divorce him? No doubt he has found some one else-- + +"I couldn't divorce him on that count, for I told him repeatedly to +console himself. It wouldn't be playing the game. Of course there are +other grounds. It would be easy enough. But our family has a strong +aversion to divorce. And a unique record.... Not that that would stop +me if I found any one I really wanted to marry. Nothing would stop me, +in fact." + +Gora glanced at her quickly, arrested by something in her voice. She +had already noticed that Alexina's limpid musical tones had deepened. +Just now they rang with something of the menace of a deep-toned bell. + +"Have you found him?" she asked smiling. "If there are obstacles, so +much the more interesting. I don't fancy that romantic streak in your +nature which permitted you to idealize Mortimer has quite dried up. +Once romantic always romantic--I deduce from human nature as I have +studied it." + +"Well ... I am rather afraid of romance. Certainly I'd never be blinded +again. A man might be nine parts demi-god and if I knew--and I should +know--that there was no companionship in him for me I wouldn't marry +him." + +"That I believe." Alexina was once more regarding the print. Gora +wondered if sex would influence her at all. + +"But have you met him? You were always an interesting child and you've +roused my curiosity." + +"No ... yes ... I don't know ... later perhaps I'll tell you something. +But I'm far more interested in you. Have you been in France all this +time?" + +"Oh, no. I was in Rouen for a year. Then I was in hospitals in England +until the German Drive began in. March when I was sent over again. Oh, +God! what sights! what sounds! what smells!" She huddled into her chair +and stared at the dull flame behind the little door of the stove. + +"Oh, I know them all. Think of something else. Surely you met--but +literally--hundreds of officers, and some must have interested you. The +British officer at best is a superb creature--if he would only stand up +straight. I saw one at the Crillon to-day whose good American shoulders +made me stare at him quite rudely." + +"Who was he?" + +"Haven't the faintest idea. I only saw his back, anyway. Surely you +must have been more than passing interested in one or two." + +"I am not susceptible. And nursing is not conducive to romance." + +"But you never were romantic, Gora dear. And you are good-looking in +your odd way. And that was your great, chance." + +"Well, I'm afraid I was too busy or too tired to take it. Now ... +perhaps ... but I'm afraid I don't inspire men with either romance or +passion. They like me and are grateful--that is, as grateful as an +Englishman can be; they take most things for granted." + +"The French are so grateful, poor dears. I loved them all. After all +... Frenchmen...." Her voice grew dreamy. + +Again Gora threw her an amused glance. "You must have met many of them +at your friend, Madame de Morsigny's, and under far more attractive +conditions than any man can hope for in a sick bed.... I can't imagine +any more appropriate destiny for you ... you should be Madame la +duchesse at the very least." + +"Not money enough, and besides they've all grown so religious, or think +they have, they wouldn't stand for divorce. Anyhow it would be so hard +on 'The Family'! ... Still.... But why, Gora dear, do you depreciate +yourself? It seems to me that you are just the type that a certain sort +of man would appreciate--fall in love with. I've heard even American +men who play about in society comment on your looks, different as you +are from sport and fluff and come-hitherness; and you only need a few +months' rest to look like your old self. I should think that a highly +intelligent Englishman would find you irresistible, especially if you +had shown your womanly side when he had holes in him. I've always had +an idea that Englishmen weren't nearly as afraid of intellectual women +as American men are." + +"That's true enough. But I doubt if there are any men more susceptible +to beauty, or quite as lustful after it, no matter how romantic they +may think they are feeling. I've talked to a good many of them in the +past four years, and for six months I was in charge of a convalescent +hospital in Kent. I think I've pretty thoroughly plumbed the +Englishman. They found me sympathetic all right, forgot their racial +shyness and inadvertently gave me much valuable material. But I saw no +indication that I made any sex appeal to them whatever." + +"Not one? Not ever?" + +Gora gave a slight withdrawing movement as if something sacred had been +touched. But she answered: "Oh ... some day I may have something to +tell you.... You said much the same thing to me a little while ago. +Tell me now." + +Alexina turned over on her elbow to beat up her pillows. Then she +answered lightly but firmly: "Not unless you promise to do likewise. +Mine is such a little thing anyhow. I know by the expression of your +face--just now--that, yours is the real thing. Is he in Paris?" + +"I'm ... not sure.... Yes, there is something ... the conditions are +very peculiar ... not at all what you think ... there is so much more +to it.... No, I don't think I can tell you." + +A fortnight ago Alexina could have lifted her eyes and uttered +Gathbroke's name as if groping through a jungle of memories. But she +could no more force his name through her lips now than she could have +laid bare all that was in her tumultuous soul. It was, in fact, all she +could do to keep from screaming. For a moment her excitement was so +intense that she jumped from the bed and ran over and opened the window. + +"This room gets intolerably stuffy. That is the worst of it--freeze or +stifle." + +"Oh, I have been cold so long! Please don't leave it open. That's a +darling." + + + +V + + +Alexina closed it with an amiable smile. "What would you do, Gora, if +you were really mad about a man? Have him at any cost? Annihilate +anything that stood in your way? Anybody, I mean." + +An appalling light came into Gora's pale eyes as she turned them, at +first in some surprise, on her sister-in-law: "Yes, if I thought he +cared ... could be made to care if I had the chance ... if another +woman tried to get him away ... yes, I don't fancy I'd stop at +anything.... Even if I finally were forced to believe that he never +could care for me in that way, the only way that counts with men--at +first, anyway ... well, I believe I'd fight to the death just the same. +When you've waited for thirty-four years ... well, you know what you +want! Better die fighting than live on interminably for nothing ... +less than nothing.... I can't tell you any more. Please don't ask me." + +"Of course not. I'll tell you my little story." And she gave a rapid +vivid account of the remarkable scene at the Embassy. She concluded +abruptly: "Do you think one could tell that a man's eyes were +hazel--the golden-brown hazel--across a pitch dark room above the flame +of a briquet?" + +"Hazel?" Alexina was standing behind Gora. She saw her body stiffen. + +"I could have vowed they were hazel. And that he was English. He also +reminded me of some one I must have met somewhere or other ... one +meets so many ... possibly it was only a fancy." + +"You didn't see him after the lights went on again?" + +"They didn't. Only candles. We were all too anxious to get away, +anyhow. I fancy the King was in a hurry to get the ambassador upstairs +and tell him what he thought of him--" + +"Don't be flippant. You always did have a maddening habit of being +flippant at the wrong time. Haven't you seen him again anywhere?" + +"I've walked the Rue de Rivoli and lunched at the Ritz looking for him; +but I've never had even a glimpse--unless that was his back I saw at +the Crillon to-day. If I saw his eyes I'd know in a minute." + +"Why should you think it was his back?" + +"Some men have expression in the back of their head. And I just had an +idea--fantastic, no doubt--that my particular Englishman stands up +straight." + +"Yours?" + +"Yes, I'm feeling quite too fearfully romantic. I'm sure he's looking +for me as hard as I am for him. And if I find him I'll keep him." + +She saw Gora's long brown hands slowly clench until they looked like +steel. She glanced at her own slim white hands. They were quite as +strong if more ornamental. She yawned politely. + +"I'm not so romantic as sleepy. I know that you must be dead after your +journey. They say it's more trouble to travel to Paris from London than +from New York. The girls won't be back for a week. You must get your +things to-morrow and come out here. I won't hear of your living in +Paris discomfort with three two empty rooms." + +"That is good of you. Yes, I'll come. And perhaps your landlady, or +whatever they call them here, could put me up later. Now that I have +come to Paris I intend to see it. I believe some of the great galleries +and museums are to be reopened." + +"André will arrange it if they're not. How you will enjoy it with your +sensitiveness to all the arts. Take this candle in ease the bulb is +burnt out. It usually is." + + + +VI + + +Gora had risen. Her face wore an expression both puzzled and grim; but +she and Alexina as they said good-night looked full into each other's +eyes without faltering. And Alexina had never looked more ingenuous. + +Perhaps that dim idea ... that she had thrown down a challenge ... had +come out in the open for a moment ... insolently? ... honestly? ... She +_must_ be completely fagged out after that abominable trip to have such +absurd fancies. She took her candle; and disposed herself in Janet's +bed, between four walls that gave her an unexpected and heavenly +privacy, with a deep sigh of gratitude, dismissing fantasies. + + + +VII + + +During the next ten days Alexina kept as close to Gora as was possible +in the circumstances. She had made many engagements and not all of them +were social; there were still gowns to be fitted, committee meetings to +attend. Twice Gora appeared to have risen with the dawn, and she +vanished for the day. Nevertheless, it grew increasingly evident to +Alexina's alert and penetrating vision that Gora was neither peaceful +nor happy; therefore it was safe to assume that she had not found +Gathbroke. For some reason she had not inquired at the British Embassy. +Or a letter to its care had failed to reach him. Possibly he was +enjoying himself without formalities. + +She took Gora twice to the Ritz to luncheon and on several afternoons +to tea. But it was a mob of Americans and members of the various +Commissions. A brilliant sight, but not in the least satisfactory. It +was quite patent from Gora's ever traveling eyes that she sought and +never found. + +Therefore when Olive asked Alexina to go to one of the towns where the +oeuvre had a branch and attend to an important matter that Mrs. Wallack +was far too much of a novice to be entrusted with, she agreed at once. +She experienced a growing desire to get away by herself--away from +Paris--away from Gora. She wanted to think. What if Gora did meet him +first? She would be but the more certain to meet him herself. Moreover +... give Gora a sporting chance. + +Janet and Alice had written from Nice that they might be detained for +some time. Gora unpacked her trunk and settled down in the pension with +that air of indestrucible patience that had always made her formidable. +She was not one of Life's favorites, but she had wrung prizes from that +unamiable deity more than once. + +Alexina speculated. Gora had all the brains that Mortimer lacked and +commanding traits of character. She was so striking in appearance even +now that people often turned and stared at her. But unless she +possessed the potent spell of woman for man all her gifts would avail +her nothing in this tragic crisis of her life. Did she possess it I No +woman could answer. Certainly Alexina had never seen evidence of it +even in Gora's youth; although to be sure her opportunities had been +few. Still ... when a woman possesses the most subtle and powerful of +all the fascinations men are drawn to it, no matter how dark the sky or +high the barriers. Nothing is keener than the animal essence. Still ... +she had heard that some women developed it later than others. Alexina +feared nothing else. + +She fancied that Gora took leave of her with a little indrawn sigh of +relief. It was with difficulty that she repressed her own. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +"Can this be Lieutenant James Kirkpatrick?" + +Kirkpatrick wheeled about and snatched off his cap. + +"Mrs. Dwight, by all that's holy! I never expected any such luck as +this!" + +They shook hands warmly in the deserted square which had been a +shambles during the first battle of the Marne, and in the days of Cæsar +and Attila, of Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little. To-day it +was as gray and peaceful, its houses as aloof and haughty as if war had +never been. It was a false impression, however, for it was the +paralysis of war it expressed, not even the normal peace of a dull +provincial town. + +"I've often wondered about you," said Alexina. "But I've been working +with the French Army and had no way of finding out. You don't look as +if you had been wounded." + +"Nary scratch, and in the thick of it. My, but it's good to sec you +again." He stared at her, his face flushed and his breath short. Then +he asked abruptly: "When do you think we're goin' home?" + +Alexina laughed merrily. "That is the first question every officer or +private I have met since the Armistice has asked me. I should feel +greatly flattered, but I fancy the question, being always on the top of +your minds, simply babbles off." + +"You bet. But--Jimminy! I'm glad to see you. You're lookin' thin, +though. Been workin', too, I'll bet." + +"Oh, yes--and all your old class has worked; most of them over here. +Mrs. Cheever couldn't come, as her husband is in the army. But she's +worked hard in California." + +"I believe you. The women have come up to the scratch, no doubt of +that. Although some of them! Good Lord! This isn't my usual language +when speaking of them. But if some came over to do just about as they +damn please, the others strike the balance, and on the whole I think +more of women than I did." + +"That's good news. But you mustn't blame them too severely. I mean +those that really came over with a single purpose and were not proof +against the forcing house of war. As for the others ... well, a good +many followed their men over, others came after excitement, others, as +you say, to do as they pleased, with no questions asked--possibly! I +shouldn't take enough interest in them to criticize them if they hadn't +used the war-relief organizations, from the Red Cross down to the +smallest oeuvre, as a pretext to get over, and then calmly throw us +down--the oeuvres, I mean. Mine was 'done' several times. But let us be +good healthy optimists such as our country loves and remind ourselves +that the worthy outnumber the unworthy--and that the really bad would +have gone the same way sooner or later." + +"It goes. Optimism for me for ever more once I get out of France." + + + +II + + +They had crossed the square and were walking down a narrow crooked +street as gray as if the dust of ages were in its old walls. Alexina +looked at him curiously. He had never had what might be called a soft +and tender countenance, but now it looked like cast-iron covered with +red rust, and his eyes were more like bits of the same metal, blackened +and polished, than ever. His youth had gone. There were deep vertical +lines in his face. His mouth was cynical. His bullet head, shaved until +only a cap of black stiff hair remained on top, and presumably safe +from assault, by no means added to the general attractiveness of his +style. He was straighter, more compact, than before, however, and his +uniform at least did not have the truly abominable cut of the private. + +"What do you think of war as war?" she asked. + +"Sherman for me. Not that I didn't enjoy sticking Germans with the best +of 'em when my blood was up. But the rest of it--God Almighty!" + +They stopped before a solid double door in a high wall. "Will you come +and take tea with me this afternoon? I am staying here for a few days. +I'm afraid I can't offer you sugar, or cakes--" + +"I'll bring the sugar along. I'm in barracks just outside and solid +with, the commissary." + +"Heavens, what a windfall! You'll be sure to come?" + +"Won't I, just? Expect me at four-thirty." He lifted his cap from his +comical head, then sainted, swung on his heel and marched off, swinging +both arms from the shoulders and looking a fine martial figure of a man. + +"But still the same old Kirkpatrick," thought Alexina. "I wonder if he +will go Bolshevik?" + + + +III + + +Her ring was answered by the old woman who toot care of the house and +Alexina entered the wild garden. There was an acre of it, but it had +been so long uncared for that it looked like a jungle caught between +four high gray walls. It was the property of one of the French members +of the oeuvre and was used as a storehouse for hospital supplies and as +headquarters for Alexina when business brought her to this part of the +Marne valley. She had been here several times during the siege of +Verdun in nineteen-sixteen when her bed had quivered all night, and +once a big gun had been trained on the city and a shell had fallen near +the headquarters of the staff. Last night she had lain awake wondering +if she did not miss the sound of the distant guns, as she had in Passy +where there was no noisy traffic to take their place. There is a +certain amount of morbidity in all highly strung imaginative minds, and +although she had developed no love for Big Bertha nor for the sound of +high firing guns attacking avions in the middle of the night, there had +been something in that steady boom of cannon whose glare stained the +horizon that had thrilled and excited her. + + + +IV + + +On the right of the main hall of the house was the room she used as an +office; the dining-room was opposite; the salon ran the whole length at +the back. This was quite a beautiful room furnished in the style of the +last Bourbons, and its long windows opened upon a stone terrace leading +down into what was still a picturesque garden in spite of its neglect. +There were three fine oaks, and the chestnut trees along the wall shut +off the town from even the upper windows. + +The oeuvre always managed to keep a load of wood in the cave and to-day +the concierge had raised the temperature of the salon to sixty-five +degrees Fahrenheit Alexina cleared a table and told the woman to set it +for tea, then went upstairs to change her dress. As she had made her +trip in one of the automobiles belonging to the oeuvre she had been +able to bring her little stove, and her bedroom was also warm. + +She had also brought one of her new gowns, knowing that she should +receive visits from several French officers, and she concluded to put +it on for Kirkpatrick. He was worth the delicate compliment; moreover +it almost obliterated the ravages of war, for it was of periwinkle blue +velvet edged with fur about the high square of the neck and at the +wrists of the long sleeves: in these days it was wise to revert to the +fashions of the centuries when palaces and houses alike were cold and +gowns were made for comfort as well as fashion. To complete the +proportions it had a train and the sleeves were slightly puffed. +Alexina was quite aware that she "looked like a picture" in it. + +She still wore her hair brushed softly back and coiled low at the base +of her beautiful curved head. Her pearls were the only jewels she had +brought to France and she always wore them. She sighed as she looked at +the vision in the mirror. For Kirkpatrick! But she was used to the +irony of life. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +He arrived promptly at half-past four and in his capacious hands were +three packages which arrested her eyes at once. He presented them one +by one. + +"Sugar. Loaf of white bread. Candy--I'm also solid with one of the +doctors." + +"I feel like pinching myself. White bread!--I've only tasted it twice +in two years-both times at the Crillon. And candy--not a sight of it +for more than that. I don't like the heavy French chocolates, which +were all one could get when one could get anything. I shall eat at +least half and take the other half back to Gora." + +"Miss Dwight? She's done good work, I'll bet. Just in her line. +Somehow, I don't see you--What did you do?" + +He watched her hungrily as she made the tea, sitting in a gilt and +brocaded chair, whose high tarnished back seemed to frame her dark head. + +"Oh, Lord!" he sighed. + +"What is it?" + +"Don't ask me. What've you been doing? Yes, I'll drink tea to please +you." + +"I nursed at first--as an auxiliary, of course--what is the matter?" + +"Can't bear to think of it. I hope you've not been doin' that for four +years!" + +"Oh, no. I've been at work with a war-relief organization in Paris most +of the time. That was too monotonous to talk about, and, thank heaven, +this will probably end my connection with it. I am much more interested +to know how the war has affected you. Are you still a socialist?" + +"Ain't I!" + +"Not going Bolshevik, I hope." + +"Not so's you'd notice it. I want changes all right and more'n ever, +but I've had enough of blood and fury and mix-ups without copying them +murdering skally-wags. That's all they are. Just out for loot and +revenge and not sense enough to know that to-morrow there'll be no +loot, and revenge'll come from the opposite direction. I may have been +in hell but my head's screwed on in the same place." + +"I wondered ... I've heard so many stories about the grievances of the +soldiers." + +"Every last one of 'em got a grievance. Hate their officers, and often +reason enough. Hate the discipline. Hate the food. Hate the neglect in +hospital when the flu is raging. Hate gettin' no letters, and as like +as not no pay and no tobacco. Hate bein' gouged by the French like they +were by the good Americans when they were in camp on the other side. +Hate every last thing a man just naturally would hate when he is livin' +in a filthy trench, or even camp, and homesick in the bargain.... But +as for mass-dissatisfaction--not a bit of it. Loyal as they make 'em. +Laugh at Bolshevik propaganda just like they laughed at Hun propaganda. +They just naturally seem to hate every other race, allied or enemy, and +that makes them so all-fired American they're fit to bust. Of course +there's plenty of skallywags--caught in the draft--and just waitin' to +get home and turn loose on the community. But in the good old style: +burglars, highwaymen, yeggs. Not a new frill. Europe hasn't a thing on +the good old American criminal brand. They fought well, too. Any man +does who's a man at all. But Lord! they'll cut loose when they get +back. Every wild bad trait they was born with multiplied by one hundred +and fifty ... before I go any further I want to warn you that I'm +liable to break out into bad language any minute. It gets to be a kind +of habit in the army to swear every other word like." + +"Don't mind me," said Alexina dryly. "After I was put out of my hotel I +managed to get a room in one of the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli for two +nights before I found my pension in Passy. The walls were thin. The +room next to mine was occupied by two American officers and the one +beyond by two more. They talked back and forth with apparently no +thought of the possibility of being overheard. Such language! And not +only swear words--although one of these to two of any. Such adventures +as they related! Such frankness! Such plain undiluted Anglo-Saxon! +Fancy a girl with all her illusions fresh, and worshiping some heroic +figure in khaki, listening to such a revelation of the nether side of +man's life!" + +"Men are hogs, all right. I don't like the idea of your having heard +such things." Kirkpatrick scowled heavily. + +"Nor did I. But I had no cotton to put in my ears. I couldn't sleep in +the street. Nor could I ask them to keep quiet and admit I had heard +them." + +"Well, I guess you can forget anything you have a mind to. You couldn't +look like you do--a kind of princess out of a fairy tale and an angel +mixed, if you couldn't." + +"A black-haired angel! And all the princesses of legend had golden +hair." + +"Well, that's just another way you're different." He changed the +subject abruptly. "What you goin' to do now!" + +"I wish I knew." + +"Goin' back to California?" + +"If I knew I would tell you. But I don't. You see.... Well, I shall not +live with Mr. Dwight again. We had been really separated a long while +before I left--and then he has done nothing for the war. That is only +one reason. What should I do there? I had thought of going into +business before I left. But I shall have a good income, and what right +have I to go into business and use my large connection to get customers +away from those that need the money for their actual bread?" + +"Not the ghost of an excuse. Farce, I call it. As long as the present +system lasts women of your class better be ornamental and satisfied +with that than take the bread out of mouths that need it." + +"I could not settle down to the old life. It isn't that I'm in love +with work. For that matter I'm only too grateful to be able to rest. +But I must fill in, some way. Possibly I could do that better in France +or England, where vita! subjects are always being discussed--and +happening!--where I would not only be interested but possibly useful in +many ways. I should feel rather a brute, knowing the conditions of +Europe as I do, to go back and settle down on the smiling abundance of +California. And bored to death." + +"Then you think you'll stay? ... You'd be wasted there--at +present--sure enough." + +"Sometimes I think I'll buy this house. I could for a song. Heavens! +_How_ I have longed for solitude in the last four years! I could have +it here with my books, and go to Paris as often as I wished. It would +be an ideal life. I could afford a car, and to make this house very +livable. And that garden ... between those gray high walls ... in there +... that would...." + +She had forgotten Kirkpatrick and was staring through the long windows +at the dripping trees and the riot of green. "There is something about +the old world ... in its byways like this ... not in its hateful +capitals...." + +"Do you mean there's something you want to forget? That this place +would be consolin' like?" + +She met Kirkpatrick's sharp dilated eyes with smiling composure. "This +war, and much that has happened--incidental to it; yes." + +"You could forget it easier in California." + +"I should forget too much." + +"It's awful to think of you not comin' back, though I understand well +enough. Europe suits you all right. But ... but...." + +He rose abruptly almost overturning his fragile chair. + +"Good-by, and as I guess it _is_ good-by I'll tell you something I +wouldn't if there was any chance of my seein' you like I used to. It's +this: If I'm more of a socialist than ever it's because of _you_! If my +class hatred's blacker than ever _you're_ the cause! _You'd_ have made +me a socialist if I wasn't one before. _Jesus Christ_! When I think +what I might have had if we'd all been born alike! Had the same +chances! If you hadn't been born at the top and I down at the bottom +... common ... not even educated except by myself after I was too old +to get what a boy gets that goes to school long enough. I wouldn't mind +bein' born ugly. There's plenty of men at the top that's ugly enough, +God knows. But just one generation with money irons out the commonness. +That's it! I'm common! Common! Common. _Democracy_! Oh, God!" + +He caught up his cap and rushed out of the room, + +Alexina ran after him and caught him at the garden door. Like all +beautiful women who have listened to many declarations of love (or +avoided them) she was inclined to be cruel to men that roused no +response in her. But she felt only pity for Kirkpatrick. + +She had intended merely to insist upon shaking hands with him, but when +she saw his contorted face she slipped her arm round his neck and +kissed him warmly on the cheek. + +Then she pushed him gently through the door and locked it. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina had finished giving tea to two officers, a surgeon and a +médecin major, and, enchanted almost as much by the sugar and the white +bread as by their hostess, refreshingly beautiful and elegant in her +velvet gown of pervenche blue, they had lingered until nearly six. As +the concierge had gone out on an errand of her own Alexina had opened +the garden door for them, and after they disappeared she stood looking +at the street, which always fascinated her. + +It was very narrow and crooked and gray. Her house was the only one +with a garden in front; the others rose perpendicularly from the narrow +pavement, tall and close and rather imposing. Each was heavily +shuttered, the shutters as gray as the walls. The town had been +evacuated during the first Battle of the Marne and only the poor had +returned. The well-to-do provincials in this street had had homes +elsewhere, perhaps a flat in Paris; or they had established themselves +in the south. + +The street had an intensely secretive air, brooding, waiting. Soon all +these houses would be reopened, the dull calm life of a provincial town +would flow again, the only difference being that the women who went in +and out of those narrow doors and down this long and twisted street +would wear black; but for the most part they would sit in their gardens +behind, secluded from every eye, as indifferent to their neighbors as +of old, with that ingrained unchangeable bourgeois suspicion and +exclusiveness; and the façades, the street itself, would look little +less secretive than now. + + + +II + + +Nowhere could she find such seclusion if she wished for it. This house +was the only one in the street that belonged to a member of the +noblesse, and the bourgeoisie had as little "use" for the noblesse as +the noblesse for the bourgeoisie. + +For the moment Alexina felt that the house was hers, and the street +itself. She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up +and down its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt +for many days. There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she +never wanted to feel again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had +done much good in the past four years; she had been, for the most part, +high-minded, self-sacrificing, indifferent to the petty things of life, +even to discomfort, and it had given her a sense of elevation--when she +had had time to think about it. It was only certain extraordinary +circumstances that brought other qualities as inherent as life itself +surging to the top. It was demoralizing even to fight them, for that +involved recognition. Better that she protect herself from their +assaults. True, she was young, but she had had her fill of drama. All +her old cravings, never satisfied in the old days of peace without and +insurgence within, had been surfeited by this close personal contact +with the greatest drama in history. + +Why return to Paris at all? Why not settle down here at once, live a +life of thought and study, and give abundant help where help was +needed? There were villages within a few miles where the inhabitants +were living in the ruins. (The Germans in their first retreat had been +too hard pressed to linger long enough to set fire to this large town +and they had not been able to reach it during their second drive.) + +That had been a last flicker of romance at the embassy ... a last +resurgence of the evil the war had done her, as she sat in her cold +room ... a last blaze of sheer femininity when she discovered that Gora +had come to Paris in search of Gathbroke.... + +She felt as if she had escaped from a bottomless pit.... Assuredly she +had the will and the character to make herself now into whatever she +chose to be ... let Gora have him if she could find him and keep +him.... Better that than hating herself for the rest of her life ... +love, far from being ennobling, seemed to her the most demoralizing of +the passions ... there had been something ennobling, expanding, +soul-stirring in hating the brutal mediæval race that had devastated +France ... but in the reaction from her fierce registered vow to snatch +a man from a forlorn unhappy woman no matter what her claims and have +him for her own, she had shrunk from this new revelation of her depths +in horror.... One could not live with that.... + + + +III + + +A man in khaki was walking quickly down the long crooked street. As he +approached she saw the red on his collar. He was a British officer. In +another moment she was shaking hands with Gathbroke. + +She was far more composed than he, although she felt as if the world +had turned over, and there was a roar in her ears like the sound of +distant guns. She had a vague impression that the war had begun again. + +"You are the last person I should have expected to meet here. There is +no British--" + +"I came here to see you. I got your address from Madaine de Morsigny. I +saw her last night at a reception and recognized her. She was at that +ball in San Francisco. I introduced myself at once and asked her if you +were in Paris. I was sure it was you ... that night...." + +"Will you come in!" + +He followed her into the salon, softly lit by candles. She felt that +fate for once had been kind. It was difficult to imagine surroundings +or conditions in which she would look lovelier, be seen to greater +advantage. But her hands were cold. + +"It is too late for tea but perhaps you will share my frugal supper." + +"If it won't inconvenience you too much. Thanks." + +She sat down in the wide brocaded chair with its tarnished back. He +stood looking at her for a moment, then took a turn up and down the +long room. + +Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and +freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown +and thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle +light. His nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more +especially life in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature +with him. His eyes were still the same bright golden hazel, but their +expression was keen and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could +look as hard as those features more susceptible to modeling. + + + +IV + + +"Smoke if you like." + +"Thanks. I don't want to smoke." + +Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to +speak. + +"I feel rather an ass. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer +twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and +made up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety. +Somehow I don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you +like a brute because I wanted you more than anything on earth.... + +"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten +you for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have +simply projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has +ever been. You were there! + +"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits +of your soul to mine--I hate to say what sounds like sentimental +rotting, but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other +plane of consciousness. It takes war to shift a man over the border if +only for a moment. It kept me--lately--from ... never mind that now. +When I saw your eyes above that tiny yellow flame ... it wasn't only +that your eyes are not to be matched anywhere ... it seemed to me that +I saw myself in them, They came as dose as that! Laugh if you like." + +He stood defiantly in front of her. + +"God! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have +one. But you had once, if only for a moment!" + +"I have never had one since--for any one, that is. I hear the +concierge. I'll tell her to set a place for you." + + + +V + + +She left the room and he stared after her. Her words had been full of +meaning but her voice had been even and cold. + +She returned and asked: "Are you in any way committed to Gora Dwight?" + +"No ... yes ... that is ... why do you ask me that?" + +"Are you engaged to her?" + +"I am not. But I came very close--that is, of course if she would have +had me. She nursed me after I was wounded and gassed. She was a +wonderful nurse and there was something almost romantic in meeting her +again ... as if she had come straight out of the past. We had an +extraordinary experience as you know. I was not in the least drawn to +her at that time. You filled, possessed me." + +He hesitated. But it was a barrier he had not anticipated and it must +go down. Moreover, it was evident that she wouldn't talk, and he was +too excited for silence on his own part. + +"She was there ... when a man is weakest ... when he values tenderness +above all things ... when he does little thinking on either the past or +the future. + +"She has a queer odd kind of fascination too, and any man must admire a +woman so clever and capable and altogether fine. Several times I almost +proposed to her. But there is no privacy in wards. I was sent back to +England and went to my brother's house in Hertfordshire. It was then +that you began to haunt me. She had rejuvenated that California period +in my mind--resuscitated it ... but both express what I am trying to +say. We had often talked about California and the fire. She alluded to +you, casually, of course, more than once; but as I looked back I +gathered that your marriage had been a mistake and that you had known +it for a long time. + +"She did not come to England until four months later, and then she was +in charge of a hospital. I took her out occasionally--she was very much +confined. I liked her as much as ever. But _I didn't want her_. It +seemed tragic. There was one chance in a million that I should ever +meet you again. Once I deliberately drew her on to talk of you and +asked why you did not divorce your husband. She commented satirically +upon the intense conservatism of your family and of your own inflexible +pride. She added that you were the only beautiful woman she had ever +known who seemed to be quite indifferent to men--sexless, she meant! +But no woman knows anything about other women. I knew better! + +"As I said it was rather tragic. To be haunted by a chimera! I liked +her so much. Admired her. Who wouldn't? If she had been able to take me +home, to remain with me, there is no doubt in the world that I should +have married her if she would have had me.... I prefer now to believe +that she wouldn't. Why should she, with a great career in front of her? + +"No doubt I should have loved her--with what little love I had to give. +But those months had taught me that I could do without her, although I +enjoyed her letters. Even so ... + +"It was after she came to London that I felt I had to talk to some one +and I went down, to the country to see Lady Vick-Elton Gwynne's mother. +She had founded a hospital and run it, and was resting, worn out. She +is a hard nut, empty, withered, arid. Nothing left in her but noblesse +oblige. But there is little she doesn't know. She was smoking a black +cigar that would have knocked me down and looked like an old sibyl. I +told her the whole story--all of it, that is that was not too sacred. +She puffed such, a cloud of smoke that I could see nothing but her +hard, bright, wise, old eyes. 'Go after her,' she said. 'Find her. +Divorce her. Marry her. That's where you men have the advantage. You +can stalk straight out into the open and demand what you want point +blank. No scheming, plotting, deceit, being one thing and pretending +another, in other words ice when you are fire. Beastly rôle, woman's--' +I interrupted to remind her that it was twelve years since I had seen +you; that you had thrown me down as hard as a man ever got it and +married another man. There was no more reason to believe that I could +win you now. Then she asked me what I had come to see her and bore her +to death for when she was trying to rest. 'If you want a thing go for +it and get it, or if you can't get it at least find out that you can't. +Also see her again and find out whether you want her or not, instead of +mooning like a silly ass.' + +"The upshot was I made tip my mind to go to California as soon as I +could obtain my discharge. It never occurred to me that you were in +Paris. Then I was sent to Paris with the Commission. I have certain +expert knowledge.... For some reason I didn't tell Miss Dwight.... I +wrote her a hurried note saying that I was obliged to go to Paris for a +few weeks. + +"The night after I arrived I saw you at the Embassy. That finished it. +If I hadn't been sent back to England for some papers--twice--I'd have +found you before this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +The concierge announced supper. Alexina had brought food with her and +the little meal was good if not abundant. The dining-room was very +dreary, although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, +paneled to the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little +more to define their lineaments to each other than the flames of +briquet and match. + +The concierge served and they talked of the Peace Conference and of the +general pessimism that prevailed. Same old diplomacy. Same old +diplomatists. Same old ambitions. Same old European policies. An +idealist had about as much chance with those astute conventionalized +brains dyed in the diplomatic wiles and methods of the centuries as an +unarmed man on foot with a pack of wolves.... At the moment all the +other Commissions were cursing Italy.... She might be the stumbling +block to ultimate peace.... As for the League of Nations, as well ask +for the millenium at once. Human, nature probably inspired the creed: +"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," etc. "What we +want" (this, Gathbroke), "is an alliance between Great Britain, and the +United States. They could rule the world. Let the rest of everlastingly +snarling Europe go hang." Elton Gwynne would work for that. He had +already obtained his discharge and returned to America. He, Gathbroke, +'d work for it too. So would anybody else in the two countries that had +any sense and no personal fish to fry. + + + +II + + +When they returned to the salon he smoked. Alexina was thankful that it +was cigarettes. Mortimer had made her hate cigars. If, like most +Englishmen, he loved his pipe, he had the tact to keep it in his pocket. + +It was she who reopened the subject that filled him. + +"I feel sorry for Gora. Her life has been a tragedy in a way. Of course +she has had her successes, her compensations. But it isn't quite +everything to be the best of nurses, and I don't know that even writing +could fill a woman's life. Not unless she'd had the other thing first. +I am afraid she'll never be very popular anyhow. There are only small +groups here and there in America than can stand intellect in +fiction.... It seems to me that she would make a great wife. I mean +that. It is a great rôle and she could fill it greatly. I don't know, +of course, whether she cares for you or not. I am not in her +confidence. She is staying at my pension in Passy and I saw her +constantly for ten days before I came here, but she did not mention +your name.... If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one +else and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give +up, but she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest +tragedy of all.... + +"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe +that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of +her. I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps +forced myself not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless.... +Besides I knew even then the danger of letting myself go ... of the +unbridled imagination. Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French +marriages would seem to prove it. But we--your race and mine--have +fallen into a sublime sort of error, and we'll no more reason ourselves +out of it than out of the sex tyranny itself.... I don't see how I +could be happy with the eternal knowledge that Gora was miserable--that +she would be happy if I had remained in California...." + +"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as +I was free." + + + +III + + +The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he +remained smoking in his chair and continued: + +"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different +beings. In illness sex is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman +or he doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if +she hasn't the sex pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent +demand upon his passion, there is nothing to build on. I haven't come +out alive from that shrieking hell to be satisfied with second-class +emotions. I lay one night under three dead bodies, not one over +twenty-five. I knew them all. Each was deeply in love with a woman.... +Well, I knew the value of life that night if I never did before. And +life was given to us, when we can hold on to it, for the highest +happiness of which we are individually capable, no matter what else we +are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest pitch, not +makeshifts.... The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our own +characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy +her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief. +I'll have the highest or nothing." + +"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it +lasting. Gora would make a great companion." + +"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you +will understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at +all. If you had not brought her name into it I never should have done +so. But now I feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any +cost." + +He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and +snatched her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even +more than she was. + +"I'll have you ... have you...." + +She nodded. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Gora entered her room at the pension, mechanically lit the oil stove +that Alexina had procured for her, threw her hat on the bed, sat down +in the low chair and thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair +piled as always on top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of +herself in the mirror and wondered absurdly why she should have kept +all her hair and lost so much of her face. She looked more top-heavy +than ever. Her face was a small oblong, her eyes out of all proportion. +She thought herself hideous. + +She had heard two hours before that Gathbroke was in Paris attached to +the British Commission. She had met an old acquaintance, a San +Francisco newspaper man, who had taken her to lunch and spoken of him +casually. Gathbroke had good-naturedly given him an Interview when +other members of the Commission had been inaccessible. + +Gathbroke had told her nothing of a definite object when he wrote her +that he was off for Paris. Nor had he mentioned it in the note he had +written her after his arrival. This had been merely to tell her that he +was feeling as well as he ever had felt in his life and was enjoying +himself. Polite admonition not to tire herself out. He was always hers +gratefully and her devoted friend. + +He had written the note at the Rite Hotel, but when, assuming this was +his address, she had called him up on her arrival, she had received the +information that he was not stopping there, nor had been. + +Gora was very proud. But she was also very much in love; and she had +been in love with Gathbroke for twelve years. For the greater part of +that time she had believed it to be hopeless, but it had always been +with her, a sad but not too painful undertone in her busy life. It had +kept her from even a passing interest in another man. She had even felt +a Somewhat ironic gratitude to him and his indifference, for all the +forces of her nature, deprived of their natural outlet, went into her +literary work, informing it with an arresting and a magnetic vitality. +She had believed herself to be without hope, but in the remote feminine +fastnesses of her nature she had hoped, even dreamed--when she had the +time. That was not often. Her life, except when at her desk with her +literary faculty turned loose, had been practical to excess. + +She would have offered her services in any case to one of the warring +allies, no doubt of that; the tremendous adventure would have appealed +to her quite aside from the natural desire to place her high +accomplishment as a nurse at the disposal of tortured men. Nevertheless +she was quite aware that she went to the British Army with the distinct +hope of meeting Gathbroke again; quite as, under the cloak of travel, +she would have gone to England long since had she not been swindled by +Mortimer. + +Until she found him insensible, apparently at the point of death, after +the terrible disaster of March, nineteen-eighteen, she had only heard +of him once: when she read in the _Times_ he had been awarded the D.S.O. + +She knew then where he was and maneuvered to get back to France. She +found him sooner than she had dared to hope. And she believed that she +had saved his life. Not only by her accomplished nursing. Her powerful +will had thrown out its grappling irons about his escaping ego and +dragged it back and held it in its exhausted tenement. + +He had believed that also. He had an engaging spontaneity of nature and +he had felt and shown her a lively gratitude. He was restless and +frankly unhappy when she was out of his sight. He had a charming way of +Baying charming things to a woman and he said them to her. But he was +also as full of ironic humor as in his letters and "ragged" her. And he +talked to her eagerly when he was better and she had gone with him to a +hospital far back of the lines. There were intervals when they could +talk, and the other men would listen ... and had taken things for +granted. + +So had she. He had not made love to her. There was no privacy. +Moreover, she guessed that his keen sense of the ridiculous would not +permit him to make love to any woman when helpless under her hands. + +But how could there be other than one finale to such a story as theirs? +What was fiction but the reflection of life? if she had written a story +with these obvious materials there could have been but one logical +ending--unless, in a sudden spasm of reaction against romance, she had +killed him off. + +But he would live; and not be strong enough to return to the front for +mouths ... the war _must_ be over by then.... As for romance, well, she +was in the romantic mood. It was a right of youth that she had missed, +but a woman may be quite as romantic at thirty-four as at eighteen, if +she has sealed her fountain instead of splashing it dry when she was +too young to know its preciousness. Once before she had surrendered to +romance, fleetingly: during the week that followed the night she had +sat on Calvary with Gathbroke and watched a sea of flames. + +The mood descended upon her, possessed her. She had other patients. +There were the same old horrors, the same heart-rending duties; but the +mood stayed with her. And after he left, for England. She knew there +could, be but one ending. Her imagination had surrendered to tradition. + +Moreover, she was tired of hard work. She wanted to settle down in a +home. She wanted children. She must always write, of course. Writing +was as natural to her as breathing. And she had already proved that a +woman could do two things equally well. + + + +II + + +She never thought of trying to follow him back to England, to shirk the +increasing terrible duties behind the reorganized but harassed armies. +The wounded seemed to drop through the hospital roof like flies. + +Nevertheless when she was abruptly transferred to London she went +without protest! It was then that she began to have misgivings. She was +given charge of a large hospital just outside of London and her duties +were constant and confining. But she managed to go out to lunch with +him twice and once to dine; after which they drove back to the hospital +in a slow and battered old hansom. + +She returned a few weeks before the Armistice. She had not seen him for +four months. He was well and expecting to be sent back to the front any +day. At present they were making use of him in London. + +If anything he appeared to admire her more than ever, to be more +solicitous for her health. He lamented personally her exacting duties. +But it was the almost exuberant friendliness of one man for another, +for a comrade, a good fellow; although he often paid her quick little +diagnostic compliments. If she hadn't loved him she would have enjoyed +his companionship. He had read and thought and lived. Before the war he +had been in active public life. He had far greater plans for the future. + +He had been almost entirely impersonal. It had maddened her. Even the +night they had driven through the dark streets of London out to her +hospital, although he had talked more or less about himself, even +encouraged her to talk about herself, there had not been one instant of +correlation. + +But she had made excuses as women do, in self-defense. He assumed that +he might easily go back to the front just in time to get himself +killed, although the end of the war was in sight.... Her utter lack of +experience with men in any sex relation had made her stiff, even in her +letters; afraid of "giving herself away." She had no coquetry. If she +had, pride would have forbidden her to use it. Her ideals were +intensely old-fashioned. She wanted to be pursued, won. The man must do +it all. Her writings had never been in the least romantic. Well, she +was, if romance meant having certain fixed ideals. + +One thing puzzled her. When she wrote she manipulated her men and women +in their mutual relations with a master-hand. But she had not the least +idea how to manage her own affair. What was genius? A rotten spot in +the brain, a displacement of particles that operated independently of +personality, of the inherited ego? Possession? Ancestors come to life +for an hour in the subliminal depths? But what did she care for genius +anyhow! + +One thing she would have been willing to do as her part, aside from +meeting him mentally at all points and showing a brisk frank pleasure +in his society: give him every chance to woo and win her, to find her +more and more indispensable to his happiness. But she was no woman of +leisure. She could not receive him in charming toilettes in an equally +seductive room. She had nothing for evening wear but an old black satin +gown. After her arrival in London she had found time to buy a smart +enough tailored coat and skirt, and a hat, but nothing more. + +And after the Armistice was declared she only saw him once. + +Then came his abrupt departure for Paris. His noncommittal note. Even +then she refused to despair. It would be an utterly impossible end to +such a story ... after twelve years ... not for a moment would she +accept that. + + + +III + + +She applied for her discharge. During her long stay in the British +service she had made influential friends. She had also made a high +record not only for ability but for an untiring fidelity. Her vacations +had been few and brief. She obtained her discharge and went to Paris. +Her pride would permit her to telephone. What more natural? Nothing +would have surprised him more than if she had not. She had little doubt +of his falling into the habit of daily companionship. He knew Paris and +she did not. He would have seen her daily in London if she had been +free. + +Something, no doubt of that, held him back. He was discouraged ... or +not sure of himself.... She had assumed as a matter of course that he +was at the Ritz. When she found that he was not, had not been, she +realized that he had omitted to give her an address. + +That might have been mere carelessness.... But to find him in Paris! +She had not visualized such swarms of people. She might almost have +passed him on the street and not seen him. But not for a moment did she +waver from her purpose. She held passionately to the belief that were +they together day after day, hours on end.... + +Unbelievable. + + + +IV + + +She had telephoned an hour ago to the hotel where he was staying with +other members of the British Commission and been told that he was out +of town, but might return any moment. + +There was nothing to do but write him a note and wait. She was not +equal to the humiliation of telephoning a third time. She wrote it at +the hotel where her English friends were staying and sent it by +messenger, having heard of the idiosyncracies of the Paris post. + +Hastings, her newspaper friend, had been altogether a bird of ill omen. +He had told her that the American market was glutted with "war stuff." +The public was sick of it. Some of the magazines were advertising that +they would read no more of it. She had told him that her material was +magnificent and he had replied: "Can it. Maybe a year or two from +now--five, more likely. I'm told over here that the war fiction we've +had wished on us by the ton resembles the real thing just about as much +as maneuvers look like the first Battle of the Marne, say, when the +Germans didn't know where they were at; went out quail hunting and +struck a jungle full of tigers.... Why not? When most of 'em were +written by men of middle age snug beside a library fire with mattresses +on the roof--in America not even a Zeppelin to warm up their blood. But +that doesn't matter. The public took it all as gospel. Ate it up. Now +it is fed up and wants something else." + +What irony! + +And what a future if he--but that she would not face. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +She heard Janet Maynard, who had returned alone the day before from +Nice, enter the next, room. She kept very still; she had no desire for +conversation. But Janet tapped on her door in a moment and entered +looking very important. + +"I've something to tell you," she announced. "You'd never guess in a +thousand years. Don't get up. 111 sit on the bed-used to any old place. +Only too thankful it isn't a box, or to sit down at all. Try one of +mine? Don't you feel well?" + +"I've a rotten headache." + +"Oh ... mind my smoking?" + +"Not a bit. What did you have to tell me?" + +"Well, 'way back in ancient times, B.W., nineteen hundred and six, a +young Englishman named Gathbroke came to California after his sister, +who was ill." She was blowing rings and did not see Gora's face. When +she leveled her eyes Gora was unbuttoning her gaiters. "It seems she +died some time during the fire and he had a perfectly horrid experience +getting the body out to the cemetery. But that has nothing to do with +the story. He met Olive and the rest of us--_and Alexina_--the night of +the Hofer ball. I had forgotten the whole thing until Olive reminded me +that we had joked Alex afterward about the way she had bowled him over. +His eyes simply followed her, but Mortimer gave him no chance. + +"Then. I remembered something else. Isabel Gwynne once told me that her +husband was sure Gathbroke had proposed to Alex one day when he took +him down to Eincona. He was in a simply awful state of nerves +afterward. John thought he was going out of his mind. Now, here's the +point. Night before last Olive was at a ball and who should come up to +her and introduce himself but Gathbroke. He's changed a lot but she +recognized him. Well, he hardly waited to finish the usual amenities +before he asked her plump out if Alex was in Paris, said he was +positive he had seen her at that embassy ball where all the lights went +out and they expected a riot. He turned white when he did it, but he +was as direct as chain lightning. He wanted her address. Of course he +got it. Olive was thrilled. It's safe to assume that he's with Alex at +the present moment. At any rate Olive called him up this morning +intending to ask him to dinner, and was told he was out of town. Now, +isn't that romance for you?" + +"Rather." + +"Twelve years! Fancy a man being faithful all that time. Hadn't got +what he wanted, that's probably why. Have you ever heard Alex speak of +him? Think she'll divorce Mortimer?" + +"I asked her the other night why she didn't. She said it was against +the traditions of the family. But--I recall--she said--it seemed to me +there was a curious sort of meaning in her voice--that if she wanted to +marry a man nothing would stop her." + +"And it wouldn't. Nothing would stop Alexina if anything started her. +The trouble always was to start her. She's indolent and unsusceptible +and fastidious. But deep and intense--Lord! Mark my words, she saw him +at the Embassy. If she did and the thing's mutual she'll give poor old +Maria such a shock that the war will look like ten cents." + +"Possibly." + +"You look really ill, Gora. No wonder you have headaches with that +hair. It's magnificent--but! Go to bed and I'll send up your dinner. +Got any aspirin?" + +"Yes, thanks." + +"Au 'voir." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +The day was fine and Alexina took advantage of the brief interval of +grace and went for a walk. Gathbroke was in Paris but might come out +any moment. She wore a coat and skirt of heavy white English tweed with +a silk blouse of periwinkle blue. The same soft shade lined her black +velvet hat. + +She had a number of notes changed at the bank and struck out for one of +the ruined villages. She was in a mood to distribute happiness, and +only silver coin could carry a ray of light into the dark stupefied +recesses of those miserable wretches living in the ruins of homes +haunted by memories of their dead. + +She felt a very torch of happiness herself. Her body and her brain +glowed with it. The currents of her blood seemed to have changed their +pace and their essence. The elixir of life was in them. She felt less +woman than goddess. + +She knew now why she had been born, why she had waited. As long as this +terrible war had to be she was thankful for her intimate contact with +the very martyrdom of suffering; never else could she have known to the +full the value of life and youth and health and the power to be +triumphantly happy in love. She would have liked to wave a wand and +make all the world happy, but as this was as little possible as to +remake human nature itself she soared into an ether of her own to revel +in her astounding good fortune. + + + +II + + +The village she approached was picturesque in its ruin for it climbed +the side of a hill, and although the Germans had set fire deliberately +to every house the shells for the most part remained. Along the low +ridge was a row of brick walls in various stages of gaunt and jagged +transfiguration. They looked less the victims of fire than of +earthquake. + +The narrow ascending street was filled with rubble. She picked her way +and peered into the ruins. At first she saw no one; the place seemed to +be deserted. Then some one moved in a dark cellar, and as she stood at +the top of the short flight of steps a very old woman came forward into +the light. There were two children at her heels. + +Alexina suddenly felt very awkward. She had always thought the mere +handing out of money the most detestable part of charity. But there was +nothing here to buy. That was obvious. + +The old woman however relieved her embarrassment. She extended a skinny +hand. The poor of France are not loquacious, but like all their +compatriots they know what they want, and no doubt feel that life is +simplified when they are in a position to ask for it. + +Alexina gratefully handed her a coin and hurried on. Her next +experience was as simple but more delicate. A younger woman had fitted +up a corner of her ruin with a petticoat for roof and a plank supported +by two piles of brick for counter and had laid in a supply of the post +cards that pictured with terrible fidelity the ruins of her village. +Alexina bought the entire stock, "to scatter broadcast in the United +States," and promised to send her friends for more; assuring the woman +that when the tourists came to France once more these ruined villages +would be magnets for gold. + +She managed to get rid of her coins without much difficulty, although +comparatively few of the village's inhabitants had returned, and these +by stealth. Many of them had trekked far! Others were still detained at +the hostels in Paris and other cities where they could be looked after +without too much trouble. + +Several had set up housekeeping in the cellars in a fashion not unlike +that of their cave dwelling ancestors, and a few had found a piece of +roof above ground to huddle under when it rained. Some talked to her +pleasantly, some were surly, others unutterably sad. None refused her +largesse, and she was amused to look back and see a little procession +making for the town, no doubt with intent to purchase. + +In one side street less choked with rubbish small boys were playing at +war. But for the most part the children looked very sober. They had +been spared the horrors of occupation but they had suffered privations +and been surrounded by grief and despair. + + + +III + + +When she had exhausted her supplies she took refuge in the church. It +was at the end of the long street on the ridge and after she had rested +she could leave the village by its farther end, and by making a long +détour avoid the painful necessity of refusing alms. + +There was no roof on the church; otherwise it would have been the +general refuge. Part of it including the steeple was some distance away +and looked as if it had been blown off. The rest had gone down with one +of the walls. It was a charred unlovely ruin. Saints and virgins +sometimes defied the worst that war could do, but all had succumbed +here. The paneless windows in the walls that still remained +precariously erect framed pictures of a quiet and lovely landscape. The +stone walls were intact about the farms in which moved a few old men +and women in faded cotton frocks that looked like soft pastels. The +oaks were majestic and serene. The hills were lavender in the distance. +But the farm houses were in ruins and so was a château on a hill. +Alexina could see its black gaping walls through the grove of chestnut +trees withered by the fire. + +She wandered about looking for a seat however humble but could find +nothing more inviting than piles of brick and twisted iron. She noticed +an open place in the floor and went over to it and peered down. There +was a flight of steps ending in cimmerian darkness. Doubtless the +vaults of the great families of the neighborhood were down there. She +wondered if the spite of the Huns had driven them to demolish the very +bones of the race they were unable to conquer. + + + +IV + + +Suddenly she stiffened. A chill ran up her spine. She had an +overwhelming sense of impending danger and stepped swiftly away from +the edge of the aperture; then turned about, and faced Gora Dwight. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +"Oh," she said calmly, although her nerves still shuddered. "You must +walk like a fairy. I didn't hear you." + +"One must pick one's way through rubbish." + +"Ghastly ruin, isn't it?" + +"Life is ghastly." + +Alexina made no reply lest she deny this assertion out of the wonder of +her own experience. She guessed what Gora had come for and that she was +feeling as elemental as she looked. She herself had recovered from that +sudden access of horror but she moved still further from, that black +and waiting hole. + +"Are you going to marry Gathbroke?" + +The gauntlet was down and Alexina felt a sharp sense of relief. She was +in no mood for the subtle evasion and she had not the least inclination +to turn up her eyes. She made up her mind however to save Gora's pride +as far as possible. + +"Yes," she said. + +"You dare say that to me?" + +Alexina raised her low curved eyebrows. She seldom raised them but when +she did she looked like all her grandmothers. + +"Dare? Did you expect me to lie? Is that what you wish?" + +Gora clutched her muff hard against her throat. (Alexina wondered if +she had a pistol in it.) Her eyes looked over it pale and terrible. +Alexina had the advantage of her in apparent calm, but there was no +sign of confusion in those wide baleful irises with their infinitesimal +pupils. + +"You knew that I loved him. That I had loved him for twelve years." + +"I _knew_ nothing of the sort. You had his picture on your mantel and +you corresponded with him off and on but you never gave me a hint that +you loved him. Twelve years! Good heaven! A friendship extending over +such a period was conceivable; natural enough. But a romance! When such +an idea did cross my mind I dismissed it as fantastic. You always +seemed to me the embodiment of common sense." + +"There is no such thing. It is true--that I hardly believed it +then--admitted it. But I knew we should meet again. He never had +married. It looked like destiny when I did meet him. I nursed him--" + +She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed +no understanding and she went on, still watching. + +"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A +woman _knows_ certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have +been alone he would have found out--asked me to marry him. We should be +married to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would +have been the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to +him to come to Paris." + +"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. I had forgotten +his existence until I saw him, for a few seconds, at a reception. Don't +forget that he came to Paris under orders from his Government." + +"But you recognized him that night. You came down here to meet him, to +get away from me." + +"Far from coming here to meet him I had given up all hope of ever +seeing him again. He found out my address and followed me. You also +seem to forget that you never mentioned his name to me in Paris. How +was I to know that you were still interested in him?" + +"That first night ... you guessed it ... you threw down a sort of +challenge. Deny that if you can!" + +"No! I'll not deny it. I wanted him as badly as you did if with less +reason. Nevertheless ... believe it or not as you like ... I came down +here as much to leave the field clear to you as for my own peace of +mind. I think ... I fancy ... I decided to leave the matter on the +knees of the gods." + +"Do you mean to tell me that if I had met him while we were together in +Paris, and you knew the truth, that you would not have tried to win him +away from me?" + +"I wonder! I have asked myself that question several times. I like to +think that I should have been noble, and withdrawn. But I am not at all +sure.... Yes, I do believe I should, not from noble unselfishness, oh, +not by a long sight, but from pride--if I saw that he was really in +love with you. I'd never descend to scheming and plotting and pitting +my fascinations against another woman--" + +"Oh, damn your aristocratic highfalutin pride. I suppose you mean that +I have no such pride, having no inherited right to it. Perhaps not or I +wouldn't be here to-day. At least I wouldn't be talking to you," she +added, her voice hoarse with significance. + +Once more Alexina eyed the muff. "Did you come here to kill me?" + +"Yes, I did. No, I haven't a pistol. I couldn't get one. I trusted to +opportunity. When I saw you standing at the edge of that hole I thought +I had it." + +Alexina found it impossible to repress a shiver but in spite of those +dreadful eyes she felt no recurrence of fear. + +"What good would that have done you? Murderesses get short shrift in +France. There is none of that sickening sentimentalism here that we are +cursed with in our country." + +"Murders are not always found out. If you were at the bottom of that +hole it would be long before you were found and there is no reason why +I should be suspected. I didn't come through the village. I didn't even +inquire at your house. I saw you leave it and followed at a distance. +If I'd pushed you down there I'd have followed and killed you if you +were not dead already." + +Alexina wondered if she intended to rush her. But she was sure of her +own strength. If one of them went down that hole it would not be she. +Nevertheless she was beginning to feel sorry for Gora. She had never +sensed, not during the most poignant of her contacts with the war, such +stark naked misery in any woman's soul. Its futile diabolism but +accentuated its appeal. + +"Well, you missed your chance," she said coldly. Gora was in no mood to +receive sympathy! "And if you hadn't and escaped detection I don't +fancy you would have enjoyed carrying round with you for the next +thirty or forty years the memory of a cowardly murder. Too bad we +aren't men so that we could have it out in a fair fight. My ancestors +were all duellists. No doubt yours were too," she added politely. + +"Perhaps you are right." For the first time there was a slight +hesitation in Gora's raucous tones. But she added in a swift access of +anger: "I suppose you mean that your code is higher than mine. That you +are incapable of killing from behind." + +"Good heavens! I hope so! ... Still ... I will confess I have had my +black moods. It is possible that I might have let loose my own devil +if--if--things had turned out differently." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't! Not when it came to the point. You would have +elevated your aristocratic nose and walked off." She uttered this +dictum with a certain air of personal pride although her face was +convulsed with hate. + +"Gora, you are really making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more +time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such +melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of +murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for +some sort of revenge but I should have expected something more +original--" + +"Murder's natural enough when you've seen nothing else as long as I +have. And as for human life--how much value do you suppose I place on +it after four years of war? I had almost reached the point where death +seemed more natural than life." + +"Oh, yes ... but later.... There are tremendous reactions after war. +Settled down once more in our smiling land my ghost would be an +extremely unpleasant companion. You see, Gora, you are just now in that +abnormal state of mind known as inhibition. But, unfortunately, +perhaps, in spite of the fact that you have proved yourself to be +possessed of a violence of disposition--that I rather admire--you were +not cut out to be the permanent villain. You have great qualities. And +for thirty-four years of your life you have been a sane and reasonable +member of society. For four of those years you have been an angel of +mercy.... Oh, no. If you had killed me you would have killed yourself +later. You couldn't live with Gathbroke for you couldn't live with +yourself. Silly old tradition perhaps, but we are made up of +traditions.... That was one reason I left Paris, gave up trying to find +him.... I knew that I could have him. But I also knew that you had had +some sort of recent experience with him, that you had come to Paris to +find him, that possibly if left with a clear field you could win him. I +knew--Oh, yes, I knew!--that he would know instantly he was mine if we +met. But ... well, I too have to live with myself. It might be that he +was committed to you, that if he married you, you would both be happy +enough. When he did come nothing would have tempted me to accept him if +I had still believed--" + +"Did he tell you? Tell you how close he came? Tell you that I was in +love with him?" + +"My dear Gora, I fancy that if he were capable of that you would not be +capable of loving him. I certainly should not." There was a slight +movement in her throat as if she were swallowing the rest of the truth +whole. She had adhered to it where she could but Gora's face must be +saved. "Your name was not mentioned. I asked him no questions about his +past. I am not the heroine of a novel, old style. He told me that he +loved me, that he had never loved any other woman, never asked any +other woman to marry him. That was enough for me. I had no place in my +mind for you or any one else. Perhaps you don't know--how could +you--that years ago, when he was in California, he asked me to marry +him." + +"Calf love! If you had not been here now--" + +"He would have gone to California as soon as he could get away. He had +made up his mind to that before he came to Paris." + +"What!" + +Gora's arms dropped to her sides and she stared at the floor. Then she +laughed, "O God, what irony! I talked of you more or Jess as was +natural ... and he remembered ... we had recalled the past vividly +enough.... Why couldn't one of those instincts in which we are +supposed to be prolific have warned me?.... Much fiction is like life! +... Any heroine I could have created would have had it ... had more +sense.... I have botched the thing from beginning to end." + +She raised her head and stared at Alexina with somber eyes; the insane +light had died out of them. They took in every detail of that enhanced +beauty, of that inner flame, white hot, that made Alexina glow like a +transparent lamp. + +She also recalled that she had watched her pack her bags ... that +pervenche velvet gown ... Alexina had described the quaint old +salon.... Her imagination, flashed out that first interview with +Gathbroke with a tormenting conjuring of detail.... + +"Yon are one of the favorites of life," she admitted in her bitter +despair. "You have been given everything--" + +"I drew Mortimer," Alexina reminded her. + +"True. But you dusted him out of your life with an ease and a +thoroughness that has never been surpassed. Think what you might have +drawn. No, you are lucky, lucky! The prixes of life are for your sort. +I am one of the overlooked or the deliberately neglected. Not a fairy +stood at my cradle. All things have come to you unsought. Beauty. +Birth. Position. Sufficient wealth. Power over men and women. An +enchanting personality. All the social graces. You have had ups and +downs merely because after all you are a mortal; and as a matter of +contrast--to heighten your powers of appreciation. No doubt the worst +is over for you. I have had to take life by the throat and wring out of +her what little I have. That is what makes life so hopeless, so +terrible. No genius for social reform will ever eliminate the +inequality of personality, of the inner inheritance. Nature meant for +her own sport that a few should live and the rest should die while +still alive." + +"Gora, I don't want to sound like the well-meaning friends who tell a +mother when she loses her child that it is better off, but I can't help +reminding you that a very large and able-bodied fairy presided at your +cradle. You have a great gift that I'd give my two eyes for; and you +know perfectly well--or you will soon--that you will get over this and +forget that Gathbroke ever existed, while you are creating men to suit +yourself." Her incisive mind drove straight to the truth. "You will +write better than ever. Possibly the reason that you have not reached +the great public is because your work lacks humanity, sympathy. You +never lived before. You were all intellect. Now you have had a terrific +upheaval and you seem to have experienced about everything, including +the impulse to murder. Most writers would appear to live uneventful +lives judging from their extremely dull biographies. But they must have +had the most tremendous inner adventures and soul-racking +experiences--the big ones--or they couldn't have written as they +did.... This must be the more true in regard to women." + +Gora continued to stare at her. The words sank in. Her clear intellect +appreciated the truth of them but they afforded her no consolation. All +emotion had died out of her. She felt beaten, helpless. + +She was obliged to look up as she watched Alexina's subtly transfigured +face, fascinated. It made her feel even her physical insignificance; +the more as she had lost the flesh that had given her short stature a +certain majesty. + +"Oh, life is unjust, unjust." She no longer spoke with bitterness, +merely as one forced to state an inescapable fact. "Injustice! The root +of all misfortune." + +"Life is a hard school but where she has strong characters to work on +she turns out masterpieces. You will be one of them, Gora. And I fancy +that women born with great gifts were meant to stand alone and to be +trained in that hard school. It is only when women of your sort have a +passing attack of the love germ that they imagine they could go through +life as a half instead of a whole. When you are in the full tide of +your powers with the public for a lover I fancy you will look back upon +this episode with gratitude, if you remember it at all." + +"Perhaps. But that, is a long way off! I have just been told that the +order of fiction with which my mind is packed at present is not wanted. +It has been contemptuously rejected by the American public as 'war +stuff.'" + +"Good heaven! That _is_ a misfortune!" + +For a moment Alexina was aghast. Here was the real tragedy. She almost +prayed for inspiration, for it lay with her to readjust Gora to life. +To no one else would Gora ever give her confidence. + +"I don't believe for a moment," she said, "that the intelligent public +will ever reject a great novel or story dealing with the war. The +masterly treatment of any subject, the new point of view, the swift +compelling breathless drama that is your peculiar gift, must triumph +over any mood of the moment. Moreover, when you are back in California +you will see these last four years in a tremendous perspective. And no +contrast under heaven could be so great. You probably won't hear the +war mentioned once a month. No doubt much that crowds your mind now +will cease to interest the productive tract of your brain and you will +write a book with the war as a mere background for your new and +infinitely more complete knowledge of human psychology. No novel of any +consequence for years to come will be written without some relationship +to the war. Stories long enough to be printed in book form perhaps, but +not the novel: which is a memoir of contemporary life in the form of +fiction. No writer with as great a gift as yours could have anything +but a great destiny. Go back to California and bang your typewriter and +find it out for yourself." + +For the first time something like a smile flitted over Gora's drawn +face. "Perhaps. I hope you are right. I don't think I could ever really +lose faith in that star." She was thinking: Oh, yes! I'll go back to +California as quickly as I can get there--as a wounded animal crawls +back to its lair. + +She would have encircled the globe three times to get to it. _Her +state_. To her it was what family and friends and home and children +were to another. It was literally the only friend she had in the world. +She would have flown to it if she could, sure of its beneficence. + +"I shall go as soon as I can get passage," she said. "And you?" + +"I must go too unless I can get a divorce here. I shall know that in a +few days." + +"Well, we travel on different steamers if you do go! I shall stop off +at Truckee and go to Lake Tahoe. It will be a long while before I go to +any place that reminds me of you. I no longer want to kill you but I +want to forget you. Good-by." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +When she reached the foot of the hill she turned and looked back. +Alexina was standing in one of the jagged window casements of the +church. The bright warm sun was overhead in a cloudless sky. Its liquid +careless rays flooded the ruin. Alexina's tall white figure, the soft +blue of her hat forming a halo about her face, was bathed in its light; +a radiant vision in that shattered town whose very stones cried out +against the injustice of life. + +Alexina, who was feeling like anything but a madonna in a stained glass +window, waved a questing hand. + +"The fortunate of earth!" thought Gora. + +She set her lips grimly and walked across the valley with a steady +stride. At least she could be one of the strong. + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters-In-Law, by Gertrude Atherton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 8535-8.txt or 8535-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/3/8535/ + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sisters-In-Law + A Novel of Our Time + +Author: Gertrude Atherton + +Posting Date: August 29, 2012 [EBook #8535] +Release Date: July, 2005 +First Posted: July 20, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + + +THE SISTERS-IN-LAW + +A NOVEL OF OUR TIME + +BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON + + + + + + +TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO + + + + + + +Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading +characters in other novels and stories of the "California Series," +which covers the social history of the state from the beginning of the +last century. They are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel +Otis and the Hofers in ANCESTORS; the Randolphs in A DAUGHTER OF THE +VINE; Lee Tarlton, Lady Barnstable, Lady Arrowmount, Coralie Geary, the +Montgomerys and Trennahans in TRANSPLANTED and THE CALIFORNIANS; +Rezanov in the novel of that name, and Chonita Iturbi y Moncada in THE +DOOMSWOMAN, both bound in the volume, BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME; The Price +Ruylers in THE AVALANCHE. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest +crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted +even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive +in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of +the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San +Francisco's "early days," perched high on the steepest of the casual +hills in that city of a hundred hills. + +She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an +adventurous spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the +verandah at night when her legs were longer than her years, and during +the past winter to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door +when her worthy but hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was +the first time that she had been out after midnight. + +And it was five o'clock in the morning! + +She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother's pet aversion, to a party +given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if +crumbling pillar of San Francisco's proud old aristocracy, held in +pious disdain, and had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the +tireless exhilaration of her eighteen years until the weary band had +played Home Sweet Home. + +She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant, +even among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many +flowers even in California. Her own coming-out party in the dark double +parlors of the old house among the eucalyptus trees, whose moans and +sighs could be heard above the thin music of piano and violin, had been +so formal and dull that she had cried herself to sleep after the last +depressed member of the old set had left on the stroke of midnight. +Even Aileen's high mocking spirits had failed her, and she had barely +been able to summon them for a moment as she kissed the friend, to whom +she was sincerely devoted, a sympathetic good-night. + +"Never mind, old girl. Nothing can ever be worse. Not even your own +funeral. That's one comfort." + + + +II + + +That had been last November. During the ensuing five months Alexina had +been taken by her mother to such entertainments as were given by other +members of that distinguished old band, whose glory, like Mrs. Groome's +own, had reached its meridian in the last of the eighties. + +Not that any one else in San Francisco was quite as exclusive as Mrs. +Groome. Others might be as faithful in their way to the old tradition, +be as proud of their inviolate past, when "money did not count," and +people merely "new," or of unknown ancestry, did not venture to knock +at the gates: but the successive flocks of young folks had overpowered +their conservative parents, and Society had loosened its girdle, until +in this year of grace nineteen-hundred-and-six, there were few rich +people so hopelessly new that their ball rooms either in San Francisco +or "Down the Peninsula," were unknown to a generation equally +determined to enjoy life and indifferent to traditions. + +Mrs. Groome alone had set her face obdurately against any change in the +personnel of the eighties. She had the ugliest old house in San +Francisco, and the change from lamps to gas had been her last +concession to the march of time. The bath tubs were tin and the double +parlors crowded with the imposing carved Italian furniture whose like +every member of her own set had, in the seventies and eighties, brought +home after their frequent and prolonged sojourns abroad: for the +prouder the people of that era were of their lofty social position on +the edge of the Pacific, the more time did they spend in Europe. + +Mrs. Groome might be compelled therefore to look at new people in the +homes of her friends--even her proud daughter, Mrs. Abbott, had +unaccountably surrendered to the meretricious glitter of +Burlingame--but she would not meet them, she would not permit Alexina +to cross their thresholds, nor should the best of them ever cross her +own. + +Poor Alexina, forced to submit, her mother placidly impervious to +coaxings, tears, and storms, had finally compromised the matter to the +satisfaction of herself and of her own close chosen friend, Aileen +Lawton. She accompanied her mother with outward resignation to small +dinner dances and to the Matriarch balls, presided over by the newly +elected social leader, a lady of unimpeachable Southern ancestry and +indifference to wealth, who pledged her Virginia honor to Mrs. Groome +that Alexina should not be introduced to any young man whose name was +not on her own visiting list; and, while her mother slept, the last of +the Ballinger-Groomes accompanied Aileen (chaperoned by an unprincipled +aunt, who was an ancient enemy of Maria Groome) to parties quite as +respectable but infinitely gayer, and indubitably mixed. + +She was quite safe, for Mrs. Groome, when free of social duties, +retired on the stroke of nine with a novel, and turned off the gas at +ten. She never read the society columns of the newspapers, choked as +they were with unfamiliar and plebeian names; and her friends, +regarding Alexina's gay disobedience as a palatable joke on "poor old +Maria," and sympathetic with youth, would have been the last to +enlighten her. + + + +III + + +Alexina had never enjoyed herself more than to-night. Young Mrs. Hofer, +who had bought and remodeled the old Polk house on Nob Hill--the very +one in which Mrs. Groome's oldest daughter had made her debut in the +far-off eighties--had turned all her immense rooms into a bower of +every variety of flower that bloomed on the rich California soil. It +was her second great party of the season, and it had been her avowed +intention to outdo the first, which had attempted a revival of Spanish +California and been the talk of the town. The decorations had been done +by a firm of young women whose parents and grandparents had danced in +the old house, and the catering by another scion of San Francisco's +social founders, Miss Anne Montgomery. + +To do Mrs. Groome full justice, all of these enterprising young women +were welcome in her own home. She regarded it as unfortunate that +ladies were forced to work for their living, but had seen too many San +Francisco families in her own youth go down to ruin to feel more than +sorrow. In that era the wives of lost millionaires had knitted baby +socks and starved slowly. Even she was forced to admit that the newer +generation was more fortunate in its opportunities. + +Alexina had not gone to Mrs. Hofer's first party, Aileen being in Santa +Barbara, but she had sniffed at the comparisons of the more critical +girls in their second season. She was quite convinced that nothing so +splendid had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. +She had had the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so +charming a young man as Mortimer Dwight. + +"Some party," she thought as she ran up the steep avenue to her +sacrosanct abode, where her haughty mother was chastely asleep, secure +in the belief that her obedient little daughter was dreaming in her +maiden bower. + +"What the poor old darling doesn't know 'll never hurt her," thought +Alexina gayly. "She really is old enough to be my grandmother, anyhow. +I wonder if Maria and Sally really stood for it or were as naughty as I +am." + +Alexina was the youngest of a long line of boys and girls, all of whom +but five were dead. Ballinger and Geary practiced law in New York, +having married sisters who refused to live elsewhere. Sally had married +one of their Harvard friends and dwelt in Boston. Maria alone had wed +an indigenous Californian, an Abbott of Alta in the county of San +Mateo, and lived the year round in that old and exclusive borough. She +was now so like her mother, barring a very slight loosening of her own +social girdle, that Alexina dismissed as fantastic the notion that even +a quarter of a century earlier she may have had any of the promptings +of rebellious youth. + +"Not she!" thought Alexina grimly. "Oh, Lord! I wonder if my summer +destiny is Alta." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +She was quite breathless as she reached the eucalyptus grove and paused +for a moment before slipping into the house and climbing the stairs. + +The city lying in the valleys and on the hills arrested her attention, +for it was a long while since she had been awake and out of doors at +five in the morning. + +It looked like the ghost of a city in that pallid dawn. The houses +seemed to have huddled together as if in fear before they sank into +sleep, to crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the +ugly dome of the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower +held up their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of +outline, of alertness, as if ready to spring. + +In that far-off district known as "South of Market Street," which she +had never entered save in a closed carriage on her way to the Southern +Pacific Station or to pay a yearly call on some old family that still +dwelt on that oasis, Rincon Hill--sole outpost of the social life of +the sixties--infrequent thin lines of smoke rose from humble chimneys. +It was the region of factories and dwellings of the working-class, but +its inhabitants were not early risers in these days of high wages and +short hours. + +Even those gray spirals ascended as if the atmosphere lay heavy on +them. They accentuated the lifelessness, the petrifaction, the intense +and sinister quiet of the prostrate city. + +Alexina shuddered and her volatile spirits winged their way down into +those dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to +plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had +never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there +any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward +like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, +vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over +this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate +with a sneer. + +Alexina, holding her breath, glanced upward. That ghost of evening's +twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the +crimson rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely +blue. It looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface +presently, and then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave +way. + + + +II + + +Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming. She barely +had time to brace herself when she saw the sleeping city jar as if +struck by a sudden squall, and with the invisible storm came a loud +menacing roar of imprisoned forces making a concerted rush for freedom. + +She threw her arms about one of the trees, but it was bending and +groaning with an accent of fear, a tribute it would have scorned to +offer the mighty winds of the Pacific. Alexina sprang clear of it and +unable to keep her feet sat down on the bouncing earth. + +Then she remembered that it was a rigid convention among real +Californians to treat an earthquake as a joke, and began to laugh. +There was nothing hysterical in this perfunctory tribute to the lesser +tradition and it immediately restored her courage. Moreover, the +curiosity she felt for all phases of life, psychical and physical, and +her naive delight in everything that savored of experience, caused her +to stare down upon the city now tossing and heaving like the sea in a +hurricane, with an almost impersonal interest. + +The houses seemed to clutch at their precarious foundations even while +they danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the +ascending roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of +steeples, the dome of the City Hall, of brick buildings too hastily +erected, of ten thousand falling chimneys; of creaking and grinding +timbers, and of the eucalyptus trees behind her, whose leaves rustled +with a shrill rising whisper that seemed addressed to heaven; the +neighing and pawing of horses in the stables, the sharp terrified yelps +of dogs; and through all a long despairing wail. The mountains across +the bay and behind the city were whirling in a devil's dance and the +scattered houses on their slopes looked like drunken gnomes. The shot +tower bowed low and solemnly but did not fall. + + + +III + + +As the earth with a final leap and twist settled abruptly into peace, +the streets filled suddenly with people, many in their nightclothes, +but more in dressing-gowns, opera cloaks, and overcoats. All were +silent and apparently self-possessed. Whence came that long wail no one +ever knew. + +Alexina, remembering her own attire, sprang to her feet and ran through +the little side door and up the stair, praying that her mother, with +her usual monumental poise, would have disdained to rise. She had never +been known to leave her room before eight. + +But as Alexina ran along the upper hall she became only too aware that +Mrs. Groome had surrendered to Nature, for she was pounding on her door +and in a haughty but quivering voice demanding to be let out. + +Alexina tiptoed lightly to the threshold of her room and called out +sympathetically: + +"What is the matter, mother dear! Has your door sprung?" + +"It has. Tell James to come here at once and bring a crow-bar if +necessary." + +"Yes, darling." + +Alexina let down her hair and tore off her evening gown, kicking it +into a closet, then threw on a bathrobe and ran over to the servants' +quarters in an extension behind the house. They were deserted, but wild +shrieks and gales of unseemly laughter arose from the yard. She opened +a window and saw the cook, a recent importation, on the ground in +hysterics, the housemaid throwing water on her, and the inherited +butler calmly lighting his pipe. + +"James," she called. "My mother's door is jammed. Please come right +away." + +"Yes, miss." He knocked his pipe against the wall and ground out the +life of the coal with his slippered heel. "Just what happened to your +grandmother in the 'quake of sixty-eight. I mind the time I had getting +her out." + + + +IV + + +It was quite half an hour before the door yielded to the combined +efforts of James and the gardener-coachman, and during the interval +Mrs. Groome recovered her poise and made her morning toilette. + +She had taken her iron-gray hair from its pins and patted the narrow +row of frizzes into place; the flat side bands, the concise coil of +hair on top were as severely disdainful of untoward circumstance or +passing fashion as they had been any morning these forty years or more. + +She wore old-fashioned corsets and was abdominally correct for her +years; a long gown of black voile with white polka dots, and a guimpe +of white net whose raff of chiffon somewhat disguised the wreck of her +throat. On her shoulders, disposed to rheumatism, she wore a tippet of +brown marabout feathers, and in her ears long jet earrings. + +She had the dark brown eyes of the Ballingers, but they were bleared at +the rims, and on the downward slope of her fine aquiline nose she wore +spectacles that looked as if mounted in cast iron. Altogether an +imposing relic; and "that built-up look" as Aileen expressed it, was +the only one that would have suited her mental style. Mrs. Abbott, who +dressed with a profound regard for fashion, had long since concluded +that her mother's steadfast alliance with the past not only became her +but was a distinct family asset. Only a woman of her overpowering +position could afford it. + +Mrs. Groome's skin had never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or +powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at +least as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois +adjective--twin to genteel--had been synchronous with the equally +obsolete word swell, but it had never occurred to even the more modern +Mrs. Abbott and her select inner circle of friends, dwelling on family +estates in the San Mateo valley, to change in this respect at least +with the changing times. + + + +V + + +Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a +morning frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's +dressmaker but by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the +fashion of the moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at +the base of her beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, +their large irises very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, +had the favor of black lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and +very narrow black polished eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly +touched with color, although the rather large mouth with its definitely +curved lips was scarlet. Her long throat like the rest of her body was +white. + +All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes, +consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by +surprise when the little Alexina came along several years after her +mother was supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors +hurriedly and quite forgotten her usual nice proportions. + +The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, +for the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short +straight thin nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a +regularity, and the thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and +shook quite alarmingly when she was angry. + +These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality +were concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the +brilliant happy candid eyes (which she could convert into a madonna's +by the simple trick of lifting them a trifle and showing a lower +crescent of devotional white), the love of life and eagerness to enjoy +that radiated from her thin admirably proportioned body, which, at this +time, held in the limp slouching fashion of the hour, made her look +rather small. In reality she was nearly as tall as her mother or the +dignified Mrs. Abbott, who rejoiced in every inch of her five feet +eight, and retained the free erect carriage of her girlhood. + +Alexina, with a sharp glance about her disordered room, hastily +disarranged her bed, and, sending her ball slippers after the gown, ran +across the hall and threw herself into her mother's arms. + +"Some earthquake, what? You are sure you are not hurt, mommy dear? The +plaster is down all over the house." + +"More slang that you have learned from Aileen Lawton, I presume. It +certainly was a dreadful earthquake, worse than that of +eighteen-sixty-eight. Is anything valuable broken? There is always less +damage done on the hills. What is that abominable noise?" + +The cook, who had recovered from her first attack, was emitting another +volley of shrieks, in which the word "fire" could be distinguished in +syllables of two. + +Mrs. Groome rang the bell violently and the imperturbable James +appeared. + +"Is the house on fire?" + +"No, ma'am; only the city. It's worth looking at, if you care to step +out on the lawn." + +Mrs. Groome followed her daughter downstairs and out of the house. Her +eyebrows were raised but there was a curious sensation in her knees +that even the earthquake had failed to induce. She sank into the chair +James had provided and clutched the arms with both hands. + +"There are always fires after earthquakes," she muttered. "Impossible! +Impossible!" + +"Oh, do you think San Francisco is really going?" cried Alexina, but +there was a thrill in her regret. "Oh, but it couldn't be." + +"No! impossible, impossible!" + +Black clouds of smoke shot with red tongues of flame overhung the city +at different points, although they appeared to be more dense and +frequent down in the "South of Market Street" region. There was also a +rolling mass of flame above the water front and sporadic fires in the +business district. + +The streets were black with people, now fully dressed, and long +processions were moving steadily toward the bay as well as in the +direction of the hills behind the western rim of the city. James +brought a pair of field glasses, and Mrs. Groome discovered that the +hurrying throngs were laden with household goods, many pushing them in +baby carriages and wheelbarrows. It was the first flight of the +refugees. + +"James!" said Mrs. Groome sharply. "Bring me a cup of coffee and then +go down and find out exactly what is happening." + +James, too wise in the habits of earthquakes to permit the still +distracted cook to make a fire in the range, brewed the coffee over a +spirit lamp, and then departed, nothing loath, on his mission. Mrs. +Groome swallowed the coffee hastily, handed the cup to Alexina and +burst into tears. + +"Mother!" Alexina was really terrified for the first time that morning. +Mrs. Groome practiced the severe code, the repressions of her class, +and what tears she had shed in her life, even over the deaths of those +almost forgotten children, had been in the sanctity of her bedroom. +Alexina, who had grown up under her wing, after many sorrows and trials +had given her a serenity that was one secret of her power over this +impulsive child of her old age, could hardly have been more appalled if +her mother had been stricken with paralysis. + +"You cannot understand," sobbed Mrs. Groome. "This is my city! The city +of my youth; the city my father helped to make the great and wonderful +city it is. Even your father--he may not have been a good husband--Oh, +no! Not he!--but he was a good citizen; he helped to drag San Francisco +out of the political mire more than once. And now it is going! It has +always been prophesied that San Francisco would burn to the ground some +time, and now the time has come. I feel it in my bones." + +This was the first reference other than perfunctory, that Alexina had +ever heard her mother make to her father, who had died when she was +ten. The girl realized abruptly that this elderly parent who, while +uniformly kind, had appeared to be far above the ordinary weaknesses of +her sex, had an inner life which bound her to the plane of mere +mortals. She had a sudden vision of an unhappy married life, silently +borne, a life of suppressions, bitter disappointments. Her chief +compensation had been the unwavering pride which had made the world +forget to pity her. + +And it was the threatened destruction of her city that had beaten down +the defenses and given her youngest child a brief glimpse of that +haughty but shivering spirit. + + + +VI + + +Alexina's mind, in spite of a great deal of worldly garnering with an +industrious and investigating scythe, was as immature as her years, for +she had felt little and lived not at all. But she had swift and deep +intuitions, and in spite of the natural volatility of youth, free of +care, she was fundamentally emotional and intense. + +Swept from her poor little girlish moorings in the sophisticated sea of +the twentieth-century maiden, she had a sudden wild access of +conscience; she flung herself into her mother's arms and poured out the +tale of her nocturnal transgressions, her frequent excursions into the +forbidden realm of modern San Francisco, of her immense acquaintance +with people whose very names were unknown to Mrs. Groome, born +Ballinger. + +Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together, +expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires +in this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the +exaggerations of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if +her mother, masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as +elementary as the forces that had devastated San Francisco. + +But there was only dismay in Mrs. Groome's eyes as she stared at her +repentant daughter. Her heart sank still lower. She had never been a +vain woman, but she had prided herself upon not feeling old. Suddenly, +she felt very old, and helpless. + +"Well," she said in a moment. "Well--I suppose I have been wrong. There +are almost two generations between us. I haven't kept up. And you are +naturally a truthful child--I should have--" + +"Oh, mother, you are not blaming yourself!" Alexina felt as if the +earth once more were dancing beneath her unsteady feet. "Don't say +that!" + +The sharpness of her tone dispelled the confusion in Mrs. Groome's +mind. She hastily buckled on her armor. + +"Let us say no more about it. I fancy it will be a long time before +there are any more parties in San Francisco, but when there are--well, +I shall consult Maria. I want your youth to be happy--as happy as mine +was. I suppose you young people can only be happy in the new way, but I +wish conditions had not changed so lamentably in San Francisco.... Who +is this?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +As Alexina followed her mother's eyes she flushed scarlet and turned +away her head. A young man was coming up the avenue. He was a very +gallant figure, moderately tall and very straight; he held his head +high, his features were strong in outline. But the noticeable thing +about him at this early hour of the morning and in the wake of a great +disaster was his consummate grooming. + +"That--that--" stammered Alexina, "is Mr. Dwight. I met him last night +at the Hofers'." + +The young man raised his hat and came forward quickly. "I hope you will +forgive me," he said with a charming deference, "but I couldn't resist +coming to see if you were all right. So many people are frightened of +fire--in their own houses." + +"Mr. Dwight--my mother--" + +He lifted his hat again. Mrs. Groome in her chastened mood regarded him +favorably, and for the moment without suspicion. At least he was a +gentleman; but who could he be? + +"Dwight," she murmured. "I do not know the name. Were you born here?" + +"I was born in Utica, New York. My parents came here when I was quite +young. We--always lived rather quietly." + +"But you go about now? To all these parties?" + +"Oh, yes. I like to dance after the day's work. But I am not what you +would call a society man. I haven't the time." + +Mrs. Groome was not usually blunt, but she suddenly scented danger and +she had not fully recovered her poise. + +"You are in business?" She disliked business intensely. All gentlemen +of her day had followed one of the professions. + +"I am in a wholesale commission house. But I hope to be in business for +myself one day." + +"Ah." + +Still, all young men in this terrible twentieth century could not be +lawyers. Mrs. Groome knew enough of the march of time to be aware of +the increasing difficulties in gaining a bare livelihood. Tom Abbott +was a lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the +fifties. It was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she +recalled his frequent and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting +up nights these days if a man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. + +And at least this young man did not look like an idler or a wastrel. No +man could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the +morning if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she +knew the external seals. + +"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply. + +"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me +the honor to ask me to call." + +"I think the more highly of you. Judge Lawton is an old friend of mine. +His wife, who was much younger than the Judge, was an intimate friend +of my daughter, Mrs. Abbott. Alexina and Aileen have grown up together. +I find it impossible to forbid her the house. But I disapprove of her +in every way. She paints her lips, smokes cigarettes, boasts that she +drinks cocktails, and uses the most abominable slang. I kept my +daughter in New York for two years as much to break up the intimacy as +to finish her education, but the moment we returned the intimacy was +renewed, and for my old friend's sake I have been forced to submit. He +worships that--that--really ill-conditioned child." + +"Oh--Miss Lawton is a good sort, and--well--I suppose her position is +so strong that she feels she can do as she pleases. But she is all +right, and not so different--" + +"Do you mean to tell me that you approve of girls--nice +girls--ladies--painting themselves, smoking, drinking cocktails?" + +"I do not." His tones were emphatic and his good American gray eyes +wandered to the fresh innocent face of the girl who had captivated him +last night. + +"I should hope not. You look like an exceptionally decent young man. +Have you had breakfast? Alexina, go and ask Maggie, if she has +recovered herself, to make another cup of coffee." + + + +II + + +Alexina disappeared, repressing a desire to sing; and young Dwight, +receiving permission, seated himself on the grass at Mrs. Groome's +feet. He was lithe and graceful and as he threw back his head and +looked up at his hostess with his straight, honest glance the good +impression he had made was visibly enhanced. Mrs. Groome gave him the +warm and gracious smile that only her intimate friends and paid +inferiors had ever seen. + +"The young men of to-day are a great disappointment to me," she +observed. + +"Oh, they are all right, I guess. Most of the men that go about have +rich fathers--or near-rich ones. I wish I had one myself." + +"And you would be as dissipated as the rest, I presume." + +"No, I have no inclinations that way. But a man gets a better start in +life. And a man's a nonentity without money." + +"Not if he has family." + +"My family is good--in Utica. But that is of no use to me here." + +"But your family _is_ good?" + +"Oh, yes, it goes 'way back. There is a family mansion in Utica that is +over two hundred years old. But when the business district swamped that +part of the old town it was sold, and what it brought was divided among +six. My father came out here but did not make much of a success of +himself, so that he and my mother might as well have been on the Fiji +Islands for all the notice society took of them." + +He spoke with some bitterness, and Mrs. Groome, to whom dwelling beyond +the outer gates of San Francisco's elect was the ultimate tragedy, +responded sympathetically. + +"Society here is not what it used to be, and no doubt is only too glad +to welcome presentable young men. I infer that you have not found it +difficult." + +"Oh, I dance well, and my employer's son, Bob Cheever, took me in. But +I'm only tolerated. I don't count." + +The old lady looked at him keenly. "You are ambitious?" + +He threw back his head. "Well, yes, I am, Mrs. Groome. As far as +society goes it is a matter of self-respect. I feel that I have the +right to go in the best society anywhere--that I am as good as anybody +when it comes to blood. And I'd like to get to the top in every way. I +don't mean that I would or could do the least thing dishonest to get +there, as so many men have done, but--well, I see no crime in being +ambitious and using every chance to get to the top. I'd like not only +to be one of the rich and important men of San Francisco, but to take a +part in the big civic movements." + +Mrs. Groome was charmed. She was by no means an impulsive woman, but +she had suddenly realized her age, and if she must soon leave her +youngest child, who, heaven knew, needed a guardian, this young man +might be a son-in-law sent direct from heaven--via the earthquake. If +he had real ability the influential men she knew would see that he had +a proper start. But she had no intention of committing herself. + +"And what do you think of what is now called San Francisco society?" +she demanded. + +He was quite aware of Mrs. Groome's attitude. Who in San Francisco was +not? It was one of the standing jokes, although few of the younger or +newer set had ever heard of her until her naughty little daughter +danced upon the scene. + +"Oh, it is mixed, of course. There are many houses where I do not care +to go. But, well, after all, the rich people are rather simple for all +their luxury, and as for the old families there are no more real +aristocrats in England itself." + +Mrs. Groome was still more charmed. "But you were at Mrs. Hofer's last +night. I never heard of her before." + +"Her husband is one of the most important of the younger men. His +father made a fortune in lumber and sent his son to Yale and all the +rest of it. He is really a gentleman--it only takes one generation out +here--and at present he's bent upon delivering the city from this +abominable ring of grafters ... There is no water to put out the fires +because the City Administration pocketed the money appropriated for a +new system; the pipes leading from Spring Valley were broken by the +earthquake." + +"And who was she?" + +Mrs. Groome asked this question with an inimitable inflection inherited +from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had been guardians of San +Francisco society in their day. The accent was on the "who." Bob +Cheever, whose grandmother had asked or answered the same question in +dark old double parlors filled with black walnut and carved oak, would +have muttered, "Oh, hell!" but Mr. Dwight replied sympathetically: +"Something very common, I believe-south of Market Street. But her +father was very clever, rose to be a foreman of the iron works, and +finally went into business and prospered in a small way. He sent his +daughter to Europe to be educated ... and even you could hardly tell +her from the real thing." + +"And you go down to Burlingame, I suppose! That is a very nest of these +new people, and I am told they spend their time drinking and gambling." + +He set his large rather hard lips. "No, I have never been asked down to +Burlingame-nor down the Peninsula anywhere. You see, I am only asked +out in town because an unmarried dancing man is always welcome if there +is nothing wrong with his manners. To be asked for intimate week-ends +is another matter. But I don't fancy Burlingame is half as bad as it is +represented to be. They go in tremendously for sport, you know, and +that is healthy and takes up a good deal of time. After all when people +are very rich and have more leisure than they know what to do with--" + +"Many of the old set in Alta, San Mateo, Atherton and Menlo Park have +wealth and leisure-not vulgar fortunes, but enough-and for the most +part they live quite as they did in the old days." + +His eyes lit up. "Ah, San Mateo, Alta, Atherton, Menlo Park. There you +have a real landed aristocracy. The Burlingame set must realize that +they would be nobodies for all their wealth if they could not call at +all those old communities down the Peninsula." + +"Not so very many of them do. But I see you have no false values. You. +must go down with us some Sunday to Alta. I am sure you would like my +oldest daughter. She is very smart, as they call it now, but distinctly +of the old regime." + +"There is nothing I should like better. Thank you so much." And there +was no doubting the sincerity of his voice, a rather deep and manly +voice which harmonized with the admirable mold of his ancestors. + + + +III + + +Alexina appeared. "Breakfast is ready for all of us," she announced. +"We cooked it on the old stove in the woodhouse. I helped, for Maggie +is a wreck. Martha has swept the plaster out of the dining-room. Come +along. I'm starved." + +Young Dwight sprang to his feet and stood over Mrs. Groome with his +charming deferential manner, but he had far too much tact to offer +assistance as she rose heavily from her chair. + +"Are you really going to give me breakfast? I am sure I could not get +any elsewhere." + +"We are only too happy. Your coming has been a real God-send. Will you +give me your arm? This morning--not the earthquake but those dreadful +fires--has quite upset me." + +He escorted her into the dark old house with glowing eyes. He had seen +so little of the world that he was still very young at thirty and his +nature was sanguine, but he had never dared to dream of even difficult +access to this most exclusive home in San Francisco. Its gloom, its +tastelessness, relieved only by the splendid Italian pieces, but served +to accentuate its aristocratic aloofness from those superb but too +recently furnished mansions of which he knew so little outside of their +ballrooms. + +And he was breakfasting with the sequestered Mrs. Groome and the +loveliest girl he had ever seen, at seven o 'clock in the morning. + +He looked about eagerly as they entered the dining-room.. It was long +and narrow with a bow window at the end. The furniture was black +walnut; two immense sideboards were built into the walls. It looked +Ballinger, and it was. + +It was heavily paneled; the walls above were tinted a pale buff and set +with cracked oil paintings of men in the uniforms of several +generations. The ceiling was frescoed with fish and fowl. There had +been a massive bronze chandelier over the table. It now lay on the +floor, but as James had turned off the gas in the meter while the +earthquake was still in progress the air of the large sunny room was +untainted, and the windows were open. + +The breakfast was smoked but not uneatable and the strong coffee raised +even Mrs. Groome's wavering spirits. They were all talking gayly when +James entered abruptly. He was very pale. + +"City's doomed, ma'am. Thirty fires broke out simultaneous, and the +wind blowing from the southeast. A chimney fell on the fire-chief's bed +and he can't live. People runnin' round like their heads was cut off +and thousands pouring out of the city--over to Oakland and Berkeley. +Lootin' was awful and General Funston has ordered out the troops. Pipes +broken and not a drop of water. They're goin' to dynamite, but only the +fire-chief knew how. Everybody says the whole city'll go, Doomed, +that's what it is. Better let me tell Mike to harness up and drive you +down to San Mateo." + +Mrs. Groome had also turned pale, but she cut a piece of bacon with +resolution in every finger of her large-veined hands. + +"I do not believe it, and I shall not run--like those people south of +Market Street. I shall stay until the last minute at all events. The +roads at least cannot burn." + +"This house ought to be safe enough, ma 'am, standin' quite alone on +this hill as it does; but it's a question of food. We never keep much +of anything in the house, beyond what's needed for the week, and the +California Market's right in the fire zone. And the smoke will be +something terrible when the fire gets closer." + +"I shall stay in my own house. There are grocery stores and butcher +shops in Fillmore Street. Go and buy all you can." She handed him a +bunch of keys. "You will find money in my escritoire. Tell the maids to +fill the bathtubs while there is any water left in the mains. You may +go if you are frightened, but I stay here." + +"Very well, and you needn't have said that, ma'am. I've been in this +family, man and boy, Ballinger and Groome, for fifty-two years, and you +know I'd never desert you. But no doubt those hussies in the kitchen +will, with a lot of others. A lot of stoves have already been set up in +the streets out here and ladies are cookin' their own breakfasts." + +"Forgive me, James. I know you will never leave me. And if the others +do we shall get along. Miss Alexina is not a bad cook." And she +heroically swallowed the bacon. + + + +IV + + +James departed and she turned to Dwight, who was on his feet. + +"You are not going?" + +"I think I must, Mrs. Groome. There may be something I can do down +there. All able-bodied men will be needed, I fancy." + +"But you'll come back and see us?" cried Alexina. + +"Indeed I will. I'll report regularly." + +He thanked Mrs. Groome for her hospitality and she invited him to take +pot luck with her at dinner time. After he had gone Alexina exclaimed +rapturously: + +"Oh, you do like him, don't you, mommy dear?" + +And Mrs. Groome was pleased to reply, "He has perfect manners and +certainly has the right ideas about things. I could do no less than ask +him to dinner if he is going to take the trouble to bring us the news." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +That was a unique and vivid day for young Alexina Groome, whose +disposition was to look upon life as drama and asked only that it shift +its scenes often and be consistently entertaining and picturesque. + +Never, so James told her, since her Grandmother Ballinger's reign, had +there been such life and movement in the old house. All Mrs. Groome's +intimate friends and many of Alexina's came to it, some to make kindly +inquiries, others to beg them to leave the city, many to gossip and +exchange experiences of that fateful morning; a few from Rincon Hill +and the old ladies' fashionable boarding-house district to claim +shelter until they could make their way to relatives out of town. + +Mrs. Groome welcomed her friends not only with the more spontaneous +hospitality of an older time but in that spirit of brotherhood that +every disaster seems to release, however temporarily. Brotherhood is +unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that +sunrise era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was +automatic. The complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and +almost but not wholly replaced it by national and individual +selfishness. But the world as yet is only about one-third civilized. +Centuries hence a unified civilization may complete the circle, but +human nature and progress must act and react a thousand times before +the earthly millenium; and it cannot be hastened by dreamers and +fanatics. + +All Mrs. Groome's spare rooms were placed at the service of her +friends, and cots were bought in the humble Fillmore Street shops and +put up in the billiard room, the double parlors, the library and the +upper hall. Some forty people would sleep under the old Ballinger roof +that night--dynamite permitting. Mrs. Groome was firm in her +determination not to flee, and as James and Mike were there to watch, +she had graciously given a number of the gloomy refugees from the lower +regions permission to camp in the outhouses and grounds. + + + +II + + +Alexina spent the greater part of the day with Aileen Lawton, Olive +Bascom, and Sibyl Thorndyke, out of doors, fascinated by the spectacle +of the burning city. + +The valley beyond Market Street, and the lower business district, were +a rolling mass of smoke parting about pillars of fire, shot with a +million glittering sparks when a great building was dynamited. All the +windows in those sections of the city as yet beyond the path of the +fire were open, for although closed windows might have shut out the +torrid atmosphere, the explosions would have shattered them. + +"Oh, dear," sighed Olive Bascom, "there goes my building. The smoke +lifted for a moment and I saw the flames spouting out of the windows. A +cool million and uninsured. We thought Class A buildings were safe from +any sort of fire." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Alexina naively, "I wish I had a million-dollar +building down in that furnace. It must be a great sensation to watch a +million dollars go up in sparks." + +"I hope your mother hasn't any buildings down in the business +district," said Aileen anxiously. "I've heard dad talk about her ground +rents. She'll get those again soon enough. I fancy the old tradition +survives in this town and they'll begin to draw the plans for the new +city before the fire is out. It used to burn down regularly in the +fifties, dad says." + +"I don't fancy we have much of anything," said Alexina cheerfully. "I +think mother has only a life interest in a part of father's estate, and +I heard her tell Maria once that she intended to leave me all she had +of her own, this place and a few thousand a year in bonds and some +flats that are probably burning up right now. I gathered from the +conversation that father didn't have much left when he died and that it +was understood mother was to look out for me. I believe he gave a lot +to the others when he was wealthy." + +"Good Lord!" Aileen sighed heavily. "It won't pay your dressmakers' +bills, what with taxes and all. I won't be much better off. We'll have +to marry Rex Roberts or Bob Cheever or Frank Bascom--unless he's going +up in smoke too, Olive dear. But there are a few others." + +Alexina shook her head. Her color could not rise higher for her face +was crimson from the heat; like the others she had a wet handkerchief +on her head. "There is not a grain of romance in one of them," she +announced. "Curious that the sons of the rich nearly always have round +faces, no particular features, and a tendency to bulge. I intend to +have a romance--old style--good old style--before the vogue of the +middle-class realists. There's nothing in life but youth and you only +have it once. I'm going to have a romance that means falling wildly, +unreasonably, uncalculatingly in love." + +"You anticipate my adjectives," said Aileen drily. "Although not all. +But let that pass. I'd like to know where you expect to find the +opposite lead, as they say on the stage. Our men are not such a bad +sort, even the richest--with a few exceptions, of course. They may hit +it up at week-ends, generally at the country clubs, but they're better +than the last generation because their fathers have more sense. I'll +bet they're all down there now fighting the fire with the vim of their +grandfathers.... But romantic! Good Lord! I'll marry one of them all +right and glad of the chance--after I've had my fling. I'm in no hurry. +I'd have outgrown my illusions in any case by that time, only Nature +did the trick by not giving me any." + +"Don't you believe there isn't a man in all San Francisco able to +inspire romance." If Alexina could not blush her dark gray eyes could +sparkle and melt. "All the men we meet don't belong to that rich group." + +"Bunch, darling. Where--will you give us the pointer?--are to be found +the romantic knights of San Francisco? 'Frisco as those tiresome +Eastern people call it. Makes me sick to think that they are even now +pitying 'poor 'Frisco.' Well?--I could beat my brains and not call one +to mind." + +"Oh!" + +"What does that mean, Alex Groome? When you roll up your eyes like that +you look like a love-sick tomato." + +"Mortimer Dwight was most devoted last night," said Sibyl Thorndyke. +"She danced with him at least eight times." + +"You must have sat out alone to know what I was doing," Alexina began +hotly, but Aileen sprang at her and gripped her shoulders. + +"Don't tell me that you are interested in that cheap skate. Alexina +Groome! You!" + +"He's not a cheap skate. I despise your cheap slang." + +"He's a rank nobody." + +"You mean he isn't rich. Or his family didn't belong. What do you +suppose I care? I'm not a snob." + +"He is. A climbing, ingenuous, empty-headed snob." + +"You are a snob. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"I've a right to be a snob if I choose, and he hasn't. My snobbery is +the right sort: the 'I will maintain' kind. He'd give all the hair on +his head to have the right to that sort of snobbery. His is" (she +chanted in a high light maddening voice): "Oh, God, let me climb. Yank +me up into the paradise of San Francisco society. Burlingame, Alta, +Menlo Park, Atherton, Belvidere, San Rafael. Oh, God, it's awful to be +a nobody, not to be in the same class with these rich fellers, not to +belong to the Pacific-Union Club, not to have polo ponies, not to +belong to smart golf clubs, to the Burlingame Club. Not to get clothes +from New York and London--" + +"You keep quiet," shrieked Alexina, who with difficulty refrained from +substituting: "You shut up." She flung off Aileen's hands. "What do you +know about him? He doesn't like you." + +"Never had a chance to find out." + +"What can you know about him, then?" + +"Think I'm blind? Think I'm deaf? Don't I know everything that goes on +in this town? Isn't sizing-up my long suit? And he's as dull as--as a +fish without salt. I sat next to him at a dinner, and all he could talk +about was the people he'd met--our sort, of course. And he was dull +even at that. He's all manners and bluff--" + +"You couldn't draw him out. He talked to me." + +"What about? I'm really interested to know. Everybody says the same +thing. They fall for his dancing and manners, and--well, yes--I 'll +admit it--for his looks. He even looks like a gentleman. But all the +girls say he bores 'em stiff. They have to talk their heads off. What +did he say to you that was so frantically interesting?" + +"Well, of course--we danced most of the time." + +"That's just it. He's inherited the shell of some able old ancestor and +not a bit of the skull furniture. Nature often plays tricks like that. +But I could forgive him for being dull if he weren't such a damn snob." + +"You shan't call him names. If he wants to be one of us, and life was +so unkind as to--to--well, birth him on the outside, I'm sure that's no +crime." + +"Snobbery," said Miss Thorndyke, who was intellectual at the moment and +cultivating the phrase, "is merely a rather ingenuous form of +aspiration. I can't see that it varies except in kind from other forms +of ambition. And without ambition there would be no progress." + +"Oh, can it," sneered Judge Lawton's daughter. "You're all wrong, +anyhow. Snobbery leads to the rocks much oftener than to high +achievement. I've heard dad say so, and you won't venture to assert +that _he_ doesn't know. It bears about the same relation to progress +that grafting does to legitimate profits. Anyhow, it makes me sick, and +I'm not going to have Alex falling in love with a poor fish--" + +"Fish?" Alexina's voice rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare--and +you think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? +What do you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but +drinking and sport, whether they attend to business or not?--their +fathers make them, anyhow. And you want to marry one of them! They're +fish, if you like." + +The two girls were glaring at each other. Gray eyes were blazing, green +eyes snapping. Two sets of white even teeth were bared. They looked +like a couple of belligerent puppies. Another moment and they would +have forgotten the sacred traditions of their class and flown at each +other's hair. But Miss Bascom interposed. Even the loss of her +uninsured million did not ruffle her, for she had another in Government +and railroad bonds, and full confidence in her brother, who was an +admirable business man, and not in the least dissipated. + +"Come, come," she said. "It's much too hot to fight. Dwight is not good +enough for Alex--from a worldly point of view, I mean," as Alexina made +a movement in her direction. "We should none of us marry out of our +class. It never works, somehow. But Mr. Dwight is really quite all +right otherwise. I like him very much, Alex darling, and I don't mind +his being an outsider in the least--so long as he doesn't try to marry +one of us. He's _too_ good-looking, and his heels are fairly inspired. +No one questions the fact that he is an honorable and worthy young man, +working like a real man to earn his living. It isn't at all as if he +were an adventurer. He has never struck me as being more of a snob than +most people, and I don't see why I haven't thought to ask him down to +San Mateo for a week-end." + +"You'll certainly have a friend for life if you do," said Aileen +satirically. "Fall in love with him yourself if you choose. You can +afford it." + +"No fear. I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry a French marquis." + +"What?" Even Alexina forgot Mortimer Dwight. "Who is he? Where did you +meet him?" + +"I haven't met him yet. But I shall. I'm going to Paris next winter to +visit my aunt, and I'll find one. You get anything in this world you go +for hard enough. To be a French marquise is the most romantic thing in +the world." + +"Why not Elton Gwynne? It's an open secret that he's an English +marquis. Or that young Gathbroke Lady Victoria brought last night?" + +"He's a younger son, and he never looked at any one but Alex. And +Isabel Otis has preempted Mr. Gwynne. And I adore France and don't care +about England." + +"Well, that is romantic if you like!" cried Aileen, her green eyes +dancing. "You have my best wishes. Doesn't it make your Geary Street +knight look cheap--he boards somewhere down on Geary Street." + +"No, it doesn't! And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. +Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told +mother so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title." + +"I wish your mother could hear you. So--he's been getting round her has +he? Where on earth did he meet her?" + +Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the +favorable impression he had made. + +Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank +outsider--superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. +I'll put a flea in her ear--" + +"You dare!" + +Aileen lifted her shoulders. "Well, as a matter of fact I can't. +Tattling just isn't in my line. But if I can queer him with you I will." + +"I won't talk about him any more." Alexina drew herself up with immense +dignity. She had the advantage of Aileen not only in inches but in a +natural repose of manner. The eminent Judge Lawton's only child, upon +whom, possibly, he may have lavished too much education, had a thin +nervous little body that was seldom in repose, and her face, with its +keen irregular features and brilliant green eyes, shifted its surface +impressions as rapidly as a cinematograph. Olive Bascom had soft blue +eyes and abundant brown hair, and Sibyl Thorndyke had learned to hold +her long black eyes half closed, and had the black hair and rich +complexion of a Creole great-grandmother. Alexina was admittedly the +"beauty of the bunch." Nevertheless, Miss Lawton had informed her +doting parent before this, her first season, was half over, that she +was _vivid_ enough to hold her own with the best of them. The boys said +she was a live wire and she preferred that high specialization to the +tameness of mere beauty. + + + +IV + + +Said Alexina: "Sibyl, what are you going to do with your young life? +Shall you marry an English duke or a New York millionaire?" + +But Miss Thorndyke smiled mysteriously. She was not as frank as the +other girls, although by no means as opaque as she imagined. + +Aileen laughed. "Oh, don't ask her. Doubt if she knows. To-day she's +all for being intellectual and reading those damn dull Russian +novelists. To-morrow she may be setting up as an odalisque. It would +suit her style better." + +Miss Thorndyke's face was also crimson from the heat, but she would not +have flushed had it been the day before. She was not subject to sudden +reflexes. + +"Your satire is always a bit clumsy, dear," she said sweetly. "The +odalisque is not your role at all events." + +"I don't go in for roles." + +And the four girls wrangled and dreamed and planned, while a city burnt +beneath them; some three hundred million dollars flamed out, lives were +ruined, exterminated, altered; and Labor sat on the hills and smiled +cynically at the tremendous impetus the earth had handed them on that +morning of April eighteenth, nineteen hundred and six. + +They were too young to know or to care. When the imagination is trying +its wings it is undismayed even by a world at war. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +That night Alexina knew that romance had surely come to her. She shared +her room with three old ladies who slept fitfully between blasts of +dynamite. But she sat at the window with no desire for oblivion. + +On the lawn paced a young man with a rifle in the crook of his arm. He +was tall and young and very gallant of bearing; no less a person than +Mortimer Dwight, who had been sworn in that morning as a member of the +Citizens' Patrol, and at his own request detailed to keep watch over +the house of Mrs. Groome. + +He had not been able to pay his promised visits during the day but had +arrived at seven o'clock, dining beside Mrs. Abbott, and surrounded by +old ladies whose names were as historic as Mrs. Groome's. The cook had +deserted after the second heavy shock, and, with her wardrobe in a +pillow case, had tramped to the farthest confines of the Presidio. It +was not fear alone that induced her flight. There was a rumor that the +Government would feed the city, and why should not a hard-working woman +enjoy a month or two of sheer idleness? Let the quality cook for +themselves. It would do them good. + +James and the housemaid had cooked the dinner, and Alexina and her +friends waited on the table. Then the girls, to Alexina's relief, went +home to inquire after their families, and she accompanied Mr. Dwight +while he explored every corner of the grounds to make sure that no +potential thieves lurked in the heavy shadows cast by the trees. + +He had been very alert and thorough and Alexina admired him consumedly. +There was no question but that he was one of those men--Aileen called +it the one hundred per cent male--upon whose clear brain and strong arm +a woman might depend even in the midst of an infuriated mob. He had an +opportunity that comes to few aspiring young men born into the world's +unblest millions, and if he made the most of it he was equally assured +that he was acting in strict accord with the instincts and +characteristics that had descended upon him by the grace of God. + + + +II + + +There was no physical cowardice in him; and if he would have preferred +a life of ease and splendor, he had no illusions regarding the amount +of "hustling" necessary to carry him to the goal of his desires and +ambitions--unless he made a lucky strike. He played the stock market in +a small way and made a few hundred dollars now and then. + +He would have been glad to marry a wealthy girl, Olive Bascom, by +preference, for he had an inner urge to the short cut, but he had found +these spoiled daughters of San Francisco unresponsive ... and then, +suddenly, he had fallen in love with Alexina Groome. + +His past was green and prophylactic. He was moral both by inheritance +and necessity, and his parents, people of fair intelligence, if rather +ineffective, stern principles, and good old average ideals, had taken +their responsibilities toward their two children very seriously. People +who talked with young Dwight might not find him resourceful in +conversation but they were deeply impressed with his manners and +principles. The younger men, with the exception of Bob Cheever, who +respected his capacity for work, did not take to him; principally, no +doubt, he reflected with some bitterness, because he was not "their +sort." + +He never admitted to himself that he was a snob, for something deep and +still unfaced in his consciousness, bade him see as little fault in +himself as possible, forbade him to admit the contingency of a failure, +impelled him to call such weaknesses as the fortunate condemned by some +one of those interchangeable terms with which the lexicons are so +generous. + +But if he would not face the word snob he told himself proudly that he +was ambitious; and why should he not aspire to the best society? Was he +not entitled to it by birth? His family may not have been prominent to +excess in Utica, but it was indisputably "old." However, he assured +himself that the chief reason for his determination to mingle with the +social elect of San Francisco was not so much a tribute to his +ancestors, or even the insistence of youth for the decent pleasures of +that brief period, but because of the opportunities to make those +friends indispensable to every young man forced to cut his own way +through life. Even if his good conscience had compelled him to admit +that he was a snob he would have reminded it there was no harm in +snobbery anyway. It was the most amiable of the vices. But he thought +too well of himself for any such admission, and his mind had not been +trained to fish, even, in shallow waters. + +Nor did he admit that if the lovely Miss Groome had been a stenographer +he would not have looked at her. He would indeed have turned his face +resolutely in the other direction if she had happened to sit in his +employer's office. Fate forbade him a marriage of that sort, and +dalliance with an inferior was forbidden both by his morals and his +social integrity. + +But that Alexina Groome should be beautiful, as exaltedly born as only +a San Franciscan of the old stock might be, with a determinate income, +however modest, with a background of friendly males, as substantial +financially as socially, who would be sure to give a new member of the +family a leg-up (he liked the atmosphere and flavor of the lighter +English novels), and, above all, responsive, seemed to him a direct +reward for the circumspect life he had lived and his fidelity to his +chosen upward path. + + + +III + + +He was free to fall in love as profoundly as was in him, and during +that early hour of the agitated night, with that pit of hell roaring +below to the steady undertone of a thousand tramping feet, he felt, +despite the fact that all business was moribund for the present and his +savings were in the hot vaults of a dynamited bank, that he was a +supremely fortunate young man. + +Moreover, this disaster furnished a steady topic for conversation. He +was aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a +dinner table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he +assured himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, +and that no one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to +sport, still there had been times when he was painfully aware that a +dinner partner or some bright charming creature whose invitation to +call he had accepted, looked politely bored or chattered desperately to +cover the silences into which he abruptly relapsed; when, "for the life +of him he had not been able to think of a thing to say." + +Then, briefly, he had felt a bitter rebellion at fate for having denied +him the gift of a lively and supple mind, as well as those numberless +worldly benefits lavished on men far less deserving than he. + +He felt dull and depressed after such revelations and sometimes +considered attending evening lectures at the University of California +with his sister. But for this form of mental exertion he had no taste, +keenly as he applied himself to his work during the hours of business; +and he assured himself that such knowledge would do him no good anyway. +It did not seem to be prevalent in society. If he had been a brilliant +hand at bridge or poker, the inner fortifications of society would have +gone down before him, but his courage did not run to card gambling with +wealthy idlers who set their own pace. On the stock market he could +step warily and no one the wiser. It would have horrified him to be +called a piker, for his instincts were really lavish, and the +economical habit an achievement in which he took a resentful pride. + + + +IV + + +On this evening he had talked almost incessantly to Alexina, and she, +in the vocabulary of her years and set, had thought him frantically +interesting as he described the immediate command of the city assumed +by General Funston, the efforts of the Committee of Fifty, formed early +that morning by leading citizens, to help preserve order and to give +assistance to the refugees; of rich young men, and middle-aged citizens +who had not spent an afternoon away from their club window for ten +years, carrying dynamite in their cars through the very flames; of wild +and terrible episodes he had witnessed or heard of during the day. + +His brain was hot from the mental and physical atmosphere of the +perishing city, the unique excitement of the day: when he had felt as +if snatched from his quiet pasture by the roots; and by the +extraordinary good fortune that had delivered this perfect girl and her +formidable parent almost into his hands. Under his sternly controlled +exterior his spirits sang wildly that his luck had turned, and dazzling +visions of swift success and fulfillment of all ambitions snapped on +and off in his stimulated brain. + +Alexina thought him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to +her own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a +romantic maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her +brilliant long eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth wore a +constant alluring smile. + +A declaration trembled on his tongue, but he felt that he would be +taking an unfair advantage and restrained himself. Besides, he wished +to win Mrs. Groome completely to his side, to say nothing of the still +more alarming because more worldly Mrs. Abbott. _She_ was a snob, if +you like! + + + +V + + +At nine o'clock, after he had given the inmates of the house and +outbuildings stern orders not to light a candle or lamp under any +circumstances--such was the emergency law--he bade Alexina a gallant +good-night, and betook himself to the lawn within the grove of sighing +eucalyptus trees, to pace up and down, his rifle in his arm, his eyes +alert, and quite aware of the admiring young princess at the casement +above. + +He did his work very thoroughly, visiting outhouses at intervals and +sharply inspecting the weary occupants, as well as the prostrate forms +under the trees. They were all far too tired and apprehensive to dream +of breaking into the house that had given them hospitality, even had +they been villains, which they were not. + +But they did not resent his inspection; rather they felt a sense of +security in this watching manly figure with the gun, for they were +rather afraid of villains themselves: it was reported that many looters +had been stood against hissing walls and shot by the stern orders of +General Punston. They asked their more immediate protector questions as +to the progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as befitted his +office. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +MRS. ABBOTT entered Alexina's room and caught her hanging out of the +window. She had motored up to the city during the afternoon, and, after +a vain attempt to persuade her mother to go down at once to Alta, had +concluded to remain over night. The spectacle was the most horrifyingly +interesting she had ever witnessed in her temperate life, and her +self-denying Aunt Clara was in charge of the children. Her husband had +driven himself to town as soon as he heard of the fire and been sworn +in a member of the Committee of Fifty. + +"Darling," she said firmly to the sister who was little older than her +first-born, "I want to have a talk with you. Come into papa's old +dressing-room. I had a cot put there, and as there is no room for +another I am quite alone." + +Alexina followed with lagging feet. She had always given her elder +sister the same surface obedience that she gave her mother. It "saved +trouble." But life had changed so since morning that she was in no mood +to keep up the role of "little sister," sweet and malleable and +innocent as a Ballinger-Groome at the age of eighteen should be. + + + +II + + +She dropped on the floor and embraced her knees with her arms. Mrs. +Abbott seated herself in as dignified an attitude as was possible on +the edge of the cot. Even the rocking-chairs had been taken down to the +dining-room. + +"Well?" queried Alexina, pretending to stifle a yawn. "What is it? I am +too sleepy to think." + +"Sleepy? You looked sleepy with your eyes like saucers watching that +young man." + +"Everybody that can is watching the fire--" + +"Don't quibble, Alexina. You are naturally a truthful child. Do you +mean to tell me you were not watching Mr. Dwight?" + +"Well, if I say yes, it is not because I care a hang about living up to +my reputation, but because I don't care whether you know it or not." + +"That is very naughty--" + +"Stop talking to me as if I were a child." + +"You are excited, darling, and no wonder." + +Maria Abbott was in the process of raising a family and she did it with +tact and firmness. Nature had done much to assist her in her several +difficult roles. She was very tall straight and slender, with a haughty +little head, as perfect in shape as Alexina's, set well back on her +shoulders, and what had been known in her Grandmother Ballinger's day +as a cameo-profile. Her abundant fair hair added to the high calm of +her mien and it was always arranged in the prevailing fashion. On the +street she invariably wore the tailored suit, and her tailor was the +best in New York. She thought blouses in public indecent, and wore +shirtwaists of linen or silk with high collars, made by the same +master-hand. There was nothing masculine in her appearance, but she +prided herself upon being the best groomed woman even in that small +circle of her city that dressed as well as the fashionable women of New +York. At balls and receptions she wore gowns of an austere but +expensive simplicity, and as the simple jewels of her inheritance +looked pathetic beside the blazing necklaces and sunbursts (there were +only two or three tiaras in San Francisco) of those new people whom she +both deplored and envied, she wore none; and she was assured that the +lack added to the distinction of her appearance. + +But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, +determined as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was +alive, push the aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was +a strict conformer to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts +to enhance and preserve youth as the converse of respectable. Her once +delicate pink and white skin was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose +had never known powder; but even in the glare of the fire her skin +looked cool and pale, for the heat had not crimsoned her. Her blood was +rather thin and she prided herself upon the fact. She may have lost her +early beauty, but she looked the indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, +as her more naive grandmothers would have phrased it. + +It sufficed. + + + +III + + +By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance +she was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress +like her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were +known, no doubt." + +In reality she was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and +sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all +events her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He +had his reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her +own old set, she was intensely loyal; and although she had a cold +contempt for the institution of divorce, if one of that select band +strayed into it, no matter at which end, her loyalty rose triumphant +above her social code, and she was not afraid to express it publicly. + +Toward Alexina she felt less a sister than a second mother, and gave +her freely of her abundant maternal reservoir. That "little sister" had +at times sulked under this proud determination to assist in the +bringing-up of the last of the Ballinger-Groomes, did not discourage +her. She might be soft in her affections but she never swerved from her +duty as she saw it. Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only +needed a firm hand to guide her along that proud secluded old avenue of +the city's elect, until she had ambled safely to established +respectability and power. + +She had been alarmed at one time at certain symptoms of cleverness she +noticed in the child, and at certain enthusiastic remarks in the +letters of Ballinger Groome, with whose family Alexina had spent her +vacations during her two years in New York at school. But there had +been no evidence of anything but a young girl's natural love of +pleasure since her debut in society, and she was quite unaware of +Alexina's wicked divagations. She had spent the winter in Santa +Barbara, for the benefit of her oldest, boy, whose lungs were delicate, +and, like her mother, never deigned to read the society columns of the +newspapers. Her reason, however, was her own. In spite of her blood, +her indisputable position, her style, she cut but a small figure in +those columns. She was not rich enough to vie with those who +entertained constantly, and was merely set down as one of many guests. +The fact induced a slight bitterness. + + + +IV + + +She began tactfully. "I like this young Mr. Dwight very much, and shall +ask him down, as mother desires it. But I hope, darling, that you will +follow my example and not marry until you have had four years of +society, in other words have seen something of the world--" + +"California is not the world." + +"Society, in other words human nature, is everywhere much alike. As you +know, I spent a year in England when I was a young lady, and was +presented at court--by Lady Barnstable, who was Lee Tarlton, one of us. +It was merely San Francisco on a large scale, with titles, and greater +and older houses and parks, and more jewels, and more arrogance, and +everything much grander, of course. And they talked politics a great +deal, which bored me as I am sure they would bore you. The beauty of +our society is its simplicity and lack of arrogance--consciousness of +birth or of wealth. Even the more recent members of society, who owe +their position to their fortunes, have a simplicity and kindness quite +unknown in New York. Eastern people always remark it. And yet, owing to +their constant visits to the East and to Europe, they know all of the +world there is to know." + +"So do the young men, I suppose! I never heard of their doing much +traveling--" + +"I should call them remarkably sophisticated young men. But the point +is, darling, that if you wait as long as I did you will discover that +the men who attract a girl in her first season would bore her to +extinction in her fourth." + +"You mean after I've had all the bloom rubbed off, and men are +forgetting to ask me to dance. Then I'll be much more likely to take +what I can get. I want to marry with all the bloom on and all my +illusions fresh." + +"But should you like to have them rubbed off by your husband? You've +heard the old adage: 'marry in haste and repent--'" + +"I've been brought up on adages. They are called bromides now. As for +illusions, everybody says they don't last anyway. I'd rather have them +dispelled after a long wonderful honeymoon by a husband than by a lot +of flirtations in a conservatory and in dark corners--" + +"Good heavens! Do you suppose that I flirted in a conservatory and in +dark corners?" + +"I'll bet you didn't, but lots do. And in the haute noblesse, the +ancient aristocracy! I've seen 'em." + +"It isn't possible that you--" + +"Oh, no, I love to dance too much. But I'm not easily shocked. I 'll +tell you that right here. And I 'll tell you what I confessed to mother +this morning." + + + +V + + +When she had finished Mrs. Abbott sat for a few moments petrified; but +she was thirty-eight, not sixty-five, and there was neither dismay nor +softening in her narrowed light blue eyes. + +"But that is abominable! Abominable!" + +And Alexina, who was prepared for a scolding, shrank a little, for it +was the first time that her doting sister had spoken to her with +severity. + +"I don't care," she said stubbornly, and she set her soft lips until +they looked stern and hard. + +"But you must care. You are a Groome." + +"Oh, yes, and a Ballinger, and a Geary, and all the rest of it. But I'm +also going to annex another name of my own choosing. I'll marry whom I +damn please, and that is the end of it." + +"Alexina Groome!" Mrs. Abbott arose in her wrath. "Cannot you see for +yourself what association with all these common people has done to you? +It's the influence--" + +"Of two years in New York principally. The girls there are as hard as +nails--try to imitate the English. Ours are not a patch, not even +Aileen, although she does her best. But I hadn't finished--I even +powder my face." Alexina grinned up at her still rudderless sister. +"After mother is asleep and I am ready to slip out." + +"I thought you were safe in New York under the eyes of Ballinger and +Geary, or rather of Mattie and Charlotte. They are such earnest good +women, so interested in charities--" + +"Deadly. But you don't know the girls," + +"And I have told mother again and again that she should not permit you +to associate with Aileen Lawton." + +"She can't help herself. Aileen is one of us. Besides, mother is +devoted to the Judge." + +"But powder! None of us has ever put anything but clean cold water on +her face." + +"You'd look a long sight better if you did. Cold cream, too. You +wouldn't have any wrinkles at your age, if you weren't so damn +respectable-aristocratic, you call it. It's just middle class. And as +out of date as speech without slang. As for me, I'd paint my lips as +Aileen does, only I don't like the taste, and they're too red, anyhow. +It's much smarter to make up than not to. Times change. You don't wear +hoopskirts because our magnificent Grandmother Ballinger did. You dress +as smartly as the Burlingame crowd. Why does your soul turn green at +make-up? All these people you look down upon because our families were +rich and important in the fifties are more up-to-date than you are, +although I will admit that none of them has the woman-of-the-world air +of the smartest New York women--not that terribly respectable inner set +in New York--Aunt Mattie's and Aunt Charlotte's--_that_ just revels in +looking mid-Victorian.... The newer people I've met here--their manners +are just as good as ours, if not better, for, as you said just now, +they don't put on airs. You do, darling. You don't know it, but you +would put an English duchess to the blush, when you suddenly remember +who you are--" + +Mrs. Abbott had resumed her seat on the cot. "If you have finished +criticizing your elder sister, I should like to ask you a few +questions. Do you smoke and drink cocktails?" + +"No, I don't. But I should if I liked them, and if they didn't make me +feel queer." + +"You--you--" Mrs. Abbot's clear crisp voice sank to an agonized +whisper. For the first time she was really terrified. "Do you gamble?" + +"Why, of course not. I have too much fun to think of anything so +stupid." + +"Does Aileen Lawton gamble?" + +"She just doesn't, and don't you insinuate such a thing." + +"She has bad blood in her. Her mother--" + +"I thought her mother was your best friend." + +"She was. But she went to pieces, poor dear, and Judge Lawton wisely +sent her East. I can't tell you why. There are things you don't +understand." + +"Oh, don't I? Don't you fool yourself." + +Mrs. Abbott leaned back on the cot and pressed it hard with either hand. + +"Alexina, I have never been as disturbed as I am at this moment. When +Sally and I were your age, we were beautifully innocent. If I thought +that Joan--" + +"Oh, Joan'll get away from you. She's only fourteen now, but when she's +my age--well, I guess you and your old crowd are the last of the +Mohicans. I doubt if there'll even be any chaperons left. Joan may not +smoke nor drink. Who cares for 'vices,' anyhow? But you haven't got a +moat and drawbridge round Rincona, and she'll just get out and mix. +She'll float with the stream--and all streams lead to Burlingame." + +"I have no fear about Joan," said Mrs. Abbott, with dignity. "Four +years are a long time. I shall sow seeds, and she is a born +Ballinger--I am dreadfully afraid that my dear father is coming out in +you. Even the boys are Ballingers--" + + + +VI + + +"Tell me about father?" coaxed Alexina, who was repentant, now that the +excitement of the day had reached its climax in the baiting of her +admirable sister and was rapidly subsiding. "Mother let fall something +this morning; and once Aileen ... she began, but shut up like a clam. +Was he so very dreadful?" + +"Well, since you know so much, he was what is called fast. Married men +of his position often were in his day--quite openly. Yesterday, I +should have hesitated--" + +"Fire away. Don't mind me. Yes, I know what fast is. Lots of men are +to-day. Even members of the A. A." + +"A. A.?" + +"Ancient Aristocracy. The kind England and France would like to have." + +"I'm ashamed of you. Have you no pride of blood? The best blood of the +South, to say nothing of--" + +"I'm tickled to death. I just dote on being a Groome, plus Ballinger, +plus. And I'm not guying, neither. I'd hate like the mischief to be +second rate, no matter what I won later. It must be awful to have to +try to get to places that should be yours by divine right, as it were. +But all that's no reason for being a moss-back, a back number, for not +having any fun--to be glued to the ancestral rock like a lot of old +limpets.... And it should preserve us from being snobs," she added. + +"Snobs?" + +"The 'I will maintain' sort, as Aileen puts it." + +"Don't quote that dreadful child to me. I haven't an atom of snobbery +in my composition. I reserve the right to know whom I please, and to +exclude from my house people to whom I cannot accustom myself. Why I +know quite a number of people at Burlingame. I dined there informally +last night." + +"Yes, because it has the fascination for you that wine has for the +clergyman's son." Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the +only people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those +of the old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were +one of us. They went there to live because they were tired of being +moss-backs. Why don't you follow their example and go the whole hog? +They--and their girls--have a ripping time." + +"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the +young people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women +drink and smoke quite openly on the verandah." + +"You may bet your sweet life they do. They are honest, and quite as +sure of their position as you are. But tell me about father. How did +mother come to marry him? If he was such a naughty person I should +think she would have exercised the sound Ballinger instincts and thrown +him down." + +"Mother met him in Washington. Grandfather Ballinger was senator at the +time--" + +"From Virginia or California?" + +"It is shocking that you do not know more of the family history. From +California, of course. He had great gifts and political aspirations, +and realized that there would be more opportunity in the new +state--particularly in such a famous one--than in his own where all the +men in public life seemed to have taken root--I remember his using that +expression. So, he came here with his bride, the beauty of Richmond--" + +"Oh, Lord, I know all about her. Remember the flavor in my mother's +milk--" + +"Well, you'd look like her if you had brown eyes and a white skin, and +if your mouth were smaller. And until you learn to stand up straight +you'll never have anything like her elegance of carriage. However.... +Of course they had plenty of money--for those days. They had come to +Virginia in the days of Queen Elizabeth and received a large grant of +land--" + +"Don't fancy I haven't heard _that_!" + +"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--" + +"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his +ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!" + +"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new +community, and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that +small band of social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs. +Hunt McLane, the Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the +Gearys, the Talbots, the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom's grandmother--" + +"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother, +although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she +was a leader herself and 'money wasn't everything.' We never had so +much of it anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle +old house--" + +Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were +talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was. + +"This house and its traditions are sacred--" + +"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast +man." + +"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He +was a young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the +first year of the war and returned at once to California; of course he +had been one of the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by +no means poor. Of course in Washington he was asked to the best houses. +At that time he was very ambitious and absorbed in politics and the +advancement of California. Afterward he renounced Washington for +reasons I never clearly understood; although he told me once that +California was the only place for a man to live; and--well--I am afraid +he could do more as he pleased out here without criticism--from men, at +least. The standards--for men--were very low in those days. But when he +met mother--" + +"Was mother ever very pretty?" + +"She was handsome," replied Mrs. Abbott guardedly. "Of course she had +the freshness and roundness of youth. I am told she had a lovely color +and the brightest eyes. And she had a beautiful figure. She had several +proposals, but she chose father." + +"And had the devil's own time with him. She let out that much this +morning." + +"I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was +determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child's +brain was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at +the revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the +problem of "handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made +generalities. + +"Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time +and held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever +accused him of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes +more than one reform to his determination and ability. + +"He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, +for he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; +what men call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a +brilliant group of disreputable women here; one could not help hearing +things, for the married women here have always been great gossips. +Well--you may as well know it--it may have the same effect on you that +it did on Ballinger and Geary, who are the most abstemious of men--he +drank and gambled and had too much to do with those unspeakable +women.... + +"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he +hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in +stocks), he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, +you will only have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was +quite well off when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to +New York after marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here +when they paid us a visit in the nineties. They had money of their own +and father gave the boys a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to +Sally and me when we married. But when you came along, or rather when +you were ten, and he died--well, he had run through nearly everything, +and had lost his grip. Mother got her share of the community property, +and of course she had this house and her share of the Ballinger +estate--not very much." + + + +VII + + +"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?" + +"Mother did everything a good woman could do." + +"Maybe she was too good." + +"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good." + +"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has +different tastes." + +"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to +lower herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father." + +"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why +didn't mother get a divorce?" + +"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has +been divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very +dear friends had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I +didn't approve even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home." + +"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for +instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and +he was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I +did decide to marry Mr. Dwight--mind, I don't say I care the tip of my +little finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have +to admit that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he +doesn't drink, or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works +hard and is as steady as--I was going to say as a judge, but I've been +told that all judges, in this town at least, are not as steady as you +think. Anyhow, he is. His family is as old as ours, even if it did have +reverses or something. And you can't deny that he is a gentleman, every +inch of him." + +"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But--well, he +was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents. +He admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a +broker's office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it." + +"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what +power you have left." + +She rose and stretched and yawned in a most unladylike fashion. + +"I'm going to make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little +chat with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can +stop me, for you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! +We shall have to shout. It will be more than proper. Good night, +darling." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora Dwight with a quick turn of a strong and supple wrist flung a +folding chair up through the trap door of the roof. She followed with a +pitcher of water, opened the chair, and sat down. + +It was the second day of the fire, which was now raging in the valleys +north of Market Street and up the hills. It was still some distance +from all but the lower end of Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that +divides the eastern and western sections of the city, as Market Street +divides the northern and southern, and her own home on Geary Street was +beyond Franklin and safe for the present. It was expected that the fire +would be halted by dynamiting the blocks east of the avenue, but as it +had already leapt across not far from Market Street and was running out +toward the Mission, Gora pinned her faith in nothing less than a change +of wind. + +Life has many disparate schools. The one attended by Miss Gora Dwight +had taught her to hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be +thankful if she escaped (to use the homely phrase; one rarely found +leisure for originality in this particular school) by the skin of her +teeth. + +Gora fully expected to lose the house she sat on, and had packed what +few valuables she possessed in two large bags: the fine underclothes +she had made at odd moments, and a handsome set of toilet articles her +brother had given her on the Christmas before last. He had had a raise +of salary and her experiment with lodgers had proved even more +successful than she had dared to hope. On the following Christmas he +had given her a large book with a fancy binding (which she had +exchanged for something she could read). After satisfying the +requirements of a wardrobe suitable for the world of fashion, +supplemented by the usual toll of flowers and bon-bons, he had little +surplus for domestic presents. + +Gora's craving for drama was far deeper and more significant than young +Alexina Groome's, and she determined to watch until the last moment the +terrific spectacle of the burning city. The wind had carried the smoke +upward for a mile or more and pillars of fire supported it at such +irregular intervals that it looked like a vast infernal temple in which +demons were waging war, and undermining the roof in their senseless +fury. + +In some places whole blocks of houses were blazing; here and there high +buildings burned in solitary grandeur, the flames leaping from every +window or boiling from the roof. Sometimes one of these buildings would +disappear in a shower of sparks and an awful roar, or a row of humbler +houses was lifted bodily from the ground to burst into a thousand +particles of flying wood, and disappear. + +The heat was overpowering (she bathed her face constantly from the +pitcher) and the roar of the flames, the constant explosions of +dynamite, the loud vicious crackling of wood, the rending and splitting +of masonry, the hoarse impact of walls as they met the earth, was the +scene's wild orchestral accompaniment and, despite underlying +apprehension and horror, gave Gora one of the few pleasurable +sensations of her life. + +But she moved her chair after a moment and fixed her gaze, no longer +rapt but ironic, on the flaming hillcrests, the long line of California +Street, nucleus of the wealth and fashion of San Francisco. The Western +Addition was fashionable and growing more so, but it had been too far +away for the pioneers of the fifties and sixties, the bonanza kings of +the seventies, the railroad magnates of the eighties, and they had +built their huge and hideous mansions upon the hill that rose almost +perpendicularly above the section where they made and lost their +millions. Some wag or toady had named it Nob Hill and the inhabitants +had complacently accepted the title, although they refrained from +putting it on their cards. And now it was in flames. + + + +II + + +Gora recalled the day when she had walked slowly past those mansions, +staring at each in turn as she assimilated the disheartening and +infuriating fact that she and the children that inhabited them belonged +to different worlds. + +Her family at that time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor +Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a +sister recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less +mercurial husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, +then a rangy girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large +private school in the fashionable district. + +Gora, after all these years, ground her teeth as she had a sudden +blighting vision of the day a week later, when, puzzled and resentful, +she had walked up the steep hill with several of the girls whose homes +were on California and Taylor Streets, and two of whom, like herself, +were munching an apple. + +They had hardly noticed her sufficiently to ignore her, either then or +during the previous week, so absorbed were they in their own close +common interests. She listened to allusions which she barely could +comprehend, but it was evident that one was to give a party on Friday +night and the others were expected as a matter of course. Gora assumed +that Jim and Sam and Rex and Bob were brothers or beaux. Last names +appeared to be no more necessary than labels to inform the outsider of +the social status of these favored maidens, too happy and contented to +be snobs but quite callous to the feelings of strange little girls. + +They drifted one by one into their opulent homes, bidding one another a +careless or a sentimental good-by, and Gora, throwing her head as far +back on her shoulders as it would go without dislocation, stalked down +to the unfashionable end of Taylor Street and up to the solitude of her +bedroom under the eaves of the cottage. + +On the following day she had lingered in the school yard until the +other girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular +hill so rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a +pain in her side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the +imposing homes of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and +puzzled eyes, her young soul in tumult. It was the old inarticulate cry +of class, of the unchosen who seeks the reason and can find none. + + + +III + + +As she had a tendency not only to brood but to work out her own +problems it was several days before she demanded an explanation of her +mother. + +Mrs. Dwight, a prematurely gray and wrinkled woman, who had once been +handsome with good features and bright coloring, and who wore a +deliberately cheerful expression that Gora often wanted to wipe off, +was sitting in the dining-room making a skirt for her daughter; which, +Gora reflected bitterly, was sure to be too long on one side if not in +front. + +Mrs. Dwight's smile faded as she looked at the somber face and huddled +figure in the worn leather arm-chair in which Mr. Dwight spent his +silent evenings. + +"Why, my dear, you surely knew long before this that some people are +rich and others poor--to say nothing of the betwixts and betweens." She +was an exact woman in small matters. "That's all there is to it. I +thought it a good idea to send you to a private school where you might +make friends among girls of your own class." + +"Own class? They treat me like dirt. How am I of their class when they +live in palaces and I in a hovel?" + +"I have reproved you many times for exaggerated speech. What I meant +was that you are as well-born as any of them (better than many) only we +have been unfortunate. Your father tried hard enough, but he just +doesn't seem to have the money-making faculty like so many men. Now, +we've had a little luck I'm really hopeful. I've just had a nice letter +from your Aunt Eliza Goring--I named you for her, but I couldn't +inflict you with Eliza. You know she is many years older than I am and +has no children. She was out here once just before you were born. +We--we were very hard up indeed. It was she who furnished this cottage +for us and paid a year's rent. Soon after, your father got his present +position and we have managed to get along. She always sends me a little +cheque at Christmas and I am sure--well, there are some things we don't +say.... But this legacy from your Aunt Jane is the only real stroke of +luck we ever had, and I can't help feeling hopeful. I do believe better +times are coming.... It used to seem terribly hard and unjust that so +many people all about us had so much and we nothing, and that in this +comparatively small city we knew practically no one. But I have got +over being bitter and envious. You do when you are busy every minute. +And then we have the blessing of health, and Mortimer is the best boy +in the world, and you are a very good child when you are not in a bad +temper. I think you will be handsome, too, although you are pretty +hopeless at present; but of course you will never have anything like +Mortimer's looks. He is the living image of the painting of your +Great-great-great-grandfather Dwight that used to hang in the +dining-room in Utica, and who was in the first Congress. Now, do try +and make friends with the nicer of the children." + +But Gora's was not a conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea +of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and +humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first +position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction +of the teachers an angry emulation ensued with the gratifying result +that although the girls could not pass Gora, their weekly marks were +higher, and for the rest of the term they did less giggling even after +school hours, and more studying. + +But Gora would not return for a second term. She had made no friends +among the girls, although, no doubt, having won their respect, they +would, with the democracy of childhood, have admitted her to intimacy +by degrees, particularly if she had proved to be socially malleable. + +But for some obscure reason it made Gora happier to hate them all, and +when she had passed her examinations victoriously, and taken every +prize, except for tidiness and deportment, she said good-by with some +regret to the teachers, who had admired and encouraged her but did not +pretend to love her, and announced as soon as she arrived at home that +she should enter the High School at the beginning of the following term. + + + +IV + + +Her parents were secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future +prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her +sister Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but +unfortunately Mrs. Goring had amused herself with speculation in her +old age, and had left barely enough to pay her funeral expenses. + +Mrs. Dwight broached the subject of their immediate future to her +husband that evening. She had some time since made up her mind, in case +the school experiment was not a success, to furnish a larger house with +what remained of the legacy, and take boarders. + +"I wouldn't do it if Gora had made the friends I hoped for her," she +said, turning the heel of the first of her son's winter socks, "and +there's no such thing as a social come-down for us; for that matter, +there is more than one lady, once wealthy, who is keeping a +boarding-house in this town. Gora will have to work anyhow, and as for +Mortimer--" she glanced fondly at her manly young son, who was amiably +playing checkers in the parlor with his sister, "he is sure to make his +fortune." + +"I don't know," said Mr. Dwight heavily. "I don't know." + +"Why, what do you mean?" asked his wife sharply. + +Mrs. Dwight belonged to that type of American women whose passions in +youth are weak and anaemic, not to say exceedingly shame-faced, but +which in mature years become strong and selfish and jealous, either for +a lover or a son. Mrs. Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had +centered all the accumulated forces of her being on the son whom she +idealized after the fashion of her type; and as she had corrected his +obvious faults when he was a boy, it was quite true that he was kind, +amiable, honest, honorable, patriotic, industrious, clean, polite, and +moral; if hardly as handsome as Apollo or as brilliant and gifted as +she permitted herself to believe. + +"What do you mean?" she repeated, although she lowered her voice. It +was rarely that it assumed an edge when addressing her husband. She had +never reproached him for being a failure, for she had recognized his +limitations early and accepted her lot. But something in his tone shook +her maternal complacence and roused her to instant defense. + +Mr. Dwight took his pipe from his mouth and also cast a glance toward +the parlor, but the absorbed players were beyond the range of his +rather weak voice. + +"I mean this," he said with nothing of his usual vague hesitancy of +speech. "I'm not so sure that Morty is beyond clerk size." + +"You--you--John Dwight--your son--" The thin layer of pale flesh on +Mrs. Dwight's face seemed to collapse upon its harsh framework with the +terrified wrath that shook her. Her mouth fell apart, and hot smarting +tears welled slowly to her eyes, faded with long years of stitching; +not only for her own family but for many others when money had been +more than commonly scarce. "Mortimer can do anything. Anything." + +"Can he? Why doesn't he show it then? He went to work at sixteen and is +now twenty-two. He is drawing just fifty dollars a month. He's well +liked in the firm, too." + +"Why don't they raise his salary?" + +"Because that's all he's worth to them. He's a good steady honest +clerk, nothing more." + +"He's very young--" + +"If a man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in +his brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two--if he has been in +that forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of +this country. And employers are always on the look-out for those +qualities and only too anxious to find them and push a young man on and +up. Many a president of a great business started life as a clerk, or +even office boy--" + +"That is what I have always known would happen to Morty. I am sure, +sure, that you are doing him a cruel injustice." + +"I hope I am. But I am a failure myself and I know what a man needs in +the way of natural equipment to make a success of his life." + +"But he is so energetic and industrious and honorable and likable and--" + +"I was all that." + +"Then--" Mrs. Dwight's voice trailed off; it sounded flat and old. +"What do you both lack?" + +"Brains." + + + +V + + +Mrs. Dwight had repeated this conversation to Gora shortly before her +death, and the girl in her reminiscent mood recalled it as she stared +with somber eyes and ironic lips at the havoc the fire was playing with +those lofty mansions which had stood to her all these intervening years +as symbols of the unpardonable injustice of class. + +She recalled another of the few occasions when Mrs. Dwight, who +believed in acceptance and contentment, had been persuaded to discuss +the idiosyncrasies of her adopted city. + +"It isn't that money is the standard here as it is in New York. Of +course there is a very wealthy set these late years and they set a pace +that makes it difficult for the older families, like the Groomes for +instance--I met Mrs. Groome once at a summer resort where I was +housekeeper that year, and I thought her very typical and interesting. +She was so kind to me without seeing me at all.... But those fine old +families, who are all of good old Eastern or Southern stock--if they +manage to keep in society are still the most influential element in +it.... Family.... Having lived in California long enough to be one of +that old set.... To be, without question, one of them. That is all that +matters. I've come in contact with a good many of them first and last +in my poor efforts to help your father, and I believe the San +Franciscans to be the most loyal and disinterested people in the +world-to one another. + +"But if you come in from the outside you must bring money, or +tremendous family prestige, or the right kind of social personality +with the best kind of letters. We just crept in and were glad to be +permitted to make a living. Why should they have taken any notice of +us? They don't go hunting about for obscure people of possibly gentle +blood. That doesn't happen anywhere in the world. You must be +reasonable, my dear child. That is life, 'The World.'" + +But Gora was not gifted with that form of reasonableness. She had +wished in her darker moments that she had been born outright in the +working-class; then, no doubt, she would have trudged contentedly every +morning (except when on strike) to the factory or shop, or been some +one's cook. She was an excellent cook. What galled her was the fact of +virtually belonging to the same class as these people who were still +unaware of the existence of her family, although it had lived for over +thirty years in a city numbering to-day only half a million inhabitants. + +She was almost fanatically democratic and could see no reason for +differences of degree in the aspiring classes. To her mind the only +line of cleavage between the classes was that which divided people of +education, refinement of mind manners and habits, certain inherited +traditions, and the mental effort no matter how small to win a place in +this difficult world, from commonness, ignorance, indifference to dirt, +coarse pleasures and habits, and manual labor. She respected Labor as +the solid foundation stones upon which civilization upheld itself, and +believed it to have been biologically chosen; if she had been born in +its class she would have had the ambition to work her way out of it, +but without resentment. + +There her recognition of class stopped. That wealth or family +prominence even in a great city or an old community should create an +exclusive and favored society seemed to her illogical and outrageous. A +woman was a lady or she wasn't. A man was a gentleman or he wasn't. +That should be the beginning and the end of the social code.... When +she had been younger she had lamented her mean position because it +excluded her from the light-hearted and brilliant pleasures of youth; +but as she grew older this natural craving had given place to a far +deeper and more corrosive resentment. + +She had no patience with her brother's ingenuous snobbery. A +good-natured friend had introduced him to one or two houses where there +were young people and much dancing and he had been "taken up." Nothing +would have filled Gora with such murderous rage as to be taken up. She +wanted her position conceded as a natural right. + +Had it been in her power she would have forced her conception of +democracy upon the entire United States. But as this was quite +impossible she longed passionately for some power, personal and +irresistible, that would compel the attention of the elect in the city +of her birth and ultimately bring them to her feet. And here she had a +ray of hope. + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile it was some satisfaction to watch them being burned out of +house and home. + +Then she gave a short impatient sigh that was almost a groan, as she +wondered if her own home would go. The family had moved into it eight +years ago; and after Mr. Dwight's death his widow had barely made a +living for herself and her daughter out of the uncertain boarders. +Mortimer had paid his share, but she had encouraged him to dress well +and no one knew the value of "front" better than he. After her death, +three years ago, Gora had turned out the boarders and the last +slatternly wasteful cook and let her rooms to business women who made +their morning coffee over the gas jet. The new arrangement paid very +well and left her time for lectures at the University of California, +and for other studies. A Jap came in daily to put the rooms in order +and she cooked for herself and her brother. So unknown was she that +even Aileen Lawton was unaware that the "boarding-house down on Geary +Street" was a lodging house kept by Mortimer Dwight's sister. +Fortunately Gora was spared one more quivering arrow in her pride. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +There was a tremendous burst of dynamite that rocked the house. Then +she heard her brother's voice: + +"Gora! Gora! Where are you?" + +She let herself through the trap door and ran down to the first floor. + +Her brother was standing in the lower hall surrounded by several of +their lodgers, competent-looking women, quite calm and business like, +but dressed as for a journey and carrying suitcases and bags. + +"You are all ordered out," he was saying. "A change of the wind to the +south would sweep the fire right up this hill, and it may cross Van +Ness Avenue again at any time. So everybody is ordered out to the +western hills, or the Presidio, or across the Bay, if they can make it." + +He had no private manners and greeted his sister with the same gallant +smile and little air of deference which always carried him a certain +distance in public. "You had better take out a mattress and blanket," +he said. "I wish I could do it for you--for all of you--but I am under +orders and must patrol where I am sent. When I finish giving the orders +down here I must go back to the Western Addition." + +"Don't worry about us," said Gora drily. "We are all quite as capable +as men when it comes to looking out for ourselves in a catastrophe. I +hear that several wives led their weeping stricken husbands out of town +yesterday morning. Are you sure the fire will cross Van Ness Avenue +to-night?" + +"It may be held back by the dynamiting, but one can be sure of nothing. +Of course the wind may shift to the west any minute. That would save +this part of the city." + +"Well, don't let us keep you from your civic duties. You look very well +in those hunting boots. Lucky you went on that expedition last summer +with Mr. Cheever." + +Mortimer frowned slightly and turned to the door. The brother and +sister rarely talked on any but the most impersonal subjects, but more +than once he had had an uneasy sense that she knew him better than he +knew himself. His consciousness had never faced anything so absurd, but +there were times when he felt an abrupt desire to escape her enigmatic +presence and this was one of them. + + + +II + + +The lodgers were permitted by the patrol to cook their luncheon on the +stove that had been set up in the street, the orders being that they +should leave within an hour. After their smoky meal they departed, +carrying mattresses and blankets. + +Gora had no intention of following them unless the flames were actually +roaring up the block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. She +felt quite positive that she could outrun any fire. + +The last of the lodgers, at her request, shut the front door and made a +feint of locking it, an unnecessary precaution in any case as all the +windows were open; and as the sentries had been ordered to "shoot to +kill," and had obeyed orders, looting had ceased. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death, +she had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin +bluish green material and there were several pieces of good furniture +that she had picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered +with book shelves which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter +nights and they were filled with the books she had found in second-hand +shops. A number of them bore the autographs of men once prosilient in +the city's history but long since gone down to disaster. There were a +few prints that she had found in the same way, but no oils or water +colors or ornaments. She despised the second-rate, and the best of +these was rarely to be bought for a song even at auction. + +She sighed as she reflected that if obliged to flee to the hills there +was practically nothing she could save beyond the contents of her bags; +but at least she could remain with her treasures until the last minute, +and she pinned the curtains across the small windows and lit several +candles. + +Between the blasts of dynamite the street was very quiet. She could +hear the measured tread of the sentry as he passed, a member of the +Citizens' Patrol, like her brother. Suddenly she heard a shot, and +extinguishing the candles hastily she peered out of a window from +behind the curtains. The sentry was pounding on a door opposite with +the butt of his rifle. It was the home of an eccentric old bachelor who +possessed a fine collection of ceramics and a cellar of vintage wine. + +The door opened with obvious reluctance and the head of Mr. Andrew +Bennett appeared. + +"What you doin' here?" shouted the sentry. "Haven't all youse been told +three hours ago to light out for the hills? Git out--" + +"But the fire hasn't crossed Van Ness Avenue. I prefer--" + +"Your opinion ain't asked. Git out." + +"I call that abominable tyranny." + +"Git out or I'll shoot. We ain't standin' no nonsense." + +Gora recognized the voice as that of a young man, clerk in a butcher +shop in Polk Street, and appreciated the intense satisfaction he took +in his brief period of authority. + +Mr. Bennett emerged in a moment with two large bags and walked +haughtily up the street at the point of the bayonet. Gora stood +expectantly behind her curtain, and some ten minutes later saw him +sneak round the eastern end of his block, dart back as the sentry +turned suddenly, and when the footsteps once more receded run up the +street and into his house. She laughed sympathetically and hoped he +would not be caught a second time. + + + +II + + +Suddenly another man, carrying a woman in his arms, turned the same +corner. He was staggering as if he had borne a heavy burden a long +distance. + +Gora ran down to the first floor and glanced out of the window of the +front room. The sentry had crossed the far end of the street and was +holding converse with another member of the patrol. As the refugee +staggered past the house she opened the front door and called softly. + +"Come up quickly. Don't let them see you." + +The man stumbled up the steps and into the house. + +"You can put her on the sofa in this room." Gora led the way into what +had once been the front parlor and was now the chamber of her star +lodger. "Is she hurt?" + +The man did not answer. He followed her and laid down his burden. Gora +flashed her electric torch on the face of the girl and drew back in +horror. + +"Dead?" + +"Yes, she is dead." The young man, who looked a mere boy in spite of +his unshaven chin and haggard eyes, threw himself into a chair and +dropping his face on his arms burst into heavy sobs. + +Gora stared, fascinated, at the sharp white face of the girl, the rope +of fair hair wound round her neck like something malign and muscular +that had strangled her, the half-open eyes, whose white maleficent +gleam deprived the poor corpse of its last right, the aloofness and the +majesty of death. She may have been an innocent and lovely young +creature when alive, but dead, and lacking the usual amiable +beneficencies of the undertaker, she looked like a macabre wax work of +corrupt and evil youth. + +And she was horribly stiff. + + + +III + + +Gora went into the kitchen and made him a cup of coffee over a spirit +lamp. He drank it gratefully, then followed her up to the attic as she +feared their voices might be overheard from the lower room. There he +took the easy chair and the cigarette she offered him and told his +story. + +The young girl was his sister and they were English. She had been +visiting a relative in Santa Barbara when a sudden illness revealed the +fact that she had a serious heart affection. He had come out to take +her home and they had been staying at the Palace Hotel waiting for +suitable accommodations before crossing the continent. + +His sister--Marian--had been terrified into unconsciousness by the +earthquake and he had carried her down the stairs and out into Market +Street, where she had revived. She had even seemed to be better than +usual, for the people in their extraordinary costumes, particularly the +opera singers, had amused her, and she had returned to the court of the +hotel and listened with interest to the various "experiences." Finally +they had climbed the four flights of stairs to their rooms and he had +helped her to dress--her maid had disappeared. They had remained until +the afternoon when the uncontrolled fires in the region behind the +hotel alarmed them, and with what belongings they could carry they had +gone up to the St. Francis Hotel, where they engaged rooms and left +their portmanteaux, intending to climb to the top of the hill, if +Marian were able, and watch the fire. + +Half way up the hill she had fainted and he had carried her into a +house whose door stood open. There was no one in the house, and after a +futile attempt to revive her, he had run back to the hotel to find a +doctor. But among the few people that had the courage to remain so +close to the fire there was no doctor. The hotel clerk gave him an +address but told him not to be too sure of finding his man at home as +all the physicians were probably attending the injured, helping to +clear the threatened hospitals, or at work among the refugees, any +number of women having embraced the inopportune occasion to become +mothers. + +The doctor whose address was given him not only was out but his house +was deserted; and, distracted, he returned to his sister. + +He knew at once that she was dead. + +He sat beside her for hours, too stunned to think.... It was some time +during the night that the roar of the fire seemed to grow louder, the +smoke in the street denser. Then it occurred to him that the +inhabitants of this house as well as of the doctor's, which was close +by, would not have abandoned their homes if they had not believed that +some time during the night they would be in the path of the flames. And +he had heard that the pipes of the one water system had been broken by +the earthquake. + +He had caught up the body of his sister and walked westward until, worn +out, he had entered the basement of another empty house, and there he +had fallen asleep. When he awakened he was under the impression for a +moment that he was in the crater of a volcano in eruption. Dynamite was +going off in all directions, he could hear the loud crackling of flames +behind his refuge; and as he took the body in his arms once more and +ran out, the fire was sweeping up the hill not a block below. + +In spite of the smoke he inferred that the way was clear to the west, +and he had run on and on, once narrowly escaping a dynamiting area +where he saw men like dark shadows prowling and then rushing off madly +in an automobile ... dodging the fire, losing his way, once finding +himself confronting a wall of flames, finally crossing a wide avenue +... stumbling on ... and on.... + + + +IV + + +Gora decided that blunt callousness would help him more than sympathy. +He had recovered his self-control, but his eyes were still wide with +pain and horror. + +"Cremation is a clean honest finish for any one," she remarked, +lighting another cigarette and offering him her match. "I should have +left her if she had been my sister in that first house...." + +"I might have done it--in London. But ... perhaps I was not quite +myself.... I couldn't leave her to be burned alone in a strange +country. Besides, the horror of it would have killed my mother. Marian +was the youngest. I felt bound to do my best.... Perhaps I didn't think +at all.... If this house is threatened I shall take her out to the +Presidio, where I happen to know a man--Colonel Norris. Thanks to your +hospitality I can make it." + +"But naturally you cannot go very fast ... and these sentries ... I am +not sure.... I don't see how you escaped others ... the smoke and +excitement, I suppose.... I think if you are determined to take her it +would be better if I helped you to carry her out to the cemetery. We +can put her on a narrow wire mattress and cover her, so that it will +look as if we were rescuing an invalid. Out there you can put her in +one of the stone vaults. Some of the doors are sure to have been broken +by the earthquake." + +The young man, who had given his name as Richard Gathbroke, gratefully +rested in her brother's room while she kept watch on the roof. It was +night but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well +as the approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks +fell on the roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making +him welcome to her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious +water. When he joined her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and +she saw that he looked both older and younger than Americans of his +age; which, he had told her, was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled +face was now composed and his hazel eyes were brilliant and steady. He +had a tall trim military body, and very straight bright brown hair; a +rather conventional figure of a well-bred Englishman, Gora assumed; +intelligent, and both more naif and more worldly-wise than young +Americans of his class: but whose potentialities had hardly been +apprehended even by himself. + +They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a +spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small +tins of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the +smaller bedrooms to the front room on the first floor. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +The patrol had been relieved by another, an older man, and sober. He +merely reproved them for disobeying orders, glanced sympathetically at +the presumed invalid, and directed them to one of the temporary +hospitals some blocks farther west. + +Gora, like all imaginative people, had a horror of the corpse, and +averted her eyes from the head of the dead girl outlined under the veil +she had thrown over it, Gathbroke was obliged to walk backward, and as +both were extremely uncomfortable, there was no attempt at conversation +until they reached the gates of the old cemetery the great pioneers had +called Lone Mountain and their more commonplace descendants +rechristened Laurel Hill. + +The glare of the distant fire illuminated the silent city where a +thousand refugees slept as heavily as the dead, and as they ascended +the steep path they examined anxiously the vaults on either side. +Finally Gora exclaimed: + +"There! On the right." + +The iron doors of a once eminent resident's last dwelling had been half +twisted from their rusty hinges. Gathbroke threw his weight on them and +they fell at his feet. He and Gora carried in the body and lifted it to +an empty shelf. + +"Good!" Gora gave a long sigh of relief. "Nothing can happen to her +now. Even the entrance faces away from the fire and there is nothing +but grass in the cemetery to burn, anyhow." She held her electric torch +to the inscription above the entrance. "Better write down the +name--Randolph. There's one of the tragedies of the sixties for you! An +Englishman the hero, by the way. Nina Randolph is a handful of dust in +there somewhere. Heigho! What's the difference, anyway? Even if she'd +been happy she'd be dead by this time--or too old to have a past." + +Gathbroke replaced the gates, for he feared prowling dogs, and they +walked down to the street and sat on the grass, leaning against the +wall of the cemetery, as dissociated as possible from the rows of +uneasy sleepers. + + + +II + + +They slept a little between blasts of dynamite, the snoring of men and +women and cries of children; finally at Gora's suggestion climbed to +the steep bare summit of Calvary to observe the progress of the fire. + +The unlighted portion of the city beneath them looked like a dead +planet. Beyond was a tossing sea of flame whose far-reaching violent +glare seemed to project it illimitably. + +"Nothing can stop it!" gasped Gora; and that terrific red mass of +energy and momentum did look as if its only curb would be the Pacific +Ocean. + +They talked until morning. He was very frank about himself, finding no +doubt a profound comfort in human companionship after those long hours +of ghastly communion down in that flaming jungle. + +He was a younger son and in the army, not badly off, as his mother made +him a goodish allowance. She had come of a large manufacturing family +in the North and had brought a fortune to the empty treasury of the +young peer she had--happily for both--fallen in love with. + +He had wanted to go into business--politics later perhaps--after he +left Eton, feeling that he had inherited some of the energy of his +maternal grandfather, but his mother had insisted upon the army and as +he really didn't care so very much, he had succumbed. + +"But I'm not sure I shan't regret it. It isn't as if there were any +prospect of a real war. I'd like a fighting career well enough, but not +picayune affairs out in India or Africa. I can't help thinking I have a +talent for business. Sounds beastly conceited," he added hastily. It +was evident that he was a modest youth. "But after all one of us should +inherit something of the sort. Perhaps, later, who knows? At least I +can thank heaven that I wasn't born in my brother's place. He likes +politics, and his fate is the House of Lords. A man might as well go +and embalm himself at once. Do you know Gwynne? Elton Gwynne? John +Gwynne he calls himself out here." + +"I've heard of him. He's been written up a good deal. I don't know any +one of that sort." + +"Really? Well, don't you see? he inherited a peerage; grandfather died +and his cousin shot himself to cover up a scandal. Gwynne was in the +full tide of his career in the House of Commons and simply couldn't +stand for it. He cut the whole business and came out here where he and +his mother had a large estate--Lady Victoria's mother or grandmother +was a Spanish-Californian. Of course he chucked the title. He's a sort +of cousin of mine and I looked him up, and dined with him the other +night. He was born in the United States, by a fluke as it were, and has +made up his mind to be an American for the rest of his life and carve +out a political career in this country. I'd have done the same thing, +by Jove! First-class solution ... although it's a pretty hard wrench to +give up your own country. But when a man is too active to +stagnate--there you are.... I wish I had known where to find him +to-day, but he lives on his ranch and I've only seen him once since. +Lady Victoria took me to a ball night before last--Good God! Was it +only that? ... and we were to have met again for lunch to-day." + +"It is very easy and picturesque to renounce when you possess just +about everything in life! If I attempted to renounce any of my +privileges, for instance. I should simply move down and out." + + + +III + + +He turned his head and regarded her squarely for the first time. +Heretofore she had been simply a friend in need, a jolly good sport, +incidentally a female. If she had been beautiful he should have noted +that fact at once, for he could not imagine the circumstances in which +beauty would not exert an immediate and powerful influence, however +transitory. + +Miss Dwight was not beautiful, but he concluded during that frank stare +that her face was interesting; disturbingly so, although he was unable +at the moment to find the reason. It was possible that in favorable +conditions she would be handsome. + +She had a mass of dark brown hair that seemed to sink heavily over her +low forehead until it almost met the heavy black eyebrows. She had +removed her hat and the thick loose coils made her look topheavy; for +the face, if wide across the high cheek-bones and sharply accentuated +with a salient jaw, was not large. The eyes were a light cold gray, +oval and far apart. Her nose was short and strong and had the same +cohibitive expression as the straight sharply-cut mouth--when not +ironic or smiling. Her teeth were beautiful. + +She had put on her best tailored suit and he saw that her "figger" was +good although too short and full for his taste. He liked the long and +stately slenderness that his own centuries had bred. But her hands and +well-shod feet were narrow if not small, and he decided that she just +escaped possessing what modern slang so aptly expressed as "class," +Possibly it was the defiance in her square chin, the almost angry poise +of her head, that betrayed her as an unwilling outsider. + +"Bad luck!" he asked sympathetically. + +She gave him a brief outline of her family history, overemphasizing as +Americans will--those that lay any claim to descent--the previous +importance of the Dwights and the Mortimers in Utica, N.Y. +Incidentally, she gave him a flashlight picture of the social +conditions in San Francisco. + +He was intensely interested. "Really! I should have said there would be +the complete democracy in California if anywhere. Of course no +Englishman of my generation expects to find San Franciscans in cowboy +costume; but I must say I was astonished at the luxury and fashion not +only at those Southern California hotels, where, to be sure, most of +the guests are from your older Eastern states, but at that ball Lady +Victoria took me to. It was magnificent in all its details, originality +combined with the most perfect taste. Of course there were not as many +jewels as one would see at a great London function, but the toilettes +could not have been surpassed. And as for the women--stunning! Such +beauty and style and breeding. I confess I didn't expect quite all +that. Miss Bascom, Miss Thorndyke, and an exquisite young thing, Miss +Groome--" + +"Oh, those are the haute noblesse." Gora's tipper lip curled +satirically. "No doubt they lay claim that their roots mingle with your +own." + +"Well, we'd be proud of 'em." + +"That was the Hofer ball, wasn't it! Do you mean to say that Alexina +Groome was there? Mrs. Groome, who is the most imposing relic of the +immortal eighties, is supposed to know no one of twentieth-century +vintage." + +"I am sure of it. I danced with her twice and would have jolly well +liked to monopolize her, but she was too plainly bowled over by a +fellow--your name, by Jove--Dwight. Good-looking chap, clean-cut, fine +shoulders, danced like a god--if gods do dance. I'm an awful duffer at +it, by the way." + +"Mortimer? Is it possible? And he--was he bowled over?" + +"Ra--ther! A case, I should say." + +"How unfortunate. Of course he hasn't the ghost of a chance. Mrs. +Groome won't have a young man inside her doors whose family doesn't +belong root and branch to her old set. Fine prospect for a poor clerk!" + +"Jove! I've a mind to stay and try my luck. Oh!" He dropped his face in +his hands. "I'm forgetting!" + +"Well, forget again." Gora's voice expressed more sympathy than she +felt. She deeply resented his immediate acceptance of her social +alienage, even relegating her personal appearance to another class than +that of the delicate flora he had seen blooming for the night against +the most artful background of the season. + +However ... he was the first man she had ever met in her limited +experience who seemed to combine the three magnetisms.... Who could +tell.... + +"I should be delighted if you would cut my brother out before it goes +any further," she said untruthfully. "It will save him a heartache.... +Where could you meet her now? Society is disrupted here. But of course +Mr. Gwynne visits down the peninsula. He could take you to any one of +those exclusive abodes where you would be likely to meet the little +Alexina. She is only eighteen, by the way." + +"That is rather young," he said dubiously. "I don't fancy her +conversation would be very interesting, and, after all, that is what it +comes down to, isn't it? I've been disappointed so often." He sighed +and looked quite thirty-five. "Still, she has personality. Five or six +years hence she may be a wonder.... I don't think I'd care about +educating and developing a girl--I like a pal right away.... What an +ass I am, rotting like this. Tour brother has as much chance as I have. +Younger sons with no prospect of succession are of exactly no account +with the American mamma. I've met a few of them." + +"Oh, I fancy birth would be enough for Mrs. Groome. She's quite dotty +on the subject, and the people out here are simpler than Easterners, +anyhow. Simpler and more ingenuous." + +"How is it you know so much about it, all, if you are not, as you +say--pardon me--a part of it?" + +"I wonder!" She gave a short hard little laugh. "I don't know that I +could explain, except that it all has seemed to me from birth a part of +my blood and bones and gristle. An accident, a lucky strike on my +father's part when he first came out here, and they would know me as +well to-day as I know them. And then ... of course ... it is a small +community. We live on the doorsteps of the rich and important, as it +were. It would be hard for us not to know. It just comes to us. We are +magnets. I suppose all this seems to you--born on the inside--quite +ignominious." + +"Well, my mother would have remained on the outside--that is to say a +quiet little provincial--if her father hadn't happened to make a +fortune with his iron works. I can understand well enough, but, if you +don't mind my saying so, I think it rather a pity." + +"Pity?" + +"I mean thinking so much about it, don't you know? I fancy it's the +result of living in a small city where there are only a few hundred +people between you and the top instead of a few hundred thousand. I +express, myself so badly, but what I mean is--as I make it out--it is, +with you, a case of so near and yet so far. In a great city like London +now (great in generations--centuries--as well as in numbers) you'd just +accept the bare fact and go about your business. Not a ghost of a show, +don't you see? Here you've just missed it, and, the middle class always +flowing into the upper class, you feel that you should get your chance +any minute. Ought to have had it long ago.... I can't imagine, for +instance, that if my mother had married the son of my grandfather's +partner that I should have wasted much time wondering why I wasn't +asked to the Elizabethan Hail on the hill. Of course I don't mean there +isn't envy enough in the old countries, but it's more passive ... +without hope...." + +He felt awkward and officious but he was sorry for her and would have +liked to discharge his debt by helping her toward a new point of view, +if possible. + +She replied: "That's easy to say, and besides you are a man. My +brother, who is only a clerk in a wholesale house, has been taken up +and goes everywhere. They don't know that I even exist." + +"Well, that's their loss," he said gallantly. "Can't you make 'em sit +tip, some way? Women make fortunes sometimes, these days, And they're +in about everything except the Army and Navy. Business? Or haven't you +a talent of some sort? You have--pardon me again, but we have been +uncommonly personal to-night--a strong and individual face ... and +personality; no doubt of that." + +Gora would far rather he had told her she was pretty and irresistible, +but she thrilled to his praise, nevertheless. It was the first +compliment she had ever received from any man but the commonplace and +unimportant friends her brother had brought home occasionally before he +had been introduced to society; he took good care to bring home none of +his new friends. + +Her heart leapt toward this exalted young Englishman, who might have +stepped direct from one of the novels of his land and class ... even +the stern and anxious moderns who had made England's middle-class the +fashion, occasionally drew a well-bred and attractive man from life.... +She turned to him with a smile that banished the somber ironic +expression of her face, illuminating it as if the drooping spirit +within had suddenly lit a torch and held it behind those strange pale +eyes. + +"I'll tell you what I've never told any one--but my teacher; I've taken +lessons with him for a year. He is an instructor in the technique of +the short story, and has turned out quite a few successful magazine +writers. He believes that I have talent. I have been studying over at +the University to the same end--English, biology, psychology, +sociology. I'm determined not to start as a raw amateur. Oh! Perhaps I +have made a mistake in telling you. You may be one of those men that +are repelled by intellectual women!" + +"Not a bit of it. Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't +like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that +are so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder +sister--she's thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, +although she doesn't pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any +but clever and exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents +hate it--she lives alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. +My grandfather Doubleton liked her a lot and left her two thousand a +year. I wish you knew her. She is charming and feminine, as much so as +any of those I met at the ball; and so are many of the women that go to +her flat--" + +"Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way +of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under +her fingernail. + +Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes. + +"Well ... not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the +fighter ... but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he +added hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns +were lowering at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit." + +Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have +said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I +had worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair +marcelled like every other woman present--except those embalmed relics +of the seventies, who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a +great ball is given, and appear in a built-up red-brown wig.... And a +string of pearls round my throat? My neck and arms are quite good; +although I've never possessed an evening gown, I know I'd look quite +well in one ... my best." + +He laughed. "It does make a difference. I wish you had been there. I am +sure you are as good a dancer as you are a pal. But still ... I think I +should have recognized the fighter, even if you had been born in the +California equivalent for the purple. I fancy you would have found some +cause or other to get your teeth into once in a while. Tell me, don't +you rather like the idea of taking Life by the throat and forcing it to +deliver?" + +"I wonder? ... perhaps ... but that does not mitigate my resentment +that I am on the outside of everything when I belong on the in. I +should never have been forced to strive after what is mine by natural +right." + +"Well, don't let it make a socialist of you. That is such a cheap +revenge on society.... Confession of failure; and nothing in it." + + + +IV + + +He looked at his watch: "Eight o'clock. I'll be getting on to the +Presidio. Why don't you come with me?" + +Gora's feminine instincts arose from a less perverted source than her +social. She shook her head with a smile. + +"I don't want to go any farther from my house. I shall slip down my +first chance; and I have plenty to eat. Perhaps you will come to see me +before you go if my house is spared." + +"Rather. What is the number? And if the house goes I'll find you +somehow." + +He took her hand in both his and shook it warmly. "You are the best pal +in the world--" + +"Now don't make me a nice little speech. I'm only too glad. Go out to +the Presidio and get a hot breakfast and attend--to--to your affairs. I +am sure everything will be all right, although you may not be able to +get away as soon as you hope." + +"I don't like leaving you alone here--" + +"Alone?" She waved her hand at the hundreds of recumbent forms in the +cemeteries and on the lower slopes of Calvary. "I probably shall never +be so well protected again. Please go." + +He shook her hand once more, ran down the hill, turned and waved his +cap, and trudged off in the direction of the Presidio. + + + +V + + +She slept in her own house that night, for dynamiting by miners +summoned from Grass Valley by General Funston, and a change of wind, +had saved the western portion of the city. For the first time in her +life Gora experienced a sense of profound gratitude, almost of +happiness. She felt that only a little more would make her quite happy. +Her lodgers, even her absorbed brother, noticed that her manner, her +expression, had perceptibly softened. She herself noticed it most of +all. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +Gathbroke met Alexina Groome again a week later. + +On Saturday, when the fire was over, and she could retreat decently and +in good order, Mrs. Groome, to her young daughter's secret anguish, had +consented to rest her nerves for a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's +home in Alta. + +As Gora had predicted, Gathbroke found that it would have been hardly +more difficult to move his sister's body, now at an undertaker's in +Fillmore Street, out of the state in war-time than in the wake of a +city's disaster, which was scattering its population to every point of +the railroad compass. He had refused the space in the baggage car +offered to him by the company; it should: be a private car or nothing; +and for that, in spite of all the influence Gwynne and his powerful +friends could bring to bear, he must wait. + +Meanwhile Gwynne had asked him to stay with himself and his mother, +Lady Victoria Gwynne, at the house of his fiancee, Isabel Otis, on +Russian Hill; a massive cliff rising above one of the highest of the +city's northern hills, whose old houses, clinging to its steep sides +had escaped the fire that roared about its base. To-day it was a green +and lofty oasis in the midst of miles of smoking ruins. + +Gathbroke was as nervous as only a young Englishman within his +immemorial armor can be. Gwynne, who had gone through the same +nerve-racking crisis, although from different causes, understood what +he suffered and pressed him into service in the distribution of +government rations, and garments to the different refugee camps. But +Gathbroke had the active imagination of intelligent youth, and he never +forgot to blame himself for lingering in New York with some interesting +chaps he had met on the _Majestic_, and afterward in Southern +California, seduced by its soft climate and violent color. +Unquestionably, if he had stayed on his job, as these expressive +Americans put it, his sister would have been in New York, possibly on +the Atlantic Ocean when San Francisco shook herself to ruin. + +"But not necessarily alive," said Lady Victoria callously, removing her +cigar, her heavy eyes that looked like empty volcanos, staring down +over the smoldering waste. "People with heart disease don't invariably +wait for an earthquake to jolt them out of life. Assume that her time +had come and think of something else or you'll become a silly ass of a +neurotic." + +Gwynne, more sympathetic, continued to find him what distraction he +could, and one day drove him down the Peninsula with a message from the +Committee of Fifty to Tom Abbott; who had caught a heavy cold during +those three days when he had driven a car filled with dynamite and had +had scarcely an hour for rest. He was now at home in bed. + + + +II + + +The Abbott's place, Rincona, stood on a foothill behind the other +estates of Alta and surrounded by a park of two hundred acres set thick +with magnificent oaks. Gathbroke had never seen finer ones in England +or France. Gwynne before entering the avenue drove to an elevation +above the house and stopped the car for a moment. + +The great San Mateo valley looked like a close forest of ancient oaks +broken inartistically by the roofs of houses shorn of their chimneys. +Beyond, on the eastern side of a shallow southern arm of the Bay of San +Francisco, was the long range of the Contra Costa mountains, its waving +indented slopes incredibly graceful in outline and lovely in color. +Gwynne had pointed out their ever changing tints and shades as they +drove through the valley; at the moment they were heliotrope deepening +to purple in the hollows. + +Behind the foothills above Rincona rose the lofty mountains which in +Maria Abbott's youth had seemed to tower above the valley a solid wall +of redwoods; but long since plundered and defaced for the passing needs +of man. + +"Great country--what?" said Gwynne, starting the car. "You couldn't pry +me away from it--that is, unless I have the luck to represent it in +Washington half the year. You'll be coming back yourself some day." + +"I? Never. I hate the sight of its grinning blue sky after the red +horror of those three days. I haven't seen a cloud as big as my hand, +and in common decency it should howl and stream for months." + +"Well, forget it for a day. Perhaps you will be placed next the fair +Alexina at luncheon--" + +"Alexina...?" + +"Groome. You must have met her at the Hofer ball." + +"She--what--possible--" + +Gwynne looked at his stuttering and flushed young cousin and burst into +laughter. + +"As bad as that, was it? Well, she's not bespoken as far as I know. +Wade in and win. You have my blessing. She is almost as beautiful as +Isabel--" + +"She's quite as beautiful as Miss Otis." + +"Oh, very well. No doubt I'd think so myself if I hadn't happened to +meet Isabel first, and if I were not too old for her anyway." + +Gwynne could think of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a +flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a +living companion for his trying journey to England so much the better. + +Gathbroke's excitement subsided quickly. He was in no condition for +sustained enthusiasm. He felt as if quite ten years had passed since he +had half fallen in love with Alexina Groome in a ball room that was now +a charred heap in the sodden wreck of a city he barely could conjure in +memory. + +Besides, he had half fallen in love so often. And she was too young. He +had really been more drawn to that strange Miss Dwight; upon whom, +however, he had not yet called. + +He felt thankful that the girl _was_ too young for his critical taste. +He wanted nothing more at present in the way of emotions. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Rincona had been named in honor of Rincon Hill, where Tom Abbott's +grandmother had reigned in the sixties; a day, when in order to call on +her amiable rival, Mrs. Ballinger, her stout carriage horses were +obliged to plow through miles of sand hills, and to make innumerable +detours to avoid the steep masses of rock, over which in her grandson's +day cable car and trolley glided so lightly until that morning of April +eighteen, nineteen hundred and six. + +When her husband, in common with other distinguished citizens, bought +an estate in the San Mateo Valley, she named it Rincona, to the secret +wrath of other eminent ladies who had not thought of it in time. + +The house had as little pretensions to architectural beauty as others +of its era, but it was a large compact structure of some thirty rooms, +exclusive of the servants' quarters, and with as many outbuildings as a +Danish, farm. Long French windows opened upon a wide piazza, whose +pillars had disappeared long since under a luxuriant growth of rose +vines and wistaria. At its base was a bed of Parma violets, whose +fragrance a westerly breeze wafted to the end of the avenue a quarter +of a mile away. All about the house, breaking the smooth lawns, were +beds and trees of flowers, at this time of the year a glowing exotic +mass of color; but in the park that made up the greater part of the +estate exclusive of the farms, the grass under the superb oaks was +merely clipped, the weeds and undergrowth removed. The oaks had been +evenly shorn of their lower branches, which gave them a formal and +somewhat arrogant expression, as of cardinals and kings lifting their +skirts. + +Alexina hated the enormous rooms with their high frescoed ceilings and +heavy Victorian furniture; but Maria Abbott loved and revered the old +house, emblem that it was of a secure proud family that had defied that +detestable (and disturbing) old phrase: "Three generations from shirt +sleeves to shirt sleeves." The Abbotts, like the Ballingers and Groomes +and Gearys and many others of that ilk, had not come to California in +the fifties and sixties as adventurers, but with all that was needed to +give them immediate prestige in the new community; and, among those +that still retained their estates in the San Mateo Valley, at least, +there was as little prospect of their reversion to shirt sleeves as of +their conversion to the red shirt of socialism. Their wealth might be +moderate but it was solid and steadfast. + + + +II + + +The entertaining of the Abbotts, Yorbas, Hathaways, Montgomerys, +Brannans, Trennahans, and others of what Alexina irreverently called +the A.A., had always been ostentatiously simple, albeit a butler and a +staff of maids had contributed to their excessive comfort. In the +eighties, evening toilettes during the summer were considered immoral; +but by degrees, as time tooled in its irresistible modernities, they +gradually fell into the habit of wearing out their winter party gowns +at the evening diversions of the country season. Burlingame, that +borough of concentrated opulence founded in the early nineties as a +fashionable colony, began its career with a certain amount of +simplicity; but its millions increased to tens of millions; and what in +heaven's name, as Mrs. Clement Hunter, a leader and an individual, once +remarked, is the use of having money if you don't dress and entertain +as you would dream of dressing and entertaining if you didn't have a +cent? + +Mrs. Hunter, who had formed an incongruous and somewhat hostile +alliance with Mrs. Abbott, knew that her valuable friend, like others +of that "small and early" band, resented the fact that their standards +no longer counted outside of their own set. Mrs. Abbott had turned a +haughty shoulder to Mrs. Hunter for a time, for she remembered her as, +in their school days, the socially obscure Lidie McKann; now, however, +her husband turning all he touched to gold, she had, incredibly, become +one of the most important women in San Francisco and Burlingame. + +When Maria Abbott finally succumbed she assured herself that curiosity +to see the more ambushed glitter of that meretricious faubourg had +nothing to do with it; it was easy to persuade herself that she hoped, +being an indisputably smart woman herself, gradually to impose her +simpler and more appropriate standards upon these people who sorely +threatened the continued dominance of the old regime. + +Mrs. Hunter soon disabused her of any such notion, and during the early +days of their acquaintance, after Mrs. Abbott came to one of her +luncheons attired in a pique skirt and severe shirtwaist, impeccably +cut and worn, but entirely out of place in an Italian palace, where +forty fashionable women, some of whom had motored sixty miles to attend +the function, were dressed as they would be at a Newport luncheon, Mrs. +Hunter attended the next solemn affair at Rincona so overdressed and +made up that the outraged Altarinos (as Alexina irreverently called +them) were reduced to a horrified silence that was almost hysterical. + +But one morning Mrs. Abbott caught Mrs. Hunter digging in her private +vegetable garden behind the palace, and wearing a garment that her +second gardener's wife would have scorned, her unblemished face beaming +under a battered straw hat. Both women had the humor to laugh, and +their intimacy dated from that moment, Mrs. Hunter confessing that +stuff on her face made her sick; but adding that she adored dress and +thought that any rich woman was a fool who didn't. + +After that there was a compromise on both sides. Mrs. Hunter lunched or +dined at Rincona in her simplest frocks and Mrs. Abbott wore her best +when honoring Mrs. Hunter and others at Burlingame. She even went so +far as to have some extremely smart silk voiles (the fashionable +material of the moment) and linens made, and when asked to a wedding, a +garden party, or a great function given to some visitor of distinction, +complimented the occasion to the limit of her resources. + + + +III + + +Mrs. Hunter, in white duck, a sailor hat perched above her angular +somewhat masculine face, was sitting on the Abbott verandah as the two +Englishmen drove up. She waved her cigarette and cried gayly in her +hearty resonant voice: + +"Two men! What luck! And in time for lunch. I've hardly seen a man +since the first day of the fire. Leave your car anywhere and come in +out of the sun. I'll call Maria, and, incidentally, mention whiskey and +soda." + +"The whiskey and soda is all right," said Gwynne mopping his brow; +Nature, having wreaked her worst on California, seemed determined to +atone by unseasonably brilliant weather, and the day under the blazing +blue vault was very hot. + +Mrs. Abbott appeared in a few moments, smiling, cool, in immaculate +white, the collar of her shirtwaist high and unwilted. Her +weather-beaten face looked years older than Mrs. Hunter's, who, +although plain by comparison with the once beautiful Maria Groome, had +treated her clean healthy skin with marked respect. + +But as the butler had preceded her with whiskey and soda and ice, Mrs. +Abbott might already have achieved the mahogany tints of her mother and +she would have been regarded as enthusiastically by two hot and dusty +men. + +"Of course you will stay to luncheon," she said as naturally as she had +said it these many years, and as two hospitable generations had said it +on that verandah before her. She turned to young Gathbroke with a +smile, for Mrs. Hunter, who was in her confidence, had detained her for +a moment with a few sharp incisive words. "I have a very bored little +sister, who will be glad to sit next to a young man once more." + +And although Gathbroke almost frowned at this fresh reminder of the +callow years of the girl whose sheer loveliness had haunted his +imagination, he went off with a not disagreeable titillation of the +nerves, at Mrs. Abbott's suggestion, to find her in the park and bring +her back to luncheon in half an hour. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +He was light of step and made no sound on the heavy turf; he saw her +several minutes before she was aware of his presence and stood staring +at her, feeling much as he had done during the progress of the +earthquake. + +She was standing under one of the great oaks whose lower limbs had been +trimmed so evenly some seven feet above the ground that they made a +compact symmetrical roof above the dark head of the girl, who, being +alone, had abandoned the limp curve of fashion and was standing very +erect, drawn up to her full five feet seven. Alexina had no intention +of being afflicted with rounded shoulders when the present mode had +passed. + +But her face expressed no guile as she stood there in her simple white +frock with a bunch of periwinkles in her belt, her delicate profile +turned to Gathbroke as she gazed at the irregular majesty of the Coast +Range, dark blue under a pale blue haze. He had retained the impression +of starry eyes and vivid coloring and eager happy youth, a body of +perfect slenderness and grace, whose magnetism was not that of youth +alone but personal and individual. + +Now he saw that although her fine little profile was not too regular, +and as individual as her magnetism, the shape of her head was classic. +It was probable that she was not unaware of the fact, for its perfect +lines and curves were fully revealed by the severe flatness of the +dusky thickly planted hair, which was brushed back to the nape of her +neck and then drawn up a few inches and flared outward. The little head +was held high on the long white stem of the throat; and the pose, with +the dropping eyelids, gave her, in that deep shade, the illusion of +maturity. Gathbroke realized that he saw her for the moment as she +would look ten years hence. Even the full curved red lips were closed +firmly and once the nostrils quivered slightly. + +The narrow black eyebrows following the subtle curve of her eyelids, +the low full brow with its waving line of soft black hair, seemed to +brood over the lower part of the face with its still indeterminate +curves, over the wholly immature figure of a very young girl. + +Gathbroke surrendered then and there. This radiation of mystery, of +complexity, this secret subtle visit of maturity to youth, the hovering +spirit of the future woman, was unique in his experience and went +straight to his head. He forgot his sister, dismissed the thought of +Dwight with a gesture of contempt. He might be modest and rather +diffident in manner, owing to racial shyness, but he had a fine +sustaining substructure of sheer masculine arrogance. + + + +II + + +As he walked forward swiftly Alexina turned; and immediately was the +young thing of eighteen and of the early twentieth century. Her spine +drooped into an indolent curve, her soft red lips fell apart, her +black-gray eyes opened wide as she held out her hand to the young +Englishman. + +"How nice! I never really expected to see you again. I understood Lady +Victoria to say you were merely passing through." + +Alexina had not cast him a thought since the night of the ball but she +was hospitable and feminine. + +"I was detained." + +She noted with intense curiosity that his bright color paled and his +sparkling hazel eyes darkened with a sudden look of horror; but the +spasm of memory passed quickly, and once more he was staring at her +with frank capitulation. + +Alexina's head went up a trifle. She was still new to conquest, and +although she had met more than one pair of admiring eyes in the course +of the past season, and received as many compliments as the vainest +girl could wish, few men had had the courage to storm the stern +fortress on Ballinger Hill, or to sit more than once in a drawing-room +so darkly reminiscent of funeral ceremonies that a fellow's nerves +began to jump all over him. + +Nor had her fancy been even lightly captured until Mortimer Dwight, +that perfect hero of maiden dreams, had swept her off her dancing feet +on the most memorable night of her life. + +She had quite made up her mind to marry him. The indignant silent +hostility of the family (even Mrs. Ballinger, her moment of weakness +passed, having been swung to the horrified Maria's point of view) had +been all that was necessary to convince the young Alexina that fate had +sent her the complete romance. She hoped the opposition would drive her +to an elopement; little dreaming of the horror with which Mr. Dwight +would greet the heterodox alternative. + +Mrs. Abbott had had a valid excuse for not asking him down: provisions +were scarce, and, so Tom said, he was doing useful work in town. But +Olive Bascom, whose country home was in San Mateo, had invited him for +the next week end, and he had accepted. Alexina was to be one of the +small house party, and there were many romantic walks behind San Mateo. +A moon was also due. + + + +III + + +Still Gathbroke might have entered the race with an even chance, for +maidens of eighteen are merely the blind tools of Nature, had not the +family made the mistake of displaying too warm an approval of the +eligible young Englishman. Mrs. Groome, Mrs. Abbott, Aunt Clara, +reenforced even by the more worldly Mrs. Hunter, who, however, had no +children of her own, treated him throughout the luncheon with an almost +intimate cordiality and a lively personal interest; whereas, if Mrs. +Abbott had been driven to keep her word and invite Mortimer Dwight to +her historic board she would have depressed him with the cool pleasant +detachment she reserved for those whom she knew slightly and cared for +not at all; Mrs. Groome, automatically gracious, would have retired +within the formidable fortress of an exterior built in the still more +exclusive eighties; Aunt Clara would have sat petrified with horror at +the desecration; and Mrs. Hunter, free from the obligations of +hospitality, would have been brusque, frankly supercilious, made him as +uncomfortable as possible. + +All this Alexina angrily resented, not knowing that their amiability +was in part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of +his cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him +as a possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them +all, even Mrs. Hunter, acute anxiety. + +Young Gathbroke was handsomer than Dwight. He was younger, and his +circumstances were far more romantic, if romance Alexina must have. It +was plain that he was fascinated by the dear silly child, who, in her +turn, would no doubt promptly forget the ineligible Dwight if the +Englishman proved to be serious and paid her persistent court. + +Nevertheless Gathbroke, before the luncheon was half over, felt that he +was making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on +one of those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive +mind, that these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all +its harrowing details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his +own consciousness with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits +and extinguishing a natural gayety and light chaff that had come back +for a moment. + +Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and +knew that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the +girl, who, he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, +was making a desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man. + +Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous +orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris +and revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to +add a British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's +possible torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather +despised him for his surrender before battle, or at all events for +hauling down his flag publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine +satisfaction to the calm smiling dominance, combined with utter +devotion, of the man who had won her as easily as she had conquered +Richard Gathbroke. That the young Englishman's nature was hot and +tempestuous, with depths that even he had not sounded, and her ideal +knight's more effective mien but the expression of a possibly meager +and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart was a well-trained +organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that young +Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower +girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was +far too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge +would have affected her had she possessed it. She was in the obstinate +phase of first youth, common enough in girls of her sheltered class, +where the opportunities to study men and their behavior are few. Having +persuaded herself that she was far more romantic than she really was, +and that there would be no possible happiness or indeed interest in +life after youth, she had conceived as her ideal mate the dominant +male, the complete master, and easily persuaded herself that she had +found him in Mortimer Dwight.... If she married Gathbroke he would be +her slave (so little did she know him.). Dwight would be her master. +(So little did she know him, or herself.) + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +After luncheon, grinning amiably when Mrs. Abbott hinted that +Englishmen liked to be out of doors, she led Gathbroke to the confines +of the park, where they sat down under one of the oaks that reminded +him of England; for which he was in truth desperately homesick, and +never more so than at this moment. + +Everything combined to make him realize uneasily his youth. In England +a man of twenty-three was a man-of-the-world if he had had the proper +opportunities; but this girl who had infatuated him, and even the far +more sympathetic Miss Dwight, made him feel that he was a mere boy; and +so had this entire family, however unwittingly. + + + +II + + +He spoke of Miss Dwight suddenly, for Alexina, who had been duly +enlightened while the men were smoking with Tom, had tactfully conveyed +her sympathy, her eyes almost round with fascinated horror and +curiosity. + +He set his teeth and gave a rapid but graphic account of the whole +dreadful episode, willing to interest her at any price; and Alexina, +sitting opposite on the ground, her long spine curved, her long arms +embracing her knees, listened with a breathless interest, spurring him +to potent words, even to stressing of detail. + +"My goodness gracious me!" she ejaculated when he paused. "I should +have gone raving mad. You are a perfect wonder. I never heard of +anything so gor--perfectly thrilling. And that girl, what did you say +her name was?" + +Gathbroke, who had purposely withheld it, said explosively: + +"Dwight." + +"Dwight?" + +"I think she is a sister of a friend of yours." And he was made as +miserable as he could wish by a crimson tide that swept straight from +her heart pump up to her widow's peak. + +"Dwight? Sister? I didn't know he had one. I saw him several times +during the fire and he didn't mention her." + +"I suspect he was too absorbed." Gathbroke muttered the words, but +man's instinct of loyalty to his own sex is strong. "A city doesn't +burn every day, you know." + +"Still ... what is she like? Like him?" + +"I do not remember him at all ... She? Oh, she has a tremendous amount +of dark hair that looks as if falling off the top of her head and down +her face. Uncommonly heavy eyebrows, and very light gray--Ah, I have +it! I have been groping for the word ever since--sinister eyes.... That +is the effect in that dark face. She has a curious character, I should +think. Not very frank. She--well, she rather struck me as having been +born for drama; tragic drama, I am afraid." + +"Not a bit like her brother. How old is she?" + +"Twenty-two, she told me." + +"What--what does she do? They are not a bit well off." + +He hesitated a moment. "Well--as I recall it, she is studying something +or other at the University of California." + +"And of course she boards down there with her brother, who takes care +of her while she is studying to be a teacher or something." Alexina +having arranged it to her satisfaction dismissed the subject. She had +no mind to betray herself to this good-looking young Englishman who had +been sent to her providentially on a very dull day. He would, no doubt, +have been frantically interesting if he had not been so idiotic as to +fall head over ears the first shot. + +Still ... Alexina examined him covertly as he transferred his gaze for +a moment to the mountains across the distant bay, swimming now in a +pale blue mist with a wide banner of pale pink above them.... If she +had met him first, or had never met the other at all ... who knew? + + + +III + + +Alexina, for all her passion for romance, had a remarkably level head. +She was quite aware that there had been a certain amount of +deliberation in her own headlong plunge, convinced as she was that high +romance belonged to youth alone, and fearful lest it pass her by; aware +also that a part of Dwight's halo, aside from his looks and manners and +chivalrous charm, consisted in his being a martyr to an unjust fate, +and, as such, under the ban of her august family. It was all quite too +perfect.... But if Gathbroke had come first his qualifications might +have proved quite as puissant, and no doubt Tom Abbott, who retained +his school-history hatred of the entire English race, would have +provided the opposition and perhaps influenced the family. + +She swept her intoxicating lashes along the faint bloom high on her +olive cheeks and then raised her eyes suddenly to the tormented ones +opposite. She also smiled softly, alluringly, as little fascinating +wretches will who know nothing of the passions of men. + +"I think you should follow Mr. Gwynne's example and stay here with us." +He thought of silver chimes and contrasted her voice with Gora Dwight's +angry contralto: he always thought of Gora in phrases. "So many +Englishmen live out here and adore it." + +"I'm perfectly satisfied with my own country, thank you." + +Alexina, who was feeling intensely American at the moment, curled her +lip. "Oh, of course. We have had plenty of those, too. Scarcely any of +them becomes naturalized. Just use and enjoy the country and give as +little in return as possible." + +"Really? I fancy they must give rather a lot in return or they would +hardly be tolerated. No native has worked harder than Elton these last +days. I understand most of them are in business or ranching and have +married California girls." + +"Oh, they have redeeming points." And then having satisfied her +curiosity as to how hazel eyes looked when angry she gave him a +dazzling smile. "We love them like brothers, and that is a proof that +we are not snobbish, for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's +class--just middle-class business people at home." + +"Well, you are a business nation, so why not? I have met hardly any but +business men out here and I feel quite at home with them. My mother's +family are in trade and I enjoy myself immensely when I visit them." + +"Oh!" His halo slipped.... Still, what did it matter? "I suppose you +told me that to let me know you didn't need to come out here in search +of an heiress. But many of our most charming girls are not. Just now it +seems to me that more young men in California have money than girls ... +but they are so uninteresting." + +She looked pathetic, her mouth drooped; then she smiled at him +confidingly. + +He knew quite as well as if he had not been hard hit that she was +flirting with him, but as long as she gave him his chance to win her +she might do her transparent little best to make a fool of him. + +"Have you ever been in love?" asked Alexina softly. + +"Oh, about half-way several times, but always drew back in time ... +knew it wasn't the real thing ... Youth fools itself, you know, for the +sake of the sensation--or the race. Have you?" + +"Oh--" Alexina lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time +her color did not flow. "How is one to tell ... a girl in her first +season ... when all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with +them, when you have been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a +glimpse of life even in vacation. My New York relatives are terribly +old-fashioned. It's great fun to give one man all the dances and watch +the dado of dowagers look disapproving." And once more she gave him the +quick smile of understanding that springs so spontaneously between +youth and youth. + +"Well ... you might have given all those dances to me the other night, +instead of to that fellow Dwight." + +"Oh, but you see, I had already promised them to him. Lady Victoria +always comes so late." + +"That's true enough." His spirits rose a trifle. + +"When do you go--back to England, I mean? Not for a good long time, I +hope. We have awfully good times down here. Janet Maynard and Olive +Bascom live at San Mateo in the summer, and Aileen Lawton at +Burlingame. They are my chums and we'd give you a ripping time. We'd +like to have you take away the pleasantest possible memory of +California instead of such a terrible one. I don't mean anything very +gay of course. You mustn't think I'm heartless." And she showed the +lower pearl of her eyes and looked like a madonna. + +"I'm afraid I must go soon. I've had an extension of leave already, and +Hofer told me just before we left to-day that he thought he could let +me have his private car inside of a week. They've been using it." + + + +IV + + +There was not a dwelling in sight. The quiet of that old park with its +brooding oaks was primeval. Behind her was the pink and blue glory of +sky and mountain. Her eyes were like stars. + +He burst out boyishly: "If I only had more time! If only I could have +met you even when I first came to San Francisco ... before ... before +... I'd--I'd like to marry you. It's fearfully soon to say such a +thing. I feel like a fool. But I'm not the first man to fall madly in +love at first sight ... and you ... you ... If I tell you now instead +of waiting it's because there's so little time. Would you ... do you +think you could marry me?" + +"Oh! Ah!" (She almost said Ow.) After all it was her first proposal. +She was thrilled in spite of the fact that she was in love with another +man, for she felt close to something elemental, hazily understood ... +something in her own unsounded depths rushed to meet it. + +But he was too young, and too "easy," and she didn't like his gray +flannel shirt; which, laundry being out of the question, he had bought +in Fillmore Street almost opposite the undertaker's. + +"Suppose we correspond for a year? That is, if you must really go so +soon." + +"I must. I want you to go with me." + +His eyes had turned almost black and he had set his jaw in a way she +didn't like at all. In nerving himself to go through the ordeal he had +worked up his fermenting mind into a positively brutal mood. + +"Oh--mercy! I couldn't do that. My people are the most conventional in +the world." + +The situation was getting beyond her. She had not intended to make him +propose for at least a week and then he would have been abject and she +majestic. She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that +made her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at +bay as it were, looked at him with a little frown. + +He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less. + +"Are you refusing me outright?" he demanded. "That would be only fair, +you know, if I have no chance." + +"Well.... I think so. That is--" + +"Do you love another man?" + +Coquetry flashed back. Nevertheless, she told the exact truth little as +she suspected it. + +"I love myself, and youth, and life, and liberty. What is a man in +comparison with all that?" + +"This." And before she could make another leap he had her in his arms; +and under the fire of his lips and eyes she lay inert, intoxicated, her +first flash of young passion completely responsive to his. + +But only for a moment. + +She wrenched herself away, her face livid, her eyes black with fury. +She beat his chest with her fists. + +"You! You! How I hate you! To think I should have given that to you ... +to think that another man should have been the first to kiss me ... I'm +in love with another man, I tell you. Why don't you go? I hate myself +and I never want to lay eyes on you again. Go! Go! Go!" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +During the retreat from Mons and again in those black days of March, +nineteen-eighteen, Gathbroke's tormented mind snapped from the present +and flashed on its screen so startling a resurrection of himself during +those last dreadful days in San Francisco that for the moment he was +unconscious of the world crashing about him. + +He saw himself in long days and nights of anguish and despair, of +embittered love and baffled passion: youth enjoying one of its divine +prerogatives and the fullness thereof! + +Pacing the floor of his room on Russian Hill, tramping over the +mountains across the Bay, doggedly awaiting that sole alleviation of +mental suffering in its early stages, a change of scene. + +Finally the Hofer car was placed at his disposal and he started on his +four days' journey to New York; and this brief chapter, that his +friends thought so gruesome, was the least of his afflictions. The +memory of his twenty-four hours or more of close physical association +with his sister's corpse made any subsequent adventure with the dead +seem tame. And at least he was leaving behind him a State which seemed +to have magnetized him across six thousand miles to experience the +horror and misery she had in pickle for him. He reveled in the audible +rush of the train that was carrying him farther every moment from the +girl who had cut down into the core of his heart and left her indelible +image on a remarkably good memory. + + + +II + + +He had asked himself one day--it was his last in California and he had +taken his courage in his teeth and was on his way to call on Gora +Dwight at last, picking his steps through, the still smoking ruins down +to Van Ness Avenue--whether it would be possible for any man to suffer +twice in a lifetime as he had suffered since that hideous moment at +Rincona, coming as it did on top of an uncommon and terrible experience +that had racked his nerves and soul as it might not have done had he +been seasoned by war or even a few years older. At all events it had +left him with no reserves even in his pride to fight his failure and +his loss. + +In that shrieking hell of August twenty-sixth, or again when lying +abandoned and gassed in a way-side hut during that ominous retreat of +the Fifth Army, when he had a sudden close vision of himself, trousers +tucked into a pair of Gwynne's hunting boots, swearing now and again as +he stepped on a hot brick; and heard his groping ego whisper the +question through his prostrate mind, he was tempted to answer aloud, to +shout "No" above the shrieking of shells and the groans of men fallen +about him. + +He might no longer love Alexina Groome after twelve or even eight years +of complete severance; and, indeed, save in flashing moments like these +he had seldom thought of her after the first two or three years; but at +least she had taken the edge from his power to suffer. + +He had lost his mother soon after his return with the body of her +youngest child, his father had died three years later, and he had +accepted these griefs with the composure of maturity. Although he had +had some agreeable adventures (not that he had had much time for either +women or society) he had taken devilish good care not to get in too +deep--even if he still possessed the power to love at all, which he +doubted. + +He remembered also, what he had almost forgotten, that during that walk +it had come to him with the sharpness of surprise that the image of the +girl who clung to his mind with the tentacles of a devil-fish, was as +he had seen her standing under the oak tree while unaware of his +presence: older, a more dignified and thoughtful figure, a woman old +enough to be his mate in something more than youthful passion, the +ideal woman of vague sweet dreams; not as the thoughtless little +coquette who had tempted him to ruin his chances by acting like a cave +brute. + +Given a fortnight longer, during which he remained master of himself +instead of a young fool with a smashed temperament, and the unfledged +woman in her, whose subtle projection he had witnessed during that +moment of his capitulation, would have recognized him as her mate; as +for the moment she had in his arms. + +Not the least of his ordeals during those last days was the inevitable +call on Gora Dwight. He felt like a cad, after what she had been to him +at the end of an appalling experience, to have let, nearly three weeks +go by with no apparent recognition of her existence. But he had been +unable to find a messenger, there was no post; and then, after his +ill-starred visit to Rincona, he had forgotten her until his final +visit to the undertaker; when she had seemed to stand, an indignant and +reproachful figure, at the head of the casket. + + + +III + + +He had a note in his pocket and hoped she would be out. But she opened +the door herself, and her dark face, thinner than he recalled it, +flushed and then turned pale. But she said calmly as she extended her +hand: "Come in. I wondered what had become of you." "I'm sorry. +But--perhaps--you can understand--it was not easy for me to come here!" + +"Of course. Come up to my diggings." + +He followed her up to the attic studio, where as before he took the +easy chair and accepted one of her cigarettes; which he professed to be +grateful for as his were exhausted and every decent brand in town had +gone up in smoke. + +Gora was deeply disappointed that she had received no warning of his +call, for she possessed an extremely becoming and richly embroidered +silk Chinese costume, as red as the flames that had devoured Chinatown +a few days after she had bought it at a bankrupt sale. She had put it +on every afternoon for a week, hoping and expecting that he would call; +and now that she had on her second-best tailored suit, and a darned if +immaculate shirtwaist, he had chosen to turn, up! ... But at least the +lapels of the jacket had recently been faced with red, and it curved +closely over her beautiful bust. Moreover, she had just finished +rearranging the masses of her rich brown hair when the bell rang. + +And she had him for a time, perhaps for an hour! She set out the tea +things as an intimation of the refreshment he would get at the proper +time.... + +She too had suffered during this past interminable fortnight, but Gora +was far more mature than the young Englishman, upon whom life until the +last few weeks had smiled so persistently. She was too complex, she had +suffered in too many ways, from too many causes, not all of them +elevating, to be capable upon so short a notice, even after a night of +unique companionship, of such whole-souled agony and despair. In her +imagination, her sense of drama, her vanity, in the fading of vague +dazzling hopes of a future to which he held the key, and perhaps a +little in her stormy heart, she had felt a degree of harsh +disappointment, but she had already half-recovered; and as she sat +looking at his ravaged face she wondered that the death of a sister, no +matter how harrowing the conditions, could make such a wreck of any man. + +He told her of his difficulties in finding some one to remove the body +from the vault to the undertaker's, of the delay in obtaining a private +car, gave her some idea of his disorganized life since they had parted, +but made no mention of Alexina Groome or Rincona. Then he politely +asked her if she had any new plans for the future. Nobody seemed to +look forward to the same old life. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders with a movement expressive of irritation. +"My brother, who is engaged to Alexina Groome, insists that I give up +this lodging house." + +"Oh, so they are engaged?" Gathbroke lit another cigarette, and his +hand did not tremble; he felt as if his nerves had been immersed in ice +water and frozen. + +"Yes--marvelously. The family, as might be expected, is furious. But +the girl is mad about him and of age. She is just a foolish child and +should be locked up. My brother is not in the least what she imagines +him. She wrote me a letter. Good heaven! One would think she had +captured the prince of a fairy tale, or the hero of an old romantic +novel. There should be a law prohibiting girls from marrying before +they are twenty-two at least.... However, the thing is done. And my +brother is terribly afraid they'll find out that I keep a lodging +house. He's given them to understand we both board here. They are prime +snobs and so is he. I never dreamed it was in him until he began to go +about in society, but then you never know what is in anybody. +Otherwise, he is harmless enough, and a good industrious boy, but he'll +never make the money to keep up with that set, and she won't have much. +It's a stupid affair all round...." + +"I've refused to budge until he finds me a job. He certainly cannot +support me, even if I were willing to be supported by any one. As far +as I am concerned they could know I kept a lodging house and welcome. +It is honest and it gives me a good living; and, what I value more, +many hours of freedom. But Mortimer is not only positively terrified +they'll find it out, but he is as obstinate over it as--well, as that +kind of man always is. He's looking about, and I fancy my fate is +stenography or bookkeeping: I took a course at a business college +shortly before my mother died. I don't know that he'd like that much +better; he hinted that I might be a librarian in a small town. But I'll +be hanged if I fall for that." + +Gathbroke smiled. "Not that. You don't belong to the country town. But +I fancy you'll have to give up the lodging house. Elton Gwynne took me +down the Peninsula one day, and--well--I don't fancy they would stand +for it. Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over. They may talk +democracy, and really modify themselves a bit, but there are certain +things they'd choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't +even try. Better give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I +don't fancy you'd stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. +You've got to know and be more or less intimate with them all--" + +"I'll not be patronized by them. I don't know that I'll go near them. +For years I've resented that I was not one of them, but I don't fancy +tagging in after my brother, treated with pleasant courteous +resignation, invited once a year to a family dinner, and quite +forgotten on smart occasions." + +"Quite so. I like your spunk. Have you thought of being a nurse? All +work is hard and I should think that would be interesting. Must meet a +jolly lot of people. You should see the becoming uniforms the London +nurses wear. Prettiest women on the street, by Jove." + +Her heart sank but she replied evenly: "Not a bad idea. I've quite +enough saved to take the course comfortably--" + +He had a flash of memory. "And that would give you time to win your +reputation as a writer. Then the nursing would be merely one more +resource." + +"It was nice of you to remember that. I'll consider the nursing +proposition, and when you have your next war I'll go over and nurse +you. That part of it--a war nurse--would be mighty interesting." + +The words were spoken idly, merely to avert a pause, and forgotten as +soon as uttered. But as a matter of fact the next time they met was +when he looked up from his cot in the hospital after he had been +retrieved from the hut by two of his devoted Tommies, and saw the odd +pale eyes of Gora Dwight close above his own. + + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Gora closed the door of Mrs. Groome's room as the clock struck two, the +old Ballinger clock that had seemed to toll the hours on a deep note of +solemn acquiescence for the past six weeks. + +She crossed the hall and entered Alexina's room without knocking. +Mortimer, during the past fortnight, had moved from the room adjoining +his wife's to one at the back of the house, lest it should be necessary +to call Alexina in the night. He worked very hard. + +Alexina still occupied her old room in the front of the house where the +creaking eucalyptus trees sometimes brushed the window pane. It had +been refurnished and fitted in various elusive shades of pink by Mrs. +Abbott as her wedding present. There was a dim point of light above a +gas jet and Gora saw that Alexina was asleep. The pillows were on the +floor. She was lying flat, her arms thrown out, the dusky fine mass of +her hair spread over the low head board. Her clear olive cheeks were +pale with sleep and her eyelashes looked like two little black clouds. + +Gora watched her for a moment. Why awaken the poor child? She was +sleeping as peacefully as if that tall old clock of her forefathers had +not tolled out the last of another generation of Ballingers. Her soft +red lips were half parted. + +It was now three years since her marriage but she still looked like a +very young girl. Gora always felt vaguely sorry for her although she +seemed happy enough. At all events it was quite obvious that she did +little thinking except when she remembered to wish for a baby. + +Gora wore the white uniform of a nurse, and a little cap with wings on +the coronet of her heavy hair. It was a becoming costume and made her +eyes in their dark setting look less pale and cold. + +She had a secret contempt for most of the old conventions but she had +given her word to awaken Alexina the moment any change occurred, and +she reluctantly shook her sister-in-law's shoulder. + + + +II + + +Alexina sprang out of bed on the instant. + +"Mother?" she cried. "Is she worse?" + +Gora nodded. + +Alexina made a dart for the door, but Gora threw a strong arm about +her. Those arms had held more than one violent man in his bed. "Better +wait," she said softly. + +Alexina's body grew rigid as she slowly drew back on Gora's arm and +stared up at her. In a moment she asked in a hard steady voice: "Is my +mother dead?" + +"Yes. It was very sudden. I had no time to telephone for the doctor; to +call you. She was sleeping. I was sitting beside her. Suddenly I knew +that she had stopped breathing--" + +"Would you mind telephoning to Maria and Sally? Maria will never +forgive herself--but mother seemed so much better--" + +"I will telephone at once. Shall I call Mortimer?" + +"No. Why disturb him?" + +Gora, watching Alexina, saw a curious remoteness enter the depths of +her eyes, and her own narrowed with something of her old angry +resentment. In this hour of profound sorrow, when the human heart is +quite honest, Alexina, however her conscious mind might be averted from +the fact, regarded Mortimer Dwight as an outsider, an agreeable alien +who had no permanent place in the immense permanency of the +Ballinger-Groomes. She wanted only her own family, her own inherent +sort. Sally had hastened to California as soon as her mother's illness +had been pronounced dangerous, and had stayed in the house until a week +ago when she had been ordered by the doctor to Santa Barbara to get rid +of a heavy cold on her chest. She had telegraphed the day before that +she was threatened with pneumonia, and Maria, assured that her mother +was in no immediate danger, had gone down to spend two days with her. + +Possibly Alexina caught a flash from the mind of this strange and +interesting sister-in-law, for she added hastily: + +"You know how hard Mortimer works, poor dear. And I do not feel in the +least like crying. I shall write telegrams to Ballinger and Geary: my +brothers, you know." (Gora ground her teeth.) "It was too sad they +could not get here, but Ballinger is in South America and Geary on a +diet. I must also write a cablegram to an old friend of mine who has +married a Frenchman, Olive de Morsigny. She was always so fond of +mother. Would you also mind telephoning to Rincona about seven?" + +"I'll do all the telephoning. Go back to bed as soon as possible. It is +only a little after two." As Gora turned to leave the room Alexina put +her hand on her arm and summoned a faint sweet smile. + +"I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Gora dear, how grateful we all +are. You have been simply wonderful--" + +"I am a good nurse if I do say it myself," said Gora lightly. "But you +must remember there are others quite as good; and that I--". + +"I know you would do your duty as devotedly by any stranger." Alexina +interrupted her with sweet insistence. "But it has been wonderful to be +able to have you, all the same. It has also given me the chance to know +you at last, and I shall never quite let you go again." + +Gora, to her secret anger, had never accustomed herself to the +unswerving graciousness of these people, and all that it implied, but +her sharp mind had long since warned her that as she had neither the +position nor the training to emulate it, at least she must not betray a +sense of social inferiority by open resentment. + +Her voice was deep and naturally abrupt but she achieved a fair +imitation of Alexina's sweet cordiality. "It has meant quite as much to +me, Alexina, I can assure you. And now that I am on my own and shall +have a day or two between cases I know where I shall spend them. I am +only too thankful that I graduated in time to take care of dear Mrs. +Groome. Write your telegrams and I will give them to the doctor when he +comes. I must telephone to him at once." + + + +III + + +After she had gone Alexina wrote not only her telegrams and cablegrams, +but the "letters to follow." It was nearly four o'clock when she +finished. Old Dr. Maitland had not yet come and she put her bulletins +on the table in the hall. + +She heard Gora moving about her mother's room and retreated into her +own. She did not want to go to her mother yet nor did she care +particularly to see Gora again, although she had certainly been very +nice and a great comfort to them all. + +Alexina was quite unaware that her attitude to her sister-in-law was +one of unconsicous condescension, of a well-bred determination never to +wound the pride of a social inferior. She found Gora an "interesting +personality" and quite extraordinarily efficient. + +It had been the greatest relief to all the family when that very +capable Miss Dwight--Gora, that is; one must remember--had been brought +by Dr. Maitland to take charge of the case after Mrs. Groome's cardiac +trouble became acute and she demanded constant attention. + +Gora had slept in Mrs. Groome's bedroom for six weeks, relieved for +several hours of the afternoon by a member of the family or one of Mrs. +Groome's many anxious friends. It was her first case and it interested +her profoundly. Moreover, her personal devotion placed her for the +moment on a certain basis of equality with a family whose mental +processes were quite transparent to her contemptuous mind. She was +excessively annoyed with herself for still caring, but the roots were +too deep, and there had been nothing in her life during the past three +years to diminish her fierce sense of democracy as she interpreted it. + +Alexina had never given a thought to her sister-in-law's psychology, +although the sensitive plates of her brain received an impression now +and again of a violent inner life behind that business-like exterior. +But she had seen little of her until lately, and during the past six +weeks her mind had been too concentrated upon her mother's sufferings +and possible danger to have any disposition for analysis. + +She certainly did not feel the least need of her now. She wished, +indeed, that she had asked Aileen to remain in the house last night. +Aileen was her own age, they had been intimate since childhood, often +without the slightest regard for each other's feelings, and was more +like a sister than even dear Sally and Maria. + +Suddenly she determined to go to her. She had her own latch key and +would disturb no one but Aileen. She dressed herself warmly and slipped +down stairs and out of the house. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +The city below--the new solid city--was obliterated under a heavy fog, +pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged +dark rocks in that white and tranquil sea. + +On Angel Island and on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells +were tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond +the Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. +The bells sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other +sound in the sleeping city. + +Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the +hood over her head. + +As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with +something of a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she +had expressed to Gora her reluctance to disturb him. + +She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the +house at four o'clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl +friend when any other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) +would have flown to her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms. + +And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as +irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He +assuredly would have said just the right things to her and not have +resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest. + +On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only +was he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was +unorthodox, and he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly. + +Well, she didn't want him and that was the end of it. He didn't fill +the present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had +quite measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made +love charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager +spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o'clock every evening +never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately +afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that +they made a "stunning couple" and that people commented upon their good +looks, their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in +nature's coloring. + + + +II + + +Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her +mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she +knew that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the +suddenness of her mother's death, and that her emotions would be fluid +a few hours hence. + +They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother's +illness. As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent +him the insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a +modest exporting and importing house, that being the only business of +which he had any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested +that he open an insurance office, or start himself in any business +where little capital besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs. +Groome's advisors they were averse to launching any of her moderate +fortune on a doubtful venture. But Dwight had insisted that he was more +likely to succeed in a business he understood than in one of which he +knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed with him. Judge Lawton and +Abbott paid over the insurance money with the worst grace possible. + +And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His +aunt Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore +soon after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been +recapitalized and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring's executor had +sold her stock for something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering +the proceeds, as directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, +Mortimer and Gora Dwight. + +Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever +Harrison and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a +department in time and safely anchored for life; but he had taken the +step, and she reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a +business with which he had been associated for fourteen years, she knew +his energy and powers of application, and she resented the attitude of +"the family." Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had +consented to invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to +make immediate restitution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his +"stock did go up" with the family, particularly as he seemed to be +doing well and had the reputation of working harder than any young man +on the street. As he had anticipated, a good deal of business was +thrown his way. + +He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome's invitation to live +with her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the +current expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would +she be lonely without the child of her old age, but she must desire +that Alexina continue to live in the conditions to which she was +accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome consented to accept would not have kept +them in a fashionable family hotel, much less an apartment with several +servants. + +Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live +across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their +offspring never ceased. + +Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed "simply +great," and had continued to feed from her mother's hand even in the +matter of pin money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to +put his surplus profits back in his business; all he could spare he +needed for "front," to say nothing of pleasant little dinners at +restaurants to their hospitable young friends; who thought it no +adequate return to be asked to dine on Ballinger Hill. + +Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have +done, considering the "hard times;" or at least she would have +preferred that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly +allowance; she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure +supported by her husband. + +However, she and her mother assured each other that he was bound to +make a fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large +as that of Sibyl Thorndyke, who had married Frank Bascom. + +It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete +words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no +responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her +imagination on that plane sometimes called the fool's paradise. + + + +III + + +She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for +children. They would have been the real thing, given a serious +translation to life. + +But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and +with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long +chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have +asked for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his +working hours were over. + +Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to +watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they +spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter's magnificent "villa" at Burlingame. +Even Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they +had spent the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on +equal terms with many millionaires. + + + +IV + + +It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona +during their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family +had grimly surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement. + +Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on +the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, +Susan Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott's sisters, whose homes +were in Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now +Atherton) who had married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as +one united family. They met every day, wandering in and out at all +hours, and although they had many healthy disagreements they agreed on +all the fine old fundamentals, and they stood by one another through +thick and thin. + +The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished +asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and +smart as Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt +Clara, who was only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, +and her face was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as +loosely as her old wrapper. + +All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new +refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the +awful pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and +stuffed an infant's flannel petticoat into her mouth to muffle her +giggles. + +Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the +Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, +which was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts +to be "nice" of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he +arrived, and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings +must be spared, every moment. + +Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from +under the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court. + +In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their +gracious civil "kind" attitude had never varied, save only when their +consciences hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they +were not only heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice. + +Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking +his after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines +had been planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of +the park where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of +England, the guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the +eighties who faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott +and Coralie Geary. + +From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he +played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given +them in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he +was duller. + + + +V + + +Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, +Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling. + +For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied +topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely +painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an +attempt merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the +mayor, and his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably +resolved itself into a declaration of war, with State's Prison as its +goal, upon some of the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco. + +The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, +bent upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, +and the basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter +of course that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in +private their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to +the board of supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be +only too glad to expose the malefactors. + +But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of +admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and +bribery. They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or +renounce their great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law +had technical terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so +had the public. + +All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city +administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of +which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred +thousand dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. +Supervisors, by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand +Jury indicted not only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of +eminent citizens. + +Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now +and again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand +Thornton, at a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, +and Mrs. Hofer gave a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament. + +The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his +historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the +court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his +cell. There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would +reinstitute the lynch law of the fifties. + +Nothing came of it all but such a prolonged exposure of general +vileness that it was possible to effect a certain number of reforms +later by popular vote. The system remained inviolate, even during the +mayorship of a fine old citizen too estimable to build up a rival +machine; and the men of the prosecution, after many bitter harassed +months, when they walked and slept with their lives in their hands, +resigned themselves to the fact that no San Francisco jury would ever +convict a man who had the money to bribe it. + +All this had given Mortimer abundant material for conversation and he +had entertained Mrs. Groome and Alexina night after night with a report +of the day's events and the gossip of the street. Mrs. Groome had been +intensely interested, for this upheaval reminded her of personal +episodes in the life of her husband and father, the latter having been +a member of the vigilance committees of the fifties. + +She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to +bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina +to invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle +were accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, +nothing could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to +follow the example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer. + +Alexina had never been interested in the details of the prosecution; +the large moments of the drama and the social convulsions were enough +for her. She refused to cut Mrs. Hofer, although she ceased to call on +her, as her mother and her husband made such a point of it; but she +gave little thought to the sorrows of that ambitious young matron. She +had other fish to fry. + +Two great hotels whose interiors had been swept by the fire were +renovated and furnished and their restaurants and ballrooms eagerly +patronized. The Assembly balls were resumed. There were dinners and +dances in the Western Addition, where many of the finest homes in the +city had been built during the past ten or twenty years; and +entertaining Down the Peninsula had not paused for more than two months +after the disaster. + +Nevertheless, she had exulted in the fact that the husband of her +choice was able to please and entertain her mother-no easy feat. +Moreover, as time went on and interest in the Graft Prosecution wore +thin, it was evident that Mortimer had established himself firmly in +his mother-in-law's graces. He was not only the perfect husband but the +son of her old age. + +She had lost Ballinger and Geary in her comparative youth, and Tom was +rarely in the house when she visited Rincona. But Mortimer was as +devoted to her in the little ways so appreciated by women of any age as +he was to his wife, and he was noiseless in the house and as prompt as +the clock. During her illness his devotion touched even Mrs. Abbott, +although Mrs. Groome was the only member of the family he ever won over. + + + +VI + + +Poor Morty. In a way he was a failure, after all. The men of her set +did not seem to care any more for him than they did before her +marriage, although they were always polite and amiable; and the promise +of those old family friends to throw business in his way seemed to be +forgotten as time went on. + +No doubt they had thought he was able to stand on his own feet after a +while, but he had often looked depressed during the panic of +nineteen-seven and the long period of business drought that had +followed. Still, he had managed to hold his own, and his constitutional +optimism was unshaken. He _knew_ that when times changed he would soon +be a rich man, and Alexina shared his faith. Not that she had ever +cared particularly for great wealth, but he talked so much about it +that he had excited her imagination; after all money was the thing +these days, no doubt of that, and she had heard "poor talk" all her +life and was tired of it. + +Moreover, nothing could be more positive than that if Morty's father +had made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and +administered it with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons +of rich men to-day from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he +would be as logically intimate with those young capitalists who were +the renewed pillars of San Francisco society, as she was with the most +aloof and important of her own sex. + +She had heard Judge Lawton and other men say that if a man were still a +clerk at thirty he was hopeless. The ruts were packed with the mediocre +whose destiny was the routine work of the world, whatever might be +their secret opinions of their unrecognized abilities and their +resentment against a system that anchored them. + +The young man of brains and initiative, of energy, ambition, vision and +balance, provided he were honorable as well, and temperate in his +pleasures, was the man the eager world was always waiting for. + +Alexina knew that the United States was almost as prolific in this fine +breed of young men as she still was in opportunities for the +exceptional of every class. + +And it was possible that Mortimer was not one of them. + +Once more she put a fact into bald words. She knew that her butterfly +youth had come to an end with her mother's death, and for a year she +should be very much alone, to say nothing of her new burden of +responsibilities. Thinking during that period was inevitable. She might +as well begin now. + +Mortimer had some of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was +ambitious and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his +brain was clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that +it lacked originality. + +Did it also lack initiative, resource, that peculiar alertness and +quick pouncing quality of which she had heard? She wished she knew, but +she had never discussed her husband with any one. Certainly he had +stood still. Or was that merely the fault of the hard times? She had +heard other men complain as bitterly. + +"Fate handed you a lemon, old girl." + +Alexina could almost hear Aileen's mocking voice. She even gave a +startled glance down the quiet avenue. Well, she would never discuss +him with Aileen or any one else. + +Did she love him any longer? Had she ever loved him? What was love? She +had been quite happy with him in her own little way. What did girls of +eighteen know of love? Deliberately in her youthful arrogance and +unlicensed imagination she had manufactured a fool's paradise; and, a +hero being indispensable, had dragged him in after her. + +Perhaps she still loved him. She had read and seen enough to know that +love changed its character as the years went on. She respected his many +admirable qualities and she would never forget his devotion to her +mother. + +She certainly liked him. And the family attitude roused her obstinate +championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good +friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately +selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. +He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not +the masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate +enough to have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving +devotion to her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received +Bob Cheever one afternoon when she was alone, and had forbidden her +ever to receive a man in the daytime again. If men wanted to call on a +married woman they could do so in the evening. She no longer danced +more than twice with any man at a party, and he refused to read her +favorite books, new or old, and chilled any attempt to discuss them in +his presence. + + + +VII + + +Well, after all, what did it matter? She had dreamed her dream and he +was better than most. She sprang to her feet and ran down the hill and +across the street to the house of Judge Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Gora waited until her brother had finished his bath and returned to his +room. When she was admitted he had a brush in either hand polishing his +pale brown immaculately cut hair. He turned to her, startled, his good +American gray eyes showing no trace of sleep. He always awoke with +alert mind and refreshed body. + +"What is it? Not--" + +Gora nodded. "At two this morning. Alexina wouldn't let me call you--" + +His wide masculine eyebrows met. It was correct to be angry and he was. +"I never heard of such a thing--" + +"She was not a bit overcome and wrote letters to her brothers and +friends for at least two hours. It really wouldn't have been worth +while to disturb you--I must say I was astonished; thought she'd go to +pieces--but you never know." + +"I'll go to her at once." + +"I'd dress first. Aileen Lawton is with her." + +Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned +half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and +never descended to small game. + +"Oh, of course!" Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out +a pair of black socks. "I like Aileen well enough, but she has +altogether too much influence over Alexina. She'd have more than myself +if I didn't keep a close watch." + +"I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as +time goes on. She hasn't that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean +things in some people." + +He gave her a quick suspicious glance, but her pale gray eyes were +fixed on the windmill beyond the window, that odd old landmark in a now +fashionable quarter of San Francisco. + +"I shall always control her," he said, setting his large finely cut +lips. "I wish her to remain a child as long as possible, for she is +quite perfect as she is. She is bright and all that, but of course she +has no intellect--" + +Gora forgot her message of death and laughed outright. + +"Men--American men, anyhow--are really the funniest things in the +world. Even intellectual men are absurd in their patronizing attitude +toward the cleverest of women; but when it conies to mere masculine +arrogance ... don't you really respect any woman's brains?" + +"I never denied that some women were clever and all that, but the best +of them cannot compare with men. You must admit that." + +"I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste +any time in argument--" + +"My type?" + +She longed to reply: "The smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his +mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's shell +or the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But +she never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion +of his endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of +secret amusement. + +"Oh, you're all alike," she said lightly, and added: "Don't be too sure +that Alexina hasn't intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from +this beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it +might escape her, and begins to think--" + +"I'll do her thinking." + +"All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job.... I'll +clear out; you want to dress--" + +"Wait a moment." He sat down to draw on his socks. "I'm really cut up +over Mrs. Groome's death. She was my only friend in this damn family, +and I coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on +for twenty years." + +"I wondered how you liked them as time went on." + +He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. "I hate the whole +pack of superior patronizing condescending snobs, and it is all I can +do to keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by +God!"--he brought down his fist on his knee--"I'll beat them at their +own game yet. I simply live to make a million and build a house at +Burlingame. They really respect money as much as they think they don't; +I've got oil to that. When I'm a rich roan they'll think of me as their +equal and forget I was ever anything' else." + +"Well, don't speculate," said Gora uneasily. "Remember that luck was +left out of our family." + +"My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to +wait until this period of dry rot passes--" + +"But you're not speculating?" + +He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own. + +"I answer questions about my private affairs to no one." + +"They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital." + +"You have received your interest regularly, have you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well +as the man's opportunities, and you do not." + +"I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you +are doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand--" + +"What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?" + +"Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a +fling. I shall want to go to New York and Europe." + +"And you would throw away your capital!" + +"Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will +find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction +writing for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything +published, and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York +magazines: one of the old group and two of the best of the popular +magazines." + +He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to +alarm. "I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think +themselves so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and +all that as about on a level with the working class--" + +"I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They worship +success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for +people engaged in any of the art careers--with whom they practically +never come in contact, by the way--is partly an instinctive distrust of +anything they cannot do themselves and partly because they have an +Elizabethan idea that all artists are common and have offensive +manners." + +"I don't like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may +unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living--and that you shall +never do when I am rich--but they have no business putting their names +up before the public like men." + +Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim +fathers, of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact +from old John Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American +classic face that is passing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the +last drop from a long forgotten "tar brush," or the sly recurrent +Biblical profile. + +"We will make a bargain," she said calmly. "I will ask you no more +questions about your business for a year--when, if convenient, I should +like my money--and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to +have. It won't do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions +about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina. +You've got your hands full there. See you at breakfast." And she shut +the door on an indignant worried and disgusted brother. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife's door, was bidden to enter he +found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears +running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had +given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took +his wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical +in its reaction from the insensibility of the morning. + +"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his +sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--" + +"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the +office for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; +Sally is better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an +hour. Tom and I will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not +to think." + +"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it. +But I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!" + +But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of +morning starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by +degrees and sent him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her +grief was over. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's +bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with +her father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear +old thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the +days when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel +Hill was called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they +both should have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the +English say. Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as +fond of your father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine +that he is your father from this time forth, and come to him when you +are in doubt about anything." + +Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. "I have sometimes thought +uncle daddy didn't like Mortimer." + +"On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard +work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But +of course Mortimer is young--in business, that is; and father +thinks--but you had better talk with him." + +"No. Why should I? But I don't mind you. At least I could not discuss +Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me +to put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as +trustees--ignoring Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria's +fortune has been kept intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, +but that men in business are likely to get into tight places and use +their wife's money. Nothing would induce Mortimer to touch my money, +but he would feel pretty badly cut up if I let any one else look after +my affairs. Of course I wouldn't even discuss the matter with Tom. And +if Morty does need money at any time I'll lend it to him. Why not? What +else would any one expect me to do?" + +"Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot. +No one doubts Mortimer's good faith, but the times are awful, money has +paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the +stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes +you will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see--the +times are so abnormal, Mortimer hasn't had time to prove his abilities +yet; he's just been able to hold on; and if things don't mend and he +should lose out, why--if you still have your own little fortune, at +least you'll not be any worse off than, you are now. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. +They always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able +to hold on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of +course we shall live here and run the house--as mother did. I couldn't +bear to live anywhere else, and Morty adores it too." + +"Oh, rather. I couldn't imagine you anywhere else." + +"Geary and Ballinger sent me ten thousand dollars for a wedding present +and Morty bought some bonds for me, but I'm going to sell a few and +refurnish the lower rooms. I love the old house but I like cheerful +modern things. The poor old parlors and dining-room do look like +sarcophagi." + +"Good. I'll help. We'll have no end of fun." + + + +II + + +There was a pause and then Alexina said: "Mortimer is so determined to +be a rich man and thinks of so little else and works so hard, that he +is bound to be. Otherwise, such gifts would be meaningless." + +She made the statements with an unconscious rising inflection. Aileen +did not answer and turned her sharp revealing green eyes on the +eucalyptus grove which concealed Ballinger House from the vulgar gaze, +and incidentally shut off a magnificent view. + +"I don't know whether I like Gora Dwight or not," she remarked. + +"Neither do I. But I admire her. She is a wonder." + +"Oh, yes, I admire her, and I've a notion she's got something big in +her, some sort of destiny. But those light eyes in that dark face give +me the creeps. It isn't that I don't trust her. I believe her to be +insolently honest and honorable--and just, if you like. But--perhaps +it's only the accident of her queer coloring--she gives me the +impression that while she might go to the stake for her pride, she'd +murder you in cold blood if you got in her way." + +"Poor Gora! You make her all the more interesting." + +"Did she ever tell you that she corresponds with that Englishman who +was out here at the time of the earthquake and fire and had that +ghastly adventure with his sister? We all met him at the Hofer +ball--Gathbroke his name was." + +Alexina was staring at her with an amazed frown. "Correspond--Gora? ... +I remember now he told me she helped him to carry his sister's body out +to the old cemetery. Is he interested in her?" + +"I shouldn't wonder. They've corresponded off and on ever since. I +walked, home with her one afternoon before I went south--she interests +me frantically--and she invited me up to her quite artistic attic in +Geary Street, where she still lives, and gave me the most vivid +description of that night. It made me crawl. She stared straight before +her as she told it. Her eyes were just like gray oval mirrors in which +it seemed to me I saw the whole thing pass.... + +"Then she showed me a photograph he had recently sent her--stunning +thing he is, all right, and looks years older than when he was here. +She also alluded to things he had said in a letter or two. So my +phenomenally quick wits inferred that they correspond. Perhaps they are +engaged. Pretty good deal for her." + + + +III + + +Alexina, to her surprise, felt intensely angry, although she had the +presence of mind to cast up her eyes until the white showed below the +large brilliant iris and she looked like a saint in a niche. + +She had kept Gathbroke out of her thoughts for nearly four years, +deliberately. For a time she had hated him. Mortimer's love-making had +seemed tame in comparison with that primitive outburst, and never had +she felt any such fiery response to the man she had loved and chosen as +during those few moments when she had been in that impertinent, +outrageous, loathsome young Englishman's arms. At first she had +wondered and resented, loyally concluding that it was her own fault, or +that of fate for endowing her with such a slender emotional equipment +that she used it all up at once on the wrong man. Finally, she found it +wise not to think about it at all and to dismiss the intruder from her +thoughts. + +Now she felt outraged in her sense of possession.... Unconsciously she +had enshrined him as the secret mate of her inmost secret self ... a +self she was barely conscious of even yet ... lurking in her +subconsciousness, the personal and peculiar blend of many and diverse +ancestors.... Sometimes she had glimpsed it ... wondered a little with +a not unpleasant sense of apprehension.... + +But for the most part Circumstance had decreed that she abide on the +abundant surface of her nature and enjoy a highly enjoyable life as it +came. Now, she had experienced her first grief, which at the same time +was her first set-back. She did not go out at all. She saw much of +Mortimer and little of any one else. It was the summer season and all +her friends were in the country or in Europe. + +She had given Mortimer her power of attorney (largely a gesture of +defiance, this) and he had attended to all details connected with her +new fortune. Between the inheritance tax, small legacies, and +depreciations, she would have a little over six thousand dollars a +year; which, however, with Mortimer's contribution, would run the old +house, and keep her wardrobe up to mark after she went out of mourning. +She knew nothing of the value of money, and was accustomed to having +little to spend and everything provided. But her mind regarding +finances was quite at rest. Even if Mortimer remained a victim of the +hard times, they would be quite comfortable. + +The cares of housekeeping were very light. She discussed the daily +menus with James, but he had run Ballinger House for years, little as +Mrs. Groome had suspected it. Mortimer, shortly after his +mother-in-law's death, and while Alexina was passing a fortnight at +Rincona, had given James orders to collect all bills on the first of +every month and hand them to him, together with a statement of the +servants' wages. Mrs. Dwight was not to be bothered. + +Alexina, when she returned, had made no protest. The details of +housekeeping did not appeal to her. But the arrangement left her +without occupation, and much time for thought. After a long walk +morning and afternoon she had little to do but read. She was an early +riser and her mind was active. + + + +IV + + +Dwight had not the least intention of using his wife's money, for he +had perfect confidence in his change of luck, and in his ability to do +great things with his business as soon as the period of depression had +passed. But he had no faith in any woman's ability to invest and take +care of money, he had fixed ideas in regard to a man being master in +his own house, and he had asked Alexina for her power of attorney more +to flaunt her confidence in him and to annoy her damnable relatives +than because there might possibly be a moment when he should have need +of immediate resources. Like many Americans he chose to keep his wife +in ignorance of his business life, and it would have annoyed him +excessively to go to her with an explanation of temporary difficulties +and ask for a loan. + +Moreover, he wished to keep Alexina young and superficial, ignorant of +money matters, indifferent to the sordid responsibilities of life. Not +only was the present Alexina no embarrassment whatever to a man full of +schemes, aside from the slow march of business, for getting rich, but +she was infinitely alluring. + +He detested business women, intellectual women, women with careers; +they tipped the even balance of the man's world; moreover, they had no +accepted place in the higher social scheme. For women wage-earners he +had no antipathy and much sympathy and consideration, although he +underpaid them cheerfully when circumstances would permit. It was an +abiding canker that his sister was obliged to support herself; he was +not ashamed of it, for nursing was an honorable (and altruistic) +profession, and several young women in his new circle bad taken it up; +but he hated it as a man and a brother. As for her turning herself into +an authoress, however, he only hoped he would make his million before +she got herself talked about. + +As for Alexina she was the perfect flower of a system lie worshiped and +nothing should mar or change her if his fond surveillance could prevent +it. + +On the whole he was quite happy at this time, despite his passionate +desire for wealth and his natural resentment, at the attitude of the +Abbotts and their intimate circle of old friends who were so like them +that he always included them in his mind when speaking of "the family." +Although he was making barely enough to pay his sister the monthly +interest on her money, the salaries of his employees, and, until +recently, a monthly contribution to the household expenses, he had a +comfortable and delightful home with not a few of the minor luxuries, +an undisputed position in the best society, an honorable one in the +business world, and a beautiful wife. Now that the conventions forced +them to live the retired life, they could economize without attracting +attention; as he paid the bills Alexina would not know whether he still +contributed his share or not; (in time he meant to pay the whole and +give his wife, with the grand gesture, her entire income for pin money) +and, with Alexina's cordial assent, he had sold the old carriage, and +the horses, which were eating their heads off, dismissed the +coachman-gardener, and found a young Swede to take care of the garden +and outbuildings. + +Later, they would have their car like other people, but there was no +need for it at present, and it was neither the time nor the occasion to +exhibit a tendency to extravagance. In the matter of "front" he knew +precisely where to leave off. + +In a certain small anxious bag-of-tricks way he was clever. But not +clever enough. He knew nothing of Alexina beneath her shining surface. +If he had he would have sought to crowd her mind with the details of +the home, encouraged her to join in the frantic activities of some one +of the women's clubs he held in scorn, persuaded her to play golf daily +at the fashionable club of which they were members, even though she ran +the risk of talking, unchaperoned by himself, with other men. + +He never would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books +for companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in +psychology, or in revelations of the many phases of life of which she +was personally so ignorant); and only his own companionship evening +after evening. + +But he had known all the Alexina he was ever to know. Such flashing +glimpses as he was destined to have later so bewildered him that he +reacted obstinately to his original estimate of her, ... just a child +under the influence of her family or some of those friends of hers who +had always hated him ... erratic and irresponsible like all women ... a +man never could understand women because there was nothing to +understand ... merely a bundle of contradictions.... + +In some ways his mental equipment was an enviable one. + + + +VI + + +Some of all this Alexina guessed, and although she was nettled at times +that he took no note of her maturing mind and character, she was, on +the whole, more amused. + +Indulgent by nature, and somewhat indolent, she had been more than +willing that Morty should enjoy his new authority, should even delude +himself that he was footing all the bills, poor dear; and she listened +raptly to his evening visions of their future life in Burlingame, +alternated with visits to New York and England, the while she puzzled +over the intricacies of some character portrayed by a master analyst. + +Sometimes he did not talk at all, utterly fagged by a strenuous day in +which he had accomplished precisely nothing. But the more transparent +and truncated and dull he grew the more spontaneous the "niceness" and +almost effusive courtesy of his wife. Insensibly she was veering to the +family attitude, but he had tagged her once for all and never saw it. + +Until this moment, however, when Gathbroke had been jerked from his +deep seclusion within her ivory tower by Aileen's unwelcome news, she +had never had a moment of complete self-revelation.... She knew +instantly that she had never loved her husband: he was not her mate and +Gathbroke was. She had had three years of rippling content and light +enjoyment with Mortimer, they had never quarreled seriously, and they +had never taken their parts in one moment of real drama. + +If she had married Gathbroke they would have quarreled furiously, they +would have thrown courtesy and behavior to the winds often enough, +particularly while they were young, for neither would have been in the +least apprehensive of wounding the rank-pride of the other, and such +mutual and passionate love as theirs naturally gave birth to a high +state of irritability; they would have loved and hated and made +constant discoveries about each other ... there would have been depths +never to be fully explored but always luring them on ... and the +perfect companionship ... the complete fusion.... + +How Alexina knew all this after less than three hours' association with +Gathbroke, let any woman answer. She was not so foolish as to imagine +herself the victim of a secret passion, or that she had ever loved the +man, or ever would. She had merely had her chance for the great +duodrama, and thrown it away for a callow dream. She had no passing +wish, even in that moment of visualizing him interlocked with her own +wraith in that sacred inner temple where even she had never intruded +before, to meet him again. She had no intention of passing any of her +abundant leisure in dreaming dreams of him and the perfect bliss. But +he had been hers ... and utterly ... he had loved her ... he had wanted +her ... he had precipitately begged her to marry him ... he had offered +her the homage of complete brutality. + +Something of him would always be hers. + +And even though she renounced all rights in him because she must, she +did not in the least relish that any one so close to her as Gora Dwight +should have him. She might have heard of his marriage to a girl of his +own land and class with only a passing spasm, but his continued and +possibly tender friendship with her sister-in-law shook her out of the +last of her jejunity and its illusions.... She was not exactly a dog in +the manger ... she was a maturing woman looking back with anger and +dismay not only upon the fatal mistake of her youth, but upon the +inexorable realities of her present life.... + +The reaction was a more intense feeling of loyalty to Mortimer than +ever. She was entirely to blame. He not only had been innocent of +conscious rivalry, even of pursuit--for she could quite easily have +discouraged him in the earlier stages of his courtship--but he was +dependent upon her in every way: for his happiness, for the secure +social position that meant so much to him, for the greater number of +his valuable connections, for even his comfort and ease of living. + +Something of this had passed through her stunned mind on the morning of +her mother's death. Now it was all as sharply outlined as the etching +at which she was raptly gazing, and she vowed anew that she would never +desert him, never deny him the assistance of the true partner. She had +signed a life contract with her eyes open and she would keep it to the +letter. + +Only she hoped to heaven that Gathbroke was not serious about Gora. She +wished never to be reminded of his existence again. + +And, as Aileen talked of Santa Barbara, she wondered vaguely why there +was not a law forbidding girls to marry until they were well into their +twenties.... until they had had a certain amount of experience.... knew +their own minds.... Maria had been right.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +The darkness had come early with the high rolling fog that shut out the +stars. The fog horn and the bells were silent but the wind had a thin +anxious note as if lost, and the long creaking eucalyptus trees angrily +repelled it as if irritated beyond endurance by its eternal visitations. + +Alexina, who had been reading in her bedroom, realized that it must be +quite half an hour since she had turned a page. She lifted her +shoulders impatiently. She was in no humor for reading. + +It was only eight o'clock. Far too early for bed. Mortimer had gone to +Los Angeles on business. He had been gone a week, and she admitted to +herself with the new frankness she had determined to cultivate--that +she might meet, with the clearest possible vision, whatever +three-cornered deals Life might have in store for her--that she had not +missed him at all. His absence had been a heavenly interlude. She and +Aileen had gone to the moving pictures unescorted every night (a +performance of which he would have disapproved profoundly), and they +had lunched downtown every day until Alexina had suddenly discovered +that she had no more money in her purse; and, knowing nothing whatever +even of minor finance, was under the impression that having given +Mortimer her power of attorney she would not be able to draw from the +bank. + +Aileen had gone down to Burlingame to visit Sibyl Bascom for a few +days. Alexina had declined to go, although it was a quiet party; it +would be embarrassing not to tip the servants. + +The wind gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the +house and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who +shook it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the +window severely for good measure. + +Alexina was used to San Francisco in all her many moods, but to-night, +the wind and the high gray fog shutting out the stars, the silent +house--silent that is but for the mice playing innocently between the +walls--her complete solitude, made her restless and a little nervous. + +What could she do? + +She knew quite well that she had wanted to go to see Gora for a week. +She had not indulged in any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was +curious to see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her +mind that April day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he +had outgrown his hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, +and the inability to conceal the asinine condition to which she had +immediately reduced him, she might have given him an equal chance with +Morty. + +Aileen had said that he looked older. She had a quite natural curiosity +to decide for herself if, had he been born several years earlier, he +would have proved the successful rival in that foundational period of +their youth.... Or perhaps she was the reason of his rather sudden +maturity. After all there was no great chasm between twenty-three and +twenty-six and three-quarters. She looked little if any older. Neither +did Morty, nor any one she knew. + +This idea thrilled her, and, grimly determined upon no compromise or +evasion, she admitted it. + +Moreover, she wanted to sound out Gora. + +Somehow she had no real belief that he had transferred his affections +to her dissimilar sister-in-law, but her interest in Gora was growing. +She wanted to know her better. + +Besides, although she had often invited her to tea on her free +afternoons, and to dinner whenever possible, and had occasionally +dropped in to see her while she was still in the hospital, she had +never called on her in her home. As Gora only slept there after a +killing day's or night's work, visitors were anything but welcome; +nevertheless she felt that she had been negligent, rude--three +years!--and as Gora was not on a case for a day or two, now was the +time to atone. + +Moreover, she had never been out quite alone at night, except to run +down the avenue and across the street to Aileen's. It was a long way +down to Geary Street, and Fillmore Street at night was "tough." +Mortimer would be furious. + +She hastily changed her dinner gown to a plain walking suit of black +tweed and pinned on a close hat firmly, prepared to defy the wind and +thoroughly to enjoy her little adventure. Not since she had stolen out +to go to forbidden parties with Aileen had she felt such a sense of +altogether reprehensible elation. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Fillmore Street, its low-browed shops dark, but with great arcs of +white lights spanning the streets that ran east and west, long shafts +of yellow light shining across the sidewalk from the restaurants, the +candy stores and the nicolodeons--where the pianola tinkled +plaintively--was thronged with saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious +glances at them as she walked rapidly along. In front of every saloon +was a group of young men almost fascinatingly common to Alexina's +cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over their foreheads at an +indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners of their mouths, +or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at "bunches" of +girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, making +strident or stage-whispered comments. + +A great many girls had cavaliers, and these walked with their heads +tossed, unless drooping toward a padded, shoulder; and they wore +perhaps a coat or two less of make-up than their still neglected +sisters. These were vividly earmined, although most of them were young +enough to have relied on cold water and a rough towel; their hair was +arranged in enormous pompadours and topped with "lingerie" or +beflowered hats. Their blouses were "peek-a-boo" and cut low, their +skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated straight front +corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced the +debutante slouch and their jaws worked automatically. + +Not all of them were "bad" by any means. Fillmore Street was a +promenade at night for girls who were confined by day: waitresses, shop +girls of the humbler sort, servants, clerks, or younger daughters of +poor parents, who would see nothing of life at all if they sat +virtuously in the kitchen every night. + +The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to +ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and +they were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, +the dead white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, +ignoring the "bums" and "cadets" lounging at the corners or before the +saloons, directed intent long glances at every passing man who looked +as if he had the "roll" to treat them handsomely in the back parlor of +a saloon, or possibly stake them at a gaming table. The town, still in +its brief period of insufferable virtue, was "closed," but the lid was +not on as irremovably as the police led the good mayor to believe; and +these girls, who traveled not in "bunches" but in pairs, if they had +not already begun a career of profitable vice, were anxious to start +but did not exactly know how. Fillmore Street was not the hunting +ground of rich men; but men with a night's money came there, and many +"boobs" from the country. + +Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated +everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that +many of these girls were "decent enough"; "much more decent than I +would be in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no +place to see a beau but the street. I'd go straight to the devil and +play the only game I had for all it was worth." + +But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in +"badness." She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the +great juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. +Moreover, she could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars +above the fog, and she had drawn herself up to her full five feet +seven, thrown her shoulders back, lifted her chin and lowered her +eyelids the merest trifle. She fancied that the patrician-beauty type +would have little or no attraction for the men who frequented Fillmore +Street. Certainly the bluntest of these males could see that she was +not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum. + +Moreover she was in mourning. + +But she had reckoned without her youth. + + + +II + + +"Say, kid, what you doin' all alone?" + +A hand passed familiarly through her arm. + +Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn +upon him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help? + +Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all +terrified; nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark +of the sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: "When a +man is even half way drunk he doesn't know a lady from a trollop, and +ten to one the lady's a trollop anyhow." + +She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present +moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature? + +She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish +attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and +one girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the +situation, laughed aloud and cried after her: "Don't be frightened, +kid. He's not a slaver." + +Irrepressible curiosity made her send him a swift glance from the +corner of her eye. He was a young man, thick set, with an aggressive +nose set in a round hard face. His small, hard, black eyes were steady, +and so were his feet. He did not look in the least drunk. + +"I think you have made a mistake," she said quietly, and with no +pretense at immense dignity (she could hear Aileen say: "Cut it out. +Nothing doing in that line here"). "I, also, have made a mistake--in +walking at night on this street. Would you mind letting go my arm? I +think I'll take a car." + +"No, I think you'll stay just where you are," he said insolently. "You +don't belong here all right, but you've come and you can stand the +consequences. You're just the sort that needs a jolt and I like the +idea of handing it." + +Alexina gave him a coldly speculative glance. "I wonder why?" + +"You would? Well, I'll tell you. Never been out alone at night before, +I'll bet, like these other girls, that ain't got no place on earth to +have any fun but the streets. Never even rubbed against the common +herd? Generally go about in a machine, don't you?" + +"It is quite true that I have never been out alone at night before. I +certainly shall not go again." + +"No, you don't have to! That's the point, all right. And if you weren't +such a beauty, damn you! I'd hate you this minute as I hate your whole +parasite class." + +"Oh, you are a socialist!" Alexina looked at him with frank curiosity. +"I never saw one before." + +He was obviously disconcerted. Then his face flushed with anger. "Yes, +I'm a socialist all right, and you'll see more of us before you're many +years older." + +"You might tell me about it if you _will_ walk with me. I am a long way +from my destination, and that would be far more interesting than +personalities." + +"I've got more personalities where those came from. It makes me sick to +see the difference between you and these poor kids--ready to sell their +souls for pretty clothes and a little fun. There's nothing that has +done so much to inflame class hatred as the pampered delicate +satin-skinned women of your class, who have expensive clothes and +'grooming' to take the place of slathers of paint and cheap perfume. +Raised in a hot house for the use of the man on top. It's the crowning +offense of capitalism, and when the system goes, they'll all be like +you, or you'll be more like them. You'll come down about a thousand +pegs, and the ones down below will be shoved up to meet you." + +Alexina stood still and faced him. + +"Are you poor?" she asked. + +"What a hell of a question. Have I been talkin' like a plutocrat?" + +"Oh, there are, still, different grades. I was wondering if you would +be so inconsistent as to earn a little money from me and two friends of +mine. We have read socialism a bit, but, we don't understand it very +well. I am in mourning and it would interest me immensely." + +He had dropped her arm and was staring at her. + +"You are not afraid of me, then?" His voice was sulky but his eyes were +less hostile. + +"Oh, not in the least. I fully appreciate that you merely wished to +humiliate me, not to be insulting, as some of these other men might +have been. My name is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. I live on Ballinger +Hill--do you know it? That old house in the eucalyptus grove?" + +"I know it, all right." + +"Then you probably know, also, that I am not rich and never have been. +My husband is a struggling young business man." + +"That cuts no ice. You train with that class, don't you? You're class +yourself, reek with it. You had rich ancestors or you wouldn't be what +you are now." + +"Well, we can discuss that point another time. One of my friends is a +daughter of Judge Lawton--" + +"Hand in glove with every rich grafter in 'Frisco." + +Alexina shuddered. "Please say San Francisco. I am positive you never +heard a word against Judge Lawton's probity, nor that he ever rendered +an unjust decision." + +"He's a wise old guy, all right. But it would be wastin' time tryin' to +make you understand why I have no use for him." + +"Of course you would have no use for the husband of my other friend, +Mrs. Frank Bascom." + +She fully expected that the young millionaire's name would be the final +red rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the +benefit of all Fillmore Street. But he surprised her by saying +reluctantly: + +"He's dead straight, all right. He's not a grafter. I've nothing +against him personally, but he's part of a damnable system and I'd +clean him out with the rest." + +"Well, there you have three of us to your hand. Who knows but that you +might convert us? Why not give us the chance? If you will give me your +address I will write to you as soon as my friends come back to town." + +"I don't know whether I want to do it or not. You may be makin' game of +me for all I know." + +"I am quite sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you +something too--what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of +socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask what your +occupation is?" + +"I'm just a plain working-man--housebuilding line." + +"Then you could only come in the evening?" + +"Not at all; I get off at five. You don't have your dinner until eight +in your set, I believe," This with a sneer that curled his upper lip +almost to the septum of his nose. + +"Seven. My husband works until nearly six. He rarely has time for lunch +and comes home very hungry." + +Once more he looked puzzled and disconcerted, but his small steady eyes +did not waver. + +"My name's James Kirkpatrick." He found the stub of a pencil in his +pocket and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it +over. Maybe I'll do it. I dunno, though." + +"I do hope you will. I'm sure we can learn a good deal from each other. +Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don't the socialist +tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?" + +"Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight +better, but I guess there's nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your +car." + +He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and +as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself +on having had the last word. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on +the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young +sister-in-law left the car at the corner. + +Gora walked up to meet her guest. "Where on earth have you, been?" she +demanded. "I supposed of course that you'd take a taxi. You should not +go out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest +ideas; and you--" + +"Haven't. Not, any more. I'm tired of being kept in a glass case--being +a parasite." She laughed gayly at Gora's look of amazement. "I've had +an adventure. Almost the first I ever had." + +She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps +and stairs to the attic. + +Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. "Shall you tell Mortimer?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done." + +"But if you study with this man?" + +"There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself +as Morty's partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over +anything yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many +things whether he happens to like it or not. Possibly without +consulting him." + +"You've had time to think these past three months for the first time in +your life," said Gora shrewdly. "Here we are. I hope you don't hate +stairs. I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can't give up +the old place.... And I've lit the candles in your honor." + + + +II + + +"Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!" + +Thought Gora: "I do hope she's not going to be gracious. I've never +liked her so well before." + +But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome +tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from +respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the +impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had +caught sight immediately of Gathbroke's picture framed and enthroned on +the mantelpiece. + +She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old +Chinese lanterns that held the candles. + +"I am going to refurnish our lower rooms," she said. "If you have time +do help me. Heavens! I wish I could work off some of that old furniture +on you. I like the Italian pieces well enough, but there are too many +of them. That rather low Florentine cabinet in the back parlor would +just fit in this corner...." + +She gave a little girlish exclamation and ran forward. + +"Isn't that young Gathbroke, who was out here at the time of the +earthquake and fire ... or an older brother, perhaps?" + +She had taken the photograph from the mantel and was examining it under +one of the lanterns. Her alert ear detected the deeper and less steady +note in Gora's always hoarse voice. + +"It is the same. Did you meet him? ... Oh, I remember he told me he met +you at the Hofer ball. He rather raved over you, in fact." + +"Did he? How sweet of him. I met him again, I remember. Mr. Gwynne +brought him down to Rincona one day." + +"Oh?" + +And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit. + +"But he looks much much older." + +"He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey +on him more and more. + +"Oh." + +He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, +two weeks after the fire. + +Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a +coaxing smile. "Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me." + +"No," said Gora, shortly. "We are not engaged. Good friends, that is +all, and write occasionally." + +"Well, he must be very much interested--and you must be a very +interesting correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What +does he do, anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something +about the army." + +"He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone +into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me--oh, it +must be nearly two years ago--that if there should be a war he would +enlist as a matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and +he was sick of idleness--his good middle-class energetic blood +asserting itself, he said,--he was going to amuse himself with work, +incidentally try to make a fortune. His mother left a good deal of +money, but there are several children and I guess the present earl +needs most of it to keep up his estates, to say nothing of his +position. Fotten law, that--entail, I mean." + +Alexina came and sat down on the divan beside Gora, piling the cushions +behind her. "Are you a socialist?" + +"I am not. I believe in sticking to your own class, whether you have a +grudge against it or not, or even if you think it far from perfection." + +She shot a quick challenging glance at her admittedly aristocratic +sister-in-law, but Alexina had lifted the lower white of her eyes just +above their soft black fringe and looked more innocent than any new +born lamb. As she did not answer Gora continued: + +"I remember that night I sat out with Gathbroke on Calvary he said +something about socialism ... that it was a confession of failure. I +may feel so furious with destiny sometimes that I could go out and wave +a red flag, or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers +me is the thought that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a +reasonable fortune I'd have no more use for socialism than for a +rattlesnake in my bed. Why are you interested?" + +"Only as in any subject that interests a few million people. I haven't +the least intention of being converted, but I don't want to be an +ignoramus. Aileen and Sibyl and I did start Marx's _Das Kapital_--in +German! We nearly died of it. But I felt sure that this man, +Kirkpatrick, had studied his subject, if only because his language +changed so completely when he talked about it. It was as if he were +quoting, but intelligently. Of course the poor man had little or no +education to begin with. Somehow he struck me as a pathetic figure. +Perhaps when every one is educated--and there must be many thousands of +naturally intelligent men in the working class whose brains if trained +would be mighty useful in Washington--well, all having had equal +opportunities they would surely arrive at some way to improve +conditions without struggling for anything so hopeless as socialism. I +know enough to be sure that it is hopeless, because it antagonizes +human nature." + +"Rather. The trend under all the talk is more and more toward +individualism, not self-effacing communism. As for myself I like the +idea of the fight--for public recognition, I mean; and I don't think +I'd be happy at all if things were made too smooth for me; if, for +instance, in a socialized state it were decided that I could devote all +my time to writing, and that the state would take care of me, publish +my work, and distribute it exactly where it was sure to be appreciated. +I haven't any of the old California gambling blood in me, but I guess +the hardy ghost of those old days still dominates the atmosphere, and I +have not been one of those to escape." + +"It's in mine! Not that I care for gambling, really, like Aileen and +Alice. But I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking long +chances, and I have had inklings that I'll be rather more than less +fascinated as I grow older.... When are your stories to be published? I +am simply expiring to read them." + +"Are you?" + + + +III + + +Alexina had thrust her slim index finger unerringly through Gora's +bristling armor and tickled her weakest spot. The fledgling author +smiled into the dazzling eyes opposite and a deep flush rose to her +high cheek bones. + +"Rather!" + +"Then..." Gora rose and took a magazine from the table beside her bed. +She spread it open on her lap, when she had resumed her seat, and +handled it as Alexina had seen young mothers fondle their first-born. + +"It's here. Just out." + +"Oh!" Alexina gave a little shriek of genuine anticipation. "Read it to +me. Quick. I can't wait." + +Gora led a lonely life outside of her work, a lonely inner life always. +She had never had an intimate friend, and she suddenly reflected that +there had been a certain measure of sadness in her joy both when her +manuscripts were accepted and to-day when for the first time she had +gazed at herself in print.... She had had no one to rejoice with +her.... She felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to Alexina. + +But she gave this young wife of her brother whom she knew as little as +Alexina knew her, another swift suspicious glance.... No, there was +nothing of Alexina's usual high and careless courtesy in that eager +almost excited face. + +"I'd love to have your opinion.... I read very badly.... Make +allowances...." + +"Oh, fire away. If I'd written a story and had it accepted by that +magazine I'd read it from the housetops." + +Gora read the story well enough, and Alexina's mind did not wander even +to Gathbroke. It was written in a pure direct vigorous English. A +little less self-consciousness and it would have been distinguished. +The story itself was built craftily; she had been coached by a clever +instructor who was a successful writer of short stories himself; and it +worked up to a climax of genuine drama. But this was merely the +framework, the flexible technique for the real Gora. The story had not +only an original point of view but it pulsed with the insurgent +resentful passionate spirit of the writer. + +Alexina gave a little gasp as Gora finished. + +"Many people won't like that story," she said. "It shocks and jars and +gives one's smugness a pain in the middle. But those that do like it +will give you a great reputation, and after all there are a few +thousand intelligent readers in the United States. How on earth did +that magazine come to accept it?" + +Gora was staring at Alexina with an uncommonly soft expression in her +opaque light eyes. She felt, indeed, as if her ego would leap through +them and make a fool of her. + +"The editor wrote me something of what you have just said. He wanted +something new--to give his conservative old subscribers a shock. +Thought it would be good for them and for the magazine. You--you--have +said what I should have wanted you to say if I could have thought it +out.... I think I should have hated you if you had said, 'How +charming!' or 'How frantically interesting!'" + +"Well, it's the last if not the first. Aileen will say that and mean +it. I'll telephone to the bookstore the first thing Monday morning and +get a copy. Now I must go. It's late." + + + +IV + + +"Let me telephone for a taxi." + +Alexina laughed merrily. "You'll never believe it, but I've just thirty +cents in my purse. I forgot to ask Morty for something before he +left.... You see, I happened to find quite a bit in mother's desk and +so I've never thought to ask him for an allowance. But I shall at once." + +"An allowance? But you have your own money? Or is it because the estate +isn't settled? What has Morty to do with that?" + +"I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I +gave my power of attorney to Morty." + +"Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it." + +"Could I? Well! I'll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M." + +"Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?" + +"Oh ... why ... he asked me to ... I know nothing about business, and +he naturally would attend to my affairs." + +"But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And +the executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign +such papers as they advise.... Don't be angry, please. I am not +insinuating anything against Morty. He's never bad a dishonest thought +in his life ... has always been, the squarest ... but..." + +"Well?" + +Alexina's head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott +and Judge Lawton ... but for his sister ... + +"It's this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, +are just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some +are stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they +make up for it by being weaker in others.... I am talking particularly +of the money question, the struggle for existence, which the vast +majority of men are forced to make.... + +"Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have +any, to force success--in one way or another--out of her until the hour +they are able to lay down the burden.... Some are too strong and too +firm in their ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and +generally they are strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their +way against the most overwhelming odds.... Many are too clever not to +find some way of compromising and circumventing.... Others just peg +along and barely make both ends meet.... Others go under and down and +out. + +"Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and +high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a +duck takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and +steady worker he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market +before he was married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He +is frantic to get rich ... for more reasons than one." + +"But he never would do anything dishonorable." + +"No. Nothing he couldn't square with his conscience if it turned out +all right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little +difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the +possession of the women of his family, is his if he needs it. + +"Moreover, no doubt you have discovered that Morty is the sort of man +who looks upon women as man's natural inferiors, that if there is any +question of sacrifice the woman is not to be considered for a moment +... especially where no public risk is involved. That sort of man only +thinks he is too honest to refrain from taking some unrelated woman's +money, but as a matter of fact it is because she would send him to +State's Prison as readily as a man would. One's own women are safe. + +"I lent Morty my small inheritance with my eyes open. But he knows a +good deal of that particular business, and I did not dream the times +were going to be so bad.... I doubt if I ever see it again.... But you +must not run the risk of losing yours. I want you to promise me that on +Monday morning you will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power +of attorney. And as much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose +your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies +of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely +failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. +Then he could get a position again, and you would have your own income." + +"But do you mean to say that if I did revoke my power of attorney and +he asked me later for money to save his business that I should not give +it to him?" + +"Yes, I mean just that. Morty will never take any of the prizes in the +business world. He may hold on and make a living, that is all. He has +plenty to start with, and tells me he is doing fairly well, in spite of +the times. But he would do better in the long run as a clerk. In time +he might get a large salary as a sort of general director of all the +routine business of some large house--" + +Alexina curled her lip. "I do not want him to be a clerk." + +"No, of course you don't! But you'd like it still less if he cleaned +you out. You--would have to sell or rent your old home and live on a +hundred and fifty dollars a month in a flat in some out-of-the-way +quarter. You might have to go to work yourself." + +"I shouldn't mind that so much, except that I'm afraid I'd not be good +for much. Perhaps it was snobbish of me to object lo Morty's being a +clerk. But ... well, I'm not so sure that it is snobbish to prefer what +you have always been accustomed to--I mean if it is a higher standard. +And after all I married him when he was only a clerk." + +"You are surprisingly little of a snob, all things considered; but you +are a hopeless aristocrat." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"I think the line between the aristocratic and the snobbish attitude of +mind is almost too fine to be put into words. But they are often +confused by the undiscriminating. Will you revoke that power of +attorney on Monday?" + +"Shouldn't I wait until Morty is home? ... tell him first? It seems +rather taking an advantage ... and he will be very angry." + +"That doesn't matter." + +"What excuse shall I give him?" + +"Any one of a dozen. You are bored and want to take care of your money +... intend to learn something of business, as all women should, and +will in time.... Ring in the feminist stuff ... wife's economic +independence ... woman's new position in the world.... That will make +Morty so raving angry that he will forget about the other. Will you do +it?" + +"Yes, I will. I believe you are right. So were the others ... there +must be something in it." + +She told Gora of the advice of Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton. Gora nodded. + +"They meant more than they said. And merely because they are men of the +world, not because they like and trust Morty any the less." + +Alexina did not hear her. She was staring hard at the floor.... A year +ago ... three months ago ... she couldn't have done this thing. She had +been still under the illusion that she loved her husband, that her +marriage was a complete success. She would have sacrificed her last +penny rather than hurt his feelings. Now she only cared that she didn't +care.... She had admitted to herself that she did not love her husband +but that was different from committing an overt act that proved it.... +She felt something crumbling within her.... It was the last of the +fairy edifice of her romance ... of her first, her real, youth.... What +was to take its place? The future smugly secure on six thousand a year +and an inviolate social position ... a good dull husband ... not even +the prospect of travel.... + + + +V + + +She sprang to her feet and turned away her head. + +"Why don't you come and live with us?" she asked abruptly. "Why should +you keep this on? There are so many vacant bedrooms up there. You could +have one for your study. I'd love to have you. You'd have the most +complete independence. Do." + +Gora shook her head. "I've always this to fall back on." + +"Fall back on?" + +"Oh! I never meant to let that out. However.... Perhaps it is as +well.... Morty--you know his pride--everybody has his prime weakness +and that is his. Transpose it into snobbery if you like.... We did not +board down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid +well, but Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it +up. He was afraid you'd be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, +I did. One of my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I +entered the hospital, but kept on my room as I had to have one +somewhere. Eight months later she married, and I took it back. I found +I could run it as well as ever with the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman +she had discovered. But I never told Morty." + +Alexina laughed. "Better not. But you could run it and live with us all +the same." + +"No. I have too little time. I'd waste it coming back and forth, for I +must be here some time every day.... Besides..." + +"Your own precious atmosphere?" + +"You do understand!" + +"Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice." + +"You bet. And now, I'll see you to your car; stay with you until you +are safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don't assert your +independence in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore +Street are not spiteful socialists." + +As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to +Gathbroke's picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into +fists. + +"Oh ... you ... you.... Why weren't you.... Why didn't you...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his +day on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could +always summon at will, even when all was not well with him. + +To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had +been a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated +itself into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken +order, been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that +the retail merchants of San Francisco bought very sparingly; but he had +found in Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming +Japanese population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure. + + + +II + + +It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury +before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a +cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She +looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure +and her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in +France on a balmy day. But she quaked inside. + +She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile. +"I'm afraid you will be rather cross with me," she said softly. "But I +went down to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney +to you." + +"You did what?" The slow blood rose to Dwight's hair. He mechanically +took the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation +of falling through space ... out of somewhere.... + +Alexina repeated her statement. + +He recovered himself. "Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or +Judge Lawton." + +"Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own. +I did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up +from Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced +Mrs. Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down +there--those that read the serious new books and go to lectures when +there are any worth while--to join a class in economics. One of the +professors at Stanford is going to teach us. Aileen has lost +frightfully at poker lately and wants a new interest; she put Sibyl up +to it--who was delighted with the suggestion as she hasn't been +intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a practical streak; +so that studying economics appealed to her. + +"I jumped at the idea. It was a God-send. I have had so little to do. I +don't care for poker and one can't read all the time.... But after they +left I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying +economies in the abstract if I didn't have sense and 'go' enough to +manage my own affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn't draw +any money from the bank because I had given you my power of attorney. +Aileen has an allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually +comes out about even at poker in the course of the month, and if she +doesn't she pawns something. I've been with her to pawn shops and it's +the greatest fun. I don't mind telling you, as I know you never betray +a confidence. The Judge would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and +water. + +"Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some +stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs +over it. You know how she entertains. + +"I should never dare admit to them--or to the professor if he asked my +opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out--that I was too +lazy and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went +down first thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I +simply couldn't wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me +I shall attend to everything and not bother you, Morty dear." + + + +III + + +Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina +thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into +a saint. + +"I don't like it. I don't like it at all." + +Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate +to express his feelings. + +"I may be old-fashioned--" + +"You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school +of American husbands--" + +"There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world." + +"So there are, poor dears. It's going to be so hard for them--" + +"Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?" + +"Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my +old-fashioned family. I'd be much the same if I'd never taken any +interest in all these wonderful modern movements." + +"It's those chums of yours--Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly +approve of them." + +"Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference." + +"Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me ... disobey me?" + +"Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had +at the rehearsal. You haven't noticed, these three years, that I've had +my way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be +your way too. We've been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just +playing about, with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has +changed. We must look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole +burden on your shoulders--" + +"I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs." + +Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn't done any more. No +woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole +burden of life on her husband's shoulders. You have your own daily +battle in the business world. I will do the rest." + +"What damned emancipated talk." + +"What a funny old-fashioned word. We don't even say advanced or new any +more." + +"It's nonsense anyhow. You're nothing but a child." + +"You may just bet your life I'm not a child. Nor have I awakened all of +a sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of +modern science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always +discussing everything that interests the public; I have even read the +newspapers for two years." + +"Much better you didn't. There is no reason whatever for a woman in +your position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from +your charm." + +"Maybe, but we'll find more charm in Life as we grow older." + +His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something +that looked like a bogey. + +"May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got +everything down to a fine point.... It seems too bad you should +bother...." + +"Bother? I've been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little +good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James +and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its +elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up +when I pore over monthly bills and 'slips' and sign cheques." + +She hesitated. "You mustn't think for a minute that I want to make you +feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come, +... Of course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could +simply go on along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, +shortly after the first of the month, and you'll give me half." + + + +IV + + +Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but +in that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this +sheltered creature, with whom her mother had never discussed household +economics, and from whom he had purposely kept all knowledge of his +business, took for granted that he could pay his share of the monthly +expenses, merely because all the men she knew did twice as much, +however they might grumble. For the matter of that she never saw Tom +Abbott that he did not curse the ascending prices, but there was no +change whatever in his bountiful fashion of living. Alexina knew that +the times were bad and that her husband was having something of a +struggle, and, as a dutiful wife, was anxious to help him out for the +present, but it was simply beyond her powers of comprehension to grasp +the fact that he was in no position to pay half the expenses of their +small establishment. + +If he told her ... tried to make her understand ... even if she did, +how would he appear in her eyes? + +Of all people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina ... he +had never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at +their worst than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to +and precariously achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she +craved luxury and pomp, but because she would be forced to look up to +him with admiration and a lively gratitude. He had, in this spirit, +given her; in the most casual manner, handsome presents, or brilliant +little dinners at fashionable restaurants, in all of which she took a +fervent young pleasure. He had dipped into his slender capital, but of +this she had not even a suspicion ... he had made some airy remark +about celebrating a "good deal" ... no wonder ... he had her too well +bluffed. + +For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But +he did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl +that short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide +astonished eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set +his teeth and vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand +would last several months, even if he made no more than his expenses +meanwhile. + +He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a +lingering and malodorous death. + +"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young +and carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is +your own look-out." + +"Thank you, Morty dear." + +She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the +announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen +and Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of +economics with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had +been tutoring in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to +him whom Aileen disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, +Mrs. Francis Leslie Bascom and Miss Aileen Livingston Lawton. + +His reasons for coming to Ballinger House--which even he knew was +inaccessible to the common herd--were separate and tabulated. Alexina +had fascinated him against his best class principles; but he not only +jumped at the chance of meeting her again, he was excessively curious +to understand a woman of her class, to watch her in different moods and +situations. He was equally curious to meet other women of the same +breed; he had never brushed their skirts before, but he had often stood +and gazed at them hungrily as they passed in their limousines or +driving their smart little electric cars. + +He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so +much about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different +homes. He was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and +he had a good healthy class-consciousness and class-hatred. But he also +had a large measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to +have the opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner +circles, and when it came he had only hesitated long enough to search +his soul and assure himself that he was in no danger of growing +compliant and soft. Moreover he might possibly make converts, and in +any case it was not a bad way, society being still what it was, of +turning an honest penny. + +But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist +serene in his faith could be. + +The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one +elbow on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair +of fixed and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was +only vaguely aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent +streams of concentrated light. They looked like three little +sea-monsters, slim, flexible, malignant, ready to spring. + +He exaggerated in his embarrassment, but he was not so very far wrong. + +"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach +'em, all right." + +As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice +too loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that +you don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some." + +"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her +high light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing +that makes us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_." + +"And ain't you?" + +"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although +he is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in +Europe had meant middle-class. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no +right to pervert an honest historic old word into something so +different and so obnoxious." + +"To Marx all capitalists were in the same class. I suppose what you +mean is that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when +you have less capital than some of them that can't get in." + +"Sure thing. Take it from me." + +He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather +heavy sarcasm. + +"Even when they use slang." + +"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-class--bourgeois. +Too sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us." + +Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr. +Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little, +but as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the +naughtiness of Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken +a cigarette from a gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and +was asking him for a light. He gave her measure for measure, for he +lifted his heavy boot and struck a match on the sole. + +"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and +leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious +dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices, +which, however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping +everything from these lessons." + +"Do _you_ smoke?" + +"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve +of my friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots, +as Miss Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke. +I'll get you a cigar." + +She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room. + + + +II + + +Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the +evening paper. + +"Give me a cigar, Morty dear." + +"A cigar? What for?" + +"It would be too mean of those girls to smoke unless Mr. Kirkpatrick +did too, and I am sure we couldn't stand his tobacco. Even a whiff of +bad tobacco makes me feel quite ill." + +"I'll be hanged if I give my cigars to that bounder. The kitchen is the +place for him." + +"But not for us. And our minds are quite made up, you know. We are +going to study with him just to find out what these strange animals +called socialists are like. He is queer enough, to begin, with. And the +knowledge may prove useful one of these days.... If you won't give me +one I'll send James out--" + +Mortimer handed over one of his choice cigars with ill grace, and +Alexina returned to the library. Aileen was informing Mr. Kirkpatrick +how intensely she disliked Marx's beard, not only as she had seen it in +a photograph, but as she had smelt it in Spargo's too vivid description. + +He rose awkwardly as she entered, but he rose. She handed him the cigar +and struck a match and held it to one end while he drew at the other. +Their faces were close and she gave him a smile of warm and spontaneous +friendliness. + +Thought Mr. Kirkpatrick: "Oh, Lord, she's got me. I'd better make +tracks out of here. If she was a vamp like that Bascom woman she +wouldn't get me one little bit. Plenty of them where I come from. But +she's plain goddess with eyes like headlights on an engine." + +Perturbed as he was, however, he resumed his seat and drew +appreciatively at the finest cigar that had ever come his way. It had +the opportune effect of causing his class-hatred to flame afresh. No +fear that he would be made soft by teaching in the homes of these +pampered cats. For the moment he hated Alexina, seated in a carved +high-back Italian chair like a young queen on a throne. + +"Well," he growled. "Let's get to business. I've brought Spargo. Marx +is too much for me. He's terrible dull and involved. He was so taken up +with his subject, I guess, that he forgot to learn how to write about +it so's people without much time and education could understand without +getting a pain in their beans. Of course I've heard him expounded many +times from the platform, but there must have been about fifty Marxes, +for I've heard--or read--just about that many expounders of him and no +two agree so's you'd notice it. That, to my mind, is the only stumbling +block for socialism--that we have a prophet who's so hard to understand. + +"So, I've settled on Spargo. He has the name of being about the best +student of Marx and of socialism generally--it's split up quite a +bit--and he's easy reading. I fetched him along." + +He produced "Socialism" from his hat and hesitated. "I don't know +noth--a thing about teaching." + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," drawled Sibyl Bascom in her low +voluptuous voice and transfixing him with narrow swimming eyes; then as +he refused to be overcome, she continued more humanly: "We've been to +lots of classes, you know. There are all sorts of methods. Suppose one +of us reads the first chapter aloud and then you expound. That is, +we'll ask you questions." + +"That's fine," said Mr. Kirkpatrick with immense relief. "Fire away." + +And Alexina, who always read prefaces and introductions last, began +with "Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit." + + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Mr. Kirkpatrick realized his ambition to see with his own sharp +puncturing little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a +sewing-machine needle playing staccato) several of the most flagrant +examples of capitalistic extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled +away their useless lives and servitors battened. In other words the +extremely comfortable or the shamelessly luxurious homes built for the +most part by still active business men whose first real period of rest +would be in a small stone residence in a certain silent city Down the +Peninsula. + +Several were already occupied by their widows. In a climate where a man +can work three hundred and sixty-five days of the year the temptation +to do so is strong, and not conducive to longevity. + +The Ferdinand Thorntons, Trennahans, Hofers and others who had lost +their city homes on Nob Hill had not rebuilt, but lived the year round +in their country houses at Burlingame, San Mateo, Alta, Menlo Park, +Atherton, or "across the Bay," using the hotels when they came to town +for dances, but motoring home after the theater. + +Fortunately the finest and all of the newest mansions had been built in +the Western Addition and escaped the fire. Sibyl Bascom's father-in-law +had erected, shortly before his death, a large square granite palace +more or less in the Italian style, and as his widow preferred to live +in Santa Barbara, Frank Bascom had taken it over for himself and his +bride. + +Olive had carried her millions to France and found her marquis. (As he +was wealthy himself they contributed little to the current gossip of +San Francisco.) + +Janet Maynard lived with her mother, another widow of unrestricted +means, in a large low Spanish house with a patio, built by a famous +local architect with such success that Rex Roberts when he married +Polly Luning, had bought the nearest vacant lot and ordered a romantic +mansion as nearly like that of his wife's intimate friend as possible. +He would live in it as soon as the idiosyncrasies of The Architect and +Labor would permit. + +Mrs. Clement Hunter had another pale gray stone palace, supported in +front by noble pillars and commanding a superb view of the Bay, the +Golden Gate, and Mount Tamalpais. + +Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade +of stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted +geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other +nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and +innocent youth. + +Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square +bow-windowed mansard-roofed double house, built in +eighteen-seventy-eight, and unreclaimed. With it went a moderate +income, and Alice lived on under the ugly old roof chaperoned by an +aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal assortment of relatives +because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so terrified of draughts +that her absence when convenient could always be counted on. + + + +II + + +All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined +the class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits +among them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be +expected of "parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress, +poker, and some absorbing creature of the other sex. + +Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen, +Mrs. Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently +adopted by California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of +curiosity, having read a certain amount of socialism, but never met a +socialist. + +She confided to Mrs. Thornton that she was not acutely anxious to meet +another, and Mrs. Thornton replied tartly: + +"What do you want to belong to such a class for? It's rank hyprocrisy +to pretend interest in a question we all hate the very name of, and to +give the creature money that he no doubt turns over to the 'cause' with +his tongue in his cheek. I'd never give one of them the satisfaction of +knowing that I recognized his existence." + +Said Maria Abbott firmly: "Exactly. We should ignore them, just as we +ignore envious and spiteful and ill-bred outsiders of any sort." + +"But we may not be able to ignore them," said Mrs. Hunter. "Their +organization is the best of any party even if their numbers are not +overwhelming. If they are content to advance slowly and by purely +political methods there is no knowing who will own this or any +government fifty years hence. For my part I'd rather they all turn +raging anarchists; then we could turn machine guns on them and clean +'em out. I hate them, for I was too long getting where I am now, and I +want to stay. But I don't make the mistake of ignoring them, and I +rather like having a squint at them at close quarters. Kirkpatrick has +taken us to several socialist meetings ... we borrow the servants' +coats and mutilate our oldest hats.... Socialism seems to me rather +more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick is about +the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and +one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere.... That +would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor California is +a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the riff-raff and +derelicts.... My other hope is that even they--that is to say the least +unbalanced of them--will come in time to realize that socialism is +economically unsound--" + +"Do you mean to say," cried Mrs. Abbott, "that Alexina has gone to +socialist meetings?" + +"Rather. She's very keen--" + +"Believes in it?" + +"Rather not. But she is naturally thorough--has a really extraordinary +tendency, for a San Franciscan of her sex and status, to finish +anything she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick +she sticks out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it +is. She has him pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the +rest of us alive she can smooth him down like a regular lion tamer." + +"Well, you're nothing but a lot of parlor socialists," said Mrs. +Thornton disgustedly. "And just as ridiculous as any other hybrids. But +I'm relieved that it hasn't spoiled your taste for the simpler +pleasures of life. Maria, as you don't play poker we'll have a game of +bridge, Ladie, ring for cocktails, will you--or would you rather have a +gin fizz? Don't look so horrified, Maria. We're better than socialists, +anyhow; if they did win out you'd have farther to fall than we, for +you're a moss-backed old conservative who hates change of any sort, +while we not only love change of all sorts but are regular anarchists: +do as we please and snap our fingers at the world. Here we are." + +The three were in Mrs. Thornton's Moorish palace half way between San +Mateo and Burlingame, a situation that symbolized the connecting bridge +between the old and new order for Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Thornton was a +lineal descendant of the Rincon Hill of the sixties and had made her +debut with Maria Groome in the eighties. But she had married an +immoderately rich man and had a barbaric taste for splendor that formed +the proper setting for her own somewhat barbaric beauty, and imperious +temper. Her dark and splendid beauty was waning, for in the matter of +giving aid to nature with secrecy or with art she was faithful to the +old tradition. But she was always an imposing figure and as close to +being the first power in San Francisco society as that happy-go-lucky +independent class would ever tolerate. + + + +III + + +Kirkpatrick liked Mrs. Hunter, regarding her as "an honest plain-spoken +dame without any frills." This estimate applied not only to her +temperament but to her costumes. He admired her severe tailored suits +(although he sensed their cost) and her smart, plain, hard, little hats. + +The "frills and furbelows" of the younger "spenders" irritated the +group of nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond +endurance; but he managed to stand it by reminding himself that +irritation of all such was a healthy sign and vastly preferable to +insidious tolerance. + +Mrs. Hunter was also as regular in her attendance as Mrs. Dwight, Miss +Lawton and Mrs. Price Ruyler, and asked fairly intelligent questions. +The others floated in and out, and one by one dropped from the class, +until toward the middle of the second winter none remained but Alexina, +Aileen, Mrs. Hunter and Helene Ruyler, who, like Aileen, found in the +"frantic interest" of the materialistic creed which antagonized every +instinct in them, a distraction from the excessive gambling which had +threatened to wreck their nerves, purses, and peace of mind. They +confided this artlessly to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who replied dryly that they +were the best argument he had in stock. + +But if the major part of his fashionable class deserted him in due +course he had meanwhile seen the inside of their homes; and in each +case, Alexina, who divined his interest, arranged to have him shown +over the house from the kitchens and pantries straight up to the +servants' quarters. + +These he found unexpectedly comfortable and complete. In fact, they +were so much more modern and adorned than the little cottage in the +Mission where he lived with his mother that he longed for the immediate +installation of a system that would teach these workers what real work +was. What enraged him further was their "airs." They too obviously +looked upon him as an alien intruder, whereas their mistresses, until +socialism bored them, were, for the most part, as charmingly courteous +as his one reliable friend, Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. + + + +IV + + +During the first winter and spring while his pupils were still fairly +regular in their attendance, he was both incensed and grimly amused by +their various idiosyncrasies. He soon became accustomed to their vanity +boxes and their public application of powder and lip stick, the frank +crossing of their knees that exhibited more diaphanous silk than he had +ever seen in his life before, the polite excitement that any new +article of attire worn by one seemed to induce in all, the wicked but +on the whole good-natured baiting of Aileen Lawton and Polly Roberts, +the alternate insolence and Circean glances of Mrs. Bascom, who amused +herself "practicing on him," and the constant smoking of most of them. + +But what he could neither understand nor accept was their attitude +toward one another. They would all rush at the hostess of the day as +they entered, or at late comers, with the excited enthusiasm of loved +and loving intimates who had not met for months; and Kirkpatrick, who +missed nothing, knew that they met once a day if not oftener. + +In spite of their intimacy their warm enraptured greetings carried a +patent measure of admiration and even respect. It was always at least +fifteen minutes before they would settle down for "work" and meanwhile +they chattered about their common interests, but always with the air of +relating long-delayed information and a frank desire to give of their +best. He could have understood "gush," and sentimentalism, but this +attitude of which he had neither heard nor read bothered him until one +day he had a sudden, flash of enlightenment. + + + +V + + +"Is it class-consciousness?" + +He asked the question of Gora, who dropped in upon a class at Alexina's +or Aileen's sometimes on a free afternoon, and with whom he was walking +down to the trolley car. + +"Something like that. Caste they would call it if they thought about it +at all, which to do them justice they don't.... It used to be the +fashion in San Francisco for everybody to 'knock' everybody else. Then +came a revulsion and everybody began to praise and boost. You see it in +all circles, but the way it has taken that crowd is to show their +intense loyalty to one another by a constant reminder of it in manner, +and in refraining from criticism of one another, no matter how much +they may gossip about others outside of their particular set. Once, +just to try my sister-in-law, I told her that in my nursing I had +stumbled across evidence of an illicit love affair going on between one +of her friends and a married man, the husband of my patient. My sister +became so remote that I had the impression for a few moments that she +really wasn't there. Once it would have infuriated me, but I have +improved my sense of humor and developed my philosophy, so I merely +turned the conversation, as she wouldn't speak at all. She had quite +withdrawn--still further into the sacred preserves, I suppose.... + +"They are not only loyal but really seem to have the most exalted +admiration for one another because they are all of the same heaven-born +stock.... That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that +they get so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not +cultivate as many kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as +their wits are equal to. When they can, they vary the monotony of life +with summers in Europe and winters in New York--or Santa Barbara, where +they meet many interesting people from the East or England; but some of +them won't leave their busy husbands or the husbands won't be left; or +parents are not amenable; so they try to create an atmosphere of high +spirits and sheer delight in youth and one another, and the result is +almost a work of art. I rather respect them, but I envy them a good +deal less than before I knew them so well." + +"Oh, you envied them? They should envy you." + +"Well, they don't! Yes, I envied them because it is my natural right to +be one of them and fate slammed the door before I was born. It +embittered my first youth, and it might have become an obsession after +my brother married into society if I had not found the right kind of +work. That and the boring Sundays I've spent at Rincona, and the +experiences I have had with that young set, who are always at Mrs. +Dwight's more or less; besides a profound satisfaction in accomplishing +literary work that not one of them could do to save their lives--all +this has routed a good deal of my old bitterness of spirit. I am not +sorry that I had it and indulged it, however. Discontent and resentment +put spurs on the soul. Anything is better than smugness." + +"It's made you different enough from these others, all right. Even from +Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself.... I'd rather you'd stayed +discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've +suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're +jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention +to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as +they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't +give my eye teeth to see hanging out the wash or running a machine in a +factory."' + +Gora turned to him with a smile. At this time she was as nearly happy +as was possible for that insurgent too aspiring spirit. + +"Nevertheless, they've made you over in a way--Oh, don't flame! I don't +mean your principles ... other ways that won't hurt you in the least. +You cut your hair differently. You wear better shoes. You have your +clothes pressed--the suit you wear up here anyhow. You've reformed your +speech somewhat, and you know a good deal more about many things than +you did a few months ago. I am expecting any day to see you wearing a +'boiled' shirt." + +"Oh, no, not that! It'd never do. It's true enough I got to feeling +self-conscious about my rough clothes and boots, especially after I met +that dude brother of yours one day in the hall and he gave me a +once-over that made me feel like a tramp." + +"Oh! ... But he was snubbed himself not so very long ago, and I suppose +it gives him a certain pleasure to snub some one else, I am ashamed of +him.... But tell me, don't you like them rather better than you +expected? Find them rather a better sort? You must see that there is +practically no leisure class as far as the men are concerned--" + +"They have time enough to go chicken chasing--" + +"Well, aside from that? At least they do work. And the younger women? +You knew before that they were frivolous because they had too much +money and too few responsibilities. Many of the older women have a +serious and useful side, even if they do waste an unholy amount of time +at cards." + +"Well, if you ask me, their manners, when they remember to use 'em, are +better than I expected. Only that Miss Thorndyke is cold and haughty, +but perhaps that's because she's poor (for her), or is covering up +something, or is just plain stupid.... Mrs. Dwight's manners are always +perfect. She's my idea of a lady--just! And in the new system there'll +be a long sight more ladies than is possible now, only no +aristocrats.... Yes, they're decent enough considering they're rotten +poisoned by money and thinkin' themselves better'n the mass; and I like +their affection for one another. But they could be all that in the +socialist state and more too. They'd have to cut out drink and +gambling, and a few other diversions some of 'em'll drift into, if one +or two of 'em haven't already--just through being bored to death." + +"Do you honestly think socialism means universal virtue?" + +"No, I don't. I'm no such greenhorn; though there's some that does, or +pretends to.... But I mean there'd be no _drifting_ into vice like +there is now, no indulgence of any old weakness because temptation was +always following them about or just round the corner. That's the +trouble now.... But in the most perfect state some would be watching +out for their chance, just because the old Adam was too strong in spite +of the fact that all the old reminders had disappeared." + +"More likely they'd all murder one another because they were some ten +thousand times more bored than that poor little group whose brains you +are addling." + +"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Miss Gora. You ought to give +that pen of yours to socialism. There would be all the revenge you +could want--and it's what you're entitled to. Then I could call you +Comrade Gora." + +"Call me Comarade by all means if it hurts you to say Miss to a fellow +worker.... You admit then that envy of a society you were not born into +and which refuses to acknowledge you as an equal, is the secret of your +desire to pull it down?" + +"Partly that." he admitted cooly. "Not that I'd change places with any +of those fat millionaires I see shuffling down the steps of the +Pacific-Union Club--although I'll admit to you what I wouldn't to these +young devils in my class, that I know some socialists who would. I hate +the sight of 'em. But I want to do away with class-rights and +class-distinctions, not only because I just naturally have no use for +them but because I want to put an end to the misery of the world." + +"You mean the material misery. What would you do with the other seven +hundred different varieties?" + +"Well.... I guess each case would have to take care of itself. Perhaps +we'd get round to it after a while. Get power and class-envy out of the +world, and some genius, like as not, would invent a post-graduate +course of colleges for human nature. All things are possible." + +"You are an optimist! Here's our car. Come home with me and share the +supper that I pay for with the tainted money of a plutocrat. Only we +haven't any real plutocrats in San Francisco. Only modest millionaires. +Will you?" + +"Yes." said Mr. Kirkpatrick. "And thank you kindly." He even smiled, +for he was developing a latent heavily overlain seed of humor; +inherited from the full bay tree that had flourished in his +grandfather, born in County Clare, where men sometimes indulged in +rebellion but did not take themselves too seriously withal. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +That winter and the following seasons for the next few years passed +very rapidly for Alexina. Besides her classes and the constant +companionship of her friends (to say nothing of the excitement of +helping one or two of them out of not infrequent scrapes), she had for +a time the absorbing interest of refurnishing the best part of her +house. + +The square lower hall which had been scantily furnished with the +grandfather's clock, a hat-rack, and a settee, and whose walls were +covered with "marble paper," was painted, walls and wood, a deep ivory +white, and refurnished with light wicker furniture, palms, and growing +plants. The hat-rack was abolished, and the small library on the left +of the entrance turned into a men's dressing-room. The folding doors +were removed from the great double parlors, the "body brussels" +replaced by hardwood floors, the walls tinted a pale gray as a +background for the really valuable pictures (including the proud and +gracious and beautiful Alexina Ballinger, dust long since in Lone +Mountain), and the splendid pieces of Italian furniture which had +always seemed to sulk and bulge against the dull brown walls. The rep +and walnut sets were sent to the auction room and replaced by +comfortable chairs and sofas whose colors varied, but harmonized not +only with one another but with the rugs that Alexina under Gora's +direction had bought at auction. In fact she bought many of her new +pieces at auction and with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over +the advertisements and then go down to the crowded rooms and bid. + +The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her +mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with +bookcases to the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken +tables against an expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a +wedding gift from Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art) +that had despoiled a desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise. + +The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had +been removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den +for long rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer +when she remained in the city. + +The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and +gold wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the +sideboards were built into the wails end could be replaced only at +great cost; they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties, +and no doubt exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs +which had been merely recovered. + +As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced +by electricity. + +All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her +brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to +achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable +people would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative. +Moreover, entertaining at home would be far cheaper for him than at the +restaurants. + +He was doing fairly well at this time, for he had learned what +commodities the retail men were likely to buy of a firm as small as +his, and he had got into touch with one or two foreign markets not +monopolized by the older houses. Moreover, he had been speculating a +little in the new Nevada mines, and successfully. He presented Alexina +with a Victrola which included the music for all the new dances, and a +long coat of baby lamb lined with her favorite periwinkle blue. To his +sister he returned a thousand dollars of her money. + +Alexina knew nothing of these speculations and felt that her original +faith in him was justified. He did not offer even yet to pay all the +monthly expenses of the house, explaining casually that the greater +part of his profits went back into the business; but he handed over his +share promptly, and such fleeting doubts and anxieties as may once have +visited his still inexperienced wife faded and finally disappeared. + + + +II + + +They began to entertain a little during the second winter, Mrs. Groome +having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large +drawing-room had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a +habit, when there was "nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and +announcing they were coming up to take a whirl. This led to more +telephoning, and some twenty couples would dance in the long-silent old +house at least once and often three times a week. + +The new order delighted James, who felt young again, and his hastily +improvised suppers were models of unpretentious succulence. There were +always sherry and whiskey in the handsome old decanters on the +sideboards; and, at the equally perfect little dinners, for a time, two +bottles of Alexander Groome's favorite brand of champagne (which he had +remembered with satisfaction on his deathbed that he had not outlived) +were brought up from the cellar by the beaming James. + +When, almost with tears, he informed his mistress' husband that the +last bottle had been served Mortimer could do no less than order up a +case. He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent +native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to +appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler. + +He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business." +Nearly all the young men, married or otherwise, that came to his house +(Alexina subtly encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or +less importance or standing in the world of business and finance (two +were lawyers in their first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne), +and the more prosperous he appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the +extent of Alexina's income) the more apt would business be to flow his +way, the less likely they would be to suspect him of playing the stock +market. At all events it enhanced his standing and gave him intense +pleasure. + +Moreover, as time passed it became evident to his sensitive ego that he +was no longer looked upon as an outsider. He was accepted as a matter +of course. He was one of them. Neither men nor women (not even Aileen) +continued to ask themselves whether they liked him or not. He was there +and to stay and that was the end of it. They had always liked his +manners; he made a charming host, and, as ever, he danced like "a god +with wings on his heels." + +Quite naturally in due course some one offered to put him up at the +most exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to +which every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance +belonged as a matter of course. Old men whose names had once been +potent in the great banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed +with sad and rheumy eyes down upon the new city in which there was +barely a familiar landmark to remind them of their youth or the years +of their power and their pride. They sat there all day long, day after +day; and tourists went away with the impression that the imposing brown +stone mansion on the sacred crest of Nob Mill was a sumptuously endowed +retreat for the incurably aged. + +But the majority of its members were very much alive and still +well-padded; and, far from being on a pale diet, were deeply +appreciative of the famous culinary resources of the chef, and showed +it. + +When the offer was made to Mortimer he accepted with a bright: "Oh, +thanks, old chap. I'd like it immensely," But when, on the first day of +his membership, he stood in one of the front windows and gazed out at +the ruins opposite--the Pacific Union Club and the Fairmont Hotel were +still two oases in the rubbled waste of Nob Hill--he felt so exultant +and so happy that he dared not open his lips lest he betray himself. He +could mount no higher socially. All that he had to strive for now was +his million--or millions. When he had half a million he would build a +house at Burlingame that could be enlarged from time to time. + +Only with the "Rincona crowd" he had made no headway. Maria did not +hesitate to comment on the extravagance of doing the house over, the +membership at the club with all it entailed, Alexina's little electric +car, and above all the constant entertaining. A moderate amount was due +Alexina's position; but open house--nothing made money fly so quickly. +Prices were getting higher every day (there came a time, in the wake of +the great war, when she looked back with sad amazement at the morning +of her discontent) and rich people were getting richer while poor +people like themselves (she meant what Alexina still called the A. A.) +were growing poorer. + +Tom Abbott had not put Mortimer up at the club. He happened to know +that although his brother-in-law was doing fairly well he was not +making a fortune, and suspected that he dabbled in stocks. But he said +nothing of this to his wife, and as he knew that Alexina had long since +revoked her power of attorney (she had given him to understand that +this was done at Mortimer's suggestion) he believed that her money at +least was safe. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Alexina, although she would have found it impossible, even if she had +so desired, to relapse into the incognitance of the years preceding her +mother's death, had nevertheless locked and sealed and cellared her +ivory tower, those depths of her nature where, she suspected, her true +ego dwelt. It was an ego she had forfeited the right to indulge, nor +had she at this time any desire to know more of herself than she did. +Life after all was very pleasant; she managed to fill it with many +little and even a few absorbing interests; and once she spent a month +at Santa Barbara chaperoning Janet Maynard, where her duties sat +lightly upon her and she would have responded naturally if addressed as +Miss Groome, so completely did Mortimer fade into the background. In +the summer of nineteen-thirteen Judge Lawton and Aileen overcame all +protests and took her with them to Europe, where, after a month in +Paris, she visited Olive de Morsigny in her renaissance chateau on the +Loire. The memory of Gathbroke revisited her and she half-wished the +Judge would go to England, but the climate did not agree with him, and +after a few more enchanted weeks, in Italy and Spain, she returned to +Mortimer, who was distinctly duller than ever. + +But she had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her +life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in +the face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as +ever attempted to stand between a girl and her fate. + +Nevertheless, immediately after her return from Santa Barbara in the +late autumn of nineteen-eleven, and wholly without, analysis or +pondering, she made a significant change in the order of her life. +Mortimer, who had, during her absence, occupied a large room at the +back of the house visited by the afternoon sun, found himself invited +to retain it.... They must avoid the least possibility of a family +until they were better off.... She had been hearing the subject +discussed ... the most economical baby cost fifty dollars a month. With +a permanent trained nurse, and of course they would have one, the cost +would easily be doubled ... thousands were required for the proper +education of a child ... even if she had girls she should wish them to +go to college; she was not half educated herself ... and boys, with +their extravagances, their debts, they cost a mint; it was better for +children to be born outright in the humbler classes than to be born +into a rich set without riches themselves ... it all put her in a panic +every time she thought of it.... Morty was so sensible and had such a +high sense of responsibility, of course he understood ... children, +even when small, would hamper him fearfully, especially as he had not +even begun to make his million.... As for herself she would be more +economical than ever and help him like the good pal she was. + +Mortimer had the sensation of being trussed up with invisible but +inflexible silken thongs. His thoughts need not be recorded. + + + +II + + +Alexina refurnished her bedroom in her favorite periwinkle blue; a low +graceful day-bed with a screen before the stationary washstand helped +to create the atmosphere of a boudoir. It had an intensely personal +atmosphere in which man, more particularly a lawful husband, had no +place. + +When Alexina stood on the threshold and surveyed this room, chaste, +cool, proud, and exquisitely lovely, she lifted her hand and blew off a +kiss, out of the window, wafting away the memory of the room as it had +been. She had remarkable powers of obliteration, a sort of River of +Lethe among the backwaters of her mind, where she held below the +surface all she wished to forget until it ceased to struggle. She never +again gave a thought to her early relationship with her husband; not +even to the indifference or distaste which had followed so quickly upon +her curiosity and her determination to feel romantic at all costs. + + + +III + + +Subtly she felt she was happier than she had ever been even in those +first weeks, when she had barred the gates of her fool's paradise +behind her; she felt as free and happy as the birds skimming over the +beds of periwinkle below her window, and (miraculously finding her +second youth quite as productive as her first) took no pains to +conceive of anything better. She looked neither forward nor back, and +all was well. + +She even flirted a little, that being the fashion, and, having had +enough of business men, encouraged the devotions of Bascom Luning and +Jimmie Thorne. She saw them when they chose to call in the daytime, and +regaled the glowering Mortimer at the dinner table with scraps of their +sapience. + +Mortimer had resigned himself long since to the sacrifice of several of +his bourgeois ambitions, among them to be master in his own house; but +not an iota of his convictions. Although it would not have occurred to +him to distrust his wife if she had chosen to sit up all night with a +man, he made frozen comments upon the impropriety of a woman having men +in the house when her husband was not there, sitting out dances with +men, taking long tramps through Marin County with three men and no one +for chaperon but Alice Thorndyke and Janet Maynard--shocking +flirts--whole Sundays--with lunch heaven knew where, and himself, who +hated tramping, not included. + +But these grim remonstrances were met in so gay a spirit of badinage +that he felt ridiculous, particularly as no powers of badinage or of +repartee had been included in his own mental equipment; and he usually +relapsed into a polite and bored silence. + +He never had had much to say at the dinner table when they were alone, +and, as time went on, his comments on the day were exhausted before the +soup had given place to the entree, and Alexina fell into the habit of +bringing her Italian text-book to the table--the study of Italian just +then being the rage in her set--and whatever interesting book she had +on hand. Mortimer made no protest. His brain was fagged at night. It +was a relief not to be expected to talk when they dined alone; those +long silences had been oppresive even to him; he rather welcomed the +books. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +This complete new freedom, and personal privacy, entailed in time a +result which Alexina would have been the last to anticipate even if she +had disposed of her husband by death or divorce. + +Owing to the thoroughness of her mental methods she was psychologically +free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been +transposed by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will +when it is strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, +thought; but it has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and +in that mysterious region are the subtle inheritances of mind and +character, the springs and the direction, of all functional life; a +fate with a thousand threads on her wheel, filaments from the souls and +the bodies, the minds and the acts, of every ancestor straight back to +that vast impersonal ocean where, unthinkable millions of years ago +proemial life awaited the call of the worlds. + +This aged untiring fate at the wheel battles unceasingly with the +conscious mind above, for age is prone to live by law and rote. These +fates, the oldest daughters of the Earth-Mother, Nature, know nothing +of morals or manners, assume that men and women are as naive in their +normality as the denizens of forest and field. And so they are while +children. + + + +II + + +The eternal pull between civilizing Mind (Oh, centuries yet from being +civilized!) and the memoried but obstinate old lady at the wheel (who +laughs when a man of powerful will and too active mind "wills" sleep; +forcing him finally to choose between the horrors of insomnia, the +insidious tyranny of drugs, and the doubtful and wearisome alternative +of psychotherapeutics)--this pull, automatic in people of low estate, +becomes bitter and often appalling where the mind is highly developed +and attuned besides to the codes and customs of the best that +civilization has so far accomplished. + +The most vital of all these functions, for without it Mother Earth +would be like an ant hill without ants, and all these ancient norms of +daughters as homeless as the rest of the fates, is what man in a spirit +of social compromise has labeled an instinct--the sex-instinct. It is +no more an instinct than recurring sleep, lymphatic action, hunger, +thirst, alimentation. It is a primal function for which Mind, wisely +foreseeing the consequences of too much Nature, long since created laws +both civil and social to curb. There are many impulses, Inherited, from +ten thousand ancestors and constantly jogged by Earth's busy agent, +human nature, that may logically be called instincts (their roots lying +in the ancient social groups and their struggle to exist) but not a +function that governs the law of reproduction, as appetite governs the +law of renewing the vital necessities of the body. + + + +III + + +In the Latin races the conscious war between the brain above and the +sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere +excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect +body, is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence, +their practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to +life, psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple +question of hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of +that modern, development, called romance, which has given birth to a +peculiar form of personal imagination, too often without foundation or +logic--all these preclude that most active of all mental aids to the +matter of fact needs of the body--glamour. + +But it is far otherwise with the English-speaking races--loosely called +Anglo-Saxon, They are powerfully sexed; their feelings and sentiments +go deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but +fatal clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is +perhaps the most precious of their achievements, and they have +established a code which not only demands rectitude of act but +suppression of thought and desire where there is no lawful outlet. + +Nothing, possibly, has more infuriated the old lady at the methodically +performing wheel than this. She takes her revenge and squirts poison +into the physical structure of the brain, obscures the soul with dark +and brooding clouds, and subtly reduces the blood system to such a +state that any germ is welcome. + + + +IV + + +Once more Mind uses its highest faculties and outwits her, having no +intention that civilization shall drop below the plane to which it has +been raised through long laborious centuries of time. Life becomes more +diverse, more complex. The middle classes work harder to live; they +have little leisure for thoughts, for introspection. Punishment is +dire.... Those that have leisure and yet not enough to command the more +brilliant and special forms of distraction are supplied with public +libraries, gymnasiums, free medical advice regarding the laws of +hygiene in places where they cannot fail to see it, new forms of cheap +amusement; they are subtly encouraged to take up useful work or study; +or there are increasing pressures which may force even this +semi-leisure class to work for luxuries if not for bread. Tens of +thousands of women are led into the passionate diversions of club life. +For them, too, politics with its fierce championships and hatreds and +frictions; the necessity of concentration of thought on the impersonal +plane if only in the matter of getting the best of rivals within the +fold; and if hair flies souls are saved. + +Over the Oldest Profession Mind still scratches its head in vain. It is +ever hopeful, and hamstrings a sovereign patron, like alcohol, now and +again; but the lady at the wheel smiles, for here, in addition to the +unquenchable maternal instinct, the ignorance of the poor, and the +glamour that the men of certain races have learned to give to love, she +has her clearest field. + +Aside from the women of commerce there are, of course, many secret +rebels--now and then only does one make her exit from society through +the courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or +capital, suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies--which +are vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding +genius is more than commonly out of patience--and rise to serene +heights or grow morbid and irritable according to the strength or the +meagerness of their equipment; or the nature of their resources. A +cultivated resource is a persistent fiction that life is as it ought to +be, not as it is, and it is no plan of theirs to read books or witness +plays that might carve and populate a new groove in their brains. + +Let no one imagine that this class will become more "enlightened," +"broader," as time goes on. Not for a century at least. Mind has made +too great a success of this product; she has practically achieved a +complete triumph over the lady at the wheel. It is this class that has +made civilization progress, the solid thing it is to date. The +excrescences, the deserters from the normal, scintillating or subtle, +may be tolerated for the spice they give to life but they will never +rule. + +Possibly they do not mind. Life Is made up of compromises and +compensations. + + + +V + + +American women in youth, of the visibly reputable world, may be freely +divided into two classes, the oversexed and those that seem cold to +themselves and others until they are well into the period of their +second youth--between twenty-four and thirty; and a not inconsiderable +number are so and permanently. In the first case they either +precipitate themselves into matrimony or have one or more intrigues +until they find the man they wish to marry, when they settle down and +make excellent wives. The others, if they are imaginative and +high-minded, fall in love romantically and marry far too soon; or they +capitalize their youth or beauty and marry to the best advantage; or +they elect to live a life of serene spinsterhood like Alexina's Aunt +Clara, and bring up the family children. A not inconsiderable number +take their fling late. + +When the American girl of the super-refined class, and whose baleful +norm in the crypt was asleep at the wheel in her first blind youth, +finds herself disappointed in the most intimate partnership that +exists, the complaisance, voluntary at the beginning, drifts into +habit, more and more grimly endured. Some have the moral courage to put +an end to it as they would to any false situation, but if individuals +were not rare in this world we should have chaos, not a civilization of +sorts which is a pleasant place to plant the feet, however high into +the clouds the head may poke its investigating nose. + +It is natural that with such women during the period of endurance all +love should seem distasteful, and the mind dwell upon any other +subject. But remove the cause of sex-inertia and there is likely to be +the stir and awakening of spring after a long monotonous winter of hard +frost and blanketing snow. Or a homelier simile: remove the cause of +chronic indigestion and the appetite becomes fresh and normal. + +Thus Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +San Francisco, commencing in September, has three or four months of +perfect weather. The cold fogs and winds cease to pay their daily +visits, the rainy season awaits the new year. The skies are a deep and +cloudless blue, the air is warm and soft and alluring, never too hot, +although the overcoats of summer are discarded. + +The city lies bathed in golden sunlight or the sharp jeweled light of +stars, when the moon is not blazing like a crystal bonfire. Then Mount +Tamalpais and other mountains across the Bay and behind the city take +on a chiseled outline that, particularly at night, makes them look +curiously new, as if but yesterday heaved from the deep, and Nature too +busy to provide them with a background and the soft blurs of time for +centuries to come. This primeval look of bare California mountains on +clear nights has something sinister and menacing in its aspect as if at +any moment they might once more brood alone over the earth. + + + +II + + +Alexina returned from abroad early in November and stood one morning +outside her eucalyptus grove, revolving slowly on one heel, schoolgirl +fashion, as she gazed up at the steep densely populated hill that rose +from the street below her own private little hill, and cut off her view +of the hills of Berkeley and the mountains beyond; at the broad crowded +valleys on the south; the range of hills that hid the Pacific Ocean, +and included Mount Calvary with its cross and the symmetrical mass of +Twin Peaks; the bare brown mountains of the north piling above the +green sparkling bay with its wooded and military islands. + +Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she +had seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it +to art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she +had returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving +off the disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her +to admit it. + +San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that +compact mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with +sudden palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the +impression that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike +Genoa. But it seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had +just paid her first brief visit to the old world, an interval, +moreover, that had been without a responsibility, cut her off so +completely from her general life that when variously addressed +"Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Senorita," she ceased almost at once to +feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not forbidden herself to +dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with a future to sketch +with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her pleasure. + +But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in +Europe. She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert +Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary +bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he +intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social +prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the +totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into +the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife +were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and +many small dinners, not avowedly bridge or poker parties, were as +inevitable as crab in season; but there were too many young men whom +girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony of crab a la +poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as little to say +as poor Morty. She had known debutantes who flatly refused to dance +with married men or even to be introduced to them. + +California was her fate. No doubt of that. She might never see Europe +again, for while it was all very well to be a guest once it would be +quite impossible another time. She certainly could not afford it +herself and keep Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as +she might if her home were in New York. + +Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not. +Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him +so depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven. His eyes +were as lifeless as slate, his voice was flat, although for that matter +he was almost dumb. When at home he sat brooding heavily by the open +western windows of the drawing-room, or moved restlessly about. To all +her questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse +than ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As +she had not been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself, +and had paid few week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about +and the men talked of nothing but the business depression.... Alexina +had shrugged her shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle +reproach for leaving him to the dull cares of business while she +enjoyed herself in Europe. + +She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly +comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money +which with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the +household expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club +by the ocean, and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of +his idolatry on Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was +and it was now two years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a +luxurious bachelor at the back of the house with an always amiable +companion at breakfast and dinner. + + + +III + + +Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and +watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty +had consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying +him. She hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be +happy in his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his +divagations from the world--and she could trust him to do that! Now +that she had ceased to be the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves +and torpid imagination she would be the last to condemn him. Human +Nature was an ever opening book to her these days, and she wondered +what would happen to herself if any of several men she liked were +capable of making her love him, whipping up a personal storm in those +emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly intruded themselves +upon her consciousness. + +She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the +old world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are +or not, and where life looks to the American the quintessence of +romance.... She had concluded that the most satisfactory experience +that could come to her would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a +man who possessed all the requirements to induce it, but who would +either be the unsuspecting object, or, reciprocating, would continue to +love her with the world between them. + +For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did +not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might +for a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she +recalled the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were +put to meet their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole +drama of man and woman. + +Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and +society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often +laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when +circumstances have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness +even the blind urge of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go +on sullenly feeding the fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for +the astrological moment. + + + +IV + + +Alexina shrugged her shoulders impatiently and went into the house. She +would go down to the bank and clip her coupons. She cultivated +assiduously the practical side of life, making the most of it, +delighted when repairs were needed on her flats, regretting that the +greater part of her income came from ground rents, collected, as ever, +by Tom Abbott, and bonds, from which she still experienced a childish +pleasure in cutting the coupons. Her flats, which were in a humbler +part of the western division of the city, she had never visited, but +she received a call every month from the agent, who brought her the +rents and complaints. + +She had made a heroic effort to turn herself into a business woman but +the material had been too slender; and she sometimes wished for a large +independent fortune that would tax her powers to the utmost. But she +never even had any surplus to invest. Her wardrobe was no +inconsiderable item; living prices rose steadily; there were repairs +both on her own house and the flats to be anticipated every year, to +say nothing of the fiendish sum that must be set aside for taxes. But +she managed to save the necessary amount; and if they lived somewhat +extravagantly, at least she had never disturbed her capital. + +On the whole she knew they had managed very well for young people who +lived so much in the world, and she had no intention of economizing +further. They had no children. Her husband was young and energetic and +healthy. Her own little fortune was secure. She purposed to enjoy life +as best she could; and as she could not have done this quite selfishly +and been happy, she included among her yearly expenditures a certain +admirable charity presided over by her equally admirable sister, and +even visited it occasionally with her friends when a serious mood +descended abruptly upon them.... She was now on the threshold of her +second beautiful youth, and found herself and life far more interesting +than when, a silly girl of eighteen, she had believed that all life and +romance must be crowded into that callow period. She had no idea of +sacrificing this new era vibrating with unknown possibilities (it was +on the cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory tomb; +lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it +difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a +sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the +same time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott +(when Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a----fool, but +she was not a----fool. + + + +V + + +She dressed herself in a black velvet suit made by her New York +tailors. She had spent, a fortnight with her brother Ballinger on her +way home, and he had given her a set of silver fox: a large muff and +two of those priceless animals head to head to keep a small section of +her anatomy at blood heat in a climate never cold enough for furs. + +The day was hot. It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side +of the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and +fortunate woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women +everywhere with a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn +is the time to display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San +Francisco woman of fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in +the glorious spring weather of November if she perished in her furs. + +The coat, bound with silk braid, was lined with periwinkle blue, and +there was a touch of the same color in her large black velvet hat. +Nothing could make the great irises of her black-gray eyes look blue, +but they shone out, dazzling, under the drooping brim; and if she was, +perchance, too warm above, her scant skirt, her thin silk stockings and +low patent leather shoes struck the balance like a brilliant paradox. + +Alexina nodded approvingly at her image in the pier glass, found the +key of her safe deposit box in the cabinet where she had left it, and +went down to the smart little electric car which the gardener had +brought to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Alexina stood alone in the strong room of the bank leaning heavily +against the wall with its endless rows of compartments from one of +which she had taken the dispatch box in which she had kept her bonds. + +The box had fallen to the floor. If there had been any one in the room +with her he would have started and turned as the box clanged with a +hollow echo on the steel surface. + +The box was empty. + +It was a large box. It had contained forty thousand dollars' worth of +bonds, nearly a third of her fortune. The securities were among the +soundest the country afforded, for Alexander Groome, wild as he may +have been when relieving the monotony of life with too many diversions, +not the least of which was speculation, never made a mistake in his +permanent investments; and others had been bought with equal prudence +by Judge Lawton or Tom Abbott. + +But the bonds had been negotiable. She recalled Tom Abbott's warning to +keep them always in her safe deposit box and the key hidden. They might +be traced if stolen, but State's Prison for the thief would be cold +comfort if the bonds had been cashed and the money spent. + +She had always had one of the lighter Italian pieces in her bedroom, a +beautiful cabinet of carved and gilded oak nearly black with age. Like +all such it had a secret drawer and here she had kept her keys, and her +jewels during the winter. + +Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain +little gilded face on the panel? ... All her friends, of course: +Aileen, Sibyl, Alice, Olive, Janet, Helene.... Unthinkable to have a +secret drawer in an old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some +Borgia or other, and not exhibit it to one's chosen friends. + +She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had +kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was +applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They +had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had +remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and +jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe +under the stairs. + +It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable +stones, reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine +pieces she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of +the family out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished +but more opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother +slept. Her pearl necklace had been the present of her more intimate +group of friends. + +Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although +she seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went +abroad, in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified +glance in the coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat. + +But her attention riveted itself once more on the empty box at her +feet. A third of her fortune, and gone beyond redemption. Her stunned +mind grasped that fact at once. No one stole bonds to keep them. But +who was the thief? + +Not any of her old friends. They might gamble, or drink, or deceive +their legal guardians, but they drew the line at stealing. Certain sins +lie within the social code and others do not. Women of her class, +unless kleptomaniac, did not steal. It wasn't done. With reason or +unreason they classed thieves of any sort with harlots, burglars, +firebugs, embezzlers, forgers, murderers, and common people who +overdressed and drank too much in public; and withdrew their skirts. + +Moreover, Aileen had been with her in Europe. Olive lived there. Janet +and Sibyl had more money than they could spend. The Ruylers were +ranching, and Helene was in Adler's Sanatorium with a new baby. Alice +had gone to Santa Barbara before she left and had not returned. + +It was insulting even to pass them in review, but the mind works in +erratic curves under shock. + +Gora had taken the thousand dollars Mortimer had returned to her and +gone first to Lake Tahoe and then to Honolulu to write a novel. She +would return on the morrow. + +Mortimer. + +It was incredible. Monstrous. She was outrageous even to link his name +with such a deed. He was the soul of honor. He might not be a genius +but no man had a cleaner reputation. She had lived with him now for +over six years and she had never ... never ... never ... + +And she knew, unconsentingly, infallibly, that Mortimer had stolen the +bonds. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Alexina drew the jewel coffer from the depths of the compartment and +opened it with fingers that felt swollen and numb. But the jewels were +there, and she experienced a feeling of fleeting satisfaction. They +were no part of her fortune, for she believed that only want would ever +induce her to sell them, but at least they were her own personal +treasure and a part of the beauty of life. + +She returned the fallen box to its place and locked the little +cupboard, then took herself in hand. Neither the keeper outside the +door of the vault nor those she met above must suspect that anything +was wrong with her. What she should do she had no idea at the moment, +but at all events she must have time to think. + +She left the bank with her usual light step and her head high, and then +she motored down the Peninsula. As she passed the shipyards she saw +crowds of men standing about; some of them turned and scowled after +her. They were on strike and took her no doubt for the wife or daughter +of a millionaire; and in truth there was never any difference +superficially in her appearance from that of her wealthier friends. She +had one ear instead of several hut it was perfect of its kind. Her +wardrobe was by no means as extensive as Sibyl's or Janet's or a +hundred others, but what she had came from the best houses, that use +only the costliest materials. Her face was composed and proud. There +was not a signal out, even from her brilliant expressive eyes, of the +storm within. + +Her mind was no longer stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury. +How dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and +separate.... She felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if +her jewel coffer instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was +the instinct of possession that had been outraged. What was hers was +hers as much as the hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind ... an +instinct that harked back to the oldest of the buried civilizations ... +she wondered if any socialist really had cultivated the power to feel +differently. She was quite certain that if Kirkpatrick should see a +thief fleeing with his purse he would chase him, collar him, and either +chastise him then and there or drag him to the nearest police station. + +And the thief was her husband, the man of her choice. Alexina felt that +possibly if a brother had stolen her money she would have been less +bitter because less humiliated; one did not select one's brothers.... +And if she had still loved Mortimer it would have been bad enough, +although no doubt with the blindness of youthful passion she would +immediately have begun to make excuses for him, reeling a blow as it +would have been. But the one compensation she had found in her +matrimonial wilderness was her pride in the essential honor of her +chosen partner, and her complete trust. If there had been any necessity +for giving a power of attorney when she went to Europe she would have +drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so completely had she +forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution.... If she had, no +doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless. + +Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate +himself from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had +lost it; that was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his +powers of bluff failed him matters were serious indeed. + +He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the +last was unpardonable. + +And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his +parents' had they been alive, because however they might lash him with +their contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in +society unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had +had forty thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it +would have been safe no matter what his predicament. He would have +accepted the alternative of bankruptcy without hesitation. + +But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered +something that Gora had once said to the same effect.... Yes, she could +have forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be +spared this sickening suffocating sensation of contempt. It was +demoralizing. She hated herself as much as she hated him. Moreover +there would have been some compensation in sending an outsider to San +Quentin. + +And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand +dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she +was visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid +half the household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to +pay any. They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay +taxes, subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay +the doctor and the dentist ... a hundred and one other incidentals ... +out of four thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They +would have to change their mode of living. + +However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a +plain talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even +had she wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have +things out and over with. But it would be horrible ... horribly +intimate. She had always deliberately lived on the surface with her +family and friends, respected their privacies as she held hers +inviolate. As her mind flashed back over her life she realized that +this would be the first really serious personal talk she would ever +have held with any one. Or, if her family, and occasionally, Mortimer, +had insisted upon being serious she had maintained her own attitude of +airy humor or delicate insolence. + +She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the +soul. Some day ... perhaps ... but never yet. + + + +II + + +She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries +would run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this +time having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy. +She knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of +Mr. James Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other +thoughtful men, that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty +equally divided; greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and +class hatred and the itch for power on the part of labor leaders; and a +stupidity in the mass that was more pardonable than the short-sighted +stupidities of capital.... But what would you? A few centuries hence +the world might be civilized, but not in her time. Nothing gave her +mind less exercise. One thing at least was certain and that was that +when strikes lasted too long the laborers and their families went +hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the question for her +and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet the fashion +to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless between +these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.) + +But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her +own.... The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life, +had been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she +was bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not +noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in +its wake.... She had had enough left, more than many women who had made +the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony.... And +now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a +liner about to sail through the Golden Gate ... but she would no doubt +have to live on ... and on ... in changed, possibly humble, conditions +... despising the man she must meet sometime every day.... Yes, she did +wish she never had been born. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +She concluded, while she dressed for dinner, that she must be a coward. + +Alexina was far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have +liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power +in the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the +national gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction--racial rather +than individual ... qualities that have made the United States lag far +behind the greater European nations in all but material development and +a certain inventiveness; both of which in some cases are outclassed in +the older world. + +A California woman of her mother's generation had become a great and +renowned archaeologist and lived romantically in a castle in the City of +Mexico. She bad often wished, since her serious mental life had begun, +that this gift had descended upon her--the donee had also been a member +of the A. A., and this striking endowment might just as well have +tarried a generation and a half longer. + +She was by no means avid of publicity--people seldom are until they +have tasted of it--but she would have enjoyed a rapid and brilliant +development of her mental faculties with productiveness of some sort +either as a sequel or an interim. It was impossible to advance much +farther in her present circumstances. + +No, she was far from perfect, and willing to admit it; but she had +always assumed that courage, moral as well as physical, was an +accompaniment of race, like breeding and certain automatic impulses. +But her hands were trembling and her cheeks drained of every drop of +color because she must have a plain and serious talk with a guilty +wretch. She had nothing to fear, but she could not have felt worse if +she had been the culprit herself. What was human nature but a bundle of +paradoxes? + +At least she had the respite of the dinner hour. Only a fiend would +spoil a man's dinner--and cigar--no matter what he had done. That would +make the full time of her own respite about an hour and twenty minutes. + +In a moment of panic she contemplated telephoning to Aileen and begging +her to come over to dinner. She also no doubt could get Bascom Luning +and Jimmie Thorne. Then it would not be possible to speak to Mortimer +before to-morrow as he always fell asleep at ten o'clock when there was +no dancing.... To-morrow it would be easier, and wiser. One should +never speak in anger.... + +But she was quite aware that her anger had burnt itself out. Her mind +felt as cold as her hands. Better have it over. She put on a severe +black frock, not only suitable to the occasion but as a protection from +disarming compliments. Mortimer, who dressed so well himself that it +would have been as impossible for him to overdress as to be rude to a +woman, disliked dark severity in woman's attire. He never criticized +his wife's clothes, but when they displeased him he ignored them with +delicate ostentation. + + + +II + + +Alexina had begun to feel that she should scream in the complete +silence of the dining-room when Mortimer unexpectedly made a remark. + +"Gora arrives to-morrow. Will you meet her? I shall not have time." + +"Of course. I shall be delighted to see her again. It would have been +an ideal arrangement if I could have left her here with you when I went +to Europe." + +"Yes. She was here for a week. I missed her when she left." + +"W-h-at? When was she here? You never told me." + +"I forgot. It was soon after you left. The ship was disabled--fire, I +think,--and put back. I asked her to stay here until the next sailing." + +"How jolly." + +Again there was a complete silence. But Alexina did not notice it. Her +brain was whirling. After all, she might be mistaken! Mortimer! He +might be innocent.... To think of Gora as a thief was fantastic ... was +it? ... Was she not Mortimer's sister? ... Why he rather than she? ... +And what after all did she know of Gora? ... She inspired some people +with distrust, even fear.... That might be the cause of Mortimer's +depression.... He knew it.... + +At all events it was a straw and she grasped it as if it had been a +plank in mid-ocean. With even a bare chance that Mortimer was innocent +it would be unpardonable to insult and wound him.... Nor was it quite +possible to ask him if his sister were a thief. She must wait, of +course. + +And if Gora had taken the bonds they might be recovered. It would be +like a woman to secrete them in a reaction of terror after having +nerved herself up to the deed. + +She wished that Gora had gone to Hong Kong. Bolted. Then she could be +certain. But at least she had a respite, and she felt so ebullient that +she almost forgot her loss, and swept Morty over to the Lawtons after +dinner; and the Judge took them all to the movies. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Alexina would listen to no remonstrance. Gora might send her trunks to +Geary Street if she liked, but she must come home to Ballinger House +and spend at least one night with her brother and sister, who had +missed her quite dreadfully. Gora wondered how Alexina could have +missed her so touchingly in Europe, but accepted the invitation, as a +note from the surgeon to whom she had written by the previous steamer +asked her to hold herself in readiness for an operation a week hence. + +Gora was looking remarkably well, and Alexina assumed it was not only +the six months of mountain life and the three months in the tropics. +She had an air of assured power, rarely absent in a woman who has found +herself and achieved a definite place in life. Besides being one of the +best nurses in San Francisco, in constant demand by the leading doctors +and surgeons, her short stories had attracted considerable attention in +the magazines, although no publisher would risk bringing them out in +book form. But they were invariably mentioned in any summary of the +year's best stories, one had been included in a volume of selected +short stories by modern authors, and one in a recent text-book compiled +for the benefit of aspirants in the same difficult art. The +remuneration had been insignificant, for her stories were not of the +popular order, and she had not yet the name that alone commands the +high reward; but she had advanced farther than many another as severely +handicapped, and she knew through her admiring sister-in-law and Aileen +Lawton that her stories were mentioned occasionally at a San Francisco +dinner table and even discussed! She was "arriving." No doubt of that. + + + +II + + +"When will the novel come out? I can't wait." + +"Not until the spring." + +They were sitting in Alexina's room and Gora had been placed directly +in front of the cabinet, which she did not appear even to see. She had +taken off her hat and coat and was holding the heavy masses of hair +away from her head. + +"Do you mind? I feel as if I had a twenty-pound weight...." + +"What a question! Do what you want." + +Gora took out the pins and let down her hair. It was not as fine as +Alexina's, but it was brown and warm and an unusual head of hair for +these days. It fell down both sides of her face, and her long cold +unrevealing eyes looked paler than ever between her sun-burned cheeks +and her low heavy brows. + +Alexina knew that she had an antagonist far worthier of any weapons she +might find in her armory than poor Morty, but she believed she could +trap her if she were guilty.... And she must be ... she must.... + +"Didn't you find it too hot in the tropics for writing?" + +"I only copied and revised. The book was finished before I left Lake +Tahoe-an ideal place for work. Some day I shall have a log cabin up +there. May I smoke?" + +"Of course." + +"It is almost a shame to desecrate a flower.... I used to come in here +sometimes and look round ... the week I spent here.... The room is a +poem ... like you.... Or rather the binding of the prose poem that is +Alexina." + +"I'd love it if you made me the heroine of one of your novels." + +"You'll have much more fun living it yourself." + +"Fine chance. I don't suppose I'll ever get out of California again.... +I am afraid that Morty is doing quite badly." + +Gora shrugged her strong square shoulders. "I never expected anything +else. I asked him for another thousand dollars of my money when I was +here and he looked as if he had forgotten he owed me any. Just like a +man and Morty in particular. Then he said he expected to make an +immense profit on something or other he had ordered from the Orient and +would pay me off when I returned. Has he condescended to tell you +anything about his affairs?" + +"Not a word. Did you need the money badly? If I had been here I could +have lent it to you." + +"Thanks. I am sure you would. But I dislike the idea of borrowing. It +must be so depressing to pay back.... I was in no particular need of +it, for of course I've saved quite a bit. I merely have a natural +desire for my own and thought it was a good opportunity to strike +Morty.... I suppose he's been speculating. Fortunes have been made in +Tonopah, but he would be sure to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong +mine.... Has he ever asked you for money?" + +"Never. He knows, too, that I have quite a sum in bonds that I could +convert into cash at once." + +"Well, take my advice and hold on to them--to every cent you have. +Where do you keep them?" + +"In the bank ... in a safe-deposit vault--Oh, how careless of me! I've +left the key out on the table! I usually keep it ... you remember ... +in the secret drawer of the cabinet." + +"How I wish I had the courage to write a story about a secret drawer of +an old Italian cabinet! ... I wouldn't leave it lying about; although, +of course, no one could use it without a pass also." + +"A what?" + +"They use every precaution. I know, because when I nursed old Mrs. +Beresford for eight months, I was sent down to the vault twice." + +Alexina's head was whirling. The blood burned and beat in her face. + +"Even with her signature I couldn't get by the keeper the first time +because he didn't know me. I had to be identified by her lawyer." + +"I like to feel so well taken care of. What shall you do if your novel +is a great success? Of course it will be. You would never go on being a +nurse." + +"I am not so sure it will be a success. Neither is my publisher. He +wrote me a half-whimsical half-complimentary letter saying that I must +remember the average reader was utterly commonplace, with no education +in the higher sense, no imagination, had an extremely limited +vocabulary and thought and talked in ready-made phrases, composed for +the most part of the colloquialisms of the moment. Style, distinction +of mind, erected an almost visible wall between the ambitious writer +and this predominant class. If they found this sort of book +interesting-which as a rule they did not--they felt a sullen sense of +inferiority; and if there were too many unfamiliar words they pitched +it across the room with the ultimate adjective of their +disapproval--'highbrow.' But it is more the general atmosphere they +resent--would resent if the book were purposely written with the most +limited vocabulary possible." + +"Our national self-sufficiency, I suppose. Also the fetish of equality +that still persists. We are the greatest nation on earth, of course, +but it isn't democratic for any one of us to be greater than the other." + +"Exactly. I don't say I wouldn't write for the mob if I could. Nice +stories about nice people. Intimate life histories of commonplace 'real +Americans,' touched with a bit of romance, or tragedy-somewhere about +the middle--or adventure, with a bad man or woman for good measure and +to prove to the highbrows that the author is advanced and knows the +world as well as the next, even if he or she prefers to treat of the +more 'admirable aspects of our American life.' Unluckily I cannot read +such books nor write them. I was born with a passion for English and +the subtler psychology. I should be hopeless from any editor's or +publisher's standpoint if I didn't happen to have been fitted out with +a strong sense of drama. If I could only set my stage with commonplace, +people no doubt I'd make a roaring hit. But I can't and I won't. Who +has such a chance as an author to get away from commonplace people? +Fancy deliberately concocting new ones!" + +"Not you! But you'll have some sort of success, all the same." + +"Yes, there are publics. Perhaps I'll hypnotize one of them. As for the +financial end what I hope is that the book will give me a position that +will raise my prices in the magazines." + +"You could live abroad very cheaply." Alexina raised her eyes a trifle +and looked as guileless as her words. + +"Oh, be sure I'll go to Europe and stay there for years as soon as I +see my way ahead. I should find color in the very stones or the village +streets." + +"I am told that you can find most comfortable quarters in some of those +English village inns, and for next to nothing. By the way, do you still +correspond with that Englishman who was here during the fire?" + +"Gathbroke? Off and on. T send him my stories and he writes a humorous +sort of criticism of each; says that as I have no humor lie feels a +sort of urge to apply a little somewhere." + +"How interesting. He didn't strike me as humorous." + +"I fancy he wasn't more than about one-fifth developed when he was +here. Men like that, with his advantages, go ahead very rapidly when +they get into their stride. He has already developed from business into +politics--he is in Parliament--and that is the second long stride he +has taken in the past seven years." + +"How interesting it will be for you two to meet, again." Alexina spoke +with languid politeness. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders, "If we do." She might not be able to show +the under-white of her eyes arid look like a seraph, but she had her +voice, her features, under perfect control, and she had never been +quick to blush. She did not suspect that Alexina was angling, but the +very sound of Gathbroke's name was enough to put up her guard. + +"You must have had several proposals, Gora dear. Your profession is +almost as good as a matrimonial bureau. And you look too fetching for +words in that uniform and cap." + +"I've had just two proposals. One was from an old rancher who liked the +way I turned him over in bed and rubbed his back. The other was--well, +a nice fellow, and quite well off. But I'm not keen on marrying any +one." + +"Still, if it gave you that much more independence and leisure ... +travel ... a wider life...." + +"I'd only consider marrying for two reasons: If I met a man who had the +power to make me quite mad about him, or one who could give me a great +position in the world and was not wholly obnoxious. Otherwise, I prefer +to trot alone. Why not? At least I escape monotony; I have what after +all is the most precious thing in life, complete personal freedom; and +if I succeed with my writing I can see the world and attain to position +without the aid of any man. If I don't, I don't, and that is the end of +it. I'm a bit of a fatalist, I think, although to be sure when I want a +thing badly enough I forget all about that and fight like the devil." + +Alexina looked at the square face of her strange sister-in-law, so +unlike her brother; at the high cheek bones, the heavy low brows over +the cold light eyes, the powerful jaw, the wide firm but mobile mouth. + +"Have you any Eussian blood?"' she asked. "'Way back?" + +"Not that I know of. But after all I know little about my family, +outside of the one ancestor that anchors us in the Revolutionary era. +He or his son or his son's son may have married a Russian or a +Mongolian for all I know. Perhaps some one of my old aunts may have +worked out a family tree in cross-stitch, but if so I never heard of +it. Well, I'm off to clean up for dinner." + +Alexina for the first time in their acquaintance flung her arms round +Gora's neck and kissed her warmly. Truth to tell her conscience was +smarting, although she was able to assure herself that not for a moment +had she really believed her sister-in-law to be guilty; she had merely +grasped at a straw. Gora returned the embrace gratefully and without +suspicion. As ever, she was a little sorry for Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina felt only an intolerable ennui. Gora had gone in the morning; +she sat alone in her room. Of course she must have that explanation +with Mortimer, but any time before the first of the month would do. She +was far less concerned with that now than with the problem: what to do +with her life. How was she to continue to live in the same house with +him? Perhaps in far smaller quarters than these? For she could not +leave him. She had no visible excuse, and no desire to admit to the +world that she had made woman's superlative mistake. + +She scowled at the lovely room in which she had expected to find +compensation in dreams, the setting for an unreal and enchanted world. + +Dreams had died out of her. For the first time in her sheltered +existence she appreciated the grim reality of life. She was no longer +sheltered, secluded, one of the "fortunate class." Ways and means would +occupy most of her time henceforth. And it was not the privations she +shrank from but the contacts with the ugly facts of life; a side she +had found extremely picturesque in novels, but knew from, occasional +glimpses to be merely repulsive and demoralizing. + +And of whom could she ask advice! She must make changes and make them +quickly. Four thousand dollars a year! ... and taxes--besides the new +income tax--to be paid on the downtown property, the fiats, the land on +which her home stood, Ballinger House itself and all its contents. + +She knew vaguely that many girls these days were given special training +of some sort even where their parents were well off; but more +particularly where the father was what is known as a high-salaried man; +or even a moderately successful professional or business man--all of +whose expenses arid incomes balanced too nicely for investments. + +Not in her set! Joan, bored after her third season with dancing in +winter and "sitting round Alta" in summer, had asked permission to +become a trained nurse like Gora, or go into the decorating business, +"any old thing"; and Maria Abbott had simply stared at her in horror; +even her father had asked her angrily if she wished to disgrace him, +advertise him as unable to provide for his family. No self-respecting +American, etc. + +But something must be done. She wished to live on in Ballinger House if +possible, not only because she loved it, or to avoid the commiserations +of the world; she had no desire to live in narrow quarters with her +husband.... And she knew nothing, was fit for nothing, belonged to a +silly class that still looked upon women workers as de-classed, +although to be sure two or three whose husbands had left them penniless +had gone into business and were loyally tolerated, if deeply deplored. + +The day after her return from Europe Alice Thorndyke had come into this +room and thrown herself down on the couch, her long, languorous body +looking as if set on steel springs, her angelic blonde beauty distorted +with fury and disgust, and poured out her hatred of men and all their +ways, her loathing for society and gambling and all the stupid vicious +round of the life both public and secret she had elected to lead.... +She had had enough of it.... After all, she had some brains and she +wanted to use them. She wanted to go into the decorating business. +There was an opening. She had a natural flair for that sort of thing. +See what she had managed to do with that old ark she had inherited, and +on five cents a year.... When she had asked her sister to advance the +money Sibyl had flown into one of her worst rages and thrown a gold +hair brush through a Venetian mirror. Didn't she give her clothes by +the dozen that she hadn't worn a month? Did any girl have a better time +in society? Was any girl luckier at poker? Was any girl more popular +with men--too bad it was generally the married ones that lost their +heads.... Better if she stopped fooling and married. By and by it would +be too late. + +But she didn't want to marry. She was sick of men. She wanted to get +out of her old life altogether and cultivate a side of her mind and +character that had stagnated so far ... also to enjoy the independent +life of a money-earner ... life in an entirely different world ... +something new ... new ... new. + +Alexina had offered to lend her the capital, for Alice had a hard cool +head. But she had refused, saying she could mortgage her old barrack if +it came to that ... but she didn't know ... it would be a break.... Sib +might never speak to her again ... people were such snobs ... and she +mightn't like it ... she wished she had been born of poor but honest +parents and put to work in a canning factory or married the plumber. + +She had done nothing, and Alexina wondered if she would have the +courage to go into some sort of business with herself ... they could +give out they were bored, seeking a new distraction ... save the +precious pride of their families. + +She leaned forward and took her head in her hands. If she only had some +one to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in +any one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, +even in a roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet +and the other girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. But +her head would burst if she didn't consult some one. She was too +horribly alone. And after all she was still very young. She had talked +largely of her responsibilities, but as a matter of fact until now she +had never had one worth the name. + +Suddenly she thought of James Kirkpatrick. + + + +II + + +The lessons in socialism had died a natural death long since. But +Alexina and Aileen and Janet had never quite let him go. Whenever there +was a great strike on, either in California or in any part of the +nation, they invited him to take tea with them at least once a week +while it lasted and tell them all the "ins." This he was nothing loath +to do, and waived the question of remuneration aside with a gesture. He +was now a foreman, and vice-president of his union, and it gave him a +distinct satisfaction to confer a favor upon these "lofty dames," whom, +however, he liked better as time went on. Alexina he had always +worshiped and the only time he ceased to be a socialist was when he +ground his teeth and cursed fate for not making him a gentleman and +giving him a chance before she was corralled by that sawdust dude. + +He had also remained on friendly terms with Gora, who had +cold-bloodedly studied him and made him the hero of a grim strike +story. But as he never read polite literature their friendship was +unimpaired. + + + +II + + +He came to tea that afternoon in response to a telephone call from +Alexina. She had put on a tea gown of periwinkle blue chiffon and a +silver fillet about her head, and looked to Mr. Kirkpatrick's +despairing gaze as she intended to look--beautiful, of course, but less +woman than goddess. Exquisite but not tempting. She was quite aware of +the young workman's hopeless passion and she managed him as skillfully +as she did the more assured, sophisticated, and sometimes "illuminated" +Jimmie Thorne and Bascom Luning. + +She received him in the great drawing-room behind the tea-table, laden +with the massive silver of dead and gone Ballingers. + +"I've only been home a week," she said gayly. "See what a good friend I +am. I've scarcely seen any one. Did you get my post cards?" + +"I did and I've framed them, if you don't mind my saying so." + +"I hoped you would. I picked out the prettiest I could find. They do +have such beauties in Europe. Just think, it was my first visit. I was +wildly excited. Wouldn't you like to go?" + +"Naw. America's good enough for me. 'Fris--oh, Lord! San Francisco--for +that matter. I'd like to go to the next International Socialist +Congress all right--next year. Maybe I will. I guess that would give me +enough of Europe to last me the rest of my natural life." + +"I met a good many Frenchmen, and I have a friend married to a very +clever one. He says they expect a war with Germany in a year two--" + +"There'll never be another war. Not in Europe or anywhere else. The +socialists won't permit it." + +"There are a good many socialists--and syndicalists--in France, and +it's quite true they're doing all they can to prevent any money being +voted for the army or expended if it is voted; but I happen to know +that the Government has asked the president of the Red Cross to train +as many nurses as she can induce to volunteer, and as quickly as +possible. My friend Madame Morsigny was to begin her training a few +days after I left." + +"Hm. So. I hadn't heard a word of it." + +"We get so much European news out here! America first! Especially in +the matter of murders and hold-ups. Who cares for a possible war in +Europe when the headlines are as black as the local crimes they +announce?" + +"Sure thing. Great little old papers. But don't let any talk of war +from anywhere at all worry you. And I'll tell you why. At the last +International Congress all the socialists of all the nations were ready +to agree that all labor should lay down its tools--quit work--go on a +colossal strike--the moment those blood-sucking capitalists at the top, +those sawdust kings and kaisers and tsars--or any president for that +matter--declared war for any cause whatsoever. All, that is, but the +German delegates. They couldn't see the light. Now they have. When we +meet next August the resolution will be unanimous. Take it from me. +You've read of your last war in some old history book. Peace from now +on, and thank the socialists." + +"I should. But suppose Germany should declare war before next August?" + +"She won't. She ain't ready. She'd have done it after that there +'Agadir Incident' if she'd dared. That is to say been good and ready. +Now she's got to wait for another good excuse and there ain't one in +sight." + +"But you believe she'd like to precipitate a war in Europe for her own +purposes?" + +"She'd like it all right." And he quoted freely from Treitschke and +Bernhardi, while Alexina as ever looked at him in wonder. He seemed to +be more deeply read every time she met him, and he remained exactly the +same James Kirkpatrick. "What an adventitious thing breeding was! +Mortimer had it!" + +"Well, I am glad I spoke of it. You have relieved my mind, for you +speak as one with authority.... There is something else I want to talk +to you about.... A friend of mine is in a dilemma and I don't quite +know how to advise her.... We're all such a silly set of moths--" + +"No moth about you!" interrupted Mr. Kirkpatrick firmly. "Some of +them--those others, if you like. The only redeeming virtue I can see in +most of them is that they are what they are and don't give a damn. But +you--you've got more brains and common sense than the whole bunch of +women in this town put together." + +"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to +cultivate them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my +common sense." She spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, +and curve of lip, that neither then nor later did he suspect that she +was the heroine of her own tale. + +"Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you +anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me." + +"Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you +smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad +for my curtains.... This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had +a terrible experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part +of her little fortune whose income enabled them to do something more +than keep alive. You see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he +had always been the most honest creature in the world; and that's as +much of a blow as the loss of the money." + +"What'd he do it for?" + +"Oh, I know so little about business ... he wanted to get rich too +quickly I suppose ... speculated or something ... perhaps got into a +hole. This has been a bad year." + +"Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively. + +"You're not commiserating _him_?" + +"Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper, +hasn't he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and +temptations of the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he +wanted to, you can bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim +of a vicious system. A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in +the middle! Not capital enough. Hard times and the little man goes +under, no matter if he's a darn sight better fellow than the bloated +beast on top--" + +"You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go +under?" + +"I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--" + +"Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and +has always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he +were he wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good +start, far better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country +had in their youth." + +"Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever +in chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's +our job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in +which the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to +work will have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have +to work anyhow or starve.... One of the thousand things the matter with +the present system is that the square man is so often in the round +hole. In the socialized state every man will be guided to the place +which exactly fits his abilities. No weaker to the wall there." + +"You think you can defy Nature to that extent!" + +"You bet." + +"Well. I'm too much distracted by my friend's predicament to discuss +socialism.... I rather like the idea though of the strong man having +the opportunity to prove himself stronger than Life ... find out what, +he was put on earth and endowed with certain characteristics for ... +rather a pity all that should atrophy.... However--what shall my friend +do? Continue to live with a man she despises?" + +"She's no right to despise him or anybody. It's the system, I tell you. +And no doubt she's just as weak in some way herself. Every man jack of +us is so chuck full of faults and potential crime it's a wonder we +don't break out every day in the week, and if women are going to desert +us when the old Adam runs head on into some one of the devilish traps +the present civilization has set out all over the place, instead of +being able to sidestep it once more, well--she'd best divorce herself +from the idea of matrimony before she goes in for the thing itself. +Would I desert my brother if he got into trouble? Would you?" + +"N--o, I suppose you are right, and I doubt if she would leave him +anyway. However ... there's the other aspect. What can a woman in her +position do to help matters out? You have met a good many of her kind +here. Fancy Miss Lawton or Mrs. Bascom or Miss Maynard forced to work--" + +"I can't. If I had imagination enough for that I'd be writin' novels +like Miss Dwight." + +"I believe they'd do better than you think. Well, this friend isn't +quite so much absorbed in society and poker and dress. She's more +like--well, there's Mrs. Ruyler, for instance. She was very much like +the rest of us, and now we never see her. She's as devoted to ranching +as her husband." + +"There was sound bourgeois French blood there," he said shrewdly. "And +she wasn't brought up like the rest of you. Don't you forget that." + +"Then you think we're hopeless?" + +"No, I don't. Three or four women of your crowd--a little older, that's +all--are doin' first-rate in business, and they were light-headed +enough in their time, I'll warrant. And you, for instance--if you came +up against it--" + +"Yes? What could I do?" cried Alexina gayly. "But alas! you admit you +have no imagination." + +"Don't need any. You'd be good for several things. You could go into +the insurance business like Mrs. Lake, or into real estate like Mrs. +Cole--people like to have a pretty and stylish young lady showin' 'em +round flats. Or you could buy an orchard like the Ruylers--that'd +require capital. If we had the socialistic state you'd be put on one of +the thinking boards, so to speak. That's the point. You've got no +training, but you've got a thinker. You'd soon learn. But I'm not so +sure of your friend. Somehow, you've given me the impression she's just +one of these lady-birds." + +"I'm afraid she is," said Alexina with a sigh. "But you're so good to +take an interest.... Suppose you had the socialistic state +now--to-morrow, what would you do with all these--lady-birds?" + +"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up, +and then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal +physical condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one +of 'em." + +"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?" + +"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of +the great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in +their beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers +and civilians were armed to the teeth. + +"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No +wonder some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course +they're fools, just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but +you can't blame 'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If +Marx had been a good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day. +Things didn't turn out according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat +ain't proletariat any longer, instead of overrunning the earth; and in +place of a handful of great capitalists to fight we've a few hundred +thousand little capitalists, or good wage earners with white collars +on, that have about as much use for socialism as they have for +man-eating tigers. I'm thinking about this country principally. Too +much chance for the individual. Trouble is, the individual, like as +not, don't know what's good for him and goes under, like the man you've +been telling me about." + +"There's only one thing I apprehend in your socialistic state," said +Alexina, who always became frivolous when Kirkpatrick waxed serious, +"and that is universal dissolution from sheer ennui. Either that or +we'll go on eternally rowing about something else. Earth has never been +free from war since the beginning of history, and there is trouble of +some sort going on somewhere all the time--" + +"All due to capitalism." + +"Capitalism hasn't always existed." + +"Human greed has, and the dominance of the strong over the weak." + +"Exactly, and socialism if she ever gets her chance will dominate all +she knows how. Remember what you said just now about forcing the +pampered women to work when they were the underdog. But the point is +that Nature made Earthians a fighting breed. She must have had a good +laugh when we named another planet Mars." + +"Well, we'll fight about worthier things." + +"Don't be too sure. We fight about other things now. All the trouble in +the world isn't caused by money or the want of it. And what about the +religious wars--" + + + +III + + +It was at this inopportune moment that they met Mortimer. If Alexina +had remembered that this was his homing hour she would have parted from +her visitor at the drawing-room door; but in truth she had dismissed +Mortimer from her mind. + +He halted some paces off and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume +to the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue +sloped abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to +keep from grinding his teeth. + +Alexina went forward and placed her hand within his arm, giving it a +warning pressure. + +"Now, at last, you and Mr. Kirkpatrick will meet. You've always so +snubbed our little attempts to understand some of the things that men +know all about, that you've never met any of our teachers. But no one +has taught, me as much as Mr. Kirkpatrick, so shake hands at once and +be friends." + +Mortimer extended a straight and wooden hand. Kirkpatrick touched, and +dropped it as if lie feared contamination, Mortimer ascended a few +steps and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated +disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the +speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle +skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out +his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. +Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice, +and continued to look like a stage lord dismissing a varlet. + +Kirkpatrick caught Alexina's imploring eyes and turned abruptly on his +heel, "So long," he said. "Guess I'd better be getting on." + + + +IV + + +"I won't have that fellow in the house," said Mortimer, in a low tone +of white fury. "To think that my wife--my wife--" + +"If you don't mind we won't talk about it." + +Alexina was on the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the +air. She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop +and when she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to +elongate like the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever +happened to have incurred her wrath. + +Mortimer glowered at her. He had many grievances. For the moment he +forgot that she might have any against him. + +"And out here in broad daylight, almost on the street, in that tea +gown--" + +"I have often been quite on the street in similar ones. Going over to +Aileen's. You forget that the Western Addition is like a great park set +with the homes of people more or less intimate." + +Mortimer made no further remarks. He had never pretended to be a match +for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him +temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for +although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more +relish. As he settled himself to his cigar in a comfortable wicker +chair on the terrace and she was about to return to the house he spoke +abruptly in a faint firm voice. + +"Will you stay here? I've got something to say to you." + +"Oh?" + +She wheeled about. His face was a sickly greenish white in the heavy +shade of the trees. + +"It's--it's--something I've been wanting to say--tell you ... as well +now as any time." + +"Oh, very well. I must write just one letter." + +She ran into the house and up the stairs and shut herself in the +library, breathless, panic-stricken. He was going to confess! How +awful! How awful! How could she ever go through with it? Why, why, +hadn't she spoken at once and got it over? + +She sat quite still until she had ceased trembling and her heart no +longer pounded and affected her breathing. Then she set her teeth and +went downstairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Mortimer was walking up and down the hall. + +"Come in here," he said. He entered the drawing-room, and Alexina +followed like a culprit led to the bar. Nevertheless, it crossed her +mind that he wanted the moral support of a mantelpiece. + +She almost stumbled into a chair. Mortimer did not avail himself of the +chimneypiece toward which he had unconsciously gravitated, but walked +back and forth. Two electric lights hidden under lamp shades were +burning, but the large room was rather somber. + +Alexina composed herself once more with a violent effort and asked in a +crisp tone: "Well? What is this mystery? Are you in love with some one +else? Been, making love--" + +"Alexina!" + +He confronted her with stricken eyes. "You know that I am literally +incapable of such a thing. But of course you were jesting." + +"Of course. But something is so manifestly wrong with you, and ... well +... of course you would be justified." + +"Not in my own eyes. Besides, I shall never give up the hope of winning +you back again. I live for that ... although now! ... that is the whole +trouble.... How am I going to say it?" + +"Well, let me help you out. You took the bonds." + +"You've been to the bank! I wanted to tell you first ... the day you +came back.... I couldn't...." + +"There is only one thing I am really curious about. How did you get in? +Of course you knew where I kept the key, but--" + +"I--" His voice was so lifeless that if dead men could speak it must be +in the same flat faint tones. "I had the old power of attorney." + +"But I revoked it." + +"I mean the instrument--the paper. You did not ask for it. I did not +think of it either.... I trusted to the keeper taking it on its face +value, not looking it up. He didn't. You see--" He gave a dreadful sort +of laugh. "I am well known and have a good reputation." + +"Why didn't you cable and ask me to lend you the money?" + +"There wasn't time. Besides, you might have refused. I was desperate--" + +"I don't want to hear the particulars. I am not in the least curious. +What I must talk to you about--" + +"I must tell you the whole thing. I can't go about with it any longer. +Then, perhaps, you will understand." + +His voice was still flat and as he continued to walk he seemed to draw +half-paralyzed legs after him. Alexina set her lips and stared at the +floor. He meant to talk. No getting out of it. + +"I--I--have only done well occasionally since the very first. It didn't +matter so long as your mother was alive, and for a little while after. +But when you took things into your own hands ... after that it was +capital I turned over to you nearly every month--hardly ever profits." + +"What? Why didn't you tell me?" + +"I hadn't the courage. I was too anxious to stand well with you. And I +always hoped, believed, I would do better as times improved. I had +great hopes of myself and I had a pretty good start. But as time went +on I grew to understand that my abilities were third-rate. I should +have done all right with a large capital--say a hundred and fifty +thousand dollars--but only a man far cleverer than I am could have got +anywhere in that business with a paltry sixteen thousand to begin on. I +got one or two connections and did pretty well, off and on, for a time; +but if I hadn't made one or two lucky strikes in stocks my capital +would simply have run away in household expenses long ago." + +"Then why did you join that expensive club?" + +"It was good business," he said evasively. "I meet the right sort of +men there. That's where I got my stock pointers." + +"Did you take the bonds to gamble with?" + +"No. I'd never have done that. I gambled in another way, though. I +thought I saw a chance to sell a certain commodity at that particular +time and I plunged and sent for a large quantity of it. It looked sure. +I have a friend over there and got it on credit. I banked on an +immediate sale and a big profit. But something delayed the shipping in +Hong Kong. When it arrived the market was swamped. Some one else had +had the same idea. I had to pay for the goods, as well as other big +outstanding bills, or go into bankruptcy. So I took the bonds. It +wasn't easy. But there was nothing else to do.... There were about ten +thousand dollars left and I tried another coup. That failed too." + +"How is it possible to go on with the business?" + +"It isn't. I have closed out. But I have escaped bankruptcy. People on +the street think that I wanted to get into the real estate +business--with Andrew Weston, a young man who has recently come here +from Los Angeles. He's doing fairly well and has a good office. He +wanted a hustler and a partner who had good connections. But it is slow +work. There are the old firms, again, to compete with. I wouldn't have +looked at it if I'd had any choice, but it was a case of a port in a +storm." + +"Well? Is that all? There is another matter to discuss. Our future mode +of living." + +"No, it isn't all. I wish you would tell Gora something. I can never go +through this again. While she was away--in Honolulu--that lawyer of my +aunt sent out ten thousand dollars' worth more of stock, that had been +looked upon as so much waste paper, but suddenly appreciated--some +little railroad that was abandoned half finished, but has since been +completed. This had been left to Gora alone. We had some correspondence +and he sent it to me as Gora was traveling. It came at the wrong time +for me ... on top of everything else.... I plunged in a new mine Bob +Cheever and Baseom Luning were interested in. It turned out to be no +good. We lost every cent." + + + +II + + +Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it +had turned to stone. + +He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together. + +"If you knew ... if you knew ... what I have been through.... At first +it was only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over +... when there was nothing left to speculate with ... then I realized +what I had done ... I ... a thief ... a thief.... I had been so proud +of my honor, my honesty. I never had believed that I could even be +tempted. And I went to pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its +first storm. There's nothing, it seems, in being well brought up, when +circumstances are too strong for you." + +Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad," +she said, rather at a loss. + +"No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken +long chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in +too deep. But if I could have repaid it all I'd feel nearly as +demoralized. That I should have stolen ... and from women...." + +Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on. + +"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn't seem to me that I +had the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest +sense of right and wrong ... It does not seem possible even now." + +Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she +should be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him +that she quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She +wished that she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of +the physical demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared +to defend him if need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that +she would willingly die rather than touch him.... She wondered if souls +in dissolution subtly wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too +close.... + +"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I'll tell Gora and +engage that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now +let us discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to +contribute anything to the household expenses?" + +"I'm afraid not. It takes time to work up a business." + +"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I +suppose I had better look for a job." + +"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her +incredulously. "You?" + +"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the +decorating business." + +"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I +could fool them then!" + +"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have +stuck to the old business if it had paid." + +"It isn't the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go +out to earn money--why, I'd be a laughing stock." + +"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this +lot--" + +"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to +your old home ... and after fixing it up...." + +"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can't go on." + +"My brain seems to have stopped. I can't do much thinking. But ... well +... you might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my +business begins to pay." + +"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if +you can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--" + +"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that +when you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why +couldn't Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know +anything about Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your +family have let me stay where I was? I should have been head clerk with +a good salary by this time, and we would have arranged our expenses +accordingly when your mother died. Why can't men give a young fellow a +better chance when he goes into business for himself? Every man trying +to cut every other man's throat. What chance has a young fellow with a +small capital?" + +"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However ... +perhaps you are right.... Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I +feel more inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all +the ancestral inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are +made and our characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at +least resign from the club?" + +He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of +character his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the +first Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in +two ways: they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in +the same way the men who can give me a leg up in business." + +"Are you sure those are the only reasons?" + +To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you +shall go on speculating?" + +"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can +help me in business." + +"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However ... At least +I'll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom +no one will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over. +To-morrow I shall do something. I don't know what it will be, yet." + +He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, +"that you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell +this house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had +recovered his usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes +were as stern as his lips. + +Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that +apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to +understand. She nodded amiably. + +"No doubt I'll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner +time. Don't expect me at breakfast. Good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the +following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park +and signaling to her to stop. + +"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one +ill?" + +"Not so's you'd notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak +after me quietly and don't say a word." + +Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece +by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she +had fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with +the "fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the +small group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly +disapproved of, who entertained in some form or other every day and +every night, played poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of +the new dances, made up brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent +stimulants. Two of Joan's former schoolmates belonged to this active +set, but she was only permitted to meet them at formal dinners and +large parties. She had rebelled at first, but her mother's firm hand +was too much for her still undeveloped will, and later she had +concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the whole tiresome +society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she was socially as +conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and although full +of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no prince +having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound +Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and +she had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She +worked off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be +indulged in California for eight months of the year, rode horseback +every day, used all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the +society of such uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided +her time. Sooner or later she was determined to "get out and +hustle,"--"shake a leg." That would be the only complete change from +her present life, not matrimony and running with fast sets. She wanted +more money, she wanted to live alone, and, while devoted to her family, +she wanted interests they could not furnish, "no, not in a thousand +years." + + + +II + + +Joan's slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached +the rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy +fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah +did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a +generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground. +A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a +gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit +and peered through the outside shutters, which had been carefully +closed. + +The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and +shone down upon an amazing sight. + +Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the +floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was +evidently talking rapidly. Alexina's mouth opened as widely as her +eyes. She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that +took place at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition +been brought to chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter +or Mrs. Thornton, or any of those fortunate Californians who visited +the headquarters of fashion and sin once a year? They would do a good +deal to vary the monotony of life. But that they should have corrupted +Maria ... the impeccable, the superior, the unreorientable Maria! +Maria, with whom contentment and conservatism were the first articles +of the domestic and the socio-religious creed! + +For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face +was a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid +floor, were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, +another old friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom's sister, Susan Delling, +austere in her virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a +fine mahogany complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel +not so much a harlot as a social inferior. + +What on earth ... what on earth.... + +The thin loquacious stranger clapped her hands. Up went six pairs of +legs. Two remained in mid-air, Mrs. Geary's and Mrs. Brannan's having +met an immovable obstacle shortly above the hip-joints. Three bent +backward slowly but surely until they approached the region of the +neck. Maria's flew unerringly, effortlessly, up, back, until they +tapped the floor behind her head. Alexina almost shouted "Bravo." Maria +was a real sport. + +Six times they repeated this fascinating rite, and then, obeying +another peremptory command, they rolled over abruptly and balanced on +all fours. Alexina could stand no more. She dropped down the ladder and +ran after Joan, who was disappearing round the corner of the house. + + + +III + + +"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Maria! Your mo--" + +"She gained three pounds, for the first time in her life, and you know +her figure is her only vanity. This woman came along and the whole +Peninsula is crazy about her. She's taken the fat off every woman in +New York, and came out with letters to a lot of women. Mother fell for +her hard. I nearly passed away when I peeked through that shutter the +first time. Mother! She's the best of the bunch, though. But they're +all having a perfectly grand time. New interest for middle-age--what?" + +"Don't be cruel. Heavens, how hot they all looked! I could hear them +gasp. Hope their arteries are all right. Are they going to stay to +lunch?" + +"No. There's a big one on in Burlingame. Mother's not going, though. +It's at that Mrs. Cutts', new Burlingame stormer, that Anne Montgomery +coaches and caters for and who gives wonderful entertainments. Mother +and Aunt Susan won't go, but nearly all the others do." + +"Anne Montgomery. I haven't seen her since mother died." + +"You look as if an idea had struck you. She's useful no end, they say; +is now a social secretary to a lot of new people, and sells the 'real +lace' and other superfluous luxuries of some of our old families for +the cold coin that buys comforts." + +"Fine idea. But I'm glad your mother will be alone. I've come down to +have a talk with her." + +"Thanks. I'll take the hint." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +Alexina went up to Joan's room to remain until the gong sounded for +luncheon, when she drifted down innocently and kissed the somewhat +furtive-looking Maria, who was in chaste duck and fresh from a bath. + +"So glad to see you, darling," she murmured almost effusively. "I hope +you haven't waited long. A number of my friends have a lesson every +Thursday morning, and meet at one house or another." + +"Irregular French verbs, I suppose. So fascinating, and one does forget +so. I thought I'd never brush up my French." + +Not for anything would she have forced Maria into the most innocent +equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people +are expected to do after their first visit to Europe. + +No time could have been more propitious for this necessary +understanding with Maria, who was feeling amiable, apologetic, as +limber as Joan, and almost as warm. She had also lost two-thirds of a +pound. + + + +II + + +Alexina began as soon as Joan left them alone on the shady side of the +wide piazza. + +"I have a lot of things to tell you," she said nervously. "I have to +make certain economies and I want the benefit of your advice." + +Mrs. Abbott looked up from her embroidery. "Of course, darling. I was +afraid you were going a little too fast for young people." + +"That is not it. I always managed well enough.... You know we've never +gone the limit: polo at Burlingame and Monterey, gambling, big parties +and all the rest of it. I've never run into debt or spent any of my +capital. But..." + +Maria began to feel anxious and took off the large round shell-rimmed +spectacles that enlarged stitches and print. "Yes?" + +"You know I had bonds--about forty thousand dollars' worth--those that +mother left: I spent those that Ballinger and Geary gave me on the +house and one thing and another." + +"Yes?" Mrs. Abbott was now alarmed. She had a very keen sense of the +value of money, like most persons that have inherited it, and was +extremely conservative in its use. + +"Well, you see, I thought I saw a chance to treble it--we never really +had enough--and I speculated and lost it." + +Alexina was a passionate lover of the truth, but she could always lie +like a gentleman. + +Maria Abbott readjusted her spectacles and took a stitch or two in her +linen. She was aghast and did not care to speak for a moment. She was +no fool and Tom had told her that Mortimer had changed his business and +might bluff the street, but could never bluff him. She knew quite as +well as if Alexina had confessed it that Mortimer had lost the money, +either in his business or in stocks; although of course she was far +from suspecting the whole truth. + + + +III + + +"That is dreadful," she said finally. "I wish you had consulted Tom. He +understands stocks as he does everything else." + +"I thought I had the best tips. However--the thing is done, and the +point is that I must make great changes. Mortimer is not making as much +as he was, either; he came to the conclusion that he couldn't get +anywhere in that business on so small a capital, and has gone into real +estate. It will be some time before he makes enough to keep things +going in the old way. I made all my plans last night and came down to +ask you if you could take James. He has been with us so long; I can't +let him go to strangers. Then I shall turn out all those high-priced +servants and get a woman to do general housework. Alice says her aunt +always gets green ones from an agency and breaks them in. They are +quite cheap. I shall help her, of course, and if she doesn't know much +about cooking I know a little and can learn more. I shall shut up the +big drawing-room, put everything into moth balls, and give out that the +doctor has ordered me to rest this winter, to go to bed every night at +eight. That will stop people coming up three or four times a week to +dance. And I can sell the new clothes I brought from Paris and New York +to Polly Roberts. She's just my height and weight. Of course I must +tell the girls the truth--that I'm economizing; but wild horses +wouldn't drag it out of them. I don't care tuppence, but Morty says it +would hurt his business. I rather like the idea of working. I'm tired +of the old round, and would like to get a job if Morty wasn't so +opposed--says it would ruin him." + +"I should think so. At least let us wash our dirty linen at home.... I +have been thinking while you talked. I've only spent two whole winters +in town since I married, end I've always thought I'd love to live in +the old house. I've rather envied you, Alexina, dear ... it is so full +of happy memories for me. I did have such a good time as a girl ... +such a good, simple time.... I'm wondering if Tom wouldn't rent it for +the winter and spring. He's been doing splendidly these last two or +three years, and he owned some of the property west of Twin Peaks that +is building up so fast. I know he sold it for quite a lot.... And I +sometimes wonder if he doesn't get as tired of living in the same place +year after year as I do. He could play golf at the Ingleside.... I am +sure he will.... It would be the very best thing all round. Then we +could run the house, and you and Mortimer would pay something--never +mind what.... People would think it was the other way, if they thought +anything about it. Families often double up in that fashion." + +"Maria! I can't believe it. It would be too perfect a solution, +provided of course that we pay all we cost. I should insist upon +keeping the slips as usual. You are an angel." + +"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The +Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our +parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and +I know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day +as he used to be of the train." + +"It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect +sincerity. She had not faltered before the prospect of work, but that +of Mortimer's society unrelieved for an indefinite time had filled her +with something like panic. It had been the one test of her powers of +endurance of which she had not felt assured. + +"That will give us time, too, to get on our feet again. Morty is very +hopeful of this new business. I shall go out very little, and as Joan +will be the natural center of attraction it will be understood that her +friends, not mine, have the run of the house." + +Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She +worries me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for +the winter and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If +you want to be housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like +better than a rest from ordering dinner, after all these years." + +"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure +I wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and +I'd like to drink your health." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the +immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria +Abbott; there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic +wife's presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs. +Moreover he feared Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered +word and he might as well have told the whole story. Well, he never +talked much anyhow; he would merely talk less. + +When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was +forced to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of +resignation. When she told him what her original plan had been he was +so appalled, so humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a +servant's apron (to say nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he +almost warmed to the Abbotts. + + + +II + + +Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of +spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of +something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, +received a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand +dollars and asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where +she kept her savings. + +"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper +so heavily freighted. + +"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus +whose husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy +and Anne advises her." + +"What did you sell? Your jewels?" + +"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste +to wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard +to buy now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people +always think it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest +and clumsiest of the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told +her that they were as good as a passport." + +Mortimer sprang to the only, the naive, the eternal masculine +conclusion. + +"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the +sudden rejuvenation of his heavy body. "I never really believed you had +ceased to care.... you were capricious like all women ... a little +spoilt. I knew that if I had patience ... Only a loving wife would do +such a thing." + +Alexina made a wry face at the banality of his climax, although the +fatuous outburst had barely amused her. + +"No, I don't love you in the least, Mortimer, and never shall. Make up +your mind to that. Love some one else if you like.... I did this for +two reasons: I did not have the courage to tell Gora the truth--and +that I was too unjust and penurious to restore the money you had taken; +and as your wife it would have hurt my pride unbearably." + +"And you are not afraid to trust me with this money?" he asked, his +voice toneless. + +"Not in the least. There's no other way to manage it and I fancy you +know what would happen if you didn't hand it over. There is such a +thing as the last straw." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +It was a week later. Alexina was changing her dress. Maria had asked a +number of her girlhood friends in for luncheon, and they were to +exchange reminiscences in the old house over a table laden as of yore +with the massive Ballinger silver, English cutglass, and French china. +Alexina was about to take refuge with Janet Maynard. + +Her door opened unceremoniously and Gora entered. + +Alexina caught her breath as she saw her sister-in-law's eyes. They +looked like polar seas in a tropical storm. + +"Why, Gora, dear," she said lightly. "I thought you were on an +important case." + +"Man died last night. I have just been to see Mortimer. When I got his +note--just three lines--saying that he had received a cheque from Utica +and deposited it to my account I knew at once--as soon as I had time to +think--there was something wrong. The natural thing would have been to +call me up--couldn't tell me the good news too soon.... And there was a +hollow ring about that note.... Well, as soon as I woke up to-day I +went straight down to his office. I had to wait an hour. When he came +in and saw me he turned green. I marched him into a back room and +corkscrewed the truth out of him--the whole truth. Then I blasted him. +He knows exactly what one person in this world thinks of him, what +everybody else would think of him if he were found out. I gathered that +you had let him down easy. Your toploftical pride, I suppose. Well, I +must have a good plebeian streak in me somewhere and for the first time +I was glad of it. When I left him he looked shrunken to half his +natural size. His eyes looked like a dead fish's and all the muscles of +his face had given Way. He looked as if he were going to die and I wish +he would. Faugh! A thief in the family. That at least we never had +before." + +"Don't be too sure. Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and +everybody'll go on thinking he's honest. Half our friends may be +thieves for all we know, and as for our ancestors--what are you doing?" + + + +II + + +Gora had taken a roll of yellow bills from her purse. She counted them +on the table; ten bills denominating a thousand dollars each. + +"I won't take them." said Alexina stiffy. "I think you are horrid, +simply horrid." + +"And do you imagine I would keep it? I What do you take me for?" + +"I am in a way responsible for Mortimer's debts--his partner." + +"That cuts no ice with me--nor with you. That is not the reason you +sold your jewels and laces and those superb--Oh, you poor child! If I'm +furious, it's more for you than on any other account. You don't deserve +such a fate--" + +"I don't deserve to have you treat me so ungratefully. I can't get my +things back. I wanted you to have the money more than I eared for those +things, anyhow. I have no use for the money. I don't owe anything and +the rent Tom pays me for six months will help me to run the house for +the rest of the year and pay taxes besides. So, you just keep it, Gora. +It's yours and that's the end of it." + +"This is the end of it as far as I'm concerned." She opened the secret +drawer of the cabinet and stuffed in the bills. "They're safe from any +sort of burglars there. But not from fire. Bank them to-morrow." + +"I'll not touch them." + +"Nor I either." + + + +III + + +Gora threw her hat on the floor and sitting down before the table +thrust her hands into her hair and tugged at the roots. "I always do +this when I'm excited--which is oftener than you think. What dreams I +had that first night--I got his note late and was too tired to reason, +to suspect.... I just dreamed until I fell asleep. I'd start for +England a week later--for England!" + +Goose flesh made Alexina's delicate body feel like a cold nutmeg +grater. "England?" + +"Yes! ... ah ... you see, it's the only place where literary +recognition counts for anything." + +"Oh? I rather thought the British authors looked upon Uncle Sam in the +light of a fairy godfather. Our recognition counts for a good deal, I +should say. I never thought you were snobbish." + +"I'm not really. Only London is a sort of Mecca for writers just as +Paris is for women of fashion.... Just fancy being feted in London +after you had written a successful novel." + +"I'd far rather receive recognition in my own country," said Alexina, +elevating her classic American profile. She was not feeling in the +least patriotic, however. "You'd see your friend Gathbroke, though. +That would be jolly. Do take the money, Gora, and don't be a goose." + +"That subject's closed. Don't let me keep you. James told me that Maria +is having a luncheon, and I suppose that means you are going out. I'll +rest here for awhile if you don't mind." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +I + + +Mortimer went off that night and got drunk. It was the first time in +his life and possibly his last, but he made a thorough job of it. He +took the precaution to telephone to the house that he was going out of +town, but when he returned two days later he experienced a distinct +pleasure in telling Alexina what he had done. Alexina, who still hoped +that she would always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather +sympathized with him, and assured him that he would have nothing to +apprehend from Gora in the future: she had no more fervent wish than to +keep out of his way. + + + +II + + +He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most +kind, Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as +well as she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at +home he undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly +grateful; it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully +preserved that the Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and +that all expenses were equally shared. In time he came to believe it, +and his hours of deep depression, when he had pondered over his +inexplicable roguery, grew rarer and finally ceased. After all he had +had nothing to lose as far as Alexina was concerned; one's sister +hardly mattered (Did women matter much, anyhow?); and his sense of +security, which he hugged at this time as the most precious thing he +had ever possessed, at last made him a little arrogant. He had done +what he should not, of course, but it was over and done with, ancient +history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison for less, he +had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew that he +would never do it again and that his position in life was as assured as +it ever had been. + + + +III + + +He spent a good many evenings at the club, and Maria found him a +willing cavalier when Tom "drew the line" at dancing parties. Alexina, +who had sold her car to Janet and her new gowns to Polly, had announced +that she was bored with dancing and should devote the winter to study. +She spent the evenings either in her library upstairs or with her +friends. Mortimer saw her only at the table. + +He wondered if Tom Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant +feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. +He made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to +hand anything over when the first of the month came round--a date that +had haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend +it on himself, and he felt an increasing pleasure in doing so. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +I + + +Gray naked trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after +mile. Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden +fruit. Tall accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms +shivering against a gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with +forest trees, their crests filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains +lifting their bleak ridges above bare brown hills thirsting for rain. + +The heavy rains were due. It was late in January. Alexina and several +of her friends were motoring back to the city through the Santa Clara +Valley, after luncheon with the Price Ruylers at their home on the +mountain above Los Gatos. As it was Sunday there was an even number of +men in the party, and Alexina, maneuvered into Jimmie Thorne's +roadster, was enduring with none of the sweet womanly graciousness +which was hers to summon at will, one of those passionate declarations +of love which no beautiful young woman out of love with her husband may +hope to escape; and not always when in. Alexina had grown skillful in +eluding the reckless verbalisms of love, but when one is packed into a +small motor car with a determined man, desperately in love, one might +as well try to wave aside the whirlwind. + +Jimmie Thorne was a fine specimen of the college-bred young American of +good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this +biography save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's +being, and he fell at Chateau-Thierry. + + + +II + + +Alexina lifted her delicate profile and gave it as sulky an expression +as she could assume. She really liked him, but was annoyed at being +trapped. + +"I don't in the least wish to marry you." + +"Everybody knows you don't care a straw for Dwight. You could easily +get a divorce--" + +"On what grounds! Besides, I don't want to. I'd have to be really off +my head about a man even to think of such a thing. Our family has kept +out of the divorce courts. And I don't care two twigs for you, Jimmie +dear." + +"I don't believe it. That is, I know I could make you care. You don't +know what love is--" + +"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and +that if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man +hasn't come along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth. +I suppose men will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what +is the limit these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't." + +"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts. +God! I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of +studying law at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won +you!" + +"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances +favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even +if I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in +love with you." + +"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all." + +Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming, +magnetic, companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She +could feel the warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats, +and her own trembled a little.... It suddenly came to her that she no +longer owed Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved +by his own act. If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something +beyond the agreeable response of the mating-season (any season is the +mating season in California) ... that was the trouble. He was not +individual enough to hold her. Life had been too kind to him. Save for +this unsatisfied passion he was perfectly content with life. Such men +do not "live." They may have charm, but not fascination.... Perhaps it +was as well after all that she had married Mortimer. Another man might +not have been so easily disposed of. + +"Jimmie dear, if it were a question of a few months, and I made a cult +of men as some women do, it would be all right. But marry another man +that I am not sure--that I know I don't want to spend my life with. Oh, +no." + +He looked somewhat scandalized. Like many American men he was even more +conventional than most women are; he was, moreover, a man's man, +spending most of his leisure in their society, either at the club or in +out-of-door sports, and he divided women rigidly into two classes. +Alexina was his first love and his last; and as he went over the top +and crumpled up he thought of her. + +"I wouldn't have a rotten affair with you. You're not made for that +sort of thing--" + +"Well, you're not going to have one, so don't bother to buckle on your +armor." She relented as she looked into his miserable eyes, and took +his hand impulsively. "I'm sorry ... sorry.... I wish ... you are worth +it ... but it's not on the map." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +I + + +Gora's novel was published in February. Aileen Lawton, Sibyl Bascom, +Alice Thorndyke, Polly Roberts, and Janet Maynard organized a campaign +to make it the fashion. They went about with copies under their arms, +on the street, in the shops, at luncheons, even at the matinee, and +"could talk of nothing else." Sibyl and Janet bought a dozen copies +each and sent them to friends and acquaintances with the advice to read +it at once unless they wished to be hopelessly out of date: it was "all +the rage in New York." + +As a matter of fact, with the exception of Aileen and possibly Janet, +the book almost terrified them with its pounding vigor and grim +relentless logic, even its romantic realism, which made its tragedy +more poignant and sinister by contrast; and, again with the exception +of Aileen, they were little interested in Gora. But they were loyally +devoted to Alexina and obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to +help her make the book a success. They worked with the sterner +determination as Alexina in her own efforts was obliged to be extremely +subtle. + +Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but +almost to have her in the family as it were. Their industrious sowing +bore an abundant harvest and Gora's novel became the fashion. Whether +people hated it or not, and most of them did, they discussed it +continually, and when a book meets with that happy fate personal +opinions matter little. + + + +II + + +Maria thought the book was "awful" and forbade Joan to read it. Joan +thought (to Alexina) that it was simply the most terribly fascinating +book she had ever read and made her despise society more than ever and +more determined to light out and see life for herself first chance she +got. Tom Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have +written; a man might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice. +Mortimer declined to read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover, +although his social position was now planetary, it annoyed him +excessively to hear his sister alluded to continually as an author. +Even the men at the club were reading the damned book. + + + +III + + +Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned +that Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as +she had been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred +that, like many another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough +to acquire material. When they learned the truth, and particularly +after her inescapable novel appeared, they were indignant that she had +not sought her muse at Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of +mutual admiration; affiliated herself; announced herself, at the very +least. There was a very sincere feeling among them that any attempt on +the part of a rank outsider to achieve literary distinction was +impertinent as well as unjustifiable.... It was impossible that he or +she could be the real thing. + +When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with +fashionable society, nurse though she might be, and that those +frivolous and negligible beings were not only buying her book by the +ton but giving her luncheons and dinners and teas, their disgust knew +no bounds and they tacitly agreed that she should be tabu in the only +circles where recognition counted. + + + +IV + + +But Gora, who barely knew of their existence, little recked that she +had been weighed, judged, and condemned. Her old dream had come true. +Society, the society which should have been her birthright and was not, +had thrown open its doors to her at last and everybody was outdoing +everybody else in flattering and entertaining her. + +Not that she was deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success +with the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the +social heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for +the original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco +and its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her +youthful bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued +from obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph rang hollow, and +that she really cared very little about it; but the strength and +tenacity of her nature alone would have forced her to quaff every drop +of the cup so long withheld. Even if she had been desperately bored she +would have accepted these invitations to houses so long indifferent to +her existence, and as a matter of fact she welcomed the sudden lapse +into frivolity after her years of hard and almost unremitting work. She +had played little in her life; and a year later when she was working +eighteen hours a day without rest, in conditions that seemed to have +leapt into life from the blackest pages of history, she looked back +upon her one brief interval of irresponsibility, gratified vanity, and +bodily indolence, as at a bright star low on the horizon of a dark and +terrible night. + + + +V + + +There was one small group of women, Gora soon discovered, that stood +for something besides amusement, sharply as some of them were +identified with all that was brilliant in the social life of the city. +They read all that was best in serious literature and fiction as soon +after it came out as their treadmill would permit, and they gave +somewhat more time to it than to poker. It was this small group, led by +Mrs. Hunter, that in common with several wealthy and clever Jewish +women, with intellectual members of old families that had long since +dropped out of a society that gave them too little to be worth the +drain on their limited means, and with one or two presidents of women's +clubs, made up the small attendance at the lectures on literary and +political subjects, delivered either by some local light, or European +specialist in the art of charming the higher intelligence of American +women without subjecting it to undue fatigue. + +This small but distinguished band discussed Gora separately and +collectively and placed the seal of approval upon her. With them her +arrival was genuine and permanent. + +It was hardly a step from their favor to the many women's clubs of the +city, and she was invited to be the luncheon or afternoon guest at one +after another until all had entertained the rising star and she had +learned to make the little speeches expected of her without turning to +ice. + + + +VI + + +The local intelligenzia, those that assured one another how great were +each and all, and whose poems or stories found an occasional +hospitality in the eastern magazines, who toiled over "precious" +paragraphs of criticism or whose single achievement had been a play for +the mid-summer jinks of the Bohemian Club; these and their associates, +the artists and sculptors, still held aloof, more and more annoyed that +Gora Dwight should have had the bad taste to be discovered by the +Philistines, and should be flying across the high heavens in spite of +their tabu. + +Gora had gradually become aware of their existence, and their attitude, +which both amused and piqued her. She knew now that if she had been one +of them they would have beaten the big drum and proclaimed to the world +(of California) that she was "great," "a genius," the legitimate +successor of Ambrose Bierce, whom she remotely resembled, and Bret +Harte, whom she did not resemble at all. This they would have done if +only to prove that California no longer "knocked" as in the mordant +nineties, nor waited for the anile East to set the seal of its dry +approval before discovering that a new volcano was sending forth its +fiery swords in their midst. + +But it was extremely doubtful if society and upper club circles would +have taken any notice of her. Both had acquired the habit, however +unjustly, of regarding their local intelligenzia (with the exception of +the few who kept themselves wholly apart from all groups) as worshipers +of small gods, and preferred to take their cues from London or New +York. They plumed themselves upon having discovered Gora Dwight and +sometimes wondered how it had happened. + +But Bohemia is hardly a trades union; it is indeed anarchistic and +knows no boss. Gora might not be invited to Carmel this many a day, nor +yet to Berkeley, nor to sundry other parnassi, but there was one club +in San Francisco whose curiosity got the better of it, and she was +invited to be the guest of the evening at the home of the Seven Arts +Club on the twentieth of April in the fateful year of nineteen-fourteen. + + + +VII + + +The Seven Arts Club had been organized by a group of painters, +architects, authors, sculptors, musicians, actors and poets, most of +whom had long since found various degrees of fame and moved to New +York, Europe, or the romantic wilderness. + +It still had seventy times seven votaries of the seven arts on its list +and few had found fame as yet outside their hospitable state--where +log-rolling is as amiable as the climate--but all save the elders were +expecting it and many made a fair living. They met once a week, and a +part of the evening pleasure of the literary wing was to "place" +authors. They were willing to swallow the British authors whole (they +did in fact "discover" one or two of them, as the musical critics had +discovered such a rara avis as Tetrazzini, or the dramatic critics many +a now famous player); but they were excessively critical of all who +owed their origin to the United States of America, and particularly of +those who had loved and lost the sovereign state of California. + +Naturally all were more or less radical (except the cynical and now +somewhat anaemic elders who gave up hope for a world that had ceased to +hold out hope to them). The artists were disturbed by futurism and +cubism, although as neither paid they were forced to devote the greater +part of their inspiration to the marketable California scenery. + +But the writers: potential or locally arrived novelists, playwrights, +poets, essayists, were the real intelligenzia! They went about with the +radical weeklies of the East (or Berkeley) under their arms and +discoursed under their breath (when foregathered in small and ardent +groups) upon The Revolution, the day of Judgment for all but honest +Labor, and hissed their hatred of Capital. And if they had much in +common with those "intellectuals" to be found in every land who caress +the chin of radicalism with one hand and plunge the other into the +pocket of capital as far as permitted, who shall blame them? One must +live and one must have something to excite one's intellect when sex, +the stand-by, takes its well-earned rest. + +Several of these ardent ladies and gentlemen, with the sanction of the +Club's President, a business man whose contributions were the financial +mainstay of the Seven Arts, and who sincerely envied the gifted +members, denying them nothing, invited James Kirkpatrick to be the +guest of an evening and deliver an address on Socialism and the +Proletariat. He replied that he would come and spit on them if they +liked but that he had as much use for parlor socialists as he had for +damned fools and posers of any sort. Life was too short. As for Labor +it knew how to take care of itself and had about as crying a need of +their "support" as a healthy human body had of lice and other parasites. + +They were not discouraged however, merely pronouncing him a "creature," +and were not at all flattered or surprised when Gora Dwight accepted +their invitation and asked permission to bring her friends, Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight and Miss Aileen Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +I + + +The wildflowers were on the green hills: the flame-colored velvet +skinned poppy, the purple and yellow lupins, the pale blue "babyeyes," +buttercups, dandelions and sweetbrier, fields of yellow mustard. The +gardens about the Bay and down the Peninsula were almost licentious in +their vehement indulgence in color. Every flower that grows north, +south, east, west, on the western hemisphere and the eastern, was to be +found in some one of these gardens of Central California; the +poinsettia cheek by jowl with periwinkle and the hedges of marguerite; +heavy-laden trees of magnolia above beds of Russian violets. +Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, bridal wreath and camellia, begonia, +fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, roses, roses, +roses.... Little orchards of almond trees, their blossoms a pink mist +against a clear blue sky.... The mariposa lily was awake in the +forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet for the feet +of the deer and the puma.... In the old Spanish towns of the south, the +Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and poignant as +when Rezanov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of +eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on +the hearts of men in Monterey.... From end to end of the great Santa +Clara Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres +and more of pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took +Alexina over it one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from +above it looked like a scented sea that was all foam. + +But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the +season for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the +compass at once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets +of the city, abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking +warmth; abruptly deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights, +always searching, searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San +Francisco, for something lost and never found. + + + +II + + +"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said +Aileen, as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, +down to the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending +to prove in public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast +to Bohemia, that I'm nearly frozen." + +"Keep your wrap on," said Alexina. "Who cares? I have always been wild +to get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead +the most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all, +anyhow. That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and +powerful--" + +"Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to +meet to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--" + +"What do you know about them?" + +"I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know +more or less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York +I was taken several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich +Village. I could only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This +must be a sort of chromo of it.... Gora, are you as wildly excited as +Alex is? I know she is because her spine is rigid; and she is probably +colder than I am." + +"Well, anyhow," said Alexina defiantly, "it will be something I never +saw before." + +"It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you anticipate?" + +Gora laughed. "I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The +circumstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my +imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of +taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this, +one way or another." + + + +III + + +The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the +city. The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor, +apparently very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to +be crowded, were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under +the eaves. + +"Looks like the loft of a barn," grumbled Aileen. There was no +attendant to hear. "Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several +reasons--only one of which is that if this room is a sample my +ill-covered bones will rattle together downstairs." + +She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band +of green in her fashionably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft +white satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim +and round, the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her +hair was done in a classic knot and held with a comb--a present from +Aileen--designed from periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling +dew-drops. + +Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black +satin, very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort. +To-night she wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out +the warm browns of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and +shoulders and bust, and the skin of her body was a delicate honey color +that melted imperceptibly into the deeper tones of her throat and face. + +"Alexina," she said, "let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your +arms and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born +again. Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid...." + +She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the +discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the +keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered +room they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a +new standard. + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," Aileen began. + +A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came +forward almost panting. "I just ran up those stairs," she cried. "But I +was bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down +on Bush Street--dear Minnie Morrison!" + +She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed button, +eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side. + +"But my mother never went to school in San Francisco," said Gora +stiffly, and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual +world with profound disfavor. + +"Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that +dear Minnie's daughter--" + +"Her name was not Minnie Morrison--" + +"Oh, yes, it was--" + +"Don't mind her so much, Gora dear." Aileen did not trouble to lower +her voice. "She's drunk. Let's go down." + +Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a +stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such +a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of +the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs. + +"I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up +here," she said apologetically. "She is not always herself, poor thing. +Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but ... +well, you know ... all people do not have the good fortune to have +their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes +disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, +and--and--your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared +to think no further explanation necessary. + +"Oh, yes," murmured the bewildered Gora. "It was you who wrote to me." + +"Exactly. I am chairman of the reception committee." She looked +expectant, then piqued, and added hastily: "Will you come downstairs? +What lovely gowns. I should like to paint you all." + +She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen +wickedly), and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from +the same bolt as the gown. + +"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't +know--I thought..." + +"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming, +what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody +criticizes anybody else." + +"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. "You will admit we never +found anything like that before." + +"Just you watch and catch them criticizing us.... Rather +effective--what?" + +They were descending a staircase that led directly into the crowded +room below, and they looked down upon a mass of upturned expectant +faces, Gora was ahead with Miss Halsey, and as she reached the floor +the faces changed their angle; it was apparent that they were not +interested in her satellites. + +"Let's stop here for a moment and watch," said Alexina. "It's too +interesting. They look as if they'd eat her alive." + +The whole company seemed to be seething about Gora, and as they were +rapidly presented by Miss Halsey and passed on they produced the +effect, in the inner circles, of a maelstrom. On the outer edge the +women frankly stood on chairs to get a better look at the new lion, or +pushed forward with frenzied determination to the fixed center of the +whirlpool, whose gracious smile was becoming strained. + +"Poor Gora!" said Aileen. "We do it better. A few picked souls at a +time; or, even when it's a tea, just casual introductions at decent +intervals, and not too many references to the immortal work." + +"It's simply great for Gora, anyhow; for, big or little, they're her +own sort. And they're not snobs, They don't care tuppence for us." + +"You're right there. I went to a big reception of all the arts in Paris +once and the only people any one kowtowed to were two disgustingly rich +New York women who had never done anything. But no one can be blamed +for national characteristics. Heavens! What an olla podrida!" + +Some of the men were in evening dress, but the greater number were not. +They were of all ages, shaves, neckties and haircuts. The women wore +every variety of hat, from an immense sailor perched above an immense +fat face, above an immense shirtwaist bust, to minute turbans and +waving plumes. They wore tailored suits, high "one piece" frocks of any +material from chiffon to serge, symphonic confections like Miss +Halsey's, and flowing robes presumably artistic. None wore full evening +dress except the guests of honor. All, however, did not wear hats, and +they arranged their hair as individually as Alexina. + + + +IV + + +"This may be our chance to see the art exhibit," said Aileen. "They'll +remember us in time, or Gora will...." + +They descended into the room but had waited too long. Miss Halsey, +turning the guest of honor over to the second in command, a woman of +portentous seriousness, made her way hastily to the mere butterflies; +who endeavored vainly to slink away under cover of the rotating crowd. + +"You won't think me rude, I hope," she cried, "but I had to start +things going, and it is awkward for all to introduce three people at a +time." + +"You were most considerate," said Alexina amiably. "But we only came to +witness Gora's triumph, and we enjoy looking on, anyhow.... We were +about to look at the pictures...." + +"You must meet some of our more brilliant members," said Miss Halsey +firmly. "They would never forgive me, and have been almost as excited +at meeting two such distinguished members of society as at meeting Miss +Dwight herself. Now, if you ... if you ... that is..." + +"Our names are Jane Boughton and Mamie Featherhurst," supplied Aileen, +transfixing the lady with her wicked green eyes. + +"Oh, yes, to be sure ... there has been so much to think of ... but +your names are so often in the society columns ... it seems to me I +recall that one of you is the daughter of a famous judge--" + +"Boughton. He's under indictment, you know, for graft, bribery, and +corruption." + +"Oh ... ah ... how unfortunate," Miss Halsey's jaw fell. Even she had +heard--vaguely in her studio--of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she +wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his +family to the club. + +"You see," said Aileen coolly. "I am not fit to associate with your +members, and as Miss Featherhurst is still my loyal friend, we'll just +go over and sit in a corner--" + +"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind. You are our guests, +and--please for this evening forget everything else." + +"You nasty little beast," hissed Alexina into Aileen's discomforted +ear. "She's worth two of you." + +"So she is," said Aileen contritely, "I'll behave better." + +Miss Halsey, who had been signaling several members and rounding up +others, returned, Alexina blazed her eyes at Aileen, who murmured +hastily to the hostess: "I was just joking. I am Judge Lawton's +daughter, and this is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Gora's sister-in-law. I'd +never have told such a whopper but I'm so nervous and shy. I didn't +think I could go through the ordeal." + +"Oh, you poor child. Well, you'll find we're not terrible in the least. +Now, don't try to remember names. They'll remember yours--better than I +did!" + +Another small eddying circle formed about the luminaries from a lower +sphere. This proved to be much like similar performances in any stratum +of society. All murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be +original or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves +and were making their way toward the pictures that turned the four +walls into a harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering +up. He had bright, eyes and a pleasant face. + +"Which is Mrs. Dwight?" he asked eagerly. Alexina bent her lofty head +and smiled down upon him. + +"Of course. Little Alexina. I remember you when you were a dear little +girl and I used to see you playing about the house when I went up to +have a good powwow with that clever grandfather of yours, Alex +Groome--one of the ablest politicians this town ever had; and straight, +damn straight." + +"Alexander Groome was my father." + +"Oh, no, he wasn't. He was your grandfather. You are the daughter ... +let me see ... there were two or three young ladies.... I remember when +they came out in the eighties ... and a boy or two...." + +"I am sorry to be rude, but Alexander Groome was my father. I came +along rather late." + +"Impossible! ... Well, I suppose you know best..." and he drifted off. + +"This seems to be a home for incurables," said Aileen. "I am sure I +don't know how I shall get through the evening. Gora has a slight sense +of humor, you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively +fiendish.... Oh, Lord!" + +Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of +another woman. + +"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up +to look like Carmen." + +The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been +considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had +evidently expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of +Nature. Her unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck +with immense pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade +rings dangled in tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of +colored beads covered the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, +beaded gown. She had a haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, +but something, an emanation perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was +still young. + +"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with +whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week +but was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of +the east to our new daughter of the west." + +Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted +forward and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how +wonderful I think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been +watching you!" She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a +child, which, oddly, made her look like a very old woman. + +"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave. + +"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You +look like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh, +I do think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid +artists here will want to paint you." + +Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and +unbridled admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if +rather queer. But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and +rushed on. + +"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over +her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style +are unique and she suggests tragedy--with those marvelous pale eyes in +that dark face--those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have +suggested that Folkes--your greatest portrait painter, you know,--paint +her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be +of her!" + +"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in +America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?" + +"I? I am not an artist--with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey +Smith." + +"Oh!..." Aileen's voice trailed off vaguely, "What do you write? Plays? +Essays?..." + +"I--why, I'm one of the best--my stories appear constantly in the best +magazines." Miss Smith, who had been deserted some time since by Miss +Halsey, looked abject, helpless, and infuriated. + +"Oh! We only read the worst. It must be wonderful to be famous. Come, +Alex, we must see the pictures. They're going to have music and supper +later." + + + +V + + +"Nevertheless," said Alexina, "they are real as far as they go, and +they really do things, good or bad. They work, they aspire; they dream, +and perhaps with reason, of a glorious future, when they will be as +famous and successful as the founders of the club. Even if they fail +they will have had the wonderful dream. Nothing can take that from +them. I envy them--envy them!" + +They were standing in a far corner of the room, after having examined +three or four admirable and many passable paintings. Aileen looked at +her in surprise. They had both been remarking upon the comic aspects of +the intellectual life, and Alexina's outburst was unexpected. Aileen +had seldom seen her vehement since they had outgrown their youthful +habit of wrangling. She was still more astonished when she turned from +a view of the Latin-seeming roofs of San Francisco from Twin Peaks, to +Alexina's face. It looked drawn and desperate. + +"Well, most of them will fail," she said lightly. "Look at these +pictures! That is what is the matter with California--too much talent. +You must be as individual as a talking monkey to get your head above +the crowd. All these poor devils are doomed to the local reputation." + +"Even so they have something to live for, mean something, do something. +What do I mean to myself or anyone? What have I accomplished? The man I +married is a dummy-husband; means nothing to me nor I to him. I have no +children. Even my housekeeping for Maria is a farce; James really does +it all. I mean nothing to society now that I can no longer entertain +it. I haven't even a decent vice. I don't smoke and gamble like you, +nor have lovers like some of the others. I'm simply a +nonentity--nothing!" + +"You have personality ... beauty...." Aileen was completely at a loss. +"I hate being banal like that Smith idiot ... but you are the +perfection of a type. That is something. And you cultivate your mind--" + +"My mind! What does it amount to? Anybody can pack a brain. I'd like +one of those that gives out something, however little. But I can't help +that. The point is I don't live. I don't care a hang about personality +that doesn't get anywhere, and I care still less about being a finished +type--that's the work of dead and gone ancestors, anyhow, not mine.... +I wish I could fall in love with James Kirkpatrick. I'd feel more +justified in my own eyes if I were living with him over in the +Mission--" + +"His old mother would chase you out with a broom and use Biblical +language. Of course I know you must be bored, Alex dear. Can't you +manage to go abroad and live for a time?" + +"No, I can't, and I don't see what difference that would make. But I'll +tell you what I shall do. If Tom and Maria want to rent the house next +year they can have it but I'll not live there. I'll not be 'held up' +any longer. I'll stand on my own feet--in other words get a job. +No--I've some loose money, I'll start in business." + +"Good for you. Perhaps dad'll let me go in with you. Don't imagine I +don't get sick of my racketing life; and when I have a spasm of reform +I nearly take seriously to drink, I'm so bored. Would you have me for +partner?" + +"Wouldn't I? That is if you would be serious about it. I am, let me +tell you. The whole family can perform suttee for all I care. I'm going +to do something that will give me a place in the main stream of life." + +"Trust me. I have been considering Bob's fifteenth proposal--Mr. +Cheever has promised him a full partnership the day he marries, and it +wouldn't be so bad. Bobby is a good sport, and we'd live the out-door +life at Burlingame instead of the in--sports ... tournaments ... polo +... cut out dissipation. We've both really had enough of it. But I +believe business would be more interesting. After all that's what you +marry for unless you want children--which I don't--to be interested. +What'll we be? Decorators?" + +"I suppose so. But all this has only just come to a head, although I +know now that it has been slowly gathering force in my deepest deeps. +If we do I'll take Alice on. She's sick of the game too and she has +simply ripping ideas." + +"Perfect. 'Dwight, Thorn--', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm +too excited--convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and +get out. It will be our real, our first adventure." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +I + + +But two weeks later Aileen told Alexina that although she had cannily +waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her +father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She +stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a +cent nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had +supported woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed +the franchise and no fair-minded man would withhold it; and if for no +other reason he would forbid his daughter to go out and compete with +women who must work whether they wanted to or not. + +But that was only one point. + +What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher +plane to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died +for? It was their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go +up not down. + +Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing +their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and +undermined society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his +way not a woman in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service, +should work. He'd tax every male in the land, according to his income +or wage, to say nothing of the rich women, and keep every last one of +the unportioned in idleness rather than risk the downfall of male +supremacy in the world. + +He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had +his way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the +public press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be +handed on, not lowered.... Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps, +but no further exposure to the vulgar gaze ... he was glad she had +never gone in for the last. + +Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top +that proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the +refinements of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of +leisure, of pleasure--quite as much an art as writing books or painting +pictures. + +If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able +to prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and +protected were second to none on this planet, at least. + +If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the +world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization.... +He was not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a +disgrace for a lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane +and compete with men for laurels.... But when it came to stripping off +the delicate badges that only the higher civilization could confer, and +struggling tooth and nail with the mob for no reason whatever--it was +disloyal, ungrateful and monstrous. + +He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different, +yes.) But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his +father before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his +convictions. + +That was all. + + + +II + + +"In short, he's modern but not too modern. My twentieth-century +arguments were brushed aside as mere fads. And yet there's probably not +an important case tried in any court in either hemisphere that he +doesn't read--learn something from if he can. He takes in the leading +newspapers and reviews of America and Europe and even reads the best +modern novels as carefully as he ever read Thackeray and Dickens--says +they are the real social chronicles. He's a profound student of +history, and the history of the present interests him just as much--he +has those Balkans under a microscope; and collects all the data on +every important strike here and elsewhere. And yet where women are +concerned he is a fossil. An American fossil--worst sort. Some of the +young ones are just as bad ... I'll have to give in. I can't break his +heart. I suppose I'll marry Bobby." + + + +III + + +Alice Thorndyke also shook her head. "I'd like to, Alex, but frankly I +haven't the courage. Your friends all stick to you like perfect dears +when you step down and out and set up shop, and are so kind you feel +like a street walker in a house of refuge. But secretly they hate it +and they don't feel toward you in the same way at all. They may not +know enough to express it, but what they really feel is that you have +threatened the solidity of the order and lowered yourself as well as +them. One day they may have more sense but not in our time, I am +afraid." + +Nevertheless, Alexina persisted in her determination. One could succeed +alone. She would not be the first. She was by no means sure, however, +what she wanted to do, and made up her mind to take no step before the +following winter. When the Abbotts returned to Rincona in May they took +James with them. Alexina closed Ballinger House, although Mortimer +slept there and a Filipino came in every morning to make his breakfast +and bed; and took a cottage in Ross with Janet Maynard whose mother had +gone south to visit old lady Bascom, and who craved the wild peace of +Marin County after too much San Francisco and Burlingame. + +Marin, with its magnificent redwood forests on the coast, fed by the +fogs of the Pacific, its ancient sunlit woods of oak and madrono and +manzanita, its mountains and rocky hills and peaceful fertile valleys, +is perhaps the most beautiful county in California, and its towns and +villages are still almost primitive in spite of the many fashionable +residents whose homes are close to or in them. The ocean pounds its +western base, Mount Tamalpais is its proudest possession, it has a +haunted looking lake; and a part of it embraces one of the many +ramifications of the Bay of San Francisco, and commands a superb view +of city and island and mountain. But it has a heavy brooding peace that +seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is intermittent, and +its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco deeply +refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a stark +little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San +Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh +are Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries. + + + +IV + + +Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the +sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in +the late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or +Belvedere, perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet +was now twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as +seriously to consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She +had great wealth, she was blasee as a result of doing everything she +chose to do, in public or in private, and she was nearly two +generations younger than Judge Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no +allurement in the business world, and the only alternative seemed +marriage. Not in California, however. No surprises there. She might +take her fortune to London and become a peeress of the realm. When +change became imperative better go up than down. + +Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not +afflicted with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and +brooding and intimate personal contacts. She wanted the deep +refreshment of the summer before girding up for the winter--before +making her plunge into the world of business and toil. + +But she was soon to discover that she had girded up her loins, or at +all events brightened up her corpuscles and reposed her brain cells, +for a far different purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +I + + +It is possible that only two people in California, barring German +spies, leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a +European War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and +knew his modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because +she recalled conversations she had had in France the summer before with +people close to the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions +in the letters of Olive de Morsigny; who may have thought it wise not +to trust all she knew to the post, or may have been too busy with her +intensive nursing course to enter into particulars. + +Janet shrugged her large statuesque shoulders when Alexina communicated +her fears. What was war to her? England at least would have sense +enough to keep out of it. Aileen came over after a convincing talk with +her father looking as worried as if some nation or other were training +their guns on the Golden Gate. + +"Dad says it's the world war ... that we'll be dragged in ... that +Germany has had it up her sleeve for years ... believes that bomb was +made in Berlin ... nothing under heaven could have averted this +impending war but a huge standing army in Great Britain ... hasn't Lord +Roberts been crying out for it?.... Dad and I dined at his house one +night in London and the only picture in the dining-room was an oil +painting of the Kaiser in a red uniform, done expressly for Lord +Roberts ... funny world ... and now Britain's got a civil war on her +hands and mutinous officers who won't go over and shoot men of their +own class in Ulster.... Russia hasn't built her strategic railways--all +the money used up in graft.... Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! who'd have thought +it? ... Twentieth century and all the rest of it." + +"Twentieth century ... war ... how utterly absurd.... I don't wish to +be rude ... but really..." + +This from every one to whom Alexina and Aileen, or even Judge Lawton, +communicated their fears. + + + +II + + +One day Alexina and Aileen met in San Francisco by appointment and +telephoned to James Kirkpatrick, asking him to lunch with them at the +California Market. He accepted with alacrity, and laughed genially at +their apprehensions. War? War? Not on your life. There'll never be +another war. Socialists won't permit it. The kaiser? To hell with the +kaiser. (Excuse me.) He, James Kirkpatrick, was in frequent +correspondence with certain German socialists. They would declare +themselves in the coming International Congress for the general strike +if any sovereign--or President--dared to try to put over a war on the +millions of determined socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, and +communists in Great Britain and Europe; he'd get the surprise of his +life. Socialism was determined there should never be another war--the +burden and life-toll of which was always borne by the poor man. He +didn't believe any of those fool sovereigns, not even the crazy kaiser, +would attempt it, knowing what they did; but if they turned out to be +deaf and blind, well, just watch out for the Great Strike. That would +be the most portentous, the most awe-inspiring event in history. + +And then he dismissed a prospective European war as unworthy of further +attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the +Great Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the +miserable make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a +horror in the very heart of a great and prosperous nation. But with the +new system ... the new system ... there would not be even these +abominable little civil wars ... for that was what we had right here in +our own country ... no need to use up your gray matter bothering about +European states.... + +He was so convincing that Alexina and Aileen thanked him warmly and +went to their respective destinations lulled and comforted. + +Nevertheless, the war made its grand debut on August first, and Mr. +Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New +York for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously +over the side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug. + + + +III + + +Two letters came from Olive to Alexina and one to each of her other old +friends, imploring them to come over and help. They could nurse. They +could run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her +friends, her countrywomen, could do. + +But the war would be over in three months.... Only Judge Lawton +believed it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a +war at all.... Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that +wondrous smiling land could think upon war anywhere?) ... It would be +too funny if it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian +refugees.... Poor things.... Maria and other good women immediately +began knitting for them ... sat for hours on the verandahs, all in +white, knitting, knitting ... but talking of anything of war.... It +simply was a horrid dream and soon would be over.... Their husbands all +said so ... three months.... German army irresistible ... modern +implements of war must annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the +Germans had the most and the best.... Rotten shame (said Burlingame) +and the Germans not even good sportsmen. + +James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with +the thought that at least Britain would be licked ... she'd get what +was coming to her, all right, and Ireland would be free.... Anyhow it +would soon be over.... When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the +socialist party for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an +American first, wasn't I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag ... +oh, hell! (Excuse me.)" + + + +IV + + +In December, nineteen-fourteen, Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who +grasped the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went +to France. Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a +passionate good-by to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever. +Jimmie Thorne went to France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning +to join the Lafayette Escadrille. Gora sailed six months later to offer +her services to England. In the case of a nurse there was much red tape +to unravel. + +A fair proportion of the women left behind continued to knit. As time +went on branches of certain French war-relief organizations were +formed, and run by such capable women as Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Hunter, +who had many friends among the American women living in France; now +toiling day and night at their oeuvres. + +Alexina and Olive de Morsigny, after a year of nursing, when what +little flesh they had left could stand no more, founded an oeuvre of +their own, and Sibyl Bascom and Aileen Cheever did fairly well with a +branch in San Francisco, Alexina's relatives quite wonderfully in New +York and Boston; although they were already interested in many others. + + + +V + + +Certain interests in California, notably the orchards and canneries, +were violently anti-British during the first years of the war, as the +blockade shut off their immense exports to Germany, and those that +failed, or closed temporarily, realized the incredible: that a war in +Europe could affect California, even as the Civil War affected the +textile factories of England. To them it was a matter of indifference, +until nineteen-seventeen, who won the war so long as one side smashed +the other and was quick about it. + +Owners and directors of copper mines--but let us draw a veil over the +sincere robust instincts of human nature. + +The Club of Seven Arts was proudly and vociferously pro-German. Not +that they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far +more original attitude than all this sobbing over France ... and then +there was Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl. +And the atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president +resigned, but no one else paid any attention to them. + +In nineteen-seventeen a few declared themselves pacifists and +conscientious objectors, and, little recking what they were in for, +marched off triumphantly to a military prison, feeling like Christ and +longing for a public cross. + +The others, those that were young enough, shouldered a gun and went to +the front with high hearts and hardened muscles. Democracy ueber alles. +The women enlisted in the Red Cross and the Y.W.C.A., and worked with +grim enthusiasm, either at home or in France. + + + +VI + + +By this time California, almost on another planet as she was, with her +abundance unchecked, and her skies smiling for at least three-fourths +of the year, admitted there was a real war in the world, as bad (or +worse) as any you could read about in history. The war films in the +motion picture houses were quite wonderful, but too terrible. + +They also discussed it, especially on those days when the streets +echoed with the march of departing regiments in khaki, or one's own +son, or one's friend's son enlisted or was drafted, or it was their day +at Red Cross headquarters. + +All the older women were at work now, and all but the most +irreclaimably frivolous of the young ones. Even Tom and Maria Abbott +made no protest against Joan's joining the Woman's Motor Corps; and, +dressed in a smart, gray, boyish uniform, she drove her car at all +hours of the day and night. She was not only sincerely anxious to +serve, but she knew, and sheltered girls all over the land knew,--to +say nothing of the younger married women--that this was the beginning +of their real independence, the knell of the old order. They were +freed. Even the reenforced concrete minds of the last generation +imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly modernized in the +rebuilding. + +A good many of the women, old and young, continued to gamble furiously +out of their hours of work; but the majority of the girls did not. +Those with naturally serious minds were absorbed, uplifted, keen, +calculating. They did not even dance. They realized that they had +wonderful futures in a changing world. It was "up to them." + + + +VII + + +Mortimer was beyond the draft age, but, possibly owing to his gallant +fearless appearance, it was rather expected that he would enlist. He +did not, however, nor did he join the Red Cross or the Y.M.C.A., nor +volunteer for some Government work, as so many of the men of his age +and class were doing as a matter of course. + +War news bored him excessively. He was making two or three hundred +dollars a month; he lived at the Club when Maria Abbott occupied +Ballinger House--Tom went to Washington--and he was extremely +comfortable. In the Club he always felt like a blood, forgot for the +time being that he was not a rich man, like the majority of its +members, and there was always a group of nice quiet contented fellows, +glad to play bridge with him in the evening. On the whole, he +congratulated himself, he had not done so badly, although he had +resigned all hope of being a millionaire--unless he made a lucky +strike.... But it did not make so much difference in California ... and +when Alexina had had enough of horrors they would settle down again +very comfortably to the old life.... There was very good dancing at the +restaurants (upstairs) where one met nice girls of sorts who didn't +care a hang about this infernal war ... one of them ... but he was +extremely careful ... he would never be divorced; that was positive ... +as for society he did not miss it particularly ... the dancing at the +restaurants was better and he didn't have to talk ... whether people +stopped asking him or not, now that his wife was away, or whether they +entertained or not, didn't so much matter. He had the Club. That was +the all important pivot of his life, his altar, his fetish ... a lot he +cared what went so long as he had that. + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the +upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of +legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to +celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with +an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, +obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be +intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he +had invested money in North and South America, and was able to +entertain his sovereign out of his private purse. He had made up his +mind to give the first brilliant function following the sudden end of +La Grande Guerre and one that it would be difficult for even Paris to +eclipse. + +All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after +nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and +her eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of +her room, blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the +Marquis and Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long +receiving line where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside +the resplendent ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to +a group of acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling +munificence that seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance. + +They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of +the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her +insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the +greatest function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the +long monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four +years, and the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last +year when avions dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha +struck terror to each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene +recalled one's most extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and +Alexina felt like a very young girl. Even the almost constant sensation +of fatigue, mental and bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had +worked from nine until six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking +the miles to and from her hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains; +the distasteful food; the tremors that had shaken even her tempered +soul when the flashing of the German guns, drawing ever nearer, could +be seen at night on the horizon. + +And Paris had been so dark! + +She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast, +quite unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date. +For that matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this +year's fashion. Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the +Armistice was declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion +to its ideal of duty, but that the American officers should have the +opportunity to discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden, +the women had not yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only +gowns in the room less than four years old were worn by the newly +arrived Americans of the Peace Commission and the ladies of the +Embassy. The most striking figures were the French Generals in their +horizon blue uniforms and rows of orders on their hardy chests. + +Of jewels there were few. When the German drive in March seemed +irresistible, jewels had been sent to distant estates, or to banks in +Marseilles and Lyons, and there had been no time to retrieve them after +the ambassador sent out his sudden invitations. Alexina smiled as she +recalled Olive de Morsigny's lament over the absence of her tiara. +European women of society take their jewels very seriously, and there +was not a Frenchwoman present who did not possess a tiara, however +old-fashioned. + +But the cold luminosity of jewels would have been extinguished to-night +under this really terrific down-pour of light. The tall candelabra +against the tapestried or the white and gold walls were relieved of +duty; Paris had had enough of candlelight; the four immense chandeliers +of this reception room, either of which would have illuminated a +restaurant, had been rewired and blazed like suns. Suspended from the +ceiling, festooned between the candelabra and the chandeliers, were +clusters and loops of glass tupils and roses, each concealing an +electric bulb. Alexina reflected that the soft haze of candles might be +more artistic and becoming, but was grateful nevertheless for this +rather tasteless fury of light, symptomatic as it was; and understood +the ambassador's revolt against the enforced economies of a long war, +his desire to do honor to his unassuming little sovereign. + + + +II + + +The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three +massive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly. +Every embassy was represented, all the grande noblesse of Paris and +even a stray Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more +distinguished American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out +of date if as inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked +as hard. But Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that +two American officers, standing still closer to the window, were +talking. One of them had parted the curtains and was looking out. + +"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows +opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one +of them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist." + +"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the +room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls ... feel it a +sort of duty to increase the rapport and all that ... but although the +married women and the other sort of girls are a long sight more +fascinating than ours, the upper--" + +"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of +carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about +that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home +town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun +didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that +he looked about rather apprehensively when he arrived, at the station +yesterday? No wonder, poor devil." + + + +III + + +Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to +halt near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door +at the fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond, +when, without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went +out. + +Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar +cry of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people +in real life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to +relieve her lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!" + +She waited to hear screams from the women, wild ejaculations from the +men. But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and +exalted the strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor +Alexina heard nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and +that was abysmal; she could not see the white of her gown. + +All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a +groan as the King fell with a knife in his back. + +Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the +crowd; she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later +she knew that a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed +him up the room to place him in front of the central pillar, but at the +moment she believed that they were either carrying out his body, or +that a group of anarchists was escaping. + + + +IV + + +Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving +excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, +then another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and +these burned with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and +lit them. All over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, +Alexina saw face after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were +invisible. The faces hung, pallid disks, in the dark. + +Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady +flame of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an +officer recently discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic +and unperturbed and his eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively +curiosity. An Englishman, probably; nothing there of the severity of +the American military countenance; although, to be sure, that had +relaxed somewhat these last weeks under the blandishments of Paris. +Nevertheless ... quite apart from the military, there was the curious +unanalyzable difference between the extremely well-bred American face +and the extremely well-bred English face. It might be that the older +civilization did not take itself quite so seriously.... + + + +V + + +Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the +sudden reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, +she took a match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it +and held it below her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly, +opened a little wider, then narrowed. + +She looked at him steadily ... interested ... something ... somewhere +... stirring. The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished. +At the same time she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond +the pillars and that people were moving on, some retreating toward the +hall. She was carried forward and a little later turned her head, +forgetting for a moment the humorous face that still had seemed to +beckon above the white disks that inspired her with no interest +whatever. + +Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him +two officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a +great candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches +had been lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless +face of the King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old +cathedral window. + +The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left +the room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his +ambassador, whose face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase. + + + +VI + + +A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of +the dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had +been no attempt at assassination. A lead fuse had melted; the +ambassador, who had taxed his imagination to honor his King, had +forgotten to give the order that electricians remain on guard to avert +just such a calamity as this. + +As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter +rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria. +But although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the +mild exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get +away. Many still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the +assassins were lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel. + +Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white +and shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of +strong nerves as well as of untiring effort. + +"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap. +"If he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought Andre would faint. +His last wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who +knows? ... In Paris!..." + +Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent +friends in the porte cochere the certainty grew that some one was +watching her. That officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the +crowd about her, then into the densely packed hall behind. But she +encountered no pair of eyes even remotely humorous, no face in any +degree familiar.... Later she whirled about again.... There was a +pillar ... easy to dodge behind it.... At this moment Andre took her +elbow and gently piloted her into the car. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her +pension in Passy. + +Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left +her free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the +great hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a +canteen in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the +Armistice in a comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de +Morsigny, and found much solace together. But their hotel had been +commandeered for one of the Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with +her sister-in-law, and Alexina, Janet, and Alice had found with no +little difficulty vacant rooms in a second-rate pension in Passy. The +food was even worse than at the hotel, the rooms were barely heated, +and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless and jammed, and taxicabs +in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with drivers of an unsurpassable +effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles a day in all weathers. +It is true that she could have rented a limousine for a thousand francs +a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of her class to +economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre of their +devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply +camions of the Y.M.C.A. + + + +II + + +Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door and +inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many +cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard +day's work and the next. She was in no mood for talking. + +Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had +probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of +the long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly +in flood after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and +many long banners of light from the almost festive banks. + +It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved +about her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to +discomforts and thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco, +which is seldom warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts +nevertheless. During the war she had sustained herself with the thought +of the men in the trenches, but now that their lot was ameliorated she +felt that she had a right to what comforts she could find. The +difficulty was to find them. With Paris overflowing. Generals sleeping +in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, even officers, picking up +women on the streets if only to have a bed for the night, and hotel +after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace Commissions and +their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow worse. Olive +de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she preferred her +independence. + +To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months. +Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of +hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now +that the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil +stove. + +Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her +restless. The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a +shock to-night and not from the imagined assassination of a king. + +She went suddenly to her mirror and looked at herself intently ... +shook her head with a frown. She had always been slim; she was now very +thin. The roundness and color had left her cheeks. They were +pale--almost hollow. Janet and Alice had rejoiced in the lack of fats +and sweets, both having a tendency to plumpness had achieved without +effort the most fashionable slenderness that anxious woman could wish. +But she had not had a pound to lose. It seemed to her that she was +almost plain. Her eyes retained their dazzling brilliancy, a trick of +nature that old age alone no doubt could conquer, but there were dark +stains beneath the lower lashes. + +She let down her hair. It was the same soft dusky mass as ever. Her +teeth were as even and bright; her lips had not lost their curves, but +they were pink, not red. She was anaemic, no doubt. Why, in heaven's +name, shouldn't she be? Even Olive, whose major domo, driving a Ford, +had paid daily visits to the farms and brought back what eggs, chickens +and other succulences the peasants would part with for coin, had lost +her brilliant color and the full lines of her beautiful figure. She had +rouged to-night and looked as lovely as when Morsigny had captured her, +but her magnificent gown had been too hastily taken in by an elderly +inefficient maid--her young one having patriotically deserted her for +munitions long since, and sagged on her bones as she expressed it. +Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered to lend her one of the +new ones she had had the forethought to buy in New York before sailing, +and was only a year old, but Olive had feared the critical eyes of +French women who had not replenished their evening wardrobe since +nineteen-fourteen. + +Alexina did not feel particularly consoled because others had looked no +better than she. Until to-night she had given little thought to her +looks, but she now felt a renewed interest in herself, and the frown +was as much for this revival as for her wilted beauty. + +Her evening wrap was very warm and she sat down in the hard arm-chair +and huddled into its folds, covering the lower part of her body with a +hideous brown quilt. No doubt the sheets were damp, and she knew that +she could not sleep. Why shiver in bed? + + + +III + + +Was it Gathbroke? It was long since she had thought of him. She had not +even seen his photograph for four or five years. If it were, he had +changed even more since that photograph had been taken than after she +had dismissed him at Rincona. + +She was by no means sore that it was he. The light of a briquet was not +precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than +one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in +Paris.... It was something in the eyes ... she could have vowed they +were hazel ... their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat +ironic man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the +piercing alertness of a man of action ... but after ... was it perhaps +an emanation of the personality that had so impressed her angry young +soul and refused to be obliterated? + +But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers +and soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not +already supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they +may have been before.... Life seemed shorter every time they went back +to the front. + +And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her +for a moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite +youth. That was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty, +to-day, was but the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks +in the California sunshine and nourished by the California abundance +would restore her looks, no doubt of that. But she would look no better +as long as she remained in Paris.... Nor did she wish to return to +California ... and beyond all question he must have forgotten, lost all +interest in her long since. + +Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes ... was it +recognition? ... merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match +and a briquet? ... No doubt she would never see him again. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Did she want to? + +She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years +of close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as +precisely different from the first twenty-six years of her life as +peace from war. + +During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in +hospitals close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage +of her nature which she had inherited from a long line of men who had +fought in the Civil War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars +before that, and the tribal wars that came after, and all that she had +inherited from those foremothers whose courage, as severely tested, had +never failed either their men or their country; in short, the +inheritance of the best American tradition; had risen automatically to +sustain her during that period of incessant danger and horror. She had +been firm and smiling for the consolation of wounded men when under +direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity for the mutilated +patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every selfish impulse +fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many helpless +bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of the +eternal motherhood of the world. She had once thrown herself over the +bed of a politely protesting poilu, covering his helpless body with her +own, as a shell from a taube came through the roof. + +That had been a wonderful, a noble and exalted (not to say +exhilarating) period; a period that made her almost grateful for a war +that revealed to her such undreamed of possibilities in her soul. She +might smile at it in satiric wonder in the retrospect, but at least it +was ineradicable in her memory. + +If it could but have lasted! But it had not. Insensibly she accepted +suffering, sacrifice, pity, as a matter of course, even as danger and +death. It had been the romance of war she had experienced in spite of +its horrors, and no romance lives after novelty has fled. For months +nothing seemed to affect her bodily resistance to fatigue, and as +exaltation dropped, as the monotony of nursing, even of danger, left +her mind more and more free, as war grew more and more to seem, the +normal condition of life, more and more she became conscious of herself. + + + +II + + +Life at the front is very primitive. Social relations as the world +knows them cease to exist. The habits of the past are almost forgotten. +It is death and blood; shells shrieking, screaming, whining, jangling; +the boom of great guns as if Nature herself were in a constant +electrical orgasm; hideous stench; torn bodies, groans, cries, still +more terrible silences of brave men in torment; incessant +unintermittent danger. Above all, blood, blood, blood. She believed she +should smell it as long as she lived. She knew it in every stage from +the fresh dripping blood of men rushed from the field to the evacuation +hospitals, to the black caked and stinking blood of men rescued from No +Man's Land endless days and nights after they had fallen. + +All that was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, +full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the +surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter +inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished +at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything +else could ever have mattered. + +Civilization--by which men meant the varied and pleasant times of +peace--seemed incredibly insipid and out of date. It had no more +relation to this war-zone than her youth to this swift and terrible +maturity. + +She was in many hospitals--rushed where an indomitable and tireless +auxiliary nurse was most in demand--some under the direction of the +noblesse division of the Red Cross, others under the bourgeois; and in +more than one were English and American girls, long resident in France, +or, in the latter case, come from America like herself to serve the +country for which they had a romantic passion. The majority, of course, +were Frenchwomen, young (in their first freedom), middle-aged, elderly. + +Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently +noble, selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every +thought and deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land. + +But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off +after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day, +accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might +turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly +readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is +the quintessential carnality. Renan once wrote a story of the French +Revolution, "The Abbess Juarre," in which his thesis was that if +warning were given that the world would end in three days the entire +population of the globe would give itself over to an orgy of sex; sex +being life itself. It is the obsession of the doomed consumptive, the +doomed spinster, the last thought of a man with the rope round his neck. + +How much more under the terrific stimulation of war, the constant +heedless annihilation of life in its flower and its maturity? Man's +inveterate enemy, death, shrieking its derision in the very shells of +man's one inviolable right, the right to drift into eternity through +the peaceful corridors of old age. War is a monstrous anachronism and a +monstrous miscarriage of justice. The ignorant feel it less. It is the +enlightened, the intelligent, accustomed to the higher delights of +civilization, to the perfecting of such endowments, however modest, as +their ancestors have transmitted and peace has encouraged, with +ambitions and hopes and dreams, that resent however sub-consciously the +constant snarling of death at their heels. All the forces of mind and +body and spirit become formidable in a reckless hatred of the gross +injustice of a fate that individually not one of them has deserved. + +But the moment remains. They compress into it the desires of a +lifetime. After years of proud individualism they have learned that +they are atoms, cogs, helpless, the sport of iron and steel and powder +and the ambitions and stupidities of men whose lives are never risked. +Very well, turn the ego loose to find what it can. If all they have +learned from civilization is as useless in this shrieking hell, as +impotent as the dumb resentment of the clod, they can at least be +animals. + +To talk of the ennobling influences of war is one of the lies of the +conventionalized mind anxious to avoid the truths of life and to +extract good from all evil--worthy but unintelligent. How can men in +the trenches, foul with dirt and vermin, stench forever in their +nostrils, callous to death and suffering, wallowing like pigs in a +trough, compulsorily obscene, be ennobled? Courage is the commonest +attribute of man, a universal gift of Nature that he may exist in a +world bristling with dangers to frail human life; never to be +commended, only to be remarked when absent. If men lose it in the city, +the sedentary life, they recover it quickly in the camp. The +exceptions, the congenital cowards, slink out of war on any pretext, +but if drafted are likely to acquit themselves decently unless +neurotic. The cases of cowardice in active warfare are extremely rare; +a mechanical chattering of teeth, or shaking of limbs, but practically +never a refusal to obey the command to advance. But it is this very +courage which breeds callousness, and, combined with bestial +conditions, inevitably brutalizes. + +When good people (far, oh far, from the zones of danger) can no longer +in the face of accumulating evidence, cling to their sentimental theory +that war ennobles, they take refuge in the vague but plausible +substitute that at least it makes the good better and the bad worse. +Possibly, but it is to be remembered that there is bad in the best even +where there is no good in the worst. + +Indubitably it leaves its indelible mark in a collection of hideous +memories, on the just and the unjust, alike; as it is more difficult +(Nature having made human nature in an ironical mood) to recall the +pleasant moments of life than the poignantly unpleasant, so is it far +more difficult to recall the moments of exaltation, of that intense +spiritual desire which visits the high and low alike, to give their all +for the safety of their country and the honor of their flag. Moreover, +the sublime indifference in the face of certain death often has its +origin in a still deeper necessity to relieve the insufferable strain +on scarified nerves, and forever. As for the much vaunted recrudescence +of the religious spirit which is one of the recurring phenomena of war, +it is merely an instinct of the subtle mind, in its subtlest depths +called soul, to indulge in the cowardice of dependence since the body +must know no fear. + +If men who have been temperate and moral all their lives, or at the +worst indulging in moderation, spend their leaves of absence from the +front like swine, it is not a reaction from the monotony of trench +life, or from the nerve-racking din of war, but merely an extension of +the fearful stimulation of a purely carnal existence, even where the +directing mind is ever on the alert. + +The aggressors of war should be pilloried in life and in history. Men +must defend their country if attacked; to do less would be to sink +lower than the beasts that defend their lairs; and for that reason all +pacifists, and conscientious objectors, are abject, mean, and shabby. +In times of national danger no man has a right to indulge his own +conscience; it merges, if he be a normal courageous man, into the +national conscience. But that very fact lowers the deliberate seekers +of war so far below the high plane of civilization as we know it, that +they should be blotted out of existence. + + + +III + + +As regards women Alexina was not likely to remain shocked for long at +any erratic manifestations of temperament. Pride and fastidiousness and +the steel armor fused by circumstances had protected her heretofore +from any divagations of her own; nor had crystallized temptation ever +approached her. + +But her education had been liberal. Several of her intimate friends and +more that she associated with daily made what she euphemistically +termed a cult of men. The naive deliberate immorality of young things +not only in the best society but in all walks of life is far more +prevalent than the good people of this world will ever believe. Those +with much to lose seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection +envelops them as a mantle; although in small towns, where concealments +are less simple, the majority of scandals are not about married women +as in a less sophisticated era, but about girls. + +Alexina had possessed numerous confidences, helped more than once to +throw dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she +was philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact +stood out that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, remained always her +favorite friend. + +An individualist, she felt it no part of her philosophy to criticize +the acts of women with different desires, weaknesses, temptations, +equipment from her own; all other things being equal. That was the +point. These girls who made use of their most secret and personal +possession as they saw fit were as well-bred as herself, honorable in +all their dealings with one another and with society at large, +generous, tolerant, exquisite in their habits, often highly intelligent +and studious. Sex was an incident. + +With the peccadillos of married women who were wives she had little +tolerance as they were a breach of faith, a deliberate violation of +contract, and indecent to boot. She was quite aware that Sibyl for all +her posturings, and avidness for sex admiration, and "acting oriental" +as the phrase went, was entirely devoted to Frank. Such of her married +friends as had severed all but the nominal and public bond with their +legal husbands, she placed in the same category as girls as far as her +personal attitude toward them went. + + + +IV + + +Therefore not only did she understand these young women driven by the +horrid stimulus of war; women (or girls) heretofore sheltered, +virtuous, romantic, sentimental, now merely filled with the lust of +life. They were, like herself, devoted and meticulous nurses, brave, +high-minded, tender; practically all, if not from the upper, at least +from the educated ranks of life. But they lived under the daily shadow +of death. Even when safe from the shells of the big guns, the murderous +aircraft paid them daily visits, singling out hospitals with diabolical +precision. They were in daily contact with young torn human bodies from +which had gone forever the purpose for which one generation precedes +another. Life was horror. Blood and death and shattered bodies were +their daily portion. No matter how brave, they heard death scream in +every shell. The world beyond existed as a mirage. No wonder they +became primeval. + +Alexina had met Alice Thorndyke in one of these hospitals and observed +her with some curiosity. But Alice was, to use her own vernacular, the +best little bourgeoise of them all. She had had her fling. Men repelled +her. She never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was +over she should live the completely independent life. Nobody would care +what economic liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had +liberalized the most conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was +ever inflicted with. + + + +V + + +As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which +she was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle +in itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that +savage lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and +powerful passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect +after she dismissed her husband. + +What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance +than most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud +instinct of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control. + +She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still +lurking desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the +complete mating which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly +not in the mere zone of death. + +She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they +had but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious +mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened +and cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle +raging behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that +vulgar blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the +death throe as incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius. + +This internal silent warfare between her long reed-like body as little +sensible to fatigue as if made of flexible steel and her extremely cold +proud chaste-looking head had grown to be of such absorbing interest +that the knowledge of its cessation was almost a shock. It was after a +prolonged experience in a hospital where they were short of nurses and +rest was almost unknown and the inroads upon her vitality so severe and +menacing that she was finally ordered to Paris to rest, and there found +a complete change of habit in an oeuvre founded by the equally +exhausted but always valiant Olive de Morsigny, that she suddenly +realized that somewhere sometime the battle had finished and mind and +body were acting in complete harmony. + + + +VI + + +To-night she wondered if her imagination, turned loose, stimulated, had +not missed the whole point. There had been no man who had made the +direct irresistible appeal. No concrete temptation.... She had after +all been a degree too civilized ... or ... romantic idealism? + +There had been little to stimulate and excite since she had settled +down to office work in the summer of nineteen-sixteen. Her nerves, +always strong, had become too case-hardened to be affected by avions or +the immense uncertainties of Big Bertha; although the light on the +horizon at night during the last German Drive and the bellow of the +guns had shaken her with a sort of reminiscent excitement. + +But for the most part she had felt frozen, torpid, a cog in the vast +military machine of France, dedicating herself like hundreds of other +women to the succor of men she never saw. That extraordinary abominable +experience at the front was overlaid, almost forgotten. And such news +as one had in Paris was quite enough to exercise the mind.... There had +been the downfall of the Russian dynasty ... the still more sinister +downfall of the true revolutionists ... the Bolshevik monster +projecting its murderous shadow over all Europe, exposing the +instability of the entire social structure.... + + + +VII + + +Was it? Could such an experience ever be forgotten? The grass might +grow over the dead on the battlefields, but the corruption fed the +wheat, and the peogle of France ate the bread. This uninvited thought +had intruded itself the first time she had driven by the Marne +battlefields and seen the numberless crosses in the rich abundant +fields. + +She smiled, a small, secret, ruthless smile.... That was her residue: +ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone +the savage elementary lust for living at any cost, but she had +ineradicably learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still +more tragic brevity of youth; she had a store of hideous memories which +could only be submerged first in the performance of duty if duty were +imperative; then, duty discharged and finished, in the one thing that +during its brief time gave life any meaning, made this earthly sojourn +bearable. If she met the man she wanted she would have him if she had +to fight for him tooth and nail. + +It was four o 'clock. She went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +The next day Alexina found herself suddenly free of office duty, A very +handsome and wealthy American woman who had not been able to visit her +beloved Paris since the beginning of the World's War, and finding the +State Department obdurate to the whims of pretty women, had induced +Mrs. Ballinger Groome, on one of whose committees she had worked +faithfully, to ask her sister-in-law to inform the Department of State +that her services at the oeuvre in Paris were indispensable. + +Alexina had passed the letter on to the President, Madame de Morsigny, +and forgotten the incident. Olive wrote the necessary letter promptly. +Not only did she believe that the time had come for Alexina to rest, +but she longed for a fresh access of energy in the office that would in +a measure relieve herself. Moreover, Mrs. Wallack was wealthy and had +many wealthy friends. That meant more money for the oeuvre, always in +need of money. Olive had given large sums herself, but the president of +a charity is yet to be found who will not permit its constant demands +to be relieved by the generous public. Mrs. Wallack had not only +promised a substantial donation at once, but a monthly contribution. +This had not been named, but Madame de Morsigny meant that it should be +something more than nominal. She could do so much for Mrs. Wallack +socially, now that it was possible to entertain again, that she felt +reasonably confident of rousing the enthusiasm of any ambitious New +Yorker. Moreover, Olive had a very insinuating way with her. + + + +II + + +Mrs. Wallack presented herself at the imposing headquarters of the +oeuvre, radiant, fresh, energetic, beautifully dressed. The war had +interested her and commanded her sympathies to some purpose, but +nothing short of personal affliction could subdue that inexhaustible +vitality, and she seemed to bring into the dark and solemn rooms +something of the atmospheric gayety and sunshine of a land that had +done much but suffered little. + +By no one was she received with more warmth of welcome than by Alexina. +The sudden release made her realize sharply her lowered vitality. +Moreover, the semi-yearly income which had just arrived from California +was her own now and she could replenish her wardrobe and feel feminine +and irresponsible once more. The reaction was so violent that after +inducting Mrs. Wallack into the mysteries of her desk she remained in +bed, prostrate, for two days. Then, feeling several years younger, she +sallied forth in search of many things. + + + +III + + +There is no such antidote to the migraines of the woman soul as +clothes. Their only rival is travel and there are cases where they know +none. Sometimes women remember to pity men, that have no such happy +playground. + +Alexina for all her ramifications, some of them too deep, had a light +and feminine side. During the following fortnight she gave it full +rein; she was absorbed, almost happy. She spent quite recklessly and +after the years of economy and self-denial this alone gave her an +intense satisfaction. In addition to her income forwarded by Judge +Lawton, who had charge of her affairs, her brother Ballinger, who was +as fond of her as of his own children, and very proud of her--she had +received two decorations--sent her a large check with the mandate to +spend it on herself. + + + +IV + + +Even so, she was not always in the shops and the dressmakers' ateliers. +She found much amusement in strolling up and down the arcades of the +Rue de Rivoli, watching the odd throngs at which Paris herself seemed, +to bend her head and stare. + +Some poet had called Paris the mistress of Europe. She looked like an +old trollop. She was dirty and dreary, unpainted and unwashed. The rain +was almost incessant and the shop windows were soon denuded of the few +attractive novelties scrambled together to meet the sudden demand after +the long drought. + +But under the long arcades the curious sauntering throngs were +sheltered from the rain and found all things in Paris novel. Men in the +American khaki, from generals to striplings, were there by the hundred; +endless streams of young women in the uniform of the Red Cross, the +Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army; British and American nurses; members of +the fashionable oeuvres artlessly watching this novel phase of Paris; +the beautiful violet uniform of Le Bien-Etre du Blesse; girls with worn +faces and relaxed bodies fresh from the front, hundreds of them, +arriving daily in camions and cars, thanking heaven for the sudden +cessation of work, sleeping heaven knew where. The American women of +the Commission, and others who, like Mrs. Wallack, had invented a +plausible excuse to get to Paris and looked almost anachronistic in +their smart gowns, their fresh faces, their bright, curious, glancing +eyes. + +There were also officers in the uniform of Britain, and Alexina +regarded them frankly, with no effort to deceive herself. The spirit of +adventure was awake in her, now that the dark mood had passed, or +slept. She hoped to meet the man of the embassy again, whether he were +Gathbroke or another. She had liked his eyes. + +She had met many charming and interesting men during the last two and a +half years at Olive de Morsigny's table, especially when Andre, +convalescent, was at home. But their eyes had said nothing to her +whatever, if not for the want of trying. Alexina's imagination, torpid +for many months, ran riot. This man might disappoint her, might have +nothing in him for her, but she refused for more than a moment to +contemplate anything so flat. Something must come of that adventure, +that vital intensely personal moment when their eyes had met above +flames so tiny the wonder was they could see anything but a white blur +on the dark. She was as sure of meeting him again as that she trod on +air after she had ordered a new gown or brought an inordinately +becoming hat. She had forgotten Mortimer's existence. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +One day at the Hotel Crillon she thought she had found him. + +She had passed the portals of that fortress with some delay, for the +American Commission protected itself as if it dwelt under the shadow of +imminent assassination and theft; whereas it was merely exclusive. The +sentries at the door demanded her permit, and passed her in with +intense suspicion to the inner guard. This was composed of three polite +but very young lieutenants in smart new uniforms with no blight of war +on them, and flagrantly of the American aristocracy. + +With these she had less trouble, for they recognized her social status +and accepted her explanation that she had been invited for tea with one +of the ladies of the Commission. Nevertheless, they knew their duty and +Alexina was followed up to the door of her hostess' suite by another +young guardian who watched her entrance through the sacred door as +carefully as if he suspected her of carrying a bomb in her muff. + + + +II + + +The party numbered about thirty, and Alexina, after chatting with the +few she knew, was standing apart by a small table drinking a cup of tea +with three lumps of sugar in it and consuming cakes like a greedy +boarding-school girl home for the holidays, when she caught sight of a +man in the British khaki, a major by his insignia, a tall man, thin and +straight, standing with his back to her at the opposite end of the +room. He was talking to the host and a small group of men. She glimpsed +something like half of his profile when he turned from the host for a +moment. Like all men in khaki, when not pronounced brunettes, his +complexion and hair looked the same color as his uniform. + +Nevertheless ... if she could only see his eyes ... he turned his full +profile ... she had never glanced at Gathbroke's profile; he had given +her no opportunity! ... Certainly she had not the faintest idea whether +the man of the embassy had had a snub nose or the thin straight feature +of this man who would have attracted her attention in any ease if only +because he did not carry his shoulders with the disillusioning +obliquity of the British Army ... why did he not turn round? Alexina +felt an impulse to throw her cup straight across the room at the back +of that well-shaped head. + +Suddenly he shook hands with his host, nodded to the others and left +the room. + + + +III + + +Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt +her hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid +questions, and walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a +primitive instinct in woman to chase the male; but civilization having +initiated her into the art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was +merely bent upon giving this man his chance if the interest had been +mutual and existed beyond the moment. + +One lift was descending as she reached the outer corridor and the other +was closed. She ran down the wide staircase as rapidly as a woman in +fashionable skirts may. There was no British uniform in the hall below. + + + +IV + + +She stood for a quarter of an hour under the arcade before the Crillon +waiting for a taxi, staring out into the dreary mist of rain, at the +round soft blurs of light in the Place de la Concorde, but in no wise +depressed. What did it matter if she had not met him to-day? The +conviction that she should meet him before long was as strong as if she +were ever hopeful sixteen.... That was the real secret of her elation. +She felt very young and entirely carefree. She reflected that if she +had met Gathbroke, or whoever he might be, during the last three years +of the war she would have felt neither joy nor elation, however +interested she might have been. To love and dream and enjoy when men +were falling every minute, writhing in agony, gasping out their life, +would have seemed to her grossly unaesthetic if nothing worse. It was +not in the picture. The primal impulses she had experienced at the +front to that harsh music of Death's orchestra were natural enough; but +safe (comparatively!) in Paris, certainly quiet, the romance of love +would have been as incongruous and heartless as to go out to the great +hospital at Neuilly and tango through a ward of dying men. + +But now! She had done her part. She could do no more. Men still must +die, but in every comfort, with every consolation. And there would be +no more recruits. + +She was free. She was young, young, young again. + +And at this moment her heart emptied itself of song and sank like lead +in her breast. She pressed her muff against her face to hide the sudden +grimace she was sure contorted it; there had been few moments in her +life when she had not been mistress of her features, but this was one +of them. + +Gora Dwight was walking rapidly toward her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Gora did not see her sister-in-law for a moment and Alexina had time to +recover her poise and make sharp swift observations. She had not seen +Gora for four years, nor exchanged a line with her. She had almost +forgotten her. The changes were more striking than in herself, who had +been always slight. Gora's superb bust had disappeared; her face was +gaunt, throwing into prominence its width and the high cheek bones. Her +eyes were enormous in her thin brown face; to Alexina's excited +imagination they looked like polar seas under a gray sky brooding above +innumerable dead. There were lines about her handsome mouth, closer and +firmer than ever. How she must have worked, poor thing! What sights, +what suffering, what despair ... four long years of it. But she had +evidently had her discharge. She wore an extremely well-cut brown +tailored suit, good furs, and a small turban with a red wing. + +What was she in Paris for? ... What ... what ... + + + +II + + +Gora saw her and almost ran forward, that brilliant inner light that +had always been her chief attraction breaking through her cold face ... +sunlight sparkling on polar seas ... oh, yes, Gora had her charm! + +"Alexina! It isn't possible! I was going to ask at the American Embassy +for your address. I only arrived last night." + +Alexina had lowered her muff and her face expressed only the warmest +surprise and welcome. "Gora! It's too wonderful! But I suppose you +couldn't go home without seeing Paris?" + +"Rather not! It's the first chance I've had, too. Where can we have a +talk?" + +"It's too late for tea. Come out to my pension and spend the night. +Janet and Alice have gone to Nice for a few days' rest. You'll be +hideously uncomfortable--" + +"Not any more than where I am--sharing a room with three others. Where +can I telephone? In here?" + +"Good heavens, no. Take a liberty with a duke, but with the American +aristocracy, never. Come down to the Meurice. Perhaps we can find a cab +there. This seems to be hopeless. Everybody comes to the Crillon in a +private car or a military automobile. Taxis appear to avoid it." + + + +III + + +It only took half an hour to get the telephone connection and another +to seize by force a taxi, which, however, deposited them at the Etoile. +The driver explained unamiably that he wanted his dinner; and a bribe, +unless unthinkable, would have been useless. In these days taxi drivers +made fifty francs a day in tips, and, as a Frenchman knows exactly what +he wants and calculates to a nicety when he has enough, valuing rest +and nutriment above even the delights of gouging foolish Americans, +Alexina knew that it would be useless to argue and did not even waste +energy in announcing her opinion of him for taking a fare under false +pretenses. There was no other cab in sight and they walked the rest of +the way. But both were inured to hardships and took their mishap +good-naturedly, trudging the long distance under their umbrellas. + + + +IV + + +After a very bad dinner in an airless room as frugally lighted they +made themselves comfortable in Alexina's room over the oil stove she +had bought, and supplied through Olive's influence with the higher +powers. She took off her street clothes and put on a thick dressing +gown, giving her sister-in-law a quilted red wrapper of Janet's, which +threw some warmth into Gora's pale cheeks. She looked comfortable, +almost happy, as she smoked her cigarette in the arm-chair. + +Alexina curled up on the bed. + +"Now, Gora," she said brightly, "give an account of yourself." + +Gora did not reply for a moment and Alexina examining her again came to +the conclusion that she had been spared some of the horrors of the +front. As a head nurse her responsibilities had been too heavy for +philanderings, and having the literary imagination rather than the +personal she had no doubt consigned it to a water-tight compartment and +converted herself into a machine. + +"I don't know that I can talk about it," she said. "I feel much like +the men. It is too close. I am thankful that I Had the experience: not +only to have been of actual service, indispensable, as every good nurse +was, but to have been a part of that colossal drama. But I am even more +thankful that it is over and if I can possibly avoid it I'll never +nurse again." + +"I suppose you have had no time to write?" + +"I should think not! During the brief leaves of absence I spent most of +the time in bed. But I have an immense amount of material. I have no +idea how much fiction has been written about the war; there might have +been none, so far as I have had time to discover. I've barely read a +newspaper." + +"The only reason I want to go back to America is to hear the news. I +see a New York newspaper once in a while, and it is plain they have it +all. We have next to none in Europe, in France at all events. Shall you +write your stories here or go back to California? That would give you +the necessary perspective, I should think." + +Alexina's eyes were fixed upon an execrable print many inches above the +footboard, and Gora, glancing at her, reflected that she was as +beautiful as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one +would be with eyes that were like stars when they looked at you and a +Murillo madonna's when she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute +as she was she had never penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor +suspected the use she made of those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an +abundance of surface it occurred to few people that she might be both +subtle and deep. + +"I ... don't know.... I rather fear losing the atmosphere ... the +immediate stimulation. Shall you go home, now that you are free?" + +"I wonder. Could I stand it? I have longed for a rest--ached would be a +better word.... This last year has been full of both nervous strain and +desperate monotony. Nineteen-seventeen was bad enough in another way: +the internal defeatist campaign, the constant menace of mutiny, soviets +in the army, strikes in the munition towns,--all the rest of it.... But +could one stand California after such an experience? I know they have +done splendid work since we entered the war, but I know also that they +will immediately subside into exactly what they were before, settle +down with a long sigh of relief to enjoy life and forget that war ever +was. It could not be otherwise in that climate. With that abundance. +That remoteness.... There seems no place out there for me. A decorator +after this! What funny little resources we thought out in those +days.... I do not see myself fitting in anywhere. Tom wants to buy +Ballinger House for Maria and I fancy I'll let him have it. I can't +keep it up unaided and I might as well sell as rent it. He and Judge +Lawton would invest the money and I should have quite a decent income. +As for Mortimer I never want to see him again. He has not done one +thing for this war--he is utterly contemptible-- + +"I've long since given up criticizing Mortimer. My father once sized +him up. He hasn't an ounce of brain. He'd like to be quite different, +but you can stretch Nature's equipment so far and no farther. He +stretched his until it suddenly snapped back and found itself shrunken +to less than half its natural size. Vale Mortimer. Let him rest. Why +don't you divorce him? No doubt he has found some one else-- + +"I couldn't divorce him on that count, for I told him repeatedly to +console himself. It wouldn't be playing the game. Of course there are +other grounds. It would be easy enough. But our family has a strong +aversion to divorce. And a unique record.... Not that that would stop +me if I found any one I really wanted to marry. Nothing would stop me, +in fact." + +Gora glanced at her quickly, arrested by something in her voice. She +had already noticed that Alexina's limpid musical tones had deepened. +Just now they rang with something of the menace of a deep-toned bell. + +"Have you found him?" she asked smiling. "If there are obstacles, so +much the more interesting. I don't fancy that romantic streak in your +nature which permitted you to idealize Mortimer has quite dried up. +Once romantic always romantic--I deduce from human nature as I have +studied it." + +"Well ... I am rather afraid of romance. Certainly I'd never be blinded +again. A man might be nine parts demi-god and if I knew--and I should +know--that there was no companionship in him for me I wouldn't marry +him." + +"That I believe." Alexina was once more regarding the print. Gora +wondered if sex would influence her at all. + +"But have you met him? You were always an interesting child and you've +roused my curiosity." + +"No ... yes ... I don't know ... later perhaps I'll tell you something. +But I'm far more interested in you. Have you been in France all this +time?" + +"Oh, no. I was in Rouen for a year. Then I was in hospitals in England +until the German Drive began in. March when I was sent over again. Oh, +God! what sights! what sounds! what smells!" She huddled into her chair +and stared at the dull flame behind the little door of the stove. + +"Oh, I know them all. Think of something else. Surely you met--but +literally--hundreds of officers, and some must have interested you. The +British officer at best is a superb creature--if he would only stand up +straight. I saw one at the Crillon to-day whose good American shoulders +made me stare at him quite rudely." + +"Who was he?" + +"Haven't the faintest idea. I only saw his back, anyway. Surely you +must have been more than passing interested in one or two." + +"I am not susceptible. And nursing is not conducive to romance." + +"But you never were romantic, Gora dear. And you are good-looking in +your odd way. And that was your great, chance." + +"Well, I'm afraid I was too busy or too tired to take it. Now ... +perhaps ... but I'm afraid I don't inspire men with either romance or +passion. They like me and are grateful--that is, as grateful as an +Englishman can be; they take most things for granted." + +"The French are so grateful, poor dears. I loved them all. After all +... Frenchmen...." Her voice grew dreamy. + +Again Gora threw her an amused glance. "You must have met many of them +at your friend, Madame de Morsigny's, and under far more attractive +conditions than any man can hope for in a sick bed.... I can't imagine +any more appropriate destiny for you ... you should be Madame la +duchesse at the very least." + +"Not money enough, and besides they've all grown so religious, or think +they have, they wouldn't stand for divorce. Anyhow it would be so hard +on 'The Family'! ... Still.... But why, Gora dear, do you depreciate +yourself? It seems to me that you are just the type that a certain sort +of man would appreciate--fall in love with. I've heard even American +men who play about in society comment on your looks, different as you +are from sport and fluff and come-hitherness; and you only need a few +months' rest to look like your old self. I should think that a highly +intelligent Englishman would find you irresistible, especially if you +had shown your womanly side when he had holes in him. I've always had +an idea that Englishmen weren't nearly as afraid of intellectual women +as American men are." + +"That's true enough. But I doubt if there are any men more susceptible +to beauty, or quite as lustful after it, no matter how romantic they +may think they are feeling. I've talked to a good many of them in the +past four years, and for six months I was in charge of a convalescent +hospital in Kent. I think I've pretty thoroughly plumbed the +Englishman. They found me sympathetic all right, forgot their racial +shyness and inadvertently gave me much valuable material. But I saw no +indication that I made any sex appeal to them whatever." + +"Not one? Not ever?" + +Gora gave a slight withdrawing movement as if something sacred had been +touched. But she answered: "Oh ... some day I may have something to +tell you.... You said much the same thing to me a little while ago. +Tell me now." + +Alexina turned over on her elbow to beat up her pillows. Then she +answered lightly but firmly: "Not unless you promise to do likewise. +Mine is such a little thing anyhow. I know by the expression of your +face--just now--that, yours is the real thing. Is he in Paris?" + +"I'm ... not sure.... Yes, there is something ... the conditions are +very peculiar ... not at all what you think ... there is so much more +to it.... No, I don't think I can tell you." + +A fortnight ago Alexina could have lifted her eyes and uttered +Gathbroke's name as if groping through a jungle of memories. But she +could no more force his name through her lips now than she could have +laid bare all that was in her tumultuous soul. It was, in fact, all she +could do to keep from screaming. For a moment her excitement was so +intense that she jumped from the bed and ran over and opened the window. + +"This room gets intolerably stuffy. That is the worst of it--freeze or +stifle." + +"Oh, I have been cold so long! Please don't leave it open. That's a +darling." + + + +V + + +Alexina closed it with an amiable smile. "What would you do, Gora, if +you were really mad about a man? Have him at any cost? Annihilate +anything that stood in your way? Anybody, I mean." + +An appalling light came into Gora's pale eyes as she turned them, at +first in some surprise, on her sister-in-law: "Yes, if I thought he +cared ... could be made to care if I had the chance ... if another +woman tried to get him away ... yes, I don't fancy I'd stop at +anything.... Even if I finally were forced to believe that he never +could care for me in that way, the only way that counts with men--at +first, anyway ... well, I believe I'd fight to the death just the same. +When you've waited for thirty-four years ... well, you know what you +want! Better die fighting than live on interminably for nothing ... +less than nothing.... I can't tell you any more. Please don't ask me." + +"Of course not. I'll tell you my little story." And she gave a rapid +vivid account of the remarkable scene at the Embassy. She concluded +abruptly: "Do you think one could tell that a man's eyes were +hazel--the golden-brown hazel--across a pitch dark room above the flame +of a briquet?" + +"Hazel?" Alexina was standing behind Gora. She saw her body stiffen. + +"I could have vowed they were hazel. And that he was English. He also +reminded me of some one I must have met somewhere or other ... one +meets so many ... possibly it was only a fancy." + +"You didn't see him after the lights went on again?" + +"They didn't. Only candles. We were all too anxious to get away, +anyhow. I fancy the King was in a hurry to get the ambassador upstairs +and tell him what he thought of him--" + +"Don't be flippant. You always did have a maddening habit of being +flippant at the wrong time. Haven't you seen him again anywhere?" + +"I've walked the Rue de Rivoli and lunched at the Ritz looking for him; +but I've never had even a glimpse--unless that was his back I saw at +the Crillon to-day. If I saw his eyes I'd know in a minute." + +"Why should you think it was his back?" + +"Some men have expression in the back of their head. And I just had an +idea--fantastic, no doubt--that my particular Englishman stands up +straight." + +"Yours?" + +"Yes, I'm feeling quite too fearfully romantic. I'm sure he's looking +for me as hard as I am for him. And if I find him I'll keep him." + +She saw Gora's long brown hands slowly clench until they looked like +steel. She glanced at her own slim white hands. They were quite as +strong if more ornamental. She yawned politely. + +"I'm not so romantic as sleepy. I know that you must be dead after your +journey. They say it's more trouble to travel to Paris from London than +from New York. The girls won't be back for a week. You must get your +things to-morrow and come out here. I won't hear of your living in +Paris discomfort with three two empty rooms." + +"That is good of you. Yes, I'll come. And perhaps your landlady, or +whatever they call them here, could put me up later. Now that I have +come to Paris I intend to see it. I believe some of the great galleries +and museums are to be reopened." + +"Andre will arrange it if they're not. How you will enjoy it with your +sensitiveness to all the arts. Take this candle in ease the bulb is +burnt out. It usually is." + + + +VI + + +Gora had risen. Her face wore an expression both puzzled and grim; but +she and Alexina as they said good-night looked full into each other's +eyes without faltering. And Alexina had never looked more ingenuous. + +Perhaps that dim idea ... that she had thrown down a challenge ... had +come out in the open for a moment ... insolently? ... honestly? ... She +_must_ be completely fagged out after that abominable trip to have such +absurd fancies. She took her candle; and disposed herself in Janet's +bed, between four walls that gave her an unexpected and heavenly +privacy, with a deep sigh of gratitude, dismissing fantasies. + + + +VII + + +During the next ten days Alexina kept as close to Gora as was possible +in the circumstances. She had made many engagements and not all of them +were social; there were still gowns to be fitted, committee meetings to +attend. Twice Gora appeared to have risen with the dawn, and she +vanished for the day. Nevertheless, it grew increasingly evident to +Alexina's alert and penetrating vision that Gora was neither peaceful +nor happy; therefore it was safe to assume that she had not found +Gathbroke. For some reason she had not inquired at the British Embassy. +Or a letter to its care had failed to reach him. Possibly he was +enjoying himself without formalities. + +She took Gora twice to the Ritz to luncheon and on several afternoons +to tea. But it was a mob of Americans and members of the various +Commissions. A brilliant sight, but not in the least satisfactory. It +was quite patent from Gora's ever traveling eyes that she sought and +never found. + +Therefore when Olive asked Alexina to go to one of the towns where the +oeuvre had a branch and attend to an important matter that Mrs. Wallack +was far too much of a novice to be entrusted with, she agreed at once. +She experienced a growing desire to get away by herself--away from +Paris--away from Gora. She wanted to think. What if Gora did meet him +first? She would be but the more certain to meet him herself. Moreover +... give Gora a sporting chance. + +Janet and Alice had written from Nice that they might be detained for +some time. Gora unpacked her trunk and settled down in the pension with +that air of indestrucible patience that had always made her formidable. +She was not one of Life's favorites, but she had wrung prizes from that +unamiable deity more than once. + +Alexina speculated. Gora had all the brains that Mortimer lacked and +commanding traits of character. She was so striking in appearance even +now that people often turned and stared at her. But unless she +possessed the potent spell of woman for man all her gifts would avail +her nothing in this tragic crisis of her life. Did she possess it I No +woman could answer. Certainly Alexina had never seen evidence of it +even in Gora's youth; although to be sure her opportunities had been +few. Still ... when a woman possesses the most subtle and powerful of +all the fascinations men are drawn to it, no matter how dark the sky or +high the barriers. Nothing is keener than the animal essence. Still ... +she had heard that some women developed it later than others. Alexina +feared nothing else. + +She fancied that Gora took leave of her with a little indrawn sigh of +relief. It was with difficulty that she repressed her own. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +"Can this be Lieutenant James Kirkpatrick?" + +Kirkpatrick wheeled about and snatched off his cap. + +"Mrs. Dwight, by all that's holy! I never expected any such luck as +this!" + +They shook hands warmly in the deserted square which had been a +shambles during the first battle of the Marne, and in the days of Caesar +and Attila, of Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little. To-day it +was as gray and peaceful, its houses as aloof and haughty as if war had +never been. It was a false impression, however, for it was the +paralysis of war it expressed, not even the normal peace of a dull +provincial town. + +"I've often wondered about you," said Alexina. "But I've been working +with the French Army and had no way of finding out. You don't look as +if you had been wounded." + +"Nary scratch, and in the thick of it. My, but it's good to sec you +again." He stared at her, his face flushed and his breath short. Then +he asked abruptly: "When do you think we're goin' home?" + +Alexina laughed merrily. "That is the first question every officer or +private I have met since the Armistice has asked me. I should feel +greatly flattered, but I fancy the question, being always on the top of +your minds, simply babbles off." + +"You bet. But--Jimminy! I'm glad to see you. You're lookin' thin, +though. Been workin', too, I'll bet." + +"Oh, yes--and all your old class has worked; most of them over here. +Mrs. Cheever couldn't come, as her husband is in the army. But she's +worked hard in California." + +"I believe you. The women have come up to the scratch, no doubt of +that. Although some of them! Good Lord! This isn't my usual language +when speaking of them. But if some came over to do just about as they +damn please, the others strike the balance, and on the whole I think +more of women than I did." + +"That's good news. But you mustn't blame them too severely. I mean +those that really came over with a single purpose and were not proof +against the forcing house of war. As for the others ... well, a good +many followed their men over, others came after excitement, others, as +you say, to do as they pleased, with no questions asked--possibly! I +shouldn't take enough interest in them to criticize them if they hadn't +used the war-relief organizations, from the Red Cross down to the +smallest oeuvre, as a pretext to get over, and then calmly throw us +down--the oeuvres, I mean. Mine was 'done' several times. But let us be +good healthy optimists such as our country loves and remind ourselves +that the worthy outnumber the unworthy--and that the really bad would +have gone the same way sooner or later." + +"It goes. Optimism for me for ever more once I get out of France." + + + +II + + +They had crossed the square and were walking down a narrow crooked +street as gray as if the dust of ages were in its old walls. Alexina +looked at him curiously. He had never had what might be called a soft +and tender countenance, but now it looked like cast-iron covered with +red rust, and his eyes were more like bits of the same metal, blackened +and polished, than ever. His youth had gone. There were deep vertical +lines in his face. His mouth was cynical. His bullet head, shaved until +only a cap of black stiff hair remained on top, and presumably safe +from assault, by no means added to the general attractiveness of his +style. He was straighter, more compact, than before, however, and his +uniform at least did not have the truly abominable cut of the private. + +"What do you think of war as war?" she asked. + +"Sherman for me. Not that I didn't enjoy sticking Germans with the best +of 'em when my blood was up. But the rest of it--God Almighty!" + +They stopped before a solid double door in a high wall. "Will you come +and take tea with me this afternoon? I am staying here for a few days. +I'm afraid I can't offer you sugar, or cakes--" + +"I'll bring the sugar along. I'm in barracks just outside and solid +with, the commissary." + +"Heavens, what a windfall! You'll be sure to come?" + +"Won't I, just? Expect me at four-thirty." He lifted his cap from his +comical head, then sainted, swung on his heel and marched off, swinging +both arms from the shoulders and looking a fine martial figure of a man. + +"But still the same old Kirkpatrick," thought Alexina. "I wonder if he +will go Bolshevik?" + + + +III + + +Her ring was answered by the old woman who toot care of the house and +Alexina entered the wild garden. There was an acre of it, but it had +been so long uncared for that it looked like a jungle caught between +four high gray walls. It was the property of one of the French members +of the oeuvre and was used as a storehouse for hospital supplies and as +headquarters for Alexina when business brought her to this part of the +Marne valley. She had been here several times during the siege of +Verdun in nineteen-sixteen when her bed had quivered all night, and +once a big gun had been trained on the city and a shell had fallen near +the headquarters of the staff. Last night she had lain awake wondering +if she did not miss the sound of the distant guns, as she had in Passy +where there was no noisy traffic to take their place. There is a +certain amount of morbidity in all highly strung imaginative minds, and +although she had developed no love for Big Bertha nor for the sound of +high firing guns attacking avions in the middle of the night, there had +been something in that steady boom of cannon whose glare stained the +horizon that had thrilled and excited her. + + + +IV + + +On the right of the main hall of the house was the room she used as an +office; the dining-room was opposite; the salon ran the whole length at +the back. This was quite a beautiful room furnished in the style of the +last Bourbons, and its long windows opened upon a stone terrace leading +down into what was still a picturesque garden in spite of its neglect. +There were three fine oaks, and the chestnut trees along the wall shut +off the town from even the upper windows. + +The oeuvre always managed to keep a load of wood in the cave and to-day +the concierge had raised the temperature of the salon to sixty-five +degrees Fahrenheit Alexina cleared a table and told the woman to set it +for tea, then went upstairs to change her dress. As she had made her +trip in one of the automobiles belonging to the oeuvre she had been +able to bring her little stove, and her bedroom was also warm. + +She had also brought one of her new gowns, knowing that she should +receive visits from several French officers, and she concluded to put +it on for Kirkpatrick. He was worth the delicate compliment; moreover +it almost obliterated the ravages of war, for it was of periwinkle blue +velvet edged with fur about the high square of the neck and at the +wrists of the long sleeves: in these days it was wise to revert to the +fashions of the centuries when palaces and houses alike were cold and +gowns were made for comfort as well as fashion. To complete the +proportions it had a train and the sleeves were slightly puffed. +Alexina was quite aware that she "looked like a picture" in it. + +She still wore her hair brushed softly back and coiled low at the base +of her beautiful curved head. Her pearls were the only jewels she had +brought to France and she always wore them. She sighed as she looked at +the vision in the mirror. For Kirkpatrick! But she was used to the +irony of life. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +He arrived promptly at half-past four and in his capacious hands were +three packages which arrested her eyes at once. He presented them one +by one. + +"Sugar. Loaf of white bread. Candy--I'm also solid with one of the +doctors." + +"I feel like pinching myself. White bread!--I've only tasted it twice +in two years-both times at the Crillon. And candy--not a sight of it +for more than that. I don't like the heavy French chocolates, which +were all one could get when one could get anything. I shall eat at +least half and take the other half back to Gora." + +"Miss Dwight? She's done good work, I'll bet. Just in her line. +Somehow, I don't see you--What did you do?" + +He watched her hungrily as she made the tea, sitting in a gilt and +brocaded chair, whose high tarnished back seemed to frame her dark head. + +"Oh, Lord!" he sighed. + +"What is it?" + +"Don't ask me. What've you been doing? Yes, I'll drink tea to please +you." + +"I nursed at first--as an auxiliary, of course--what is the matter?" + +"Can't bear to think of it. I hope you've not been doin' that for four +years!" + +"Oh, no. I've been at work with a war-relief organization in Paris most +of the time. That was too monotonous to talk about, and, thank heaven, +this will probably end my connection with it. I am much more interested +to know how the war has affected you. Are you still a socialist?" + +"Ain't I!" + +"Not going Bolshevik, I hope." + +"Not so's you'd notice it. I want changes all right and more'n ever, +but I've had enough of blood and fury and mix-ups without copying them +murdering skally-wags. That's all they are. Just out for loot and +revenge and not sense enough to know that to-morrow there'll be no +loot, and revenge'll come from the opposite direction. I may have been +in hell but my head's screwed on in the same place." + +"I wondered ... I've heard so many stories about the grievances of the +soldiers." + +"Every last one of 'em got a grievance. Hate their officers, and often +reason enough. Hate the discipline. Hate the food. Hate the neglect in +hospital when the flu is raging. Hate gettin' no letters, and as like +as not no pay and no tobacco. Hate bein' gouged by the French like they +were by the good Americans when they were in camp on the other side. +Hate every last thing a man just naturally would hate when he is livin' +in a filthy trench, or even camp, and homesick in the bargain.... But +as for mass-dissatisfaction--not a bit of it. Loyal as they make 'em. +Laugh at Bolshevik propaganda just like they laughed at Hun propaganda. +They just naturally seem to hate every other race, allied or enemy, and +that makes them so all-fired American they're fit to bust. Of course +there's plenty of skallywags--caught in the draft--and just waitin' to +get home and turn loose on the community. But in the good old style: +burglars, highwaymen, yeggs. Not a new frill. Europe hasn't a thing on +the good old American criminal brand. They fought well, too. Any man +does who's a man at all. But Lord! they'll cut loose when they get +back. Every wild bad trait they was born with multiplied by one hundred +and fifty ... before I go any further I want to warn you that I'm +liable to break out into bad language any minute. It gets to be a kind +of habit in the army to swear every other word like." + +"Don't mind me," said Alexina dryly. "After I was put out of my hotel I +managed to get a room in one of the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli for two +nights before I found my pension in Passy. The walls were thin. The +room next to mine was occupied by two American officers and the one +beyond by two more. They talked back and forth with apparently no +thought of the possibility of being overheard. Such language! And not +only swear words--although one of these to two of any. Such adventures +as they related! Such frankness! Such plain undiluted Anglo-Saxon! +Fancy a girl with all her illusions fresh, and worshiping some heroic +figure in khaki, listening to such a revelation of the nether side of +man's life!" + +"Men are hogs, all right. I don't like the idea of your having heard +such things." Kirkpatrick scowled heavily. + +"Nor did I. But I had no cotton to put in my ears. I couldn't sleep in +the street. Nor could I ask them to keep quiet and admit I had heard +them." + +"Well, I guess you can forget anything you have a mind to. You couldn't +look like you do--a kind of princess out of a fairy tale and an angel +mixed, if you couldn't." + +"A black-haired angel! And all the princesses of legend had golden +hair." + +"Well, that's just another way you're different." He changed the +subject abruptly. "What you goin' to do now!" + +"I wish I knew." + +"Goin' back to California?" + +"If I knew I would tell you. But I don't. You see.... Well, I shall not +live with Mr. Dwight again. We had been really separated a long while +before I left--and then he has done nothing for the war. That is only +one reason. What should I do there? I had thought of going into +business before I left. But I shall have a good income, and what right +have I to go into business and use my large connection to get customers +away from those that need the money for their actual bread?" + +"Not the ghost of an excuse. Farce, I call it. As long as the present +system lasts women of your class better be ornamental and satisfied +with that than take the bread out of mouths that need it." + +"I could not settle down to the old life. It isn't that I'm in love +with work. For that matter I'm only too grateful to be able to rest. +But I must fill in, some way. Possibly I could do that better in France +or England, where vita! subjects are always being discussed--and +happening!--where I would not only be interested but possibly useful in +many ways. I should feel rather a brute, knowing the conditions of +Europe as I do, to go back and settle down on the smiling abundance of +California. And bored to death." + +"Then you think you'll stay? ... You'd be wasted there--at +present--sure enough." + +"Sometimes I think I'll buy this house. I could for a song. Heavens! +_How_ I have longed for solitude in the last four years! I could have +it here with my books, and go to Paris as often as I wished. It would +be an ideal life. I could afford a car, and to make this house very +livable. And that garden ... between those gray high walls ... in there +... that would...." + +She had forgotten Kirkpatrick and was staring through the long windows +at the dripping trees and the riot of green. "There is something about +the old world ... in its byways like this ... not in its hateful +capitals...." + +"Do you mean there's something you want to forget? That this place +would be consolin' like?" + +She met Kirkpatrick's sharp dilated eyes with smiling composure. "This +war, and much that has happened--incidental to it; yes." + +"You could forget it easier in California." + +"I should forget too much." + +"It's awful to think of you not comin' back, though I understand well +enough. Europe suits you all right. But ... but...." + +He rose abruptly almost overturning his fragile chair. + +"Good-by, and as I guess it _is_ good-by I'll tell you something I +wouldn't if there was any chance of my seein' you like I used to. It's +this: If I'm more of a socialist than ever it's because of _you_! If my +class hatred's blacker than ever _you're_ the cause! _You'd_ have made +me a socialist if I wasn't one before. _Jesus Christ_! When I think +what I might have had if we'd all been born alike! Had the same +chances! If you hadn't been born at the top and I down at the bottom +... common ... not even educated except by myself after I was too old +to get what a boy gets that goes to school long enough. I wouldn't mind +bein' born ugly. There's plenty of men at the top that's ugly enough, +God knows. But just one generation with money irons out the commonness. +That's it! I'm common! Common! Common. _Democracy_! Oh, God!" + +He caught up his cap and rushed out of the room, + +Alexina ran after him and caught him at the garden door. Like all +beautiful women who have listened to many declarations of love (or +avoided them) she was inclined to be cruel to men that roused no +response in her. But she felt only pity for Kirkpatrick. + +She had intended merely to insist upon shaking hands with him, but when +she saw his contorted face she slipped her arm round his neck and +kissed him warmly on the cheek. + +Then she pushed him gently through the door and locked it. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina had finished giving tea to two officers, a surgeon and a +medecin major, and, enchanted almost as much by the sugar and the white +bread as by their hostess, refreshingly beautiful and elegant in her +velvet gown of pervenche blue, they had lingered until nearly six. As +the concierge had gone out on an errand of her own Alexina had opened +the garden door for them, and after they disappeared she stood looking +at the street, which always fascinated her. + +It was very narrow and crooked and gray. Her house was the only one +with a garden in front; the others rose perpendicularly from the narrow +pavement, tall and close and rather imposing. Each was heavily +shuttered, the shutters as gray as the walls. The town had been +evacuated during the first Battle of the Marne and only the poor had +returned. The well-to-do provincials in this street had had homes +elsewhere, perhaps a flat in Paris; or they had established themselves +in the south. + +The street had an intensely secretive air, brooding, waiting. Soon all +these houses would be reopened, the dull calm life of a provincial town +would flow again, the only difference being that the women who went in +and out of those narrow doors and down this long and twisted street +would wear black; but for the most part they would sit in their gardens +behind, secluded from every eye, as indifferent to their neighbors as +of old, with that ingrained unchangeable bourgeois suspicion and +exclusiveness; and the facades, the street itself, would look little +less secretive than now. + + + +II + + +Nowhere could she find such seclusion if she wished for it. This house +was the only one in the street that belonged to a member of the +noblesse, and the bourgeoisie had as little "use" for the noblesse as +the noblesse for the bourgeoisie. + +For the moment Alexina felt that the house was hers, and the street +itself. She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up +and down its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt +for many days. There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she +never wanted to feel again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had +done much good in the past four years; she had been, for the most part, +high-minded, self-sacrificing, indifferent to the petty things of life, +even to discomfort, and it had given her a sense of elevation--when she +had had time to think about it. It was only certain extraordinary +circumstances that brought other qualities as inherent as life itself +surging to the top. It was demoralizing even to fight them, for that +involved recognition. Better that she protect herself from their +assaults. True, she was young, but she had had her fill of drama. All +her old cravings, never satisfied in the old days of peace without and +insurgence within, had been surfeited by this close personal contact +with the greatest drama in history. + +Why return to Paris at all? Why not settle down here at once, live a +life of thought and study, and give abundant help where help was +needed? There were villages within a few miles where the inhabitants +were living in the ruins. (The Germans in their first retreat had been +too hard pressed to linger long enough to set fire to this large town +and they had not been able to reach it during their second drive.) + +That had been a last flicker of romance at the embassy ... a last +resurgence of the evil the war had done her, as she sat in her cold +room ... a last blaze of sheer femininity when she discovered that Gora +had come to Paris in search of Gathbroke.... + +She felt as if she had escaped from a bottomless pit.... Assuredly she +had the will and the character to make herself now into whatever she +chose to be ... let Gora have him if she could find him and keep +him.... Better that than hating herself for the rest of her life ... +love, far from being ennobling, seemed to her the most demoralizing of +the passions ... there had been something ennobling, expanding, +soul-stirring in hating the brutal mediaeval race that had devastated +France ... but in the reaction from her fierce registered vow to snatch +a man from a forlorn unhappy woman no matter what her claims and have +him for her own, she had shrunk from this new revelation of her depths +in horror.... One could not live with that.... + + + +III + + +A man in khaki was walking quickly down the long crooked street. As he +approached she saw the red on his collar. He was a British officer. In +another moment she was shaking hands with Gathbroke. + +She was far more composed than he, although she felt as if the world +had turned over, and there was a roar in her ears like the sound of +distant guns. She had a vague impression that the war had begun again. + +"You are the last person I should have expected to meet here. There is +no British--" + +"I came here to see you. I got your address from Madaine de Morsigny. I +saw her last night at a reception and recognized her. She was at that +ball in San Francisco. I introduced myself at once and asked her if you +were in Paris. I was sure it was you ... that night...." + +"Will you come in!" + +He followed her into the salon, softly lit by candles. She felt that +fate for once had been kind. It was difficult to imagine surroundings +or conditions in which she would look lovelier, be seen to greater +advantage. But her hands were cold. + +"It is too late for tea but perhaps you will share my frugal supper." + +"If it won't inconvenience you too much. Thanks." + +She sat down in the wide brocaded chair with its tarnished back. He +stood looking at her for a moment, then took a turn up and down the +long room. + +Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and +freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown +and thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle +light. His nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more +especially life in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature +with him. His eyes were still the same bright golden hazel, but their +expression was keen and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could +look as hard as those features more susceptible to modeling. + + + +IV + + +"Smoke if you like." + +"Thanks. I don't want to smoke." + +Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to +speak. + +"I feel rather an ass. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer +twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and +made up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety. +Somehow I don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you +like a brute because I wanted you more than anything on earth.... + +"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten +you for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have +simply projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has +ever been. You were there! + +"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits +of your soul to mine--I hate to say what sounds like sentimental +rotting, but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other +plane of consciousness. It takes war to shift a man over the border if +only for a moment. It kept me--lately--from ... never mind that now. +When I saw your eyes above that tiny yellow flame ... it wasn't only +that your eyes are not to be matched anywhere ... it seemed to me that +I saw myself in them, They came as dose as that! Laugh if you like." + +He stood defiantly in front of her. + +"God! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have +one. But you had once, if only for a moment!" + +"I have never had one since--for any one, that is. I hear the +concierge. I'll tell her to set a place for you." + + + +V + + +She left the room and he stared after her. Her words had been full of +meaning but her voice had been even and cold. + +She returned and asked: "Are you in any way committed to Gora Dwight?" + +"No ... yes ... that is ... why do you ask me that?" + +"Are you engaged to her?" + +"I am not. But I came very close--that is, of course if she would have +had me. She nursed me after I was wounded and gassed. She was a +wonderful nurse and there was something almost romantic in meeting her +again ... as if she had come straight out of the past. We had an +extraordinary experience as you know. I was not in the least drawn to +her at that time. You filled, possessed me." + +He hesitated. But it was a barrier he had not anticipated and it must +go down. Moreover, it was evident that she wouldn't talk, and he was +too excited for silence on his own part. + +"She was there ... when a man is weakest ... when he values tenderness +above all things ... when he does little thinking on either the past or +the future. + +"She has a queer odd kind of fascination too, and any man must admire a +woman so clever and capable and altogether fine. Several times I almost +proposed to her. But there is no privacy in wards. I was sent back to +England and went to my brother's house in Hertfordshire. It was then +that you began to haunt me. She had rejuvenated that California period +in my mind--resuscitated it ... but both express what I am trying to +say. We had often talked about California and the fire. She alluded to +you, casually, of course, more than once; but as I looked back I +gathered that your marriage had been a mistake and that you had known +it for a long time. + +"She did not come to England until four months later, and then she was +in charge of a hospital. I took her out occasionally--she was very much +confined. I liked her as much as ever. But _I didn't want her_. It +seemed tragic. There was one chance in a million that I should ever +meet you again. Once I deliberately drew her on to talk of you and +asked why you did not divorce your husband. She commented satirically +upon the intense conservatism of your family and of your own inflexible +pride. She added that you were the only beautiful woman she had ever +known who seemed to be quite indifferent to men--sexless, she meant! +But no woman knows anything about other women. I knew better! + +"As I said it was rather tragic. To be haunted by a chimera! I liked +her so much. Admired her. Who wouldn't? If she had been able to take me +home, to remain with me, there is no doubt in the world that I should +have married her if she would have had me.... I prefer now to believe +that she wouldn't. Why should she, with a great career in front of her? + +"No doubt I should have loved her--with what little love I had to give. +But those months had taught me that I could do without her, although I +enjoyed her letters. Even so ... + +"It was after she came to London that I felt I had to talk to some one +and I went down, to the country to see Lady Vick-Elton Gwynne's mother. +She had founded a hospital and run it, and was resting, worn out. She +is a hard nut, empty, withered, arid. Nothing left in her but noblesse +oblige. But there is little she doesn't know. She was smoking a black +cigar that would have knocked me down and looked like an old sibyl. I +told her the whole story--all of it, that is that was not too sacred. +She puffed such, a cloud of smoke that I could see nothing but her +hard, bright, wise, old eyes. 'Go after her,' she said. 'Find her. +Divorce her. Marry her. That's where you men have the advantage. You +can stalk straight out into the open and demand what you want point +blank. No scheming, plotting, deceit, being one thing and pretending +another, in other words ice when you are fire. Beastly role, woman's--' +I interrupted to remind her that it was twelve years since I had seen +you; that you had thrown me down as hard as a man ever got it and +married another man. There was no more reason to believe that I could +win you now. Then she asked me what I had come to see her and bore her +to death for when she was trying to rest. 'If you want a thing go for +it and get it, or if you can't get it at least find out that you can't. +Also see her again and find out whether you want her or not, instead of +mooning like a silly ass.' + +"The upshot was I made tip my mind to go to California as soon as I +could obtain my discharge. It never occurred to me that you were in +Paris. Then I was sent to Paris with the Commission. I have certain +expert knowledge.... For some reason I didn't tell Miss Dwight.... I +wrote her a hurried note saying that I was obliged to go to Paris for a +few weeks. + +"The night after I arrived I saw you at the Embassy. That finished it. +If I hadn't been sent back to England for some papers--twice--I'd have +found you before this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +The concierge announced supper. Alexina had brought food with her and +the little meal was good if not abundant. The dining-room was very +dreary, although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, +paneled to the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little +more to define their lineaments to each other than the flames of +briquet and match. + +The concierge served and they talked of the Peace Conference and of the +general pessimism that prevailed. Same old diplomacy. Same old +diplomatists. Same old ambitions. Same old European policies. An +idealist had about as much chance with those astute conventionalized +brains dyed in the diplomatic wiles and methods of the centuries as an +unarmed man on foot with a pack of wolves.... At the moment all the +other Commissions were cursing Italy.... She might be the stumbling +block to ultimate peace.... As for the League of Nations, as well ask +for the millenium at once. Human, nature probably inspired the creed: +"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," etc. "What we +want" (this, Gathbroke), "is an alliance between Great Britain, and the +United States. They could rule the world. Let the rest of everlastingly +snarling Europe go hang." Elton Gwynne would work for that. He had +already obtained his discharge and returned to America. He, Gathbroke, +'d work for it too. So would anybody else in the two countries that had +any sense and no personal fish to fry. + + + +II + + +When they returned to the salon he smoked. Alexina was thankful that it +was cigarettes. Mortimer had made her hate cigars. If, like most +Englishmen, he loved his pipe, he had the tact to keep it in his pocket. + +It was she who reopened the subject that filled him. + +"I feel sorry for Gora. Her life has been a tragedy in a way. Of course +she has had her successes, her compensations. But it isn't quite +everything to be the best of nurses, and I don't know that even writing +could fill a woman's life. Not unless she'd had the other thing first. +I am afraid she'll never be very popular anyhow. There are only small +groups here and there in America than can stand intellect in +fiction.... It seems to me that she would make a great wife. I mean +that. It is a great role and she could fill it greatly. I don't know, +of course, whether she cares for you or not. I am not in her +confidence. She is staying at my pension in Passy and I saw her +constantly for ten days before I came here, but she did not mention +your name.... If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one +else and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give +up, but she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest +tragedy of all.... + +"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe +that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of +her. I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps +forced myself not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless.... +Besides I knew even then the danger of letting myself go ... of the +unbridled imagination. Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French +marriages would seem to prove it. But we--your race and mine--have +fallen into a sublime sort of error, and we'll no more reason ourselves +out of it than out of the sex tyranny itself.... I don't see how I +could be happy with the eternal knowledge that Gora was miserable--that +she would be happy if I had remained in California...." + +"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as +I was free." + + + +III + + +The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he +remained smoking in his chair and continued: + +"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different +beings. In illness sex is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman +or he doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if +she hasn't the sex pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent +demand upon his passion, there is nothing to build on. I haven't come +out alive from that shrieking hell to be satisfied with second-class +emotions. I lay one night under three dead bodies, not one over +twenty-five. I knew them all. Each was deeply in love with a woman.... +Well, I knew the value of life that night if I never did before. And +life was given to us, when we can hold on to it, for the highest +happiness of which we are individually capable, no matter what else we +are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest pitch, not +makeshifts.... The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our own +characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy +her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief. +I'll have the highest or nothing." + +"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it +lasting. Gora would make a great companion." + +"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you +will understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at +all. If you had not brought her name into it I never should have done +so. But now I feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any +cost." + +He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and +snatched her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even +more than she was. + +"I'll have you ... have you...." + +She nodded. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Gora entered her room at the pension, mechanically lit the oil stove +that Alexina had procured for her, threw her hat on the bed, sat down +in the low chair and thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair +piled as always on top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of +herself in the mirror and wondered absurdly why she should have kept +all her hair and lost so much of her face. She looked more top-heavy +than ever. Her face was a small oblong, her eyes out of all proportion. +She thought herself hideous. + +She had heard two hours before that Gathbroke was in Paris attached to +the British Commission. She had met an old acquaintance, a San +Francisco newspaper man, who had taken her to lunch and spoken of him +casually. Gathbroke had good-naturedly given him an Interview when +other members of the Commission had been inaccessible. + +Gathbroke had told her nothing of a definite object when he wrote her +that he was off for Paris. Nor had he mentioned it in the note he had +written her after his arrival. This had been merely to tell her that he +was feeling as well as he ever had felt in his life and was enjoying +himself. Polite admonition not to tire herself out. He was always hers +gratefully and her devoted friend. + +He had written the note at the Rite Hotel, but when, assuming this was +his address, she had called him up on her arrival, she had received the +information that he was not stopping there, nor had been. + +Gora was very proud. But she was also very much in love; and she had +been in love with Gathbroke for twelve years. For the greater part of +that time she had believed it to be hopeless, but it had always been +with her, a sad but not too painful undertone in her busy life. It had +kept her from even a passing interest in another man. She had even felt +a Somewhat ironic gratitude to him and his indifference, for all the +forces of her nature, deprived of their natural outlet, went into her +literary work, informing it with an arresting and a magnetic vitality. +She had believed herself to be without hope, but in the remote feminine +fastnesses of her nature she had hoped, even dreamed--when she had the +time. That was not often. Her life, except when at her desk with her +literary faculty turned loose, had been practical to excess. + +She would have offered her services in any case to one of the warring +allies, no doubt of that; the tremendous adventure would have appealed +to her quite aside from the natural desire to place her high +accomplishment as a nurse at the disposal of tortured men. Nevertheless +she was quite aware that she went to the British Army with the distinct +hope of meeting Gathbroke again; quite as, under the cloak of travel, +she would have gone to England long since had she not been swindled by +Mortimer. + +Until she found him insensible, apparently at the point of death, after +the terrible disaster of March, nineteen-eighteen, she had only heard +of him once: when she read in the _Times_ he had been awarded the D.S.O. + +She knew then where he was and maneuvered to get back to France. She +found him sooner than she had dared to hope. And she believed that she +had saved his life. Not only by her accomplished nursing. Her powerful +will had thrown out its grappling irons about his escaping ego and +dragged it back and held it in its exhausted tenement. + +He had believed that also. He had an engaging spontaneity of nature and +he had felt and shown her a lively gratitude. He was restless and +frankly unhappy when she was out of his sight. He had a charming way of +Baying charming things to a woman and he said them to her. But he was +also as full of ironic humor as in his letters and "ragged" her. And he +talked to her eagerly when he was better and she had gone with him to a +hospital far back of the lines. There were intervals when they could +talk, and the other men would listen ... and had taken things for +granted. + +So had she. He had not made love to her. There was no privacy. +Moreover, she guessed that his keen sense of the ridiculous would not +permit him to make love to any woman when helpless under her hands. + +But how could there be other than one finale to such a story as theirs? +What was fiction but the reflection of life? if she had written a story +with these obvious materials there could have been but one logical +ending--unless, in a sudden spasm of reaction against romance, she had +killed him off. + +But he would live; and not be strong enough to return to the front for +mouths ... the war _must_ be over by then.... As for romance, well, she +was in the romantic mood. It was a right of youth that she had missed, +but a woman may be quite as romantic at thirty-four as at eighteen, if +she has sealed her fountain instead of splashing it dry when she was +too young to know its preciousness. Once before she had surrendered to +romance, fleetingly: during the week that followed the night she had +sat on Calvary with Gathbroke and watched a sea of flames. + +The mood descended upon her, possessed her. She had other patients. +There were the same old horrors, the same heart-rending duties; but the +mood stayed with her. And after he left, for England. She knew there +could, be but one ending. Her imagination had surrendered to tradition. + +Moreover, she was tired of hard work. She wanted to settle down in a +home. She wanted children. She must always write, of course. Writing +was as natural to her as breathing. And she had already proved that a +woman could do two things equally well. + + + +II + + +She never thought of trying to follow him back to England, to shirk the +increasing terrible duties behind the reorganized but harassed armies. +The wounded seemed to drop through the hospital roof like flies. + +Nevertheless when she was abruptly transferred to London she went +without protest! It was then that she began to have misgivings. She was +given charge of a large hospital just outside of London and her duties +were constant and confining. But she managed to go out to lunch with +him twice and once to dine; after which they drove back to the hospital +in a slow and battered old hansom. + +She returned a few weeks before the Armistice. She had not seen him for +four months. He was well and expecting to be sent back to the front any +day. At present they were making use of him in London. + +If anything he appeared to admire her more than ever, to be more +solicitous for her health. He lamented personally her exacting duties. +But it was the almost exuberant friendliness of one man for another, +for a comrade, a good fellow; although he often paid her quick little +diagnostic compliments. If she hadn't loved him she would have enjoyed +his companionship. He had read and thought and lived. Before the war he +had been in active public life. He had far greater plans for the future. + +He had been almost entirely impersonal. It had maddened her. Even the +night they had driven through the dark streets of London out to her +hospital, although he had talked more or less about himself, even +encouraged her to talk about herself, there had not been one instant of +correlation. + +But she had made excuses as women do, in self-defense. He assumed that +he might easily go back to the front just in time to get himself +killed, although the end of the war was in sight.... Her utter lack of +experience with men in any sex relation had made her stiff, even in her +letters; afraid of "giving herself away." She had no coquetry. If she +had, pride would have forbidden her to use it. Her ideals were +intensely old-fashioned. She wanted to be pursued, won. The man must do +it all. Her writings had never been in the least romantic. Well, she +was, if romance meant having certain fixed ideals. + +One thing puzzled her. When she wrote she manipulated her men and women +in their mutual relations with a master-hand. But she had not the least +idea how to manage her own affair. What was genius? A rotten spot in +the brain, a displacement of particles that operated independently of +personality, of the inherited ego? Possession? Ancestors come to life +for an hour in the subliminal depths? But what did she care for genius +anyhow! + +One thing she would have been willing to do as her part, aside from +meeting him mentally at all points and showing a brisk frank pleasure +in his society: give him every chance to woo and win her, to find her +more and more indispensable to his happiness. But she was no woman of +leisure. She could not receive him in charming toilettes in an equally +seductive room. She had nothing for evening wear but an old black satin +gown. After her arrival in London she had found time to buy a smart +enough tailored coat and skirt, and a hat, but nothing more. + +And after the Armistice was declared she only saw him once. + +Then came his abrupt departure for Paris. His noncommittal note. Even +then she refused to despair. It would be an utterly impossible end to +such a story ... after twelve years ... not for a moment would she +accept that. + + + +III + + +She applied for her discharge. During her long stay in the British +service she had made influential friends. She had also made a high +record not only for ability but for an untiring fidelity. Her vacations +had been few and brief. She obtained her discharge and went to Paris. +Her pride would permit her to telephone. What more natural? Nothing +would have surprised him more than if she had not. She had little doubt +of his falling into the habit of daily companionship. He knew Paris and +she did not. He would have seen her daily in London if she had been +free. + +Something, no doubt of that, held him back. He was discouraged ... or +not sure of himself.... She had assumed as a matter of course that he +was at the Ritz. When she found that he was not, had not been, she +realized that he had omitted to give her an address. + +That might have been mere carelessness.... But to find him in Paris! +She had not visualized such swarms of people. She might almost have +passed him on the street and not seen him. But not for a moment did she +waver from her purpose. She held passionately to the belief that were +they together day after day, hours on end.... + +Unbelievable. + + + +IV + + +She had telephoned an hour ago to the hotel where he was staying with +other members of the British Commission and been told that he was out +of town, but might return any moment. + +There was nothing to do but write him a note and wait. She was not +equal to the humiliation of telephoning a third time. She wrote it at +the hotel where her English friends were staying and sent it by +messenger, having heard of the idiosyncracies of the Paris post. + +Hastings, her newspaper friend, had been altogether a bird of ill omen. +He had told her that the American market was glutted with "war stuff." +The public was sick of it. Some of the magazines were advertising that +they would read no more of it. She had told him that her material was +magnificent and he had replied: "Can it. Maybe a year or two from +now--five, more likely. I'm told over here that the war fiction we've +had wished on us by the ton resembles the real thing just about as much +as maneuvers look like the first Battle of the Marne, say, when the +Germans didn't know where they were at; went out quail hunting and +struck a jungle full of tigers.... Why not? When most of 'em were +written by men of middle age snug beside a library fire with mattresses +on the roof--in America not even a Zeppelin to warm up their blood. But +that doesn't matter. The public took it all as gospel. Ate it up. Now +it is fed up and wants something else." + +What irony! + +And what a future if he--but that she would not face. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +She heard Janet Maynard, who had returned alone the day before from +Nice, enter the next, room. She kept very still; she had no desire for +conversation. But Janet tapped on her door in a moment and entered +looking very important. + +"I've something to tell you," she announced. "You'd never guess in a +thousand years. Don't get up. 111 sit on the bed-used to any old place. +Only too thankful it isn't a box, or to sit down at all. Try one of +mine? Don't you feel well?" + +"I've a rotten headache." + +"Oh ... mind my smoking?" + +"Not a bit. What did you have to tell me?" + +"Well, 'way back in ancient times, B.W., nineteen hundred and six, a +young Englishman named Gathbroke came to California after his sister, +who was ill." She was blowing rings and did not see Gora's face. When +she leveled her eyes Gora was unbuttoning her gaiters. "It seems she +died some time during the fire and he had a perfectly horrid experience +getting the body out to the cemetery. But that has nothing to do with +the story. He met Olive and the rest of us--_and Alexina_--the night of +the Hofer ball. I had forgotten the whole thing until Olive reminded me +that we had joked Alex afterward about the way she had bowled him over. +His eyes simply followed her, but Mortimer gave him no chance. + +"Then. I remembered something else. Isabel Gwynne once told me that her +husband was sure Gathbroke had proposed to Alex one day when he took +him down to Eincona. He was in a simply awful state of nerves +afterward. John thought he was going out of his mind. Now, here's the +point. Night before last Olive was at a ball and who should come up to +her and introduce himself but Gathbroke. He's changed a lot but she +recognized him. Well, he hardly waited to finish the usual amenities +before he asked her plump out if Alex was in Paris, said he was +positive he had seen her at that embassy ball where all the lights went +out and they expected a riot. He turned white when he did it, but he +was as direct as chain lightning. He wanted her address. Of course he +got it. Olive was thrilled. It's safe to assume that he's with Alex at +the present moment. At any rate Olive called him up this morning +intending to ask him to dinner, and was told he was out of town. Now, +isn't that romance for you?" + +"Rather." + +"Twelve years! Fancy a man being faithful all that time. Hadn't got +what he wanted, that's probably why. Have you ever heard Alex speak of +him? Think she'll divorce Mortimer?" + +"I asked her the other night why she didn't. She said it was against +the traditions of the family. But--I recall--she said--it seemed to me +there was a curious sort of meaning in her voice--that if she wanted to +marry a man nothing would stop her." + +"And it wouldn't. Nothing would stop Alexina if anything started her. +The trouble always was to start her. She's indolent and unsusceptible +and fastidious. But deep and intense--Lord! Mark my words, she saw him +at the Embassy. If she did and the thing's mutual she'll give poor old +Maria such a shock that the war will look like ten cents." + +"Possibly." + +"You look really ill, Gora. No wonder you have headaches with that +hair. It's magnificent--but! Go to bed and I'll send up your dinner. +Got any aspirin?" + +"Yes, thanks." + +"Au 'voir." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +The day was fine and Alexina took advantage of the brief interval of +grace and went for a walk. Gathbroke was in Paris but might come out +any moment. She wore a coat and skirt of heavy white English tweed with +a silk blouse of periwinkle blue. The same soft shade lined her black +velvet hat. + +She had a number of notes changed at the bank and struck out for one of +the ruined villages. She was in a mood to distribute happiness, and +only silver coin could carry a ray of light into the dark stupefied +recesses of those miserable wretches living in the ruins of homes +haunted by memories of their dead. + +She felt a very torch of happiness herself. Her body and her brain +glowed with it. The currents of her blood seemed to have changed their +pace and their essence. The elixir of life was in them. She felt less +woman than goddess. + +She knew now why she had been born, why she had waited. As long as this +terrible war had to be she was thankful for her intimate contact with +the very martyrdom of suffering; never else could she have known to the +full the value of life and youth and health and the power to be +triumphantly happy in love. She would have liked to wave a wand and +make all the world happy, but as this was as little possible as to +remake human nature itself she soared into an ether of her own to revel +in her astounding good fortune. + + + +II + + +The village she approached was picturesque in its ruin for it climbed +the side of a hill, and although the Germans had set fire deliberately +to every house the shells for the most part remained. Along the low +ridge was a row of brick walls in various stages of gaunt and jagged +transfiguration. They looked less the victims of fire than of +earthquake. + +The narrow ascending street was filled with rubble. She picked her way +and peered into the ruins. At first she saw no one; the place seemed to +be deserted. Then some one moved in a dark cellar, and as she stood at +the top of the short flight of steps a very old woman came forward into +the light. There were two children at her heels. + +Alexina suddenly felt very awkward. She had always thought the mere +handing out of money the most detestable part of charity. But there was +nothing here to buy. That was obvious. + +The old woman however relieved her embarrassment. She extended a skinny +hand. The poor of France are not loquacious, but like all their +compatriots they know what they want, and no doubt feel that life is +simplified when they are in a position to ask for it. + +Alexina gratefully handed her a coin and hurried on. Her next +experience was as simple but more delicate. A younger woman had fitted +up a corner of her ruin with a petticoat for roof and a plank supported +by two piles of brick for counter and had laid in a supply of the post +cards that pictured with terrible fidelity the ruins of her village. +Alexina bought the entire stock, "to scatter broadcast in the United +States," and promised to send her friends for more; assuring the woman +that when the tourists came to France once more these ruined villages +would be magnets for gold. + +She managed to get rid of her coins without much difficulty, although +comparatively few of the village's inhabitants had returned, and these +by stealth. Many of them had trekked far! Others were still detained at +the hostels in Paris and other cities where they could be looked after +without too much trouble. + +Several had set up housekeeping in the cellars in a fashion not unlike +that of their cave dwelling ancestors, and a few had found a piece of +roof above ground to huddle under when it rained. Some talked to her +pleasantly, some were surly, others unutterably sad. None refused her +largesse, and she was amused to look back and see a little procession +making for the town, no doubt with intent to purchase. + +In one side street less choked with rubbish small boys were playing at +war. But for the most part the children looked very sober. They had +been spared the horrors of occupation but they had suffered privations +and been surrounded by grief and despair. + + + +III + + +When she had exhausted her supplies she took refuge in the church. It +was at the end of the long street on the ridge and after she had rested +she could leave the village by its farther end, and by making a long +detour avoid the painful necessity of refusing alms. + +There was no roof on the church; otherwise it would have been the +general refuge. Part of it including the steeple was some distance away +and looked as if it had been blown off. The rest had gone down with one +of the walls. It was a charred unlovely ruin. Saints and virgins +sometimes defied the worst that war could do, but all had succumbed +here. The paneless windows in the walls that still remained +precariously erect framed pictures of a quiet and lovely landscape. The +stone walls were intact about the farms in which moved a few old men +and women in faded cotton frocks that looked like soft pastels. The +oaks were majestic and serene. The hills were lavender in the distance. +But the farm houses were in ruins and so was a chateau on a hill. +Alexina could see its black gaping walls through the grove of chestnut +trees withered by the fire. + +She wandered about looking for a seat however humble but could find +nothing more inviting than piles of brick and twisted iron. She noticed +an open place in the floor and went over to it and peered down. There +was a flight of steps ending in cimmerian darkness. Doubtless the +vaults of the great families of the neighborhood were down there. She +wondered if the spite of the Huns had driven them to demolish the very +bones of the race they were unable to conquer. + + + +IV + + +Suddenly she stiffened. A chill ran up her spine. She had an +overwhelming sense of impending danger and stepped swiftly away from +the edge of the aperture; then turned about, and faced Gora Dwight. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +"Oh," she said calmly, although her nerves still shuddered. "You must +walk like a fairy. I didn't hear you." + +"One must pick one's way through rubbish." + +"Ghastly ruin, isn't it?" + +"Life is ghastly." + +Alexina made no reply lest she deny this assertion out of the wonder of +her own experience. She guessed what Gora had come for and that she was +feeling as elemental as she looked. She herself had recovered from that +sudden access of horror but she moved still further from, that black +and waiting hole. + +"Are you going to marry Gathbroke?" + +The gauntlet was down and Alexina felt a sharp sense of relief. She was +in no mood for the subtle evasion and she had not the least inclination +to turn up her eyes. She made up her mind however to save Gora's pride +as far as possible. + +"Yes," she said. + +"You dare say that to me?" + +Alexina raised her low curved eyebrows. She seldom raised them but when +she did she looked like all her grandmothers. + +"Dare? Did you expect me to lie? Is that what you wish?" + +Gora clutched her muff hard against her throat. (Alexina wondered if +she had a pistol in it.) Her eyes looked over it pale and terrible. +Alexina had the advantage of her in apparent calm, but there was no +sign of confusion in those wide baleful irises with their infinitesimal +pupils. + +"You knew that I loved him. That I had loved him for twelve years." + +"I _knew_ nothing of the sort. You had his picture on your mantel and +you corresponded with him off and on but you never gave me a hint that +you loved him. Twelve years! Good heaven! A friendship extending over +such a period was conceivable; natural enough. But a romance! When such +an idea did cross my mind I dismissed it as fantastic. You always +seemed to me the embodiment of common sense." + +"There is no such thing. It is true--that I hardly believed it +then--admitted it. But I knew we should meet again. He never had +married. It looked like destiny when I did meet him. I nursed him--" + +She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed +no understanding and she went on, still watching. + +"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A +woman _knows_ certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have +been alone he would have found out--asked me to marry him. We should be +married to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would +have been the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to +him to come to Paris." + +"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. I had forgotten +his existence until I saw him, for a few seconds, at a reception. Don't +forget that he came to Paris under orders from his Government." + +"But you recognized him that night. You came down here to meet him, to +get away from me." + +"Far from coming here to meet him I had given up all hope of ever +seeing him again. He found out my address and followed me. You also +seem to forget that you never mentioned his name to me in Paris. How +was I to know that you were still interested in him?" + +"That first night ... you guessed it ... you threw down a sort of +challenge. Deny that if you can!" + +"No! I'll not deny it. I wanted him as badly as you did if with less +reason. Nevertheless ... believe it or not as you like ... I came down +here as much to leave the field clear to you as for my own peace of +mind. I think ... I fancy ... I decided to leave the matter on the +knees of the gods." + +"Do you mean to tell me that if I had met him while we were together in +Paris, and you knew the truth, that you would not have tried to win him +away from me?" + +"I wonder! I have asked myself that question several times. I like to +think that I should have been noble, and withdrawn. But I am not at all +sure.... Yes, I do believe I should, not from noble unselfishness, oh, +not by a long sight, but from pride--if I saw that he was really in +love with you. I'd never descend to scheming and plotting and pitting +my fascinations against another woman--" + +"Oh, damn your aristocratic highfalutin pride. I suppose you mean that +I have no such pride, having no inherited right to it. Perhaps not or I +wouldn't be here to-day. At least I wouldn't be talking to you," she +added, her voice hoarse with significance. + +Once more Alexina eyed the muff. "Did you come here to kill me?" + +"Yes, I did. No, I haven't a pistol. I couldn't get one. I trusted to +opportunity. When I saw you standing at the edge of that hole I thought +I had it." + +Alexina found it impossible to repress a shiver but in spite of those +dreadful eyes she felt no recurrence of fear. + +"What good would that have done you? Murderesses get short shrift in +France. There is none of that sickening sentimentalism here that we are +cursed with in our country." + +"Murders are not always found out. If you were at the bottom of that +hole it would be long before you were found and there is no reason why +I should be suspected. I didn't come through the village. I didn't even +inquire at your house. I saw you leave it and followed at a distance. +If I'd pushed you down there I'd have followed and killed you if you +were not dead already." + +Alexina wondered if she intended to rush her. But she was sure of her +own strength. If one of them went down that hole it would not be she. +Nevertheless she was beginning to feel sorry for Gora. She had never +sensed, not during the most poignant of her contacts with the war, such +stark naked misery in any woman's soul. Its futile diabolism but +accentuated its appeal. + +"Well, you missed your chance," she said coldly. Gora was in no mood to +receive sympathy! "And if you hadn't and escaped detection I don't +fancy you would have enjoyed carrying round with you for the next +thirty or forty years the memory of a cowardly murder. Too bad we +aren't men so that we could have it out in a fair fight. My ancestors +were all duellists. No doubt yours were too," she added politely. + +"Perhaps you are right." For the first time there was a slight +hesitation in Gora's raucous tones. But she added in a swift access of +anger: "I suppose you mean that your code is higher than mine. That you +are incapable of killing from behind." + +"Good heavens! I hope so! ... Still ... I will confess I have had my +black moods. It is possible that I might have let loose my own devil +if--if--things had turned out differently." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't! Not when it came to the point. You would have +elevated your aristocratic nose and walked off." She uttered this +dictum with a certain air of personal pride although her face was +convulsed with hate. + +"Gora, you are really making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more +time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such +melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of +murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for +some sort of revenge but I should have expected something more +original--" + +"Murder's natural enough when you've seen nothing else as long as I +have. And as for human life--how much value do you suppose I place on +it after four years of war? I had almost reached the point where death +seemed more natural than life." + +"Oh, yes ... but later.... There are tremendous reactions after war. +Settled down once more in our smiling land my ghost would be an +extremely unpleasant companion. You see, Gora, you are just now in that +abnormal state of mind known as inhibition. But, unfortunately, +perhaps, in spite of the fact that you have proved yourself to be +possessed of a violence of disposition--that I rather admire--you were +not cut out to be the permanent villain. You have great qualities. And +for thirty-four years of your life you have been a sane and reasonable +member of society. For four of those years you have been an angel of +mercy.... Oh, no. If you had killed me you would have killed yourself +later. You couldn't live with Gathbroke for you couldn't live with +yourself. Silly old tradition perhaps, but we are made up of +traditions.... That was one reason I left Paris, gave up trying to find +him.... I knew that I could have him. But I also knew that you had had +some sort of recent experience with him, that you had come to Paris to +find him, that possibly if left with a clear field you could win him. I +knew--Oh, yes, I knew!--that he would know instantly he was mine if we +met. But ... well, I too have to live with myself. It might be that he +was committed to you, that if he married you, you would both be happy +enough. When he did come nothing would have tempted me to accept him if +I had still believed--" + +"Did he tell you? Tell you how close he came? Tell you that I was in +love with him?" + +"My dear Gora, I fancy that if he were capable of that you would not be +capable of loving him. I certainly should not." There was a slight +movement in her throat as if she were swallowing the rest of the truth +whole. She had adhered to it where she could but Gora's face must be +saved. "Your name was not mentioned. I asked him no questions about his +past. I am not the heroine of a novel, old style. He told me that he +loved me, that he had never loved any other woman, never asked any +other woman to marry him. That was enough for me. I had no place in my +mind for you or any one else. Perhaps you don't know--how could +you--that years ago, when he was in California, he asked me to marry +him." + +"Calf love! If you had not been here now--" + +"He would have gone to California as soon as he could get away. He had +made up his mind to that before he came to Paris." + +"What!" + +Gora's arms dropped to her sides and she stared at the floor. Then she +laughed, "O God, what irony! I talked of you more or Jess as was +natural ... and he remembered ... we had recalled the past vividly +enough.... Why couldn't one of those instincts in which we are +supposed to be prolific have warned me?.... Much fiction is like life! +... Any heroine I could have created would have had it ... had more +sense.... I have botched the thing from beginning to end." + +She raised her head and stared at Alexina with somber eyes; the insane +light had died out of them. They took in every detail of that enhanced +beauty, of that inner flame, white hot, that made Alexina glow like a +transparent lamp. + +She also recalled that she had watched her pack her bags ... that +pervenche velvet gown ... Alexina had described the quaint old +salon.... Her imagination, flashed out that first interview with +Gathbroke with a tormenting conjuring of detail.... + +"Yon are one of the favorites of life," she admitted in her bitter +despair. "You have been given everything--" + +"I drew Mortimer," Alexina reminded her. + +"True. But you dusted him out of your life with an ease and a +thoroughness that has never been surpassed. Think what you might have +drawn. No, you are lucky, lucky! The prixes of life are for your sort. +I am one of the overlooked or the deliberately neglected. Not a fairy +stood at my cradle. All things have come to you unsought. Beauty. +Birth. Position. Sufficient wealth. Power over men and women. An +enchanting personality. All the social graces. You have had ups and +downs merely because after all you are a mortal; and as a matter of +contrast--to heighten your powers of appreciation. No doubt the worst +is over for you. I have had to take life by the throat and wring out of +her what little I have. That is what makes life so hopeless, so +terrible. No genius for social reform will ever eliminate the +inequality of personality, of the inner inheritance. Nature meant for +her own sport that a few should live and the rest should die while +still alive." + +"Gora, I don't want to sound like the well-meaning friends who tell a +mother when she loses her child that it is better off, but I can't help +reminding you that a very large and able-bodied fairy presided at your +cradle. You have a great gift that I'd give my two eyes for; and you +know perfectly well--or you will soon--that you will get over this and +forget that Gathbroke ever existed, while you are creating men to suit +yourself." Her incisive mind drove straight to the truth. "You will +write better than ever. Possibly the reason that you have not reached +the great public is because your work lacks humanity, sympathy. You +never lived before. You were all intellect. Now you have had a terrific +upheaval and you seem to have experienced about everything, including +the impulse to murder. Most writers would appear to live uneventful +lives judging from their extremely dull biographies. But they must have +had the most tremendous inner adventures and soul-racking +experiences--the big ones--or they couldn't have written as they +did.... This must be the more true in regard to women." + +Gora continued to stare at her. The words sank in. Her clear intellect +appreciated the truth of them but they afforded her no consolation. All +emotion had died out of her. She felt beaten, helpless. + +She was obliged to look up as she watched Alexina's subtly transfigured +face, fascinated. It made her feel even her physical insignificance; +the more as she had lost the flesh that had given her short stature a +certain majesty. + +"Oh, life is unjust, unjust." She no longer spoke with bitterness, +merely as one forced to state an inescapable fact. "Injustice! The root +of all misfortune." + +"Life is a hard school but where she has strong characters to work on +she turns out masterpieces. You will be one of them, Gora. And I fancy +that women born with great gifts were meant to stand alone and to be +trained in that hard school. It is only when women of your sort have a +passing attack of the love germ that they imagine they could go through +life as a half instead of a whole. When you are in the full tide of +your powers with the public for a lover I fancy you will look back upon +this episode with gratitude, if you remember it at all." + +"Perhaps. But that, is a long way off! I have just been told that the +order of fiction with which my mind is packed at present is not wanted. +It has been contemptuously rejected by the American public as 'war +stuff.'" + +"Good heaven! That _is_ a misfortune!" + +For a moment Alexina was aghast. Here was the real tragedy. She almost +prayed for inspiration, for it lay with her to readjust Gora to life. +To no one else would Gora ever give her confidence. + +"I don't believe for a moment," she said, "that the intelligent public +will ever reject a great novel or story dealing with the war. The +masterly treatment of any subject, the new point of view, the swift +compelling breathless drama that is your peculiar gift, must triumph +over any mood of the moment. Moreover, when you are back in California +you will see these last four years in a tremendous perspective. And no +contrast under heaven could be so great. You probably won't hear the +war mentioned once a month. No doubt much that crowds your mind now +will cease to interest the productive tract of your brain and you will +write a book with the war as a mere background for your new and +infinitely more complete knowledge of human psychology. No novel of any +consequence for years to come will be written without some relationship +to the war. Stories long enough to be printed in book form perhaps, but +not the novel: which is a memoir of contemporary life in the form of +fiction. No writer with as great a gift as yours could have anything +but a great destiny. Go back to California and bang your typewriter and +find it out for yourself." + +For the first time something like a smile flitted over Gora's drawn +face. "Perhaps. I hope you are right. I don't think I could ever really +lose faith in that star." She was thinking: Oh, yes! I'll go back to +California as quickly as I can get there--as a wounded animal crawls +back to its lair. + +She would have encircled the globe three times to get to it. _Her +state_. To her it was what family and friends and home and children +were to another. It was literally the only friend she had in the world. +She would have flown to it if she could, sure of its beneficence. + +"I shall go as soon as I can get passage," she said. "And you?" + +"I must go too unless I can get a divorce here. I shall know that in a +few days." + +"Well, we travel on different steamers if you do go! I shall stop off +at Truckee and go to Lake Tahoe. It will be a long while before I go to +any place that reminds me of you. I no longer want to kill you but I +want to forget you. Good-by." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +When she reached the foot of the hill she turned and looked back. +Alexina was standing in one of the jagged window casements of the +church. The bright warm sun was overhead in a cloudless sky. Its liquid +careless rays flooded the ruin. Alexina's tall white figure, the soft +blue of her hat forming a halo about her face, was bathed in its light; +a radiant vision in that shattered town whose very stones cried out +against the injustice of life. + +Alexina, who was feeling like anything but a madonna in a stained glass +window, waved a questing hand. + +"The fortunate of earth!" thought Gora. + +She set her lips grimly and walked across the valley with a steady +stride. At least she could be one of the strong. + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters-In-Law, by Gertrude Atherton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 8535.txt or 8535.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/3/8535/ + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Sisters-In-Law + +Author: Gertrude Atherton + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8535] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +THE SISTERS-IN-LAW + +A NOVEL OF OUR TIME + +BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON + + + + + + +TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO + + + + + + +Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading characters +in other novels and stories of the "California Series," which covers the +social history of the state from the beginning of the last century. They +are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel Otis and the Hofers +in ANCESTORS; the Randolphs in A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE; Lee Tarlton, Lady +Barnstable, Lady Arrowmount, Coralie Geary, the Montgomerys and Trennahans +in TRANSPLANTED and THE CALIFORNIANS; Rezanov in the novel of that name, +and Chonita Iturbi y Moncada in THE DOOMSWOMAN, both bound in the volume, +BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME; The Price Ruylers in THE AVALANCHE. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest +crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even +by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the +Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue +that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's "early +days," perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city of a +hundred hills. + +She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an adventurous +spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the verandah at +night when her legs were longer than her years, and during the past winter +to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door when her worthy but +hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was the first time that she +had been out after midnight. + +And it was five o'clock in the morning! + +She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother's pet aversion, to a party +given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if crumbling +pillar of San Francisco's proud old aristocracy, held in pious disdain, and +had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the tireless exhilaration of +her eighteen years until the weary band had played Home Sweet Home. + +She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant, even +among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many flowers +even in California. Her own coming-out party in the dark double parlors of +the old house among the eucalyptus trees, whose moans and sighs could be +heard above the thin music of piano and violin, had been so formal and dull +that she had cried herself to sleep after the last depressed member of the +old set had left on the stroke of midnight. Even Aileen's high mocking +spirits had failed her, and she had barely been able to summon them for +a moment as she kissed the friend, to whom she was sincerely devoted, a +sympathetic good-night. + +"Never mind, old girl. Nothing can ever be worse. Not even your own +funeral. That's one comfort." + + + +II + + +That had been last November. During the ensuing five months Alexina had +been taken by her mother to such entertainments as were given by other +members of that distinguished old band, whose glory, like Mrs. Groome's +own, had reached its meridian in the last of the eighties. + +Not that any one else in San Francisco was quite as exclusive as Mrs. +Groome. Others might be as faithful in their way to the old tradition, be +as proud of their inviolate past, when "money did not count," and people +merely "new," or of unknown ancestry, did not venture to knock at the +gates: but the successive flocks of young folks had overpowered their +conservative parents, and Society had loosened its girdle, until in this +year of grace nineteen-hundred-and-six, there were few rich people so +hopelessly new that their ball rooms either in San Francisco or "Down the +Peninsula," were unknown to a generation equally determined to enjoy life +and indifferent to traditions. + +Mrs. Groome alone had set her face obdurately against any change in the +personnel of the eighties. She had the ugliest old house in San Francisco, +and the change from lamps to gas had been her last concession to the march +of time. The bath tubs were tin and the double parlors crowded with the +imposing carved Italian furniture whose like every member of her own set +had, in the seventies and eighties, brought home after their frequent and +prolonged sojourns abroad: for the prouder the people of that era were of +their lofty social position on the edge of the Pacific, the more time did +they spend in Europe. + +Mrs. Groome might be compelled therefore to look at new people in the homes +of her friends--even her proud daughter, Mrs. Abbott, had unaccountably +surrendered to the meretricious glitter of Burlingame--but she would not +meet them, she would not permit Alexina to cross their thresholds, nor +should the best of them ever cross her own. + +Poor Alexina, forced to submit, her mother placidly impervious to coaxings, +tears, and storms, had finally compromised the matter to the satisfaction +of herself and of her own close chosen friend, Aileen Lawton. She +accompanied her mother with outward resignation to small dinner dances and +to the Matriarch balls, presided over by the newly elected social leader, +a lady of unimpeachable Southern ancestry and indifference to wealth, +who pledged her Virginia honor to Mrs. Groome that Alexina should not be +introduced to any young man whose name was not on her own visiting list; +and, while her mother slept, the last of the Ballinger-Groomes accompanied +Aileen (chaperoned by an unprincipled aunt, who was an ancient enemy of +Maria Groome) to parties quite as respectable but infinitely gayer, and +indubitably mixed. + +She was quite safe, for Mrs. Groome, when free of social duties, retired on +the stroke of nine with a novel, and turned off the gas at ten. She never +read the society columns of the newspapers, choked as they were with +unfamiliar and plebeian names; and her friends, regarding Alexina's gay +disobedience as a palatable joke on "poor old Maria," and sympathetic with +youth, would have been the last to enlighten her. + + + +III + + +Alexina had never enjoyed herself more than to-night. Young Mrs. Hofer, who +had bought and remodeled the old Polk house on Nob Hill--the very one in +which Mrs. Groome's oldest daughter had made her debut in the far-off +eighties--had turned all her immense rooms into a bower of every variety of +flower that bloomed on the rich California soil. It was her second great +party of the season, and it had been her avowed intention to outdo the +first, which had attempted a revival of Spanish California and been the +talk of the town. The decorations had been done by a firm of young women +whose parents and grandparents had danced in the old house, and the +catering by another scion of San Francisco's social founders, Miss Anne +Montgomery. + +To do Mrs. Groome full justice, all of these enterprising young women were +welcome in her own home. She regarded it as unfortunate that ladies were +forced to work for their living, but had seen too many San Francisco +families in her own youth go down to ruin to feel more than sorrow. In +that era the wives of lost millionaires had knitted baby socks and starved +slowly. Even she was forced to admit that the newer generation was more +fortunate in its opportunities. + +Alexina had not gone to Mrs. Hofer's first party, Aileen being in Santa +Barbara, but she had sniffed at the comparisons of the more critical girls +in their second season. She was quite convinced that nothing so splendid +had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. She had had +the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so charming a young +man as Mortimer Dwight. + +"Some party," she thought as she ran up the steep avenue to her sacrosanct +abode, where her haughty mother was chastely asleep, secure in the belief +that her obedient little daughter was dreaming in her maiden bower. + +"What the poor old darling doesn't know 'll never hurt her," thought +Alexina gayly. "She really is old enough to be my grandmother, anyhow. I +wonder if Maria and Sally really stood for it or were as naughty as I am." + +Alexina was the youngest of a long line of boys and girls, all of whom +but five were dead. Ballinger and Geary practiced law in New York, having +married sisters who refused to live elsewhere. Sally had married one +of their Harvard friends and dwelt in Boston. Maria alone had wed an +indigenous Californian, an Abbott of Alta in the county of San Mateo, and +lived the year round in that old and exclusive borough. She was now so like +her mother, barring a very slight loosening of her own social girdle, that +Alexina dismissed as fantastic the notion that even a quarter of a century +earlier she may have had any of the promptings of rebellious youth. + +"Not she!" thought Alexina grimly. "Oh, Lord! I wonder if my summer destiny +is Alta." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +She was quite breathless as she reached the eucalyptus grove and paused for +a moment before slipping into the house and climbing the stairs. + +The city lying in the valleys and on the hills arrested her attention, for +it was a long while since she had been awake and out of doors at five in +the morning. + +It looked like the ghost of a city in that pallid dawn. The houses seemed +to have huddled together as if in fear before they sank into sleep, to +crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the ugly dome of +the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower held up +their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of outline, of +alertness, as if ready to spring. + +In that far-off district known as "South of Market Street," which she had +never entered save in a closed carriage on her way to the Southern Pacific +Station or to pay a yearly call on some old family that still dwelt on +that oasis, Rincon Hill--sole outpost of the social life of the +sixties--infrequent thin lines of smoke rose from humble chimneys. It +was the region of factories and dwellings of the working-class, but its +inhabitants were not early risers in these days of high wages and short +hours. + +Even those gray spirals ascended as if the atmosphere lay heavy on them. +They accentuated the lifelessness, the petrifaction, the intense and +sinister quiet of the prostrate city. + +Alexina shuddered and her volatile spirits winged their way down into those +dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to plumb. +She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined +a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh +lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous +invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of +a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy +accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate with a sneer. + +Alexina, holding her breath, glanced upward. That ghost of evening's +twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the crimson +rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely blue. It +looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface presently, and +then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave way. + + + +II + + +Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming. She barely had +time to brace herself when she saw the sleeping city jar as if struck by a +sudden squall, and with the invisible storm came a loud menacing roar of +imprisoned forces making a concerted rush for freedom. + +She threw her arms about one of the trees, but it was bending and groaning +with an accent of fear, a tribute it would have scorned to offer the mighty +winds of the Pacific. Alexina sprang clear of it and unable to keep her +feet sat down on the bouncing earth. + +Then she remembered that it was a rigid convention among real Californians +to treat an earthquake as a joke, and began to laugh. There was nothing +hysterical in this perfunctory tribute to the lesser tradition and it +immediately restored her courage. Moreover, the curiosity she felt for all +phases of life, psychical and physical, and her naive delight in everything +that savored of experience, caused her to stare down upon the city now +tossing and heaving like the sea in a hurricane, with an almost impersonal +interest. + +The houses seemed to clutch at their precarious foundations even while they +danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the ascending +roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of steeples, the dome +of the City Hall, of brick buildings too hastily erected, of ten thousand +falling chimneys; of creaking and grinding timbers, and of the eucalyptus +trees behind her, whose leaves rustled with a shrill rising whisper that +seemed addressed to heaven; the neighing and pawing of horses in the +stables, the sharp terrified yelps of dogs; and through all a long +despairing wail. The mountains across the bay and behind the city were +whirling in a devil's dance and the scattered houses on their slopes looked +like drunken gnomes. The shot tower bowed low and solemnly but did not +fall. + + + +III + + +As the earth with a final leap and twist settled abruptly into peace, the +streets filled suddenly with people, many in their nightclothes, but +more in dressing-gowns, opera cloaks, and overcoats. All were silent and +apparently self-possessed. Whence came that long wail no one ever knew. + +Alexina, remembering her own attire, sprang to her feet and ran through the +little side door and up the stair, praying that her mother, with her usual +monumental poise, would have disdained to rise. She had never been known to +leave her room before eight. + +But as Alexina ran along the upper hall she became only too aware that Mrs. +Groome had surrendered to Nature, for she was pounding on her door and in a +haughty but quivering voice demanding to be let out. + +Alexina tiptoed lightly to the threshold of her room and called out +sympathetically: + +"What is the matter, mother dear! Has your door sprung?" + +"It has. Tell James to come here at once and bring a crow-bar if +necessary." + +"Yes, darling." + +Alexina let down her hair and tore off her evening gown, kicking it into a +closet, then threw on a bathrobe and ran over to the servants' quarters in +an extension behind the house. They were deserted, but wild shrieks and +gales of unseemly laughter arose from the yard. She opened a window and saw +the cook, a recent importation, on the ground in hysterics, the housemaid +throwing water on her, and the inherited butler calmly lighting his pipe, + +"James," she called. "My mother's door is jammed. Please come right away." + +"Yes, miss." He knocked his pipe against the wall and ground out the +life of the coal with his slippered heel. "Just what happened to your +grandmother in the 'quake of sixty-eight. I mind the time I had getting her +out." + + + +IV + + +It was quite half an hour before the door yielded to the combined efforts +of James and the gardener-coachman, and during the interval Mrs. Groome +recovered her poise and made her morning toilette. + +She had taken her iron-gray hair from its pins and patted the narrow row of +frizzes into place; the flat side bands, the concise coil of hair on top +were as severely disdainful of untoward circumstance or passing fashion as +they had been any morning these forty years or more. + +She wore old-fashioned corsets and was abdominally correct for her years; a +long gown of black voile with white polka dots, and a guimpe of white net +whose raff of chiffon somewhat disguised the wreck of her throat. On her +shoulders, disposed to rheumatism, she wore a tippet of brown marabout +feathers, and in her ears long jet earrings. + +She had the dark brown eyes of the Ballingers, but they were bleared at +the rims, and on the downward slope of her fine aquiline nose she wore +spectacles that looked as if mounted in cast iron. Altogether an imposing +relic; and "that built-up look" as Aileen expressed it, was the only one +that would have suited her mental style. Mrs. Abbott, who dressed with a +profound regard for fashion, had long since concluded that her mother's +steadfast alliance with the past not only became her but was a distinct +family asset. Only a woman of her overpowering position could afford it. + +Mrs. Groome's skin had never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or +powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at least +as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois adjective--twin +to genteel--had been synchronous with the equally obsolete word swell, but +it had never occurred to even the more modern Mrs. Abbott and her select +inner circle of friends, dwelling on family estates in the San Mateo +valley, to change in this respect at least with the changing times. + + + +V + + +Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a morning +frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's dressmaker but +by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the fashion of the +moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at the base of her +beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, their large irises +very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, had the favor of black +lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and very narrow black polished +eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly touched with color, although +the rather large mouth with its definitely curved lips was scarlet. Her +long throat like the rest of her body was white. + +All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes, +consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by surprise +when the little Alexina came along several years after her mother was +supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors hurriedly and +quite forgotten her usual nice proportions. + +The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, for +the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short straight thin +nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a regularity, and the +thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and shook quite alarmingly +when she was angry. + +These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality were +concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the brilliant happy +candid eyes (which she could convert into a madonna's by the simple trick +of lifting them a trifle and showing a lower crescent of devotional white), +the love of life and eagerness to enjoy that radiated from her thin +admirably proportioned body, which, at this time, held in the limp +slouching fashion of the hour, made her look rather small. In reality she +was nearly as tall as her mother or the dignified Mrs. Abbott, who rejoiced +in every inch of her five feet eight, and retained the free erect carriage +of her girlhood. + +Alexina, with a sharp glance about her disordered room, hastily disarranged +her bed, and, sending her ball slippers after the gown, ran across the hall +and threw herself into her mother's arms. + +"Some earthquake, what? You are sure you are not hurt, mommy dear? The +plaster is down all over the house." + +"More slang that you have learned from Aileen Lawton, I presume. +It certainly was a dreadful earthquake, worse than that of +eighteen-sixty-eight. Is anything valuable broken? There is always less +damage done on the hills. What is that abominable noise?" + +The cook, who had recovered from her first attack, was emitting another +volley of shrieks, in which the word "fire" could be distinguished in +syllables of two. + +Mrs. Groome rang the bell violently and the imperturbable James appeared. + +"Is the house on fire?" + +"No, ma'am; only the city. It's worth looking at, if you care to step out +on the lawn." + +Mrs. Groome followed her daughter downstairs and out of the house. Her +eyebrows were raised but there was a curious sensation in her knees that +even the earthquake had failed to induce. She sank into the chair James had +provided and clutched the arms with both hands. + +"There are always fires after earthquakes," she muttered. "Impossible! +Impossible!" + +"Oh, do you think San Francisco is really going?" cried Alexina, but there +was a thrill in her regret. "Oh, but it couldn't be." + +"No! impossible, impossible!" + +Black clouds of smoke shot with red tongues of flame overhung the city at +different points, although they appeared to be more dense and frequent down +in the "South of Market Street" region. There was also a rolling mass of +flame above the water front and sporadic fires in the business district. + +The streets were black with people, now fully dressed, and long processions +were moving steadily toward the bay as well as in the direction of the +hills behind the western rim of the city. James brought a pair of field +glasses, and Mrs. Groome discovered that the hurrying throngs were laden +with household goods, many pushing them in baby carriages and wheelbarrows. +It was the first flight of the refugees. + +"James!" said Mrs. Groome sharply. "Bring me a cup of coffee and then go +down and find out exactly what is happening." + +James, too wise in the habits of earthquakes to permit the still distracted +cook to make a fire in the range, brewed the coffee over a spirit lamp, and +then departed, nothing loath, on his mission. Mrs. Groome swallowed the +coffee hastily, handed the cup to Alexina and burst into tears. + +"Mother!" Alexina was really terrified for the first time that morning. +Mrs. Groome practiced the severe code, the repressions of her class, and +what tears she had shed in her life, even over the deaths of those almost +forgotten children, had been in the sanctity of her bedroom. Alexina, who +had grown up under her wing, after many sorrows and trials had given her a +serenity that was one secret of her power over this impulsive child of +her old age, could hardly have been more appalled if her mother had been +stricken with paralysis. + +"You cannot understand," sobbed Mrs. Groome. "This is my city! The city of +my youth; the city my father helped to make the great and wonderful city +it is. Even your father--he may not have been a good husband--Oh, no! Not +he!--but he was a good citizen; he helped to drag San Francisco out of the +political mire more than once. And now it is going! It has always been +prophesied that San Francisco would burn to the ground some time, and now +the time has come. I feel it in my bones." + +This was the first reference other than perfunctory, that Alexina had ever +heard her mother make to her father, who had died when she was ten. The +girl realized abruptly that this elderly parent who, while uniformly kind, +had appeared to be far above the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, had an +inner life which bound her to the plane of mere mortals. She had a sudden +vision of an unhappy married life, silently borne, a life of suppressions, +bitter disappointments. Her chief compensation had been the unwavering +pride which had made the world forget to pity her. + +And it was the threatened destruction of her city that had beaten down the +defenses and given her youngest child a brief glimpse of that haughty but +shivering spirit. + + + +VI + + +Alexina's mind, in spite of a great deal of worldly garnering with an +industrious and investigating scythe, was as immature as her years, for +she had felt little and lived not at all. But she had swift and deep +intuitions, and in spite of the natural volatility of youth, free of care, +she was fundamentally emotional and intense. + +Swept from her poor little girlish moorings in the sophisticated sea of the +twentieth-century maiden, she had a sudden wild access of conscience; +she flung herself into her mother's arms and poured out the tale of her +nocturnal transgressions, her frequent excursions into the forbidden realm +of modern San Francisco, of her immense acquaintance with people whose very +names were unknown to Mrs. Groome, born Ballinger. + +Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together, +expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires in +this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the exaggerations +of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if her mother, +masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as elementary as the forces +that had devastated San Francisco. + +But there was only dismay in Mrs. Groome's eyes as she stared at her +repentant daughter. Her heart sank still lower. She had never been a vain +woman, but she had prided herself upon not feeling old. Suddenly, she felt +very old, and helpless. + +"Well," she said in a moment. "Well--I suppose I have been wrong. There are +almost two generations between us. I haven't kept up. And you are naturally +a truthful child--I should have--" + +"Oh, mother, you are not blaming yourself!" Alexina felt as if the earth +once more were dancing beneath her unsteady feet. "Don't say that!" + +The sharpness of her tone dispelled the confusion in Mrs. Groome's mind. +She hastily buckled on her armor. + +"Let us say no more about it. I fancy it will be a long time before there +are any more parties in San Francisco, but when there are--well, I shall +consult Maria. I want your youth to be happy--as happy as mine was. I +suppose you young people can only be happy in the new way, but I wish +conditions had not changed so lamentably in San Francisco....Who is this?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +As Alexina followed her mother's eyes she flushed scarlet and turned away +her head. A young man was coming up the avenue. He was a very gallant +figure, moderately tall and very straight; he held his head high, his +features were strong in outline. But the noticeable thing about him at +this early hour of the morning and in the wake of a great disaster was his +consummate grooming. + +"That--that--" stammered Alexina, "is Mr. Dwight. I met him last night at +the Hofers'." + +The young man raised his hat and came forward quickly. "I hope you will +forgive me," he said with a charming deference, "but I couldn't resist +coming to see if you were all right. So many people are frightened of +fire--in their own houses." + +"Mr. Dwight--my mother--" + +He lifted his hat again. Mrs. Groome in her chastened mood regarded +him favorably, and for the moment without suspicion. At least he was a +gentleman; but who could he be? + +"Dwight," she murmured. "I do not know the name. Were you born here?" + +"I was born in Utica, New York. My parents came here when I was quite +young. We--always lived rather quietly." + +"But you go about now? To all these parties?" + +"Oh, yes. I like to dance after the day's work. But I am not what you would +call a society man. I haven't the time." + +Mrs. Groome was not usually blunt, but she suddenly scented danger and she +had not fully recovered her poise. + +"You are in business?" She disliked business intensely. All gentlemen of +her day had followed one of the professions. + +"I am in a wholesale commission house. But I hope to be in business for +myself one day." + +"Ah." + +Still, all young men in this terrible twentieth century could not be +lawyers. Mrs. Groome knew enough of the march of time to be aware of the +increasing difficulties in gaining a bare livelihood. Tom Abbott was a +lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the fifties. It +was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent +and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a +man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. + +And at least this young man did not look like an idler or a wastrel. No man +could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the morning +if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she knew the +external seals. + +"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply. + +"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me the +honor to ask me to call." + +"I think the more highly of you. Judge Lawton is an old friend of mine. His +wife, who was much younger than the Judge, was an intimate friend of my +daughter, Mrs. Abbott. Alexina and Aileen have grown up together. I find it +impossible to forbid her the house. But I disapprove of her in every way. +She paints her lips, smokes cigarettes, boasts that she drinks cocktails, +and uses the most abominable slang. I kept my daughter in New York for two +years as much to break up the intimacy as to finish her education, but the +moment we returned the intimacy was renewed, and for my old friend's sake I +have been forced to submit. He worships that--that--really ill-conditioned +child." + +"Oh--Miss Lawton is a good sort, and--well--I suppose her position is so +strong that she feels she can do as she pleases. But she is all right, and +not so different--" + +"Do you mean to tell me that you approve of girls--nice +girls--ladies--painting themselves, smoking, drinking cocktails?" + +"I do not." His tones were emphatic and his good American gray eyes +wandered to the fresh innocent face of the girl who had captivated him last +night. + +"I should hope not. You look like an exceptionally decent young man. +Have you had breakfast? Alexina, go and ask Maggie, if she has recovered +herself, to make another cup of coffee." + + + +II + + +Alexina disappeared, repressing a desire to sing; and young Dwight, +receiving permission, seated himself on the grass at Mrs. Groome's feet. He +was lithe and graceful and as he threw back his head and looked up at his +hostess with his straight, honest glance the good impression he had made +was visibly enhanced. Mrs. Groome gave him the warm and gracious smile that +only her intimate friends and paid inferiors had ever seen. + +"The young men of to-day are a great disappointment to me," she observed. + +"Oh, they are all right, I guess. Most of the men that go about have rich +fathers--or near-rich ones. I wish I had one myself." + +"And you would be as dissipated as the rest, I presume." + +"No, I have no inclinations that way. But a man gets a better start in +life. And a man's a nonentity without money." + +"Not if he has family." + +"My family is good--in Utica. But that is of no use to me here." + +"But your family _is_ good?" + +"Oh, yes, it goes 'way back. There is a family mansion in Utica that is +over two hundred years old. But when the business district swamped that +part of the old town it was sold, and what it brought was divided among +six. My father came out here but did not make much of a success of himself, +so that he and my mother might as well have been on the Fiji Islands for +all the notice society took of them." + +He spoke with some bitterness, and Mrs. Groome, to whom dwelling beyond the +outer gates of San Francisco's elect was the ultimate tragedy, responded +sympathetically. + +"Society here is not what it used to be, and no doubt is only too glad +to welcome presentable young men. I infer that you have not found it +difficult." + +"Oh, I dance well, and my employer's son, Bob Cheever, took me in. But I'm +only tolerated. I don't count." + +The old lady looked at him keenly. "You are ambitious?" + +He threw back his head. "Well, yes, I am, Mrs. Groome. As far as society +goes it is a matter of self-respect. I feel that I have the right to go in +the best society anywhere--that I am as good as anybody when it comes to +blood. And I'd like to get to the top in every way. I don't mean that I +would or could do the least thing dishonest to get there, as so many men +have done, but--well, I see no crime in being ambitious and using every +chance to get to the top. I'd like not only to be one of the rich and +important men of San Francisco, but to take a part in the big civic +movements." + +Mrs. Groome was charmed. She was by no means an impulsive woman, but she +had suddenly realized her age, and if she must soon leave her youngest +child, who, heaven knew, needed a guardian, this young man might be a +son-in-law sent direct from heaven--via the earthquake. If he had real +ability the influential men she knew would see that he had a proper start. +But she had no intention of committing herself. + +"And what do you think of what is now called San Francisco society?" she +demanded. + +He was quite aware of Mrs. Groome's attitude. Who in San Francisco was not? +It was one of the standing jokes, although few of the younger or newer set +had ever heard of her until her naughty little daughter danced upon the +scene. + +"Oh, it is mixed, of course. There are many houses where I do not care to +go. But, well, after all, the rich people are rather simple for all their +luxury, and as for the old families there are no more real aristocrats in +England itself." + +Mrs. Groome was still more charmed. "But you were at Mrs. Hofer's last +night. I never heard of her before." + +"Her husband is one of the most important of the younger men. His father +made a fortune in lumber and sent his son to Yale and all the rest of it. +He is really a gentleman--it only takes one generation out here--and at +present he's bent upon delivering the city from this abominable ring +of grafters...There is no water to put out the fires because the City +Administration pocketed the money appropriated for a new system; the pipes +leading from Spring Valley were broken by the earthquake." + +"And who was she?" + +Mrs. Groome asked this question with an inimitable inflection inherited +from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had been guardians of San +Francisco society in their day. The accent was on the "who." Bob Cheever, +whose grandmother had asked or answered the same question in dark old +double parlors filled with black walnut and carved oak, would have +muttered, "Oh, hell!" but Mr. Dwight replied sympathetically: "Something +very common, I believe-south of Market Street. But her father was very +clever, rose to be a foreman of the iron works, and finally went into +business and prospered in a small way. He sent his daughter to Europe to be +educated...and even you could hardly tell her from the real thing." + +"And you go down to Burlingame, I suppose! That is a very nest of these new +people, and I am told they spend their time drinking and gambling." + +He set his large rather hard lips. "No, I have never been asked down to +Burlingame-nor down the Peninsula anywhere. You see, I am only asked out in +town because an unmarried dancing man is always welcome if there is nothing +wrong with his manners. To be asked for intimate week-ends is another +matter. But I don't fancy Burlingame is half as bad as it is represented to +be. They go in tremendously for sport, you know, and that is healthy and +takes up a good deal of time. After all when people are very rich and have +more leisure than they know what to do with--" + +"Many of the old set in Alta, San Mateo, Atherton and Menlo Park have +wealth and leisure-not vulgar fortunes, but enough-and for the most part +they live quite as they did in the old days." + +His eyes lit up. "Ah, San Mateo, Alta, Atherton, Menlo Park. There you have +a real landed aristocracy. The Burlingame set must realize that they would +be nobodies for all their wealth if they could not call at all those old +communities down the Peninsula." + +"Not so very many of them do. But I see you have no false values. You. must +go down with us some Sunday to Alta. I am sure you would like my oldest +daughter. She is very smart, as they call it now, but distinctly of the old +regime." + +"There is nothing I should like better. Thank you so much." And there was +no doubting the sincerity of his voice, a rather deep and manly voice which +harmonized with the admirable mold of his ancestors. + + + +III + + +Alexina appeared. "Breakfast is ready for all of us," she announced. "We +cooked it on the old stove in the woodhouse. I helped, for Maggie is a +wreck. Martha has swept the plaster out of the dining-room. Come along. I'm +starved." + +Young Dwight sprang to his feet and stood over Mrs. Groome with his +charming deferential manner, but he had far too much tact to offer +assistance as she rose heavily from her chair. + +"Are you really going to give me breakfast? I am sure I could not get any +elsewhere." + +"We are only too happy. Your coming has been a real God-send. Will you give +me your arm? This morning--not the earthquake but those dreadful fires--has +quite upset me." + +He escorted her into the dark old house with glowing eyes. He had seen so +little of the world that he was still very young at thirty and his nature +was sanguine, but he had never dared to dream of even difficult access to +this most exclusive home in San Francisco. Its gloom, its tastelessness, +relieved only by the splendid Italian pieces, but served to accentuate +its aristocratic aloofness from those superb but too recently furnished +mansions of which he knew so little outside of their ballrooms. + +And he was breakfasting with the sequestered Mrs. Groome and the loveliest +girl he had ever seen, at seven o 'clock in the morning. + +He looked about eagerly as they entered the dining-room.. It was long and +narrow with a bow window at the end. The furniture was black walnut; two +immense sideboards were built into the walls. It looked Ballinger, and it +was. + +It was heavily paneled; the walls above were tinted a pale buff and set +with cracked oil paintings of men in the uniforms of several generations. +The ceiling was frescoed with fish and fowl. There had been a massive +bronze chandelier over the table. It now lay on the floor, but as James had +turned off the gas in the meter while the earthquake was still in progress +the air of the large sunny room was untainted, and the windows were open. + +The breakfast was smoked but not uneatable and the strong coffee raised +even Mrs. Groome's wavering spirits. They were all talking gayly when James +entered abruptly. He was very pale. + +"City's doomed, ma'am. Thirty fires broke out simultaneous, and the wind +blowing from the southeast. A chimney fell on the fire-chief's bed and he +can't live. People runnin' round like their heads was cut off and thousands +pouring out of the city--over to Oakland and Berkeley. Lootin' was awful +and General Funston has ordered out the troops. Pipes broken and not a drop +of water. They're goin' to dynamite, but only the fire-chief knew how. +Everybody says the whole city'll go, Doomed, that's what it is. Better let +me tell Mike to harness up and drive you down to San Mateo." + +Mrs. Groome had also turned pale, but she cut a piece of bacon with +resolution in every finger of her large-veined hands. + +"I do not believe it, and I shall not run--like those people south of +Market Street. I shall stay until the last minute at all events. The roads +at least cannot burn." + +"This house ought to be safe enough, ma 'am, standin' quite alone on +this hill as it does; but it's a question of food. We never keep much +of anything in the house, beyond what's needed for the week, and the +California Market's right in the fire zone. And the smoke will be something +terrible when the fire gets closer." + +"I shall stay in my own house. There are grocery stores and butcher shops +in Fillmore Street. Go and buy all you can." She handed him a bunch of +keys. "You will find money in my escritoire. Tell the maids to fill the +bathtubs while there is any water left in the mains. You may go if you are +frightened, but I stay here." + +"Very well, and you needn't have said that, ma'am. I've been in this +family, man and boy, Ballinger and Groome, for fifty-two years, and you +know I'd never desert you. But no doubt those hussies in the kitchen will, +with a lot of others. A lot of stoves have already been set up in the +streets out here and ladies are cookin' their own breakfasts." + +"Forgive me, James. I know you will never leave me. And if the others do +we shall get along. Miss Alexina is not a bad cook." And she heroically +swallowed the bacon. + + + +IV + + +James departed and she turned to Dwight, who was on his feet. + +"You are not going?" + +"I think I must, Mrs. Groome. There may be something I can do down there. +All able-bodied men will be needed, I fancy." + +"But you'll come back and see us?" cried Alexina. + +"Indeed I will. I'll report regularly." + +He thanked Mrs. Groome for her hospitality and she invited him to take +pot luck with her at dinner time. After he had gone Alexina exclaimed +rapturously: + +"Oh, you do like him, don't you, mommy dear?" + +And Mrs. Groome was pleased to reply, "He has perfect manners and certainly +has the right ideas about things. I could do no less than ask him to dinner +if he is going to take the trouble to bring us the news." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +That was a unique and vivid day for young Alexina Groome, whose disposition +was to look upon life as drama and asked only that it shift its scenes +often and be consistently entertaining and picturesque. + +Never, so James told her, since her Grandmother Ballinger's reign, had +there been such life and movement in the old house. All Mrs. Groome's +intimate friends and many of Alexina's came to it, some to make kindly +inquiries, others to beg them to leave the city, many to gossip and +exchange experiences of that fateful morning; a few from Rincon Hill and +the old ladies' fashionable boarding-house district to claim shelter until +they could make their way to relatives out of town. + +Mrs. Groome welcomed her friends not only with the more spontaneous +hospitality of an older time but in that spirit of brotherhood that +every disaster seems to release, however temporarily. Brotherhood is +unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that sunrise +era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was automatic. The +complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and almost but not wholly +replaced it by national and individual selfishness. But the world as yet is +only about one-third civilized. Centuries hence a unified civilization may +complete the circle, but human nature and progress must act and react a +thousand times before the earthly millenium; and it cannot be hastened by +dreamers and fanatics. + +All Mrs. Groome's spare rooms were placed at the service of her friends, +and cots were bought in the humble Fillmore Street shops and put up in the +billiard room, the double parlors, the library and the upper hall. Some +forty people would sleep under the old Ballinger roof that night--dynamite +permitting. Mrs. Groome was firm in her determination not to flee, and as +James and Mike were there to watch, she had graciously given a number +of the gloomy refugees from the lower regions permission to camp in the +outhouses and grounds. + + + +II + + +Alexina spent the greater part of the day with Aileen Lawton, Olive Bascom, +and Sibyl Thorndyke, out of doors, fascinated by the spectacle of the +burning city. + +The valley beyond Market Street, and the lower business district, were a +rolling mass of smoke parting about pillars of fire, shot with a million +glittering sparks when a great building was dynamited. All the windows in +those sections of the city as yet beyond the path of the fire were open, +for although closed windows might have shut out the torrid atmosphere, the +explosions would have shattered them. + +"Oh, dear," sighed Olive Bascom, "there goes my building. The smoke lifted +for a moment and I saw the flames spouting out of the windows. A cool +million and uninsured. We thought Class A buildings were safe from any sort +of fire." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Alexina naively, "I wish I had a million-dollar +building down in that furnace. It must be a great sensation to watch a +million dollars go up in sparks." + +"I hope your mother hasn't any buildings down in the business district," +said Aileen anxiously. "I've heard dad talk about her ground rents. She'll +get those again soon enough. I fancy the old tradition survives in this +town and they'll begin to draw the plans for the new city before the fire +is out. It used to burn down regularly in the fifties, dad says." + +"I don't fancy we have much of anything," said Alexina cheerfully. "I think +mother has only a life interest in a part of father's estate, and I heard +her tell Maria once that she intended to leave me all she had of her own, +this place and a few thousand a year in bonds and some flats that are +probably burning up right now. I gathered from the conversation that father +didn't have much left when he died and that it was understood mother was +to look out for me. I believe he gave a lot to the others when he was +wealthy." + +"Good Lord!" Aileen sighed heavily. "It won't pay your dressmakers' bills, +what with taxes and all. I won't be much better off. We'll have to marry +Rex Roberts or Bob Cheever or Frank Bascom--unless he's going up in smoke +too, Olive dear. But there are a few others." + +Alexina shook her head. Her color could not rise higher for her face was +crimson from the heat; like the others she had a wet handkerchief on her +head. "There is not a grain of romance in one of them," she announced. +"Curious that the sons of the rich nearly always have round faces, +no particular features, and a tendency to bulge. I intend to have a +romance--old style--good old style--before the vogue of the middle-class +realists. There's nothing in life but youth and you only have it once. +I'm going to have a romance that means falling wildly, unreasonably, +uncalculatingly in love." + +"You anticipate my adjectives," said Aileen drily. "Although not all. But +let that pass. I'd like to know where you expect to find the opposite +lead, as they say on the stage. Our men are not such a bad sort, even the +richest--with a few exceptions, of course. They may hit it up at week-ends, +generally at the country clubs, but they're better than the last generation +because their fathers have more sense. I'll bet they're all down there now +fighting the fire with the vim of their grandfathers....But romantic! Good +Lord! I'll marry one of them all right and glad of the chance--after I've +had my fling. I'm in no hurry. I'd have outgrown my illusions in any case +by that time, only Nature did the trick by not giving me any." + +"Don't you believe there isn't a man in all San Francisco able to inspire +romance." If Alexina could not blush her dark gray eyes could sparkle and +melt. "All the men we meet don't belong to that rich group." + +"Bunch, darling. Where--will you give us the pointer?--are to be found the +romantic knights of San Francisco? 'Frisco as those tiresome Eastern people +call it. Makes me sick to think that they are even now pitying 'poor +'Frisco.' "Well?--I could beat my brains and not call one to mind." + +"Oh!" + +"What does that mean, Alex Groome? When you roll up your eyes like that you +look like a love-sick tomato." + +"Mortimer Dwight was most devoted last night," said Sibyl Thorndyke. "She +danced with him at least eight times." + +"You must have sat out alone to know what I was doing," Alexina began +hotly, but Aileen sprang at her and gripped her shoulders. + +"Don't tell me that you are interested in that cheap skate. Alexina Groome! +You!" + +"He's not a cheap skate. I despise your cheap slang." + +"He's a rank nobody." + +"You mean he isn't rich. Or his family didn't belong. What do you suppose I +care? I'm not a snob." + +"He is. A climbing, ingenuous, empty-headed snob." + +"You are a snob. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"I've a right to be a snob if I choose, and he hasn't. My snobbery is the +right sort: the 'I will maintain' kind. He'd give all the hair on his head +to have the right to that sort of snobbery. His is" (she chanted in a +high light maddening voice): "Oh, God, let me climb. Yank me up into the +paradise of San Francisco society. Burlingame, Alta, Menlo Park, Atherton, +Belvidere, San Rafael. Oh, God, it's awful to be a nobody, not to be in +the same class with these rich fellers, not to belong to the Pacific-Union +Club, not to have polo ponies, not to belong to smart golf clubs, to the +Burlingame Club. Not to get clothes from New York and London--" + +"You keep quiet," shrieked Alexina, who with difficulty refrained from +substituting: "You shut up." She flung off Aileen's hands. "What do you +know about him? He doesn't like you." + +"Never had a chance to find out." + +"What can you know about him, then?" + +"Think I'm blind? Think I'm deaf? Don't I know everything that goes on in +this town? Isn't sizing-up my long suit? And he's as dull as--as a fish +without salt. I sat next to him at a dinner, and all he could talk about +was the people he'd met--our sort, of course. And he was dull even at that. +He's all manners and bluff--" + +"You couldn't draw him out. He talked to me." + +"What about? I'm really interested to know. Everybody says the same thing. +They fall for his dancing and manners, and--well, yes--I 'll admit it--for +his looks. He even looks like a gentleman. But all the girls say he bores +'em stiff. They have to talk their heads off. What did he say to you that +was so frantically interesting?" + +"Well, of course--we danced most of the time." + +"That's just it. He's inherited the shell of some able old ancestor and not +a bit of the skull furniture. Nature often plays tricks like that. But I +could forgive him for being dull if he weren't such a damn snob." + +"You shan't call him names. If he wants to be one of us, and life was +so unkind as to--to--well, birth him on the outside, I'm sure that's no +crime." + +"Snobbery," said Miss Thorndyke, who was intellectual at the moment and +cultivating the phrase, "is merely a rather ingenuous form of aspiration. I +can't see that it varies except in kind from other forms of ambition. And +without ambition there would be no progress." + +"Oh, can it," sneered Judge Lawton's daughter. "You're all wrong, anyhow. +Snobbery leads to the rocks much oftener than to high achievement. I've +heard dad say so, and you won't venture to assert that _he_ doesn't +know. It bears about the same relation to progress that grafting does to +legitimate profits. Anyhow, it makes me sick, and I'm not going to have +Alex falling in love with a poor fish--" + +"Fish?" Alexina's voice rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare--and you +think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? What do +you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but drinking and +sport, whether they attend to business or not?--their fathers make them, +anyhow. And you want to marry one of them! They're fish, if you like." + +The two girls were glaring at each other. Gray eyes were blazing, green +eyes snapping. Two sets of white even teeth were bared. They looked like a +couple of belligerent puppies. Another moment and they would have forgotten +the sacred traditions of their class and flown at each other's hair. But +Miss Bascom interposed. Even the loss of her uninsured million did not +ruffle her, for she had another in Government and railroad bonds, and full +confidence in her brother, who was an admirable business man, and not in +the least dissipated. + +"Come, come," she said. "It's much too hot to fight. Dwight is not good +enough for Alex--from a worldly point of view, I mean," as Alexina made a +movement in her direction. "We should none of us marry out of our class. It +never works, somehow. But Mr. Dwight is really quite all right otherwise. I +like him very much, Alex darling, and I don't mind his being an outsider +in the least--so long as he doesn't try to marry one of us. He's _too_ +good-looking, and his heels are fairly inspired. No one questions the fact +that he is an honorable and worthy young man, working like a real man to +earn his living. It isn't at all as if he were an adventurer. He has never +struck me as being more of a snob than most people, and I don't see why I +haven't thought to ask him down to San Mateo for a week-end." + +"You'll certainly have a friend for life if you do," said Aileen +satirically. "Fall in love with him yourself if you choose. You can afford +it." + +"No fear. I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry a French marquis." + +"What?" Even Alexina forgot Mortimer Dwight. "Who is he? Where did you meet +him?" + +"I haven't met him yet. But I shall. I'm going to Paris next winter to +visit my aunt, and I'll find one. You get anything in this world you go +for hard enough. To be a French marquise is the most romantic thing in the +world." + +"Why not Elton Gwynne? It's an open secret that he's an English marquis. Or +that young Gathbroke Lady Victoria brought last night?" + +"He's a younger son, and he never looked at any one but Alex. And Isabel +Otis has preempted Mr. Gwynne. And I adore France and don't care about +England." + +"Well, that is romantic if you like!" cried Aileen, her green eyes dancing" +"You have my best wishes. Doesn't it make your Geary Street knight look +cheap--he boards somewhere down on Geary Street." + +"No, it doesn't! And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. +Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told mother +so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title." + +"I wish your mother could hear you. So--he's been getting round her has +he? Where on earth did he meet her?" + +Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the +favorable impression he had made. + +Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank +outsider--superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. I'll +put a flea in her ear--" + +"You dare!" + +Aileen lifted her shoulders. "Well, as a matter of fact I can't. Tattling +just isn't in my line. But if I can queer him with you I will." + +"I won't talk about him any more." Alexina drew herself up with immense +dignity. She had the advantage of Aileen not only in inches but in a +natural repose of manner. The eminent Judge Lawton's only child, upon whom, +possibly, he may have lavished too much education, had a thin nervous +little body that was seldom in repose, and her face, with its keen +irregular features and brilliant green eyes, shifted its surface +impressions as rapidly as a cinematograph. Olive Bascom had soft blue eyes +and abundant brown hair, and Sibyl Thorndyke had learned to hold her long +black eyes half closed, and had the black hair and rich complexion of a +Creole great-grandmother. Alexina was admittedly the "beauty of the bunch." +Nevertheless, Miss Lawton had informed her doting parent before this, her +first season, was half over, that she was _vivid_ enough to hold her own +with the best of them. The boys said she was a live wire and she preferred +that high specialization to the tameness of mere beauty. + + + +IV + + +Said Alexina: "Sibyl, what are you going to do with your young life? Shall +you marry an English duke or a New York millionaire?" + +But Miss Thorndyke smiled mysteriously. She was not as frank as the other +girls, although by no means as opaque as she imagined. + +Aileen laughed. "Oh, don't ask her. Doubt if she knows. To-day she's all +for being intellectual and reading those damn dull Russian novelists. +To-morrow she may be setting up as an odalisque. It would suit her style +better." + +Miss Thorndyke's face was also crimson from the heat, but she would not +have flushed had it been the day before. She was not subject to sudden +reflexes. + +"Your satire is always a bit clumsy, dear," she said sweetly. "The +odalisque is not your role at all events." + +"I don't go in for roles." + +And the four girls wrangled and dreamed and planned, while a city burnt +beneath them; some three hundred million dollars flamed out, lives were +ruined, exterminated, altered; and Labor sat on the hills and smiled +cynically at the tremendous impetus the earth had handed them on that +morning of April eighteenth, nineteen hundred and six. + +They were too young to know or to care. When the imagination is trying its +wings it is undismayed even by a world at war. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +That night Alexina knew that romance had surely come to her. She shared her +room with three old ladies who slept fitfully between blasts of dynamite. +But she sat at the window with no desire for oblivion. + +On the lawn paced a young man with a rifle in the crook of his arm. He was +tall and young and very gallant of bearing; no less a person than Mortimer +Dwight, who had been sworn in that morning as a member of the Citizens' +Patrol, and at his own request detailed to keep watch over the house of +Mrs. Groome. + +He had not been able to pay his promised visits during the day but had +arrived at seven o'clock, dining beside Mrs. Abbott, and surrounded by old +ladies whose names were as historic as Mrs. Groome's. The cook had deserted +after the second heavy shock, and, with her wardrobe in a pillow case, had +tramped to the farthest confines of the Presidio. It was not fear alone +that induced her flight. There was a rumor that the Government would feed +the city, and why should not a hard-working woman enjoy a month or two of +sheer idleness? Let the quality cook for themselves. It would do them good. + +James and the housemaid had cooked the dinner, and Alexina and her friends +waited on the table. Then the girls, to Alexina's relief, went home to +inquire after their families, and she accompanied Mr. Dwight while he +explored every corner of the grounds to make sure that no potential thieves +lurked in the heavy shadows cast by the trees. + +He had been very alert and thorough and Alexina admired him consumedly. +There was no question but that he was one of those men--Aileen called it +the one hundred per cent male--upon whose clear brain and strong arm a +woman might depend even in the midst of an infuriated mob. He had an +opportunity that comes to few aspiring young men born into the world's +unblest millions, and if he made the most of it he was equally assured that +he was acting in strict accord with the instincts and characteristics that +had descended upon him by the grace of God. + + + +II + + +There was no physical cowardice in him; and if he would have preferred a +life of ease and splendor, he had no illusions regarding the amount +of "hustling" necessary to carry him to the goal of his desires and +ambitions--unless he made a lucky strike. He played the stock market in a +small way and made a few hundred dollars now and then. + +He would have been glad to marry a wealthy girl, Olive Bascom, by +preference, for he had an inner urge to the short cut, but he had found +these spoiled daughters of San Francisco unresponsive...and then, suddenly, +he had fallen in love with Alexina Groome. + +His past was green and prophylactic. He was moral both by inheritance +and necessity, and his parents, people of fair intelligence, if rather +ineffective, stern principles, and good old average ideals, had taken their +responsibilities toward their two children very seriously. People who +talked with young Dwight might not find him resourceful in conversation but +they were deeply impressed with his manners and principles. The younger +men, with the exception of Bob Cheever, who respected his capacity for +work, did not take to him; principally, no doubt, he reflected with some +bitterness, because he was not "their sort." + +He never admitted to himself that he was a snob, for something deep and +still unfaced in his consciousness, bade him see as little fault in himself +as possible, forbade him to admit the contingency of a failure, impelled +him to call such weaknesses as the fortunate condemned by some one of those +interchangeable terms with which the lexicons are so generous. + +But if he would not face the word snob he told himself proudly that he was +ambitious; and why should he not aspire to the best society? Was he not +entitled to it by birth? His family may not have been prominent to excess +in Utica, but it was indisputably "old." However, he assured himself that +the chief reason for his determination to mingle with the social elect +of San Francisco was not so much a tribute to his ancestors, or even the +insistence of youth for the decent pleasures of that brief period, but +because of the opportunities to make those friends indispensable to +every young man forced to cut his own way through life. Even if his good +conscience had compelled him to admit that he was a snob he would have +reminded it there was no harm in snobbery anyway. It was the most amiable +of the vices. But he thought too well of himself for any such admission, +and his mind had not been trained to fish, even, in shallow waters. + +Nor did he admit that if the lovely Miss Groome had been a stenographer +he would not have looked at her. He would indeed have turned his face +resolutely in the other direction if she had happened to sit in his +employer's office. Fate forbade him a marriage of that sort, and dalliance +with an inferior was forbidden both by his morals and his social integrity. + +But that Alexina Groome should be beautiful, as exaltedly born as only +a San Franciscan of the old stock might be, with a determinate income, +however modest, with a background of friendly males, as substantial +financially as socially, who would be sure to give a new member of the +family a leg-up (he liked the atmosphere and flavor of the lighter English +novels), and, above all, responsive, seemed to him a direct reward for the +circumspect life he had lived and his fidelity to his chosen upward path. + + + +III + + +He was free to fall in love as profoundly as was in him, and during that +early hour of the agitated night, with that pit of hell roaring below to +the steady undertone of a thousand tramping feet, he felt, despite the fact +that all business was moribund for the present and his savings were in the +hot vaults of a dynamited bank, that he was a supremely fortunate young +man. + +Moreover, this disaster furnished a steady topic for conversation. He was +aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a dinner +table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he assured +himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, and that no +one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to sport, still +there had been times when he was painfully aware that a dinner partner or +some bright charming creature whose invitation to call he had accepted, +looked politely bored or chattered desperately to cover the silences into +which he abruptly relapsed; when, "for the life of him he had not been able +to think of a thing to say." + +Then, briefly, he had felt a bitter rebellion at fate for having denied him +the gift of a lively and supple mind, as well as those numberless worldly +benefits lavished on men far less deserving than he. + +He felt dull and depressed after such revelations and sometimes considered +attending evening lectures at the University of California with his sister. +But for this form of mental exertion he had no taste, keenly as he applied +himself to his work during the hours of business; and he assured himself +that such knowledge would do him no good anyway. It did not seem to be +prevalent in society. If he had been a brilliant hand at bridge or poker, +the inner fortifications of society would have gone down before him, but +his courage did not run to card gambling with wealthy idlers who set their +own pace. On the stock market he could step warily and no one the wiser. +It would have horrified him to be called a piker, for his instincts were +really lavish, and the economical habit an achievement in which he took a +resentful pride. + + + +IV + + +On this evening he had talked almost incessantly to Alexina, and she, +in the vocabulary of her years and set, had thought him frantically +interesting as he described the immediate command of the city assumed by +General Funston, the efforts of the Committee of Fifty, formed early that +morning by leading citizens, to help preserve order and to give assistance +to the refugees; of rich young men, and middle-aged citizens who had not +spent an afternoon away from their club window for ten years, carrying +dynamite in their cars through the very flames; of wild and terrible +episodes he had witnessed or heard of during the day. + +His brain was hot from the mental and physical atmosphere of the perishing +city, the unique excitement of the day: when he had felt as if snatched +from his quiet pasture by the roots; and by the extraordinary good fortune +that had delivered this perfect girl and her formidable parent almost into +his hands. Under his sternly controlled exterior his spirits sang wildly +that his luck had turned, and dazzling visions of swift success and +fulfillment of all ambitions snapped on and off in his stimulated brain. + +Alexina thought him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to her +own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a romantic +maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her brilliant long +eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth wore a constant alluring +smile. + +A declaration trembled on his tongue, but he felt that he would be taking +an unfair advantage and restrained himself. Besides, he wished to win Mrs. +Groome completely to his side, to say nothing of the still more alarming +because more worldly Mrs. Abbott. _She_ was a snob, if you like! + + + +V + + +At nine o'clock, after he had given the inmates of the house and +outbuildings stern orders not to light a candle or lamp under any +circumstances--such was the emergency law--he bade Alexina a gallant +good-night, and betook himself to the lawn within the grove of sighing +eucalyptus trees, to pace up and down, his rifle in his arm, his eyes +alert, and quite aware of the admiring young princess at the casement +above. + +He did his work very thoroughly, visiting outhouses at intervals and +sharply inspecting the weary occupants, as well as the prostrate forms +under the trees. They were all far too tired and apprehensive to dream of +breaking into the house that had given them hospitality, even had they been +villains, which they were not. + +But they did not resent his inspection; rather they felt a sense of +security in this watching manly figure with the gun, for they were rather +afraid of villains themselves: it was reported that many looters had +been stood against hissing walls and shot by the stern orders of General +Punston. They asked their more immediate protector questions as to the +progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as befitted his office. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +MRS. ABBOTT entered Alexina's room and caught her hanging out of the +window. She had motored up to the city during the afternoon, and, after +a vain attempt to persuade her mother to go down at once to Alta, had +concluded to remain over night. The spectacle was the most horrifyingly +interesting she had ever witnessed in her temperate life, and her +self-denying Aunt Clara was in charge of the children. Her husband had +driven himself to town as soon as he heard of the fire and been sworn in a +member of the Committee of Fifty. + +"Darling," she said firmly to the sister who was little older than +her first-born, "I want to have a talk with you. Come into papa's old +dressing-room. I had a cot put there, and as there is no room for another I +am quite alone." + +Alexina followed with lagging feet. She had always given her elder sister +the same surface obedience that she gave her mother. It "saved trouble." +But life had changed so since morning that she was in no mood to keep +up the role of "little sister," sweet and malleable and innocent as a +Ballinger-Groome at the age of eighteen should be. + + + +II + + +She dropped on the floor and embraced her knees with her arms. Mrs. Abbott +seated herself in as dignified an attitude as was possible on the edge of +the cot. Even the rocking-chairs had been taken down to the dining-room. + +"Well?" queried Alexina, pretending to stifle a yawn. "What is it? I am too +sleepy to think." + +"Sleepy? You looked sleepy with your eyes like saucers watching that young +man." + +"Everybody that can is watching the fire--" + +"Don't quibble, Alexina. You are naturally a truthful child. Do you mean to +tell me you were not watching Mr. Dwight?" + +"Well, if I say yes, it is not because I care a hang about living up to my +reputation, but because I don't care whether you know it or not." + +"That is very naughty--" + +"Stop talking to me as if I were a child." + +"You are excited, darling, and no wonder." + +Maria Abbott was in the process of raising a family and she did it with +tact and firmness. Nature had done much to assist her in her several +difficult roles. She was very tall straight and slender, with a haughty +little head, as perfect in shape as Alexina's, set well back on her +shoulders, and what had been known in her Grandmother Ballinger's day as a +cameo-profile. Her abundant fair hair added to the high calm of her mien +and it was always arranged in the prevailing fashion. On the street she +invariably wore the tailored suit, and her tailor was the best in New York. +She thought blouses in public indecent, and wore shirtwaists of linen or +silk with high collars, made by the same master-hand. There was nothing +masculine in her appearance, but she prided herself upon being the best +groomed woman even in that small circle of her city that dressed as well as +the fashionable women of New York. At balls and receptions she wore gowns +of an austere but expensive simplicity, and as the simple jewels of her +inheritance looked pathetic beside the blazing necklaces and sunbursts +(there were only two or three tiaras in San Francisco) of those new people +whom she both deplored and envied, she wore none; and she was assured that +the lack added to the distinction of her appearance. + +But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, determined +as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was alive, push the +aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was a strict conformer +to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts to enhance and preserve +youth as the converse of respectable. Her once delicate pink and white skin +was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose had never known powder; but even +in the glare of the fire her skin looked cool and pale, for the heat had +not crimsoned her. Her blood was rather thin and she prided herself +upon the fact. She may have lost her early beauty, but she looked the +indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, as her more naive grandmothers would +have phrased it. + +It sufficed. + + + +III + + +By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance she +was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress like +her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were known, no +doubt." + +In reality she was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and +sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all events +her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He had his +reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her own old +set, she was intensely loyal; and although she had a cold contempt for the +institution of divorce, if one of that select band strayed into it, no +matter at which end, her loyalty rose triumphant above her social code, and +she was not afraid to express it publicly. + +Toward Alexina she felt less a sister than a second mother, and gave her +freely of her abundant maternal reservoir. That "little sister" had at +times sulked under this proud determination to assist in the bringing-up +of the last of the Ballinger-Groomes, did not discourage her. She might be +soft in her affections but she never swerved from her duty as she saw it. +Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only needed a firm hand to guide +her along that proud secluded old avenue of the city's elect, until she had +ambled safely to established respectability and power. + +She had been alarmed at one time at certain symptoms of cleverness she +noticed in the child, and at certain enthusiastic remarks in the letters of +Ballinger Groome, with whose family Alexina had spent her vacations during +her two years in New York at school. But there had been no evidence of +anything but a young girl's natural love of pleasure since her debut in +society, and she was quite unaware of Alexina's wicked divagations. She +had spent the winter in Santa Barbara, for the benefit of her oldest, boy, +whose lungs were delicate, and, like her mother, never deigned to read the +society columns of the newspapers. Her reason, however, was her own. In +spite of her blood, her indisputable position, her style, she cut but a +small figure in those columns. She was not rich enough to vie with those +who entertained constantly, and was merely set down as one of many guests. +The fact induced a slight bitterness. + + + +IV + + +She began tactfully. "I like this young Mr. Dwight very much, and shall ask +him down, as mother desires it. But I hope, darling, that you will follow +my example and not marry until you have had four years of society, in other +words have seen something of the world--" + +"California is not the world." + +"Society, in other words human nature, is everywhere much alike. As you +know, I spent a year in England when I was a young lady, and was presented +at court--by Lady Barnstable, who was Lee Tarlton, one of us. It was +merely San Francisco on a large scale, with titles, and greater and older +houses and parks, and more jewels, and more arrogance, and everything much +grander, of course. And they talked politics a great deal, which bored +me as I am sure they would bore you. The beauty of our society is its +simplicity and lack of arrogance--consciousness of birth or of wealth. +Even the more recent members of society, who owe their position to their +fortunes, have a simplicity and kindness quite unknown in New York. Eastern +people always remark it. And yet, owing to their constant visits to the +East and to Europe, they know all of the world there is to know." + +"So do the young men, I suppose! I never heard of their doing much +traveling--" + +"I should call them remarkably sophisticated young men. But the point is, +darling, that if you wait as long as I did you will discover that the men +who attract a girl in her first season would bore her to extinction in her +fourth." + +"You mean after I've had all the bloom rubbed off, and men are forgetting +to ask me to dance. Then I'll be much more likely to take what I can get. I +want to marry with all the bloom on and all my illusions fresh." + +"But should you like to have them rubbed off by your husband? You've heard +the old adage: 'marry in haste and repent--'" + +"I've been brought up on adages. They are called bromides now. As for +illusions, everybody says they don't last anyway. I'd rather have them +dispelled after a long wonderful honeymoon by a husband than by a lot of +flirtations in a conservatory and in dark corners--" + +"Good heavens! Do you suppose that I flirted in a conservatory and in dark +corners?" + +"I'll bet you didn't, but lots do. And in the haute noblesse, the ancient +aristocracy! I've seen 'em." + +"It isn't possible that you--" + +"Oh, no, I love to dance too much. But I'm not easily shocked. I 'll tell +you that right here. And I 'll tell you what I confessed to mother this +morning." + + + +V + + +When she had finished Mrs. Abbott sat for a few moments petrified; but +she was thirty-eight, not sixty-five, and there was neither dismay nor +softening in her narrowed light blue eyes. + +"But that is abominable! Abominable!" + +And Alexina, who was prepared for a scolding, shrank a little, for it was +the first time that her doting sister had spoken to her with severity. + +"I don't care," she said stubbornly, and she set her soft lips until they +looked stern and hard. + +"But you must care. You are a Groome." + +"Oh, yes, and a Ballinger, and a Geary, and all the rest of it. But I'm +also going to annex another name of my own choosing. I'll marry whom I damn +please, and that is the end of it." + +"Alexina Groome!" Mrs. Abbott arose in her wrath. "Cannot you see for +yourself what association with all these common people has done to you? +It's the influence--" + +"Of two years in New York principally. The girls there are as hard as +nails--try to imitate the English. Ours are not a patch, not even Aileen, +although she does her best. But I hadn't finished--I even powder my face." +Alexina grinned up at her still rudderless sister. "After mother is asleep +and I am ready to slip out." + +"I thought you were safe in New York under the eyes of Ballinger and Geary, +or rather of Mattie and Charlotte. They are such earnest good women, so +interested in charities--" + +"Deadly. But you don't know the girls," + +"And I have told mother again and again that she should not permit you to +associate with Aileen Lawton." + +"She can't help herself. Aileen is one of us. Besides, mother is devoted to +the Judge." + +"But powder! None of us has ever put anything but clean cold water on her +face." + +"You'd look a long sight better if you did. Cold cream, too. You +wouldn't have any wrinkles at your age, if you weren't so damn +respectable-aristocratic, you call it. It's just middle class. And as out +of date as speech without slang. As for me, I'd paint my lips as Aileen +does, only I don't like the taste, and they're too red, anyhow. It's much +smarter to make up than not to. Times change. You don't wear hoopskirts +because our magnificent Grandmother Ballinger did. You dress as smartly as +the Burlingame crowd. Why does your soul turn green at make-up? All these +people you look down upon because our families were rich and important in +the fifties are more up-to-date than you are, although I will admit that +none of them has the woman-of-the-world air of the smartest New York women +--not that terribly respectable inner set in New York--Aunt Mattie's and +Aunt Charlotte's--_that_ just revels in looking mid-Victorian....The newer +people I've met here--their manners are just as good as ours, if not +better, for, as you said just now, they don't put on airs. You do, darling. +You don't know it, but you would put an English duchess to the blush, when +you suddenly remember who you are--" + +Mrs. Abbott had resumed her seat on the cot. "If you have finished +criticizing your elder sister, I should like to ask you a few questions. Do +you smoke and drink cocktails?" + +"No, I don't. But I should if I liked them, and if they didn't make me feel +queer." + +"You--you--" Mrs. Abbot's clear crisp voice sank to an agonized whisper. +For the first time she was really terrified. "Do you gamble?" + +"Why, of course not. I have too much fun to think of anything so stupid." + +"Does Aileen Lawton gamble?" + +"She just doesn't, and don't you insinuate such a thing." + +"She has bad blood in her. Her mother--" + +"I thought her mother was your best friend." + +"She was. But she went to pieces, poor dear, and Judge Lawton wisely sent +her East. I can't tell you why. There are things you don't understand." + +"Oh, don't I? Don't you fool yourself." + +Mrs. Abbott leaned back on the cot and pressed it hard with either hand. + +"Alexina, I have never been as disturbed as I am at this moment. When +Sally and I were your age, we were beautifully innocent. If I thought that +Joan--" + +"Oh, Joan'll get away from you. She's only fourteen now, but when she's my +age--well, I guess you and your old crowd are the last of the Mohicans. I +doubt if there'll even be any chaperons left. Joan may not smoke nor drink. +Who cares for 'vices,' anyhow? But you haven't got a moat and drawbridge +round Rincona, and she'll just get out and mix. She'll float with the +stream--and all streams lead to Burlingame." + +"I have no fear about Joan," said Mrs. Abbott, with dignity. "Four years +are a long time. I shall sow seeds, and she is a born Ballinger--I am +dreadfully afraid that my dear father is coming out in you. Even the boys +are Ballingers--" + + + +VI + + +"Tell me about father?" coaxed Alexina, who was repentant, now that +the excitement of the day had reached its climax in the baiting of her +admirable sister and was rapidly subsiding. "Mother let fall something this +morning; and once Aileen...she began, but shut up like a clam. Was he so +very dreadful?" + +"Well, since you know so much, he was what is called fast. Married men of +his position often were in his day--quite openly. Yesterday, I should have +hesitated--" + +"Fire away. Don't mind me. Yes, I know what fast is. Lots of men are +to-day. Even members of the A. A." + +"A. A.?" + +"Ancient Aristocracy. The kind England and France would like to have." + +"I'm ashamed of you. Have you no pride of blood? The best blood of the +South, to say nothing of--" + +"I'm tickled to death. I just dote on being a Groome, plus Ballinger, plus. +And I'm not guying, neither. I'd hate like the mischief to be second rate, +no matter what I won later. It must be awful to have to try to get to +places that should be yours by divine right, as it were. But all that's no +reason for being a moss-back, a back number, for not having any fun--to +be glued to the ancestral rock like a lot of old limpets....And it should +preserve us from being snobs," she added. + +"Snobs?" + +"The 'I will maintain' sort, as Aileen puts it." + +"Don't quote that dreadful child to me. I haven't an atom of snobbery in my +composition. I reserve the right to know whom I please, and to exclude from +my house people to whom I cannot accustom myself. Why I know quite a number +of people at Burlingame. I dined there informally last night." + +"Yes, because it has the fascination for you that wine has for the +clergyman's son." Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the only +people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those of the +old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were one of us. +They went there to live because they were tired of being moss-backs. Why +don't you follow their example and go the whole hog? They--and their +girls--have a ripping time." + +"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the young +people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women drink and +smoke quite openly on the verandah." + +"You may bet your sweet life they do. They are honest, and quite as sure of +their position as you are. But tell me about father. How did mother come to +marry him? If he was such a naughty person I should think she would have +exercised the sound Ballinger instincts and thrown him down." + +"Mother met him in Washington. Grandfather Ballinger was senator at the +time--" + +"From Virginia or California?" + +"It is shocking that you do not know more of the family history. From +California, of course. He had great gifts and political aspirations, +and realized that there would be more opportunity in the new state-- +particularly in such a famous one--than in his own where all the men +in public life seemed to have taken root--I remember his using that +expression. So, he came here with his bride, the beauty of Richmond--" + +"Oh, Lord, I know all about her. Remember the flavor in my mother's milk--" + +"Well, you'd look like her if you had brown eyes and a white skin, and if +your mouth were smaller. And until you learn to stand up straight you'll +never have anything like her elegance of carriage. However....Of course +they had plenty of money--for those days. They had come to Virginia in the +days of Queen Elizabeth and received a large grant of land--" + +"Don't fancy I haven't heard _that_!" + +"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--" + +"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his +ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!" + +"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new community, +and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that small band of +social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs. Hunt McLane, the +Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the Gearys, the Talbots, +the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom's grandmother--" + +"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother, +although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she was a +leader herself and 'money wasn't everything.' We never had so much of it +anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle old house--" + +Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were +talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was. + +"This house and its traditions are sacred--" + +"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast man." + +"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He was a +young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the first year of +the war and returned at once to California; of course he had been one of +the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by no means poor. Of +course in Washington he was asked to the best houses. At that time he was +very ambitious and absorbed in politics and the advancement of California. +Afterward he renounced Washington for reasons I never clearly understood; +although he told me once that California was the only place for a man +to live; and--well--I am afraid he could do more as he pleased out here +without criticism--from men, at least. The standards--for men--were very +low in those days. But when he met mother--" + +"Was mother ever very pretty?" + +"She was handsome," replied Mrs. Abbott guardedly. "Of course she had the +freshness and roundness of youth. I am told she had a lovely color and the +brightest eyes. And she had a beautiful figure. She had several proposals, +but she chose father." + +"And had the devil's own time with him. She let out that much this +morning." + +"I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was +determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child's brain +was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at the +revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the problem of +"handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made generalities. + +"Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time and +held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever accused him +of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes more than one +reform to his determination and ability. + +"He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, for +he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; what men +call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a brilliant group of +disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married +women here have always been great gossips. Well--you may as well know +it--it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary, +who are the most abstemious of men--he drank and gambled and had too much +to do with those unspeakable women.... + +"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he +hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks), +he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only +have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off +when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after +marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a +visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys +a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married. +But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he +had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her +share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her +share of the Ballinger estate--not very much." + + + +VII + + +"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?" + +"Mother did everything a good woman could do." + +"Maybe she was too good." + +"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good." + +"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has +different tastes." + +"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower +herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father." + +"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why didn't +mother get a divorce?" + +"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been +divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very dear friends +had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I didn't approve +even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home." + +"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for +instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and he +was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I did +decide to marry Mr. Dwight--mind, I don't say I care the tip of my little +finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have to admit +that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he doesn't drink, +or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works hard and is as steady +as--I was going to say as a judge, but I've been told that all judges, in +this town at least, are not as steady as you think. Anyhow, he is. His +family is as old as ours, even if it did have reverses or something. And +you can't deny that he is a gentleman, every inch of him." + +"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But--well, he +was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents. He +admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a broker's +office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it." + +"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what power +you have left." + +She rose and stretched and yawned in a most unladylike fashion. + +"I'm going to make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little chat +with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can stop me, for +you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! We shall have to +shout. It will be more than proper. Good night, darling." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora Dwight with a quick turn of a strong and supple wrist flung a folding +chair up through the trap door of the roof. She followed with a pitcher of +water, opened the chair, and sat down. + +It was the second day of the fire, which was now raging in the valleys +north of Market Street and up the hills. It was still some distance from +all but the lower end of Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that divides the +eastern and western sections of the city, as Market Street divides the +northern and southern, and her own home on Geary Street was beyond Franklin +and safe for the present. It was expected that the fire would be halted +by dynamiting the blocks east of the avenue, but as it had already leapt +across not far from Market Street and was running out toward the Mission, +Gora pinned her faith in nothing less than a change of wind. + +Life has many disparate schools. The one attended by Miss Gora Dwight had +taught her to hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be thankful +if she escaped (to use the homely phrase; one rarely found leisure for +originality in this particular school) by the skin of her teeth. + +Gora fully expected to lose the house she sat on, and had packed what few +valuables she possessed in two large bags: the fine underclothes she had +made at odd moments, and a handsome set of toilet articles her brother had +given her on the Christmas before last. He had had a raise of salary and +her experiment with lodgers had proved even more successful than she had +dared to hope. On the following Christmas he had given her a large book +with a fancy binding (which she had exchanged for something she could +read). After satisfying the requirements of a wardrobe suitable for the +world of fashion, supplemented by the usual toll of flowers and bon-bons, +he had little surplus for domestic presents. + +Gora's craving for drama was far deeper and more significant than young +Alexina Groome's, and she determined to watch until the last moment the +terrific spectacle of the burning city. The wind had carried the smoke +upward for a mile or more and pillars of fire supported it at such +irregular intervals that it looked like a vast infernal temple in which +demons were waging war, and undermining the roof in their senseless fury. + +In some places whole blocks of houses were blazing; here and there high +buildings burned in solitary grandeur, the flames leaping from every window +or boiling from the roof. Sometimes one of these buildings would disappear +in a shower of sparks and an awful roar, or a row of humbler houses was +lifted bodily from the ground to burst into a thousand particles of flying +wood, and disappear. + +The heat was overpowering (she bathed her face constantly from the pitcher) +and the roar of the flames, the constant explosions of dynamite, the loud +vicious crackling of wood, the rending and splitting of masonry, the hoarse +impact of walls as they met the earth, was the scene's wild orchestral +accompaniment and, despite underlying apprehension and horror, gave Gora +one of the few pleasurable sensations of her life. + +But she moved her chair after a moment and fixed her gaze, no longer rapt +but ironic, on the flaming hillcrests, the long line of California Street, +nucleus of the wealth and fashion of San Francisco. The Western Addition +was fashionable and growing more so, but it had been too far away for the +pioneers of the fifties and sixties, the bonanza kings of the seventies, +the railroad magnates of the eighties, and they had built their huge and +hideous mansions upon the hill that rose almost perpendicularly above the +section where they made and lost their millions. Some wag or toady had +named it Nob Hill and the inhabitants had complacently accepted the title, +although they refrained from putting it on their cards. And now it was in +flames. + + + +II + + +Gora recalled the day when she had walked slowly past those mansions, +staring at each in turn as she assimilated the disheartening and +infuriating fact that she and the children that inhabited them belonged to +different worlds. + +Her family at that time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor +Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a sister +recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less mercurial +husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, then a rangy +girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large private school in the +fashionable district. + +Gora, after all these years, ground her teeth as she had a sudden blighting +vision of the day a week later, when, puzzled and resentful, she had walked +up the steep hill with several of the girls whose homes were on California +and Taylor Streets, and two of whom, like herself, were munching an apple. + +They had hardly noticed her sufficiently to ignore her, either then or +during the previous week, so absorbed were they in their own close common +interests. She listened to allusions which she barely could comprehend, but +it was evident that one was to give a party on Friday night and the others +were expected as a matter of course. Gora assumed that Jim and Sam and Rex +and Bob were brothers or beaux. Last names appeared to be no more necessary +than labels to inform the outsider of the social status of these favored +maidens, too happy and contented to be snobs but quite callous to the +feelings of strange little girls. + +They drifted one by one into their opulent homes, bidding one another a +careless or a sentimental good-by, and Gora, throwing her head as far back +on her shoulders as it would go without dislocation, stalked down to the +unfashionable end of Taylor Street and up to the solitude of her bedroom +under the eaves of the cottage. + +On the following day she had lingered in the school yard until the other +girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular hill so +rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a pain in her +side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the imposing homes +of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and puzzled eyes, her young +soul in tumult. It was the old inarticulate cry of class, of the unchosen +who seeks the reason and can find none. + + + +III + + +As she had a tendency not only to brood but to work out her own problems it +was several days before she demanded an explanation of her mother. + +Mrs. Dwight, a prematurely gray and wrinkled woman, who had once +been handsome with good features and bright coloring, and who wore a +deliberately cheerful expression that Gora often wanted to wipe off, was +sitting in the dining-room making a skirt for her daughter; which, Gora +reflected bitterly, was sure to be too long on one side if not in front. + +Mrs. Dwight's smile faded as she looked at the somber face and huddled +figure in the worn leather arm-chair in which Mr. Dwight spent his silent +evenings. + +"Why, my dear, you surely knew long before this that some people are rich +and others poor--to say nothing of the betwixts and betweens." She was an +exact woman in small matters. "That's all there is to it. I thought it a +good idea to send you to a private school where you might make friends +among girls of your own class." + +"Own class? They treat me like dirt. How am I of their class when they live +in palaces and I in a hovel?" + +"I have reproved you many times for exaggerated speech. What I meant was +that you are as well-born as any of them (better than many) only we have +been unfortunate. Your father tried hard enough, but he just doesn't seem +to have the money-making faculty like so many men. Now, we've had a little +luck I'm really hopeful. I've just had a nice letter from your Aunt Eliza +Goring--I named you for her, but I couldn't inflict you with Eliza. You +know she is many years older than I am and has no children. She was out +here once just before you were born. We--we were very hard up indeed. It +was she who furnished this cottage for us and paid a year's rent. Soon +after, your father got his present position and we have managed to +get along. She always sends me a little cheque at Christmas and I am +sure--well, there are some things we don't say....But this legacy from your +Aunt Jane is the only real stroke of luck we ever had, and I can't help +feeling hopeful. I do believe better times are coming....It used to seem +terribly hard and unjust that so many people all about us had so much and +we nothing, and that in this comparatively small city we knew practically +no one. But I have got over being bitter and envious. You do when you are +busy every minute. And then we have the blessing of health, and Mortimer is +the best boy in the world, and you are a very good child when you are not +in a bad temper. I think you will be handsome, too, although you are pretty +hopeless at present; but of course you will never have anything like +Mortimer's looks. He is the living image of the painting of your +Great-great-great-grandfather Dwight that used to hang in the dining-room +in Utica, and who was in the first Congress. Now, do try and make friends +with the nicer of the children." + +But Gora's was not a conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea +of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and +humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first +position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction +of the teachers an angry emulation ensued with the gratifying result that +although the girls could not pass Gora, their weekly marks were higher, and +for the rest of the term they did less giggling even after school hours, +and more studying. + +But Gora would not return for a second term. She had made no friends among +the girls, although, no doubt, having won their respect, they would, with +the democracy of childhood, have admitted her to intimacy by degrees, +particularly if she had proved to be socially malleable. + +But for some obscure reason it made Gora happier to hate them all, and when +she had passed her examinations victoriously, and taken every prize, except +for tidiness and deportment, she said good-by with some regret to the +teachers, who had admired and encouraged her but did not pretend to love +her, and announced as soon as she arrived at home that she should enter the +High School at the beginning of the following term. + + + +IV + + +Her parents were secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future +prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her sister +Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but unfortunately Mrs. +Goring had amused herself with speculation in her old age, and had left +barely enough to pay her funeral expenses. + +Mrs. Dwight broached the subject of their immediate future to her husband +that evening. She had some time since made up her mind, in case the school +experiment was not a success, to furnish a larger house with what remained +of the legacy, and take boarders. + +"I wouldn't do it if Gora had made the friends I hoped for her," she said, +turning the heel of the first of her son's winter socks, "and there's no +such thing as a social come-down for us; for that matter, there is more +than one lady, once wealthy, who is keeping a boarding-house in this town. +Gora will have to work anyhow, and as for Mortimer--" she glanced fondly at +her manly young son, who was amiably playing checkers in the parlor with +his sister, "he is sure to make his fortune." + +"I don't know," said Mr. Dwight heavily. "I don't know." + +"Why, what do you mean?" asked his wife sharply. + +Mrs. Dwight belonged to that type of American women whose passions in youth +are weak and anaemic, not to say exceedingly shame-faced, but which in +mature years become strong and selfish and jealous, either for a lover or a +son. Mrs. Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had centered all the +accumulated forces of her being on the son whom she idealized after the +fashion of her type; and as she had corrected his obvious faults when he +was a boy, it was quite true that he was kind, amiable, honest, honorable, +patriotic, industrious, clean, polite, and moral; if hardly as handsome as +Apollo or as brilliant and gifted as she permitted herself to believe. + +"What do you mean?" she repeated, although she lowered her voice. It was +rarely that it assumed an edge when addressing her husband. She had never +reproached him for being a failure, for she had recognized his limitations +early and accepted her lot. But something in his tone shook her maternal +complacence and roused her to instant defense. + +Mr. Dwight took his pipe from his mouth and also cast a glance toward the +parlor, but the absorbed players were beyond the range of his rather weak +voice. + +"I mean this," he said with nothing of his usual vague hesitancy of speech. +"I'm not so sure that Morty is beyond clerk size." + +"You--you--John Dwight--your son--" The thin layer of pale flesh on +Mrs. Dwight's face seemed to collapse upon its harsh framework with the +terrified wrath that shook her. Her mouth fell apart, and hot smarting +tears welled slowly to her eyes, faded with long years of stitching; not +only for her own family but for many others when money had been more than +commonly scarce. "Mortimer can do anything. Anything." + +"Can he?" Why doesn't he show it then? He went to work at sixteen and is +now twenty-two. He is drawing just fifty dollars a month. He's well liked +in the firm, too." + +"Why don't they raise his salary?" + +"Because that's all he's worth to them. He's a good steady honest clerk, +nothing more." + +"He's very young--" + +"If a man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in his +brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two--if he has been in that +forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of this +country. And employers are always on the look-out for those qualities +and only too anxious to find them and push a young man on and up. Many +a president of a great business started life as a clerk, or even office +boy--" + +"That is what I have always known would happen to Morty. I am sure, sure, +that you are doing him a cruel injustice." + +"I hope I am. But I am a failure myself and I know what a man needs in the +way of natural equipment to make a success of his life." + +"But he is so energetic and industrious and honorable and likable and--" + +"I was all that." + +"Then--" Mrs. Dwight's voice trailed off; it sounded flat and old. "What do +you both lack?" + +"Brains." + + + +V + + +Mrs. Dwight had repeated this conversation to Gora shortly before her +death, and the girl in her reminiscent mood recalled it as she stared with +somber eyes and ironic lips at the havoc the fire was playing with those +lofty mansions which had stood to her all these intervening years as +symbols of the unpardonable injustice of class. + +She recalled another of the few occasions when Mrs. Dwight, who believed +in acceptance and contentment, had been persuaded to discuss the +idiosyncrasies of her adopted city. + +"It isn't that money is the standard here as it is in New York. Of course +there is a very wealthy set these late years and they set a pace that makes +it difficult for the older families, like the Groomes for instance--I met +Mrs. Groome once at a summer resort where I was housekeeper that year, and +I thought her very typical and interesting. She was so kind to me without +seeing me at all....But those fine old families, who are all of good old +Eastern or Southern stock--if they manage to keep in society are still the +most influential element in it....Family....Having lived in California long +enough to be one of that old set....To be, without question, one of them. +That is all that matters. I've come in contact with a good many of them +first and last in my poor efforts to help your father, and I believe the +San Franciscans to be the most loyal and disinterested people in the +world-to one another. + +"But if you come in from the outside you must bring money, or tremendous +family prestige, or the right kind of social personality with the best +kind of letters. We just crept in and were glad to be permitted to make a +living. Why should they have taken any notice of us? They don't go hunting +about for obscure people of possibly gentle blood. That doesn't happen +anywhere in the world. You must be reasonable, my dear child. That is life, +'The World.'" + +But Gora was not gifted with that form of reasonableness. She had wished in +her darker moments that she had been born outright in the working-class; +then, no doubt, she would have trudged contentedly every morning (except +when on strike) to the factory or shop, or been some one's cook. She was an +excellent cook. What galled her was the fact of virtually belonging to the +same class as these people who were still unaware of the existence of her +family, although it had lived for over thirty years in a city numbering +to-day only half a million inhabitants. + +She was almost fanatically democratic and could see no reason for +differences of degree in the aspiring classes. To her mind the only line of +cleavage between the classes was that which divided people of education, +refinement of mind manners and habits, certain inherited traditions, and +the mental effort no matter how small to win a place in this difficult +world, from commonness, ignorance, indifference to dirt, coarse pleasures. +and habits, and manual labor. She respected Labor as the solid foundation +stones upon which civilization upheld itself, and believed it to have been +biologically chosen; if she had been born in its class she would have had +the ambition to work her way out of it, but without resentment. + +There her recognition of class stopped. That wealth or family prominence +even in a great city or an old community should create an exclusive and +favored society seemed to her illogical and outrageous. A woman was a lady +or she wasn't. A man was a gentleman or he wasn't. That should be the +beginning and the end of the social code....When she had been younger +she had lamented her mean position because it excluded her from the +light-hearted and brilliant pleasures of youth; but as she grew older +this natural craving had given place to a far deeper and more corrosive +resentment. + +She had no patience with her brother's ingenuous snobbery. A good-natured +friend had introduced him to one or two houses where there were young +people and much dancing and he had been "taken up." Nothing would have +filled Gora with such murderous rage as to be taken up. She wanted her +position conceded as a natural right. + +Had it been in her power she would have forced her conception of democracy +upon the entire United States. But as this was quite impossible she longed +passionately for some power, personal and irresistible, that would compel +the attention of the elect in the city of her birth and ultimately bring +them to her feet. And here she had a ray of hope. + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile it was some satisfaction to watch them being burned out of house +and home. + +Then she gave a short impatient sigh that was almost a groan, as she +wondered if her own home would go. The family had moved into it eight years +ago; and after Mr. Dwight's death his widow had barely made a living for +herself and her daughter out of the uncertain boarders. Mortimer had paid +his share, but she had encouraged him to dress well and no one knew the +value of "front" better than he. After her death, three years ago, Gora had +turned out the boarders and the last slatternly wasteful cook and let her +rooms to business women who made their morning coffee over the gas jet. +The new arrangement paid very well and left her time for lectures at the +University of California, and for other studies. A Jap came in daily to put +the rooms in order and she cooked for herself and her brother. So unknown +was she that even Aileen Lawton was unaware that the "boarding-house down +on Geary Street" was a lodging house kept by Mortimer Dwight's sister. +Fortunately Gora was spared one more quivering arrow in her pride. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +There was a tremendous burst of dynamite that rocked the house. Then she +heard her brother's voice: + +"Gora! Gora! Where are you?" + +She let herself through the trap door and ran down to the first floor. + +Her brother was standing in the lower hall surrounded by several of their +lodgers, competent-looking women, quite calm and business like, but dressed +as for a journey and carrying suitcases and bags. + +"You are all ordered out," he was saying. "A change of the wind to the +south would sweep the fire right up this hill, and it may cross Van Ness +Avenue again at any time. So everybody is ordered out to the western hills, +or the Presidio, or across the Bay, if they can make it." + +He had no private manners and greeted his sister with the same gallant +smile and little air of deference which always carried him a certain +distance in public. "You had better take out a mattress and blanket," he +said. "I wish I could do it for you--for all of you--but I am under orders +and must patrol where I am sent. When I finish giving the orders down here +I must go back to the Western Addition." + +"Don't worry about us," said Gora drily. "We are all quite as capable as +men when it comes to looking out for ourselves in a catastrophe. I hear +that several wives led their weeping stricken husbands out of town +yesterday morning. Are you sure the fire will cross Van Ness Avenue +to-night?" + +"It may be held back by the dynamiting, but one can be sure of nothing. Of +course the wind may shift to the west any minute. That would save this part +of the city." + +"Well, don't let us keep you from your civic duties. You look very well in +those hunting boots. Lucky you went on that expedition last summer with Mr. +Cheever." + +Mortimer frowned slightly and turned to the door. The brother and sister +rarely talked on any but the most impersonal subjects, but more than once +he had had an uneasy sense that she knew him better than he knew himself. +His consciousness had never faced anything so absurd, but there were times +when he felt an abrupt desire to escape her enigmatic presence and this was +one of them. + + + +II + + +The lodgers were permitted by the patrol to cook their luncheon on the +stove that had been set up in the street, the orders being that they should +leave within an hour. After their smoky meal they departed, carrying +mattresses and blankets. + +Gora had no intention of following them unless the flames were actually +roaring up the block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. She felt +quite positive that she could outrun any fire. + +The last of the lodgers, at her request, shut the front door and made a +feint of locking it, an unnecessary precaution in any case as all the +windows were open; and as the sentries had been ordered to "shoot to kill," +and had obeyed orders, looting had ceased. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death, she +had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin bluish +green material and there were several pieces of good furniture that she had +picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered with book shelves +which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter nights and they were filled +with the books she had found in second-hand shops. A number of them bore +the autographs of men once prosilient in the city's history but long since +gone down to disaster. There were a few prints that she had found in the +same way, but no oils or water colors or ornaments. She despised the +second-rate, and the best of these was rarely to be bought for a song even +at auction. + +She sighed as she reflected that if obliged to flee to the hills there was +practically nothing she could save beyond the contents of her bags; but at +least she could remain with her treasures until the last minute, and she +pinned the curtains across the small windows and lit several candles. + +Between the blasts of dynamite the street was very quiet. She could hear +the measured tread of the sentry as he passed, a member of the Citizens' +Patrol, like her brother. Suddenly she heard a shot, and extinguishing the +candles hastily she peered out of a window from behind the curtains. The +sentry was pounding on a door opposite with the butt of his rifle. It was +the home of an eccentric old bachelor who possessed a fine collection of +ceramics and a cellar of vintage wine. + +The door opened with obvious reluctance and the head of Mr. Andrew Bennett +appeared. + +"What you doin' here?" shouted the sentry. "Haven't all youse been told +three hours ago to light out for the hills? Git out--" + +"But the fire hasn't crossed Van Ness Avenue. I prefer--" + +"Your opinion ain't asked. Git out." + +"I call that abominable tyranny." + +"Git out or I'll shoot. We ain't standin' no nonsense." + +Gora recognized the voice as that of a young man, clerk in a butcher shop +in Polk Street, and appreciated the intense satisfaction he took in his +brief period of authority. + +Mr. Bennett emerged in a moment with two large bags and walked haughtily up +the street at the point of the bayonet. Gora stood expectantly behind her +curtain, and some ten minutes later saw him sneak round the eastern end of +his block, dart back as the sentry turned suddenly, and when the footsteps +once more receded run up the street and into his house. She laughed +sympathetically and hoped he would not be caught a second time. + + + +II + + +Suddenly another man, carrying a woman in his arms, turned the same corner. +He was staggering as if he had borne a heavy burden a long distance. + +Gora ran down to the first floor and glanced out of the window of the front +room. The sentry had crossed the far end of the street and was holding +converse with another member of the patrol. As the refugee staggered past +the house she opened the front door and called softly. + +"Come up quickly. Don't let them see you." + +The man stumbled up the steps and into the house. + +"You can put her on the sofa in this room." Gora led the way into what had +once been the front parlor and was now the chamber of her star lodger. "Is +she hurt?" + +The man did not answer. He followed her and laid down his burden. Gora +flashed her electric torch on the face of the girl and drew back in horror. + +"Dead?" + +"Yes, she is dead." The young man, who looked a mere boy in spite of his +unshaven chin and haggard eyes, threw himself into a chair and dropping his +face on his arms burst into heavy sobs. + +Gora stared, fascinated, at the sharp white face of the girl, the rope of +fair hair wound round her neck like something malign and muscular that had +strangled her, the half-open eyes, whose white maleficent gleam deprived +the poor corpse of its last right, the aloofness and the majesty of death. +She may have been an innocent and lovely young creature when alive, but +dead, and lacking the usual amiable beneficencies of the undertaker, she +looked like a macabre wax work of corrupt and evil youth. + +And she was horribly stiff. + + + +III + + +Gora went into the kitchen and made him a cup of coffee over a spirit lamp. +He drank it gratefully, then followed her up to the attic as she feared +their voices might be overheard from the lower room. There he took the easy +chair and the cigarette she offered him and told his story. + +The young girl was his sister and they were English. She had been visiting +a relative in Santa Barbara when a sudden illness revealed the fact that +she had a serious heart affection. He had come out to take her home +and they had been staying at the Palace Hotel waiting for suitable +accommodations before crossing the continent. + +His sister--Marian--had been terrified into unconsciousness by the +earthquake and he had carried her down the stairs and out into Market +Street, where she had revived. She had even seemed to be better than usual, +for the people in their extraordinary costumes, particularly the opera +singers, had amused her, and she had returned to the court of the hotel +and listened with interest to the various "experiences." Finally they had +climbed the four flights of stairs to their rooms and he had helped her to +dress--her maid had disappeared. They had remained until the afternoon when +the uncontrolled fires in the region behind the hotel alarmed them, and +with what belongings they could carry they had gone up to the St. Francis +Hotel, where they engaged rooms and left their portmanteaux, intending to +climb to the top of the hill, if Marian were able, and watch the fire. + +Half way up the hill she had fainted and he had carried her into a house +whose door stood open. There was no one in the house, and after a futile +attempt to revive her, he had run back to the hotel to find a doctor. But +among the few people that had the courage to remain so close to the fire +there was no doctor. The hotel clerk gave him an address but told him +not to be too sure of finding his man at home as all the physicians were +probably attending the injured, helping to clear the threatened hospitals, +or at work among the refugees, any number of women having embraced the +inopportune occasion to become mothers. + +The doctor whose address was given him not only was out but his house was +deserted; and, distracted, he returned to his sister. + +He knew at once that she was dead. + +He sat beside her for hours, too stunned to think....It was some time +during the night that the roar of the fire seemed to grow louder, the smoke +in the street denser. Then it occurred to him that the inhabitants of +this house as well as of the doctor's, which was close by, would not have +abandoned their homes if they had not believed that some time during the +night they would be in the path of the flames. And he had heard that the +pipes of the one water system had been broken by the earthquake. + +He had caught up the body of his sister and walked westward until, worn +out, he had entered the basement of another empty house, and there he had +fallen asleep. When he awakened he was under the impression for a moment +that he was in the crater of a volcano in eruption. Dynamite was going off +in all directions, he could hear the loud crackling of flames behind his +refuge; and as he took the body in his arms once more and ran out, the fire +was sweeping up the hill not a block below. + +In spite of the smoke he inferred that the way was clear to the west, and +he had run on and on, once narrowly escaping a dynamiting area where he +saw men like dark shadows prowling and then rushing off madly in an +automobile...dodging the fire, losing his way, once finding himself +confronting a wall of flames, finally crossing a wide avenue...stumbling +on...and on.... + + + +IV + + +Gora decided that blunt callousness would help him more than sympathy. He +had recovered his self-control, but his eyes were still wide with pain and +horror. + +"Cremation is a clean honest finish for any one," she remarked, lighting +another cigarette and offering him her match. "I should have left her if +she had been my sister in that first house...." + +"I might have done it--in London. But...perhaps I was not quite myself....I +couldn't leave her to be burned alone in a strange country. Besides, the +horror of it would have killed my mother. Marian was the youngest. I felt +bound to do my best....Perhaps I didn't think at all....If this house is +threatened I shall take her out to the Presidio, where I happen to know a +man--Colonel Norris. Thanks to your hospitality I can make it." + +"But naturally you cannot go very fast...and these sentries...I am not +sure....I don't see how you escaped others...the smoke and excitement, I +suppose....I think if you are determined to take her it would be better if +I helped you to carry her out to the cemetery. We can put her on a narrow +wire mattress and cover her, so that it will look as if we were rescuing an +invalid. Out there you can put her in one of the stone vaults. Some of the +doors are sure to have been broken by the earthquake." + +The young man, who had given his name as Richard Gathbroke, gratefully +rested in her brother's room while she kept watch on the roof. It was night +but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well as the +approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks fell on the +roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making him welcome to +her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious water. When he joined +her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and she saw that he looked +both older and younger than Americans of his age; which, he had told her, +was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled face was now composed and his hazel +eyes were brilliant and steady. He had a tall trim military body, and very +straight bright brown hair; a rather conventional figure of a well-bred +Englishman, Gora assumed; intelligent, and both more naif and more +worldly-wise than young Americans of his class: but whose potentialities +had hardly been apprehended even by himself. + +They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a +spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small tins +of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the smaller +bedrooms to the front room on the first floor. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +The patrol had been relieved by another, an older man, and sober. He +merely reproved them for disobeying orders, glanced sympathetically at the +presumed invalid, and directed them to one of the temporary hospitals some +blocks farther west. + +Gora, like all imaginative people, had a horror of the corpse, and averted +her eyes from the head of the dead girl outlined under the veil she had +thrown over it, Gathbroke was obliged to walk backward, and as both were +extremely uncomfortable, there was no attempt at conversation until they +reached the gates of the old cemetery the great pioneers had called Lone +Mountain and their more commonplace descendants rechristened Laurel Hill. + +The glare of the distant fire illuminated the silent city where a thousand +refugees slept as heavily as the dead, and as they ascended the steep path +they examined anxiously the vaults on either side. Finally Gora exclaimed: + +"There! On the right." + +The iron doors of a once eminent resident's last dwelling had been half +twisted from their rusty hinges. Gathbroke threw his weight on them and +they fell at his feet. He and Gora carried in the body and lifted it to an +empty shelf. + +"Good!" Gora gave a long sigh of relief. "Nothing can happen to her now. +Even the entrance faces away from the fire and there is nothing but grass +in the cemetery to burn, anyhow." She held her electric torch to the +inscription above the entrance. "Better write down the name--Randolph. +There's one of the tragedies of the sixties for you! An Englishman the +hero, by the way. Nina Randolph is a handful of dust in there somewhere. +Heigho! What's the difference, anyway? Even if she'd been happy she'd be +dead by this time--or too old to have a past." + +Gathbroke replaced the gates, for he feared prowling dogs, and they walked +down to the street and sat on the grass, leaning against the wall of the +cemetery, as dissociated as possible from the rows of uneasy sleepers. + + + +II + + +They slept a little between blasts of dynamite, the snoring of men and +women and cries of children; finally at Gora's suggestion climbed to the +steep bare summit of Calvary to observe the progress of the fire. + +The unlighted portion of the city beneath them looked like a dead planet. +Beyond was a tossing sea of flame whose far-reaching violent glare seemed +to project it illimitably. + +"Nothing can stop it!" gasped Gora; and that terrific red mass of energy +and momentum did look as if its only curb would be the Pacific Ocean. + +They talked until morning. He was very frank about himself, finding no +doubt a profound comfort in human companionship after those long hours of +ghastly communion down in that flaming jungle. + +He was a younger son and in the army, not badly off, as his mother made him +a goodish allowance. She had come of a large manufacturing family in the +North and had brought a fortune to the empty treasury of the young peer she +had--happily for both--fallen in love with. + +He had wanted to go into business--politics later perhaps--after he left +Eton, feeling that he had inherited some of the energy of his maternal +grandfather, but his mother had insisted upon the army and as he really +didn't care so very much, he had succumbed. + +"But I'm not sure I shan't regret it. It isn't as if there were any +prospect of a real war. I'd like a fighting career well enough, but not +picayune affairs out in India or Africa. I can't help thinking I have a +talent for business. Sounds beastly conceited," he added hastily. It was +evident that he was a modest youth. "But after all one of us should inherit +something of the sort. Perhaps, later, who knows? At least I can thank +heaven that I wasn't born in my brother's place. He likes politics, and his +fate is the House of Lords. A man might as well go and embalm himself at +once. Do you know Gwynne? Elton Gwynne? John Gwynne he calls himself out +here." + +"I've heard of him. He's been written up a good deal. I don't know any one +of that sort." + +"Really? Well, don't you see? he inherited a peerage; grandfather died and +his cousin shot himself to cover up a scandal. Gwynne was in the full tide +of his career in the House of Commons and simply couldn't stand for it. +He cut the whole business and came out here where he and his mother had +a large estate--Lady Victoria's mother or grandmother was a +Spanish-Californian. Of course he chucked the title. He's a sort of cousin +of mine and I looked him up, and dined with him the other night. He was +born in the United States, by a fluke as it were, and has made up his mind +to be an American for the rest of his life and carve out a political +career in this country. I'd have done the same thing, by Jove! First-class +solution...although it's a pretty hard wrench to give up your own country. +But when a man is too active to stagnate--there you are....I wish I had +known where to find him to-day, but he lives on his ranch and I've +only seen him once since. Lady Victoria took me to a ball night before +last--Good God! Was it only that?...and we were to have met again for lunch +to-day." + +"It is very easy and picturesque to renounce when you possess just about +everything in life! If I attempted to renounce any of my privileges, for +instance. I should simply move down and out." + + + +III + + +He turned his head and regarded her squarely for the first time. Heretofore +she had been simply a friend in need, a jolly good sport, incidentally a +female. If she had been beautiful he should have noted that fact at once, +for he could not imagine the circumstances in which beauty would not exert +an immediate and powerful influence, however transitory. + +Miss Dwight was not beautiful, but he concluded during that frank stare +that her face was interesting; disturbingly so, although he was unable at +the moment to find the reason. It was possible that in favorable conditions +she would be handsome. + +She had a mass of dark brown hair that seemed to sink heavily over her low +forehead until it almost met the heavy black eyebrows. She had removed her +hat and the thick loose coils made her look topheavy; for the face, if wide +across the high cheek-bones and sharply accentuated with a salient jaw, was +not large. The eyes were a light cold gray, oval and far apart. Her nose +was short and strong and had the same cohibitive expression as the straight +sharply-cut mouth--when not ironic or smiling. Her teeth were beautiful. + +She had put on her best tailored suit and he saw that her "figger" was good +although too short and full for his taste. He liked the long and stately +slenderness that his own centuries had bred. But her hands and well-shod +feet were narrow if not small, and he decided that she just escaped +possessing what modern slang so aptly expressed as "class," Possibly it was +the defiance in her square chin, the almost angry poise of her head, that +betrayed her as an unwilling outsider. + +"Bad luck!" he asked sympathetically. + +She gave him a brief outline of her family history, overemphasizing +as Americans will--those that lay any claim to descent--the previous +importance of the Dwights and the Mortimers in Utica, N.Y. Incidentally, +she gave him a flashlight picture of the social conditions in San +Francisco. + +He was intensely interested. "Really! I should have said there would be the +complete democracy in California if anywhere. Of course no Englishman of my +generation expects to find San Franciscans in cowboy costume; but I must +say I was astonished at the luxury and fashion not only at those Southern +California hotels, where, to be sure, most of the guests are from your +older Eastern states, but at that ball Lady Victoria took me to. It was +magnificent in all its details, originality combined with the most perfect +taste. Of course there were not as many jewels as one would see at a great +London function, but the toilettes could not have been surpassed. And as +for the women--stunning! Such beauty and style and breeding. I confess I +didn't expect quite all that. Miss Bascom, Miss Thorndyke, and an exquisite +young thing, Miss Groome--" + +"Oh, those are the haute noblesse." Gora's tipper lip curled satirically. +"No doubt they lay claim that their roots mingle with your own." + +"Well, we'd be proud of 'em." + +"That was the Hofer ball, wasn't it! Do you mean to say that Alexina Groome +was there? Mrs. Groome, who is the most imposing relic of the immortal +eighties, is supposed to know no one of twentieth-century vintage." + +"I am sure of it. I danced with her twice and would have jolly well liked +to monopolize her, but she was too plainly bowled over by a fellow--your +name, by Jove--Dwight. Good-looking chap, clean-cut, fine shoulders, danced +like a god--if gods do dance. I'm an awful duffer at it, by the way." + +"Mortimer? Is it possible? And he--was he bowled over?" + +"Ra--ther! A case, I should say." + +"How unfortunate. Of course he hasn't the ghost of a chance. Mrs. Groome +won't have a young man inside her doors whose family doesn't belong root +and branch to her old set. Fine prospect for a poor clerk!" + +"Jove! I've a mind to stay and try my luck. Oh!" He dropped his face in his +hands. "I'm forgetting!" + +"Well, forget again." Gora's voice expressed more sympathy than she felt. +She deeply resented his immediate acceptance of her social alienage, even +relegating her personal appearance to another class than that of the +delicate flora he had seen blooming for the night against the most artful +background of the season. + +However...he was the first man she had ever met in her limited experience +who seemed to combine the three magnetisms....Who could tell.... + +"I should be delighted if you would cut my brother out before it goes any +further," she said untruthfully. "It will save him a heartache....Where +could you meet her now? Society is disrupted here. But of course Mr. Gwynne +visits down the peninsula. He could take you to any one of those exclusive +abodes where you would be likely to meet the little Alexina. She is only +eighteen, by the way." + +"That is rather young," he said dubiously. "I don't fancy her conversation +would be very interesting, and, after all, that is what it comes down to, +isn't it? I've been disappointed so often." He sighed and looked quite +thirty-five. "Still, she has personality. Five or six years hence she may +be a wonder....I don't think I'd care about educating and developing a +girl--I like a pal right away....What an ass I am, rotting like this. Tour +brother has as much chance as I have. Younger sons with no prospect of +succession are of exactly no account with the American mamma. I've met a +few of them." + +"Oh, I fancy birth would be enough for Mrs. Groome. She's quite dotty on +the subject, and the people out here are simpler than Easterners, anyhow. +Simpler and more ingenuous." + +"How is it you know so much about it, all, if you are not, as you +say--pardon me--a part of it?" + +"I wonder!" She gave a short hard little laugh. "I don't know that I could +explain, except that it all has seemed to me from birth a part of my blood +and bones and gristle. An accident, a lucky strike on my father's part when +he first came out here, and they would know me as well to-day as I know +them. And then...of course...it is a small community. We live on the +doorsteps of the rich and important, as it were. It would be hard for us +not to know. It just comes to us. We are magnets. I suppose all this seems +to you--born on the inside--quite ignominious." + +"Well, my mother would have remained on the outside--that is to say a quiet +little provincial--if her father hadn't happened to make a fortune with his +iron works. I can understand well enough, but, if you don't mind my saying +so, I think it rather a pity." + +"Pity?" + +"I mean thinking so much about it, don't you know? I fancy it's the result +of living in a small city where there are only a few hundred people between +you and the top instead of a few hundred thousand. I express, myself so +badly, but what I mean is--as I make it out--it is, with you, a case of +so near and yet so far. In a great city like London now (great in +generations--centuries--as well as in numbers) you'd just accept the bare +fact and go about your business. Not a ghost of a show, don't you see? Here +you've just missed it, and, the middle class always flowing into the upper +class, you feel that you should get your chance any minute. Ought to have +had it long ago....I can't imagine, for instance, that if my mother had +married the son of my grandfather's partner that I should have wasted much +time wondering why I wasn't asked to the Elizabethan Hail on the hill. Of +course I don't mean there isn't envy enough in the old countries, but it's +more passive...without hope...." + +He felt awkward and officious but he was sorry for her and would have +liked to discharge his debt by helping her toward a new point of view, if +possible. + +She replied: "That's easy to say, and besides you are a man. My brother, +who is only a clerk in a wholesale house, has been taken up and goes +everywhere. They don't know that I even exist." + +"Well, that's their loss," he said gallantly. "Can't you make 'em sit tip, +some way? Women make fortunes sometimes, these days, And they're in about +everything except the Army and Navy. Business? Or haven't you a talent of +some sort? You have--pardon me again, but we have been uncommonly personal +to-night--a strong and individual face...and personality; no doubt of +that." + +Gora would far rather he had told her she was pretty and irresistible, but +she thrilled to his praise, nevertheless. It was the first compliment she +had ever received from any man but the commonplace and unimportant friends +her brother had brought home occasionally before he had been introduced to +society; he took good care to bring home none of his new friends. + +Her heart leapt toward this exalted young Englishman, who might have +stepped direct from one of the novels of his land and class...even the +stern and anxious moderns who had made England's middle-class the fashion, +occasionally drew a well-bred and attractive man from life....She turned to +him with a smile that banished the somber ironic expression of her face, +illuminating it as if the drooping spirit within had suddenly lit a torch +and held it behind those strange pale eyes. + +"I'll tell you what I've never told any one--but my teacher; I've taken +lessons with him for a year. He is an instructor in the technique of the +short story, and has turned out quite a few successful magazine writers. He +believes that I have talent. I have been studying over at the University to +the same end--English, biology, psychology, sociology. I'm determined not +to start as a raw amateur. Oh! Perhaps I have made a mistake in telling +you. You may be one of those men that are repelled by intellectual women!" + +"Not a bit of it. Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't +like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that are +so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder sister--she's +thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, although she doesn't +pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any but clever and +exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents hate it--she lives +alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. My grandfather Doubleton +liked her a lot and left her two thousand a year. I wish you knew her. She +is charming and feminine, as much so as any of those I met at the ball; and +so are many of the women that go to her flat--" + +"Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way +of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under her +fingernail. + +Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes. + +"Well...not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the +fighter...but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he added +hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns were lowering +at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit." + +Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have +said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I had +worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair marcelled like +every other woman present--except those embalmed relics of the seventies, +who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a great ball is given, +and appear in a built-up red-brown wig....And a string of pearls round my +throat? My neck and arms are quite good; although I've never possessed an +evening gown, I know I'd look quite well in one...my best." + +He laughed. "It does make a difference. I wish you had been there. I am +sure you are as good a dancer as you are a pal. But still...I think I +should have recognized the fighter, even if you had been born in the +California equivalent for the purple. I fancy you would have found some +cause or other to get your teeth into once in a while. Tell me, don't +you rather like the idea of taking Life by the throat and forcing it to +deliver?" + +"I wonder?...perhaps...but that does not mitigate my resentment that I am +on the outside of everything when I belong on the in. I should never have +been forced to strive after what is mine by natural right." + +"Well, don't let it make a socialist of you. That is such a cheap revenge +on society....Confession of failure; and nothing in it." + + + +IV + + +He looked at his watch: "Eight o'clock. I'll be getting on to the Presidio. +Why don't you come with me?" + +Gora's feminine instincts arose from a less perverted source than her +social. She shook her head with a smile. + +"I don't want to go any farther from my house. I shall slip down my first +chance; and I have plenty to eat. Perhaps you will come to see me before +you go if my house is spared." + +"Rather. What is the number? And if the house goes I'll find you somehow." + +He took her hand in both his and shook it warmly. "You are the best pal in +the world--" + +"Now don't make me a nice little speech. I'm only too glad. Go out to the +Presidio and get a hot breakfast and attend--to--to your affairs. I am sure +everything will be all right, although you may not be able to get away as +soon as you hope." + +"I don't like leaving you alone here--" + +"Alone?" She waved her hand at the hundreds of recumbent forms in the +cemeteries and on the lower slopes of Calvary. "I probably shall never be +so well protected again. Please go." + +He shook her hand once more, ran down the hill, turned and waved his cap, +and trudged off in the direction of the Presidio. + + + +V + + +She slept in her own house that night, for dynamiting by miners summoned +from Grass Valley by General Funston, and a change of wind, had saved +the western portion of the city. For the first time in her life Gora +experienced a sense of profound gratitude, almost of happiness. She felt +that only a little more would make her quite happy. Her lodgers, even her +absorbed brother, noticed that her manner, her expression, had perceptibly +softened. She herself noticed it most of all. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +Gathbroke met Alexina Groome again a week later. + +On Saturday, when the fire was over, and she could retreat decently and +in good order, Mrs. Groome, to her young daughter's secret anguish, had +consented to rest her nerves for a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's home +in Alta. + +As Gora had predicted, Gathbroke found that it would have been hardly more +difficult to move his sister's body, now at an undertaker's in Fillmore +Street, out of the state in war-time than in the wake of a city's disaster, +which was scattering its population to every point of the railroad compass. +He had refused the space in the baggage car offered to him by the company; +it should: be a private car or nothing; and for that, in spite of all the +influence Gwynne and his powerful friends could bring to bear, he must +wait. + +Meanwhile Gwynne had asked him to stay with himself and his mother, Lady +Victoria Gwynne, at the house of his fiancee, Isabel Otis, on Russian Hill; +a massive cliff rising above one of the highest of the city's northern +hills, whose old houses, clinging to its steep sides had escaped the fire +that roared about its base. To-day it was a green and lofty oasis in the +midst of miles of smoking ruins. + +Gathbroke was as nervous as only a young Englishman within his immemorial +armor can be. Gwynne, who had gone through the same nerve-racking crisis, +although from different causes, understood what he suffered and pressed him +into service in the distribution of government rations, and garments to +the different refugee camps. But Gathbroke had the active imagination of +intelligent youth, and he never forgot to blame himself for lingering in +New York with some interesting chaps he had met on the _Majestic_, and +afterward in Southern California, seduced by its soft climate and violent +color. Unquestionably, if he had stayed on his job, as these expressive +Americans put it, his sister would have been in New York, possibly on the +Atlantic Ocean when San Francisco shook herself to ruin. + +"But not necessarily alive," said Lady Victoria callously, removing her +cigar, her heavy eyes that looked like empty volcanos, staring down over +the smoldering waste. "People with heart disease don't invariably wait for +an earthquake to jolt them out of life. Assume that her time had come and +think of something else or you'll become a silly ass of a neurotic." + +Gwynne, more sympathetic, continued to find him what distraction he could, +and one day drove him down the Peninsula with a message from the Committee +of Fifty to Tom Abbott; who had caught a heavy cold during those three days +when he had driven a car filled with dynamite and had had scarcely an hour +for rest. He was now at home in bed. + + + +II + + +The Abbott's place, Rincona, stood on a foothill behind the other estates +of Alta and surrounded by a park of two hundred acres set thick with +magnificent oaks. Gathbroke had never seen finer ones in England or France. +Gwynne before entering the avenue drove to an elevation above the house and +stopped the car for a moment. + +The great San Mateo valley looked like a close forest of ancient oaks +broken inartistically by the roofs of houses shorn of their chimneys. +Beyond, on the eastern side of a shallow southern arm of the Bay of San +Francisco, was the long range of the Contra Costa mountains, its waving +indented slopes incredibly graceful in outline and lovely in color. Gwynne +had pointed out their ever changing tints and shades as they drove through +the valley; at the moment they were heliotrope deepening to purple in the +hollows. + +Behind the foothills above Rincona rose the lofty mountains which in +Maria Abbott's youth had seemed to tower above the valley a solid wall of +redwoods; but long since plundered and defaced for the passing needs of +man. + +"Great country--what?" said Gwynne, starting the car. "You couldn't pry me +away from it--that is, unless I have the luck to represent it in Washington +half the year. You'll be coming back yourself some day." + +"I? Never. I hate the sight of its grinning blue sky after the red horror +of those three days. I haven't seen a cloud as big as my hand, and in +common decency it should howl and stream for months." + +"Well, forget it for a day. Perhaps you will be placed next the fair +Alexina at luncheon--" + +"Alexina...?" + +"Groome. You must have met her at the Hofer ball." + +"She--what--possible--" + +Gwynne looked at his stuttering and flushed young cousin and burst into +laughter. + +"As bad as that, was it? Well, she's not bespoken as far as I know. Wade in +and win. You have my blessing. She is almost as beautiful as Isabel--" + +"She's quite as beautiful as Miss Otis." + +"Oh, very well. No doubt I'd think so myself if I hadn't happened to meet +Isabel first, and if I were not too old for her anyway." + +Gwynne could think of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a +flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a living +companion for his trying journey to England so much the better. + +Gathbroke's excitement subsided quickly. He was in no condition for +sustained enthusiasm. He felt as if quite ten years had passed since he +had half fallen in love with Alexina Groome in a ball room that was now +a charred heap in the sodden wreck of a city he barely could conjure in +memory. + +Besides, he had half fallen in love so often. And she was too young. He had +really been more drawn to that strange Miss Dwight; upon whom, however, he +had not yet called. + +He felt thankful that the girl _was_ too young for his critical taste. He +wanted nothing more at present in the way of emotions. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Rincona had been named in honor of Rincon Hill, where Tom Abbott's +grandmother had reigned in the sixties; a day, when in order to call on her +amiable rival, Mrs. Ballinger, her stout carriage horses were obliged to +plow through miles of sand hills, and to make innumerable detours to avoid +the steep masses of rock, over which in her grandson's day cable car and +trolley glided so lightly until that morning of April eighteen, nineteen +hundred and six. + +When her husband, in common with other distinguished citizens, bought an +estate in the San Mateo Valley, she named it Rincona, to the secret wrath +of other eminent ladies who had not thought of it in time. + +The house had as little pretensions to architectural beauty as others +of its era, but it was a large compact structure of some thirty rooms, +exclusive of the servants' quarters, and with as many outbuildings as a +Danish, farm. Long French windows opened upon a wide piazza, whose pillars +had disappeared long since under a luxuriant growth of rose vines and +wistaria. At its base was a bed of Parma violets, whose fragrance a +westerly breeze wafted to the end of the avenue a quarter of a mile away. +All about the house, breaking the smooth lawns, were beds and trees of +flowers, at this time of the year a glowing exotic mass of color; but in +the park that made up the greater part of the estate exclusive of the +farms, the grass under the superb oaks was merely clipped, the weeds +and undergrowth removed. The oaks had been evenly shorn of their lower +branches, which gave them a formal and somewhat arrogant expression, as of +cardinals and kings lifting their skirts. + +Alexina hated the enormous rooms with their high frescoed ceilings and +heavy Victorian furniture; but Maria Abbott loved and revered the old +house, emblem that it was of a secure proud family that had defied that +detestable (and disturbing) old phrase: "Three generations from shirt +sleeves to shirt sleeves." The Abbotts, like the Ballingers and Groomes +and Gearys and many others of that ilk, had not come to California in the +fifties and sixties as adventurers, but with all that was needed to give +them immediate prestige in the new community; and, among those that still +retained their estates in the San Mateo Valley, at least, there was as +little prospect of their reversion to shirt sleeves as of their conversion +to the red shirt of socialism. Their wealth might be moderate but it was +solid and steadfast. + + + +II + + +The entertaining of the Abbotts, Yorbas, Hathaways, Montgomerys, Brannans, +Trennahans, and others of what Alexina irreverently called the A.A., had +always been ostentatiously simple, albeit a butler and a staff of maids had +contributed to their excessive comfort. In the eighties, evening toilettes +during the summer were considered immoral; but by degrees, as time tooled +in its irresistible modernities, they gradually fell into the habit of +wearing out their winter party gowns at the evening diversions of the +country season. Burlingame, that borough of concentrated opulence founded +in the early nineties as a fashionable colony, began its career with +a certain amount of simplicity; but its millions increased to tens of +millions; and what in heaven's name, as Mrs. Clement Hunter, a leader and +an individual, once remarked, is the use of having money if you don't dress +and entertain as you would dream of dressing and entertaining if you didn't +have a cent? + +Mrs. Hunter, who had formed an incongruous and somewhat hostile alliance +with Mrs. Abbott, knew that her valuable friend, like others of that "small +and early" band, resented the fact that their standards no longer counted +outside of their own set. Mrs. Abbott had turned a haughty shoulder to Mrs. +Hunter for a time, for she remembered her as, in their school days, the +socially obscure Lidie McKann; now, however, her husband turning all he +touched to gold, she had, incredibly, become one of the most important +women in San Francisco and Burlingame. + +When Maria Abbott finally succumbed she assured herself that curiosity to +see the more ambushed glitter of that meretricious faubourg had nothing +to do with it; it was easy to persuade herself that she hoped, being an +indisputably smart woman herself, gradually to impose her simpler and more +appropriate standards upon these people who sorely threatened the continued +dominance of the old regime. + +Mrs. Hunter soon disabused her of any such notion, and during the early +days of their acquaintance, after Mrs. Abbott came to one of her luncheons +attired in a pique skirt and severe shirtwaist, impeccably cut and worn, +but entirely out of place in an Italian palace, where forty fashionable +women, some of whom had motored sixty miles to attend the function, were +dressed as they would be at a Newport luncheon, Mrs. Hunter attended the +next solemn affair at Rincona so overdressed and made up that the outraged +Altarinos (as Alexina irreverently called them) were reduced to a horrified +silence that was almost hysterical. + +But one morning Mrs. Abbott caught Mrs. Hunter digging in her private +vegetable garden behind the palace, and wearing a garment that her second +gardener's wife would have scorned, her unblemished face beaming under a +battered straw hat. Both women had the humor to laugh, and their intimacy +dated from that moment, Mrs. Hunter confessing that stuff on her face made +her sick; but adding that she adored dress and thought that any rich woman +was a fool who didn't. + +After that there was a compromise on both sides. Mrs. Hunter lunched or +dined at Rincona in her simplest frocks and Mrs. Abbott wore her best when +honoring Mrs. Hunter and others at Burlingame. She even went so far as to +have some extremely smart silk voiles (the fashionable material of the +moment) and linens made, and when asked to a wedding, a garden party, or +a great function given to some visitor of distinction, complimented the +occasion to the limit of her resources. + + + +III + + +Mrs. Hunter, in white duck, a sailor hat perched above her angular somewhat +masculine face, was sitting on the Abbott verandah as the two Englishmen +drove up. She waved her cigarette and cried gayly in her hearty resonant +voice: + +"Two men! What luck! And in time for lunch. I've hardly seen a man since +the first day of the fire. Leave your car anywhere and come in out of the +sun. I'll call Maria, and, incidentally, mention whiskey and soda." + +"The whiskey and soda is all right," said Gwynne mopping his brow; Nature, +having wreaked her worst on California, seemed determined to atone by +unseasonably brilliant weather, and the day under the blazing blue vault +was very hot. + +Mrs. Abbott appeared in a few moments, smiling, cool, in immaculate white, +the collar of her shirtwaist high and unwilted. Her weather-beaten face +looked years older than Mrs. Hunter's, who, although plain by comparison +with the once beautiful Maria Groome, had treated her clean healthy skin +with marked respect. + +But as the butler had preceded her with whiskey and soda and ice, Mrs. +Abbott might already have achieved the mahogany tints of her mother and she +would have been regarded as enthusiastically by two hot and dusty men. + +"Of course you will stay to luncheon," she said as naturally as she had +said it these many years, and as two hospitable generations had said it on +that verandah before her. She turned to young Gathbroke with a smile, for +Mrs. Hunter, who was in her confidence, had detained her for a moment with +a few sharp incisive words. "I have a very bored little sister, who will be +glad to sit next to a young man once more." + +And although Gathbroke almost frowned at this fresh reminder of the callow +years of the girl whose sheer loveliness had haunted his imagination, +he went off with a not disagreeable titillation of the nerves, at Mrs. +Abbott's suggestion, to find her in the park and bring her back to luncheon +in half an hour. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +He was light of step and made no sound on the heavy turf; he saw her +several minutes before she was aware of his presence and stood staring at +her, feeling much as he had done during the progress of the earthquake. + +She was standing under one of the great oaks whose lower limbs had been +trimmed so evenly some seven feet above the ground that they made a compact +symmetrical roof above the dark head of the girl, who, being alone, had +abandoned the limp curve of fashion and was standing very erect, drawn up +to her full five feet seven. Alexina had no intention of being afflicted +with rounded shoulders when the present mode had passed. + +But her face expressed no guile as she stood there in her simple white +frock with a bunch of periwinkles in her belt, her delicate profile turned +to Gathbroke as she gazed at the irregular majesty of the Coast Range, dark +blue under a pale blue haze. He had retained the impression of starry eyes +and vivid coloring and eager happy youth, a body of perfect slenderness +and grace, whose magnetism was not that of youth alone but personal and +individual. + +Now he saw that although her fine little profile was not too regular, and +as individual as her magnetism, the shape of her head was classic. It was +probable that she was not unaware of the fact, for its perfect lines and +curves were fully revealed by the severe flatness of the dusky thickly +planted hair, which was brushed back to the nape of her neck and then drawn +up a few inches and flared outward. The little head was held high on the +long white stem of the throat; and the pose, with the dropping eyelids, +gave her, in that deep shade, the illusion of maturity. Gathbroke realized +that he saw her for the moment as she would look ten years hence. Even the +full curved red lips were closed firmly and once the nostrils quivered +slightly. + +The narrow black eyebrows following the subtle curve of her eyelids, the +low full brow with its waving line of soft black hair, seemed to brood over +the lower part of the face with its still indeterminate curves, over the +wholly immature figure of a very young girl. + +Gathbroke surrendered then and there. This radiation of mystery, of +complexity, this secret subtle visit of maturity to youth, the hovering +spirit of the future woman, was unique in his experience and went straight +to his head. He forgot his sister, dismissed the thought of Dwight with a +gesture of contempt. He might be modest and rather diffident in manner, +owing to racial shyness, but he had a fine sustaining substructure of sheer +masculine arrogance. + + + +II + + +As he walked forward swiftly Alexina turned; and immediately was the young +thing of eighteen and of the early twentieth century. Her spine drooped +into an indolent curve, her soft red lips fell apart, her black-gray eyes +opened wide as she held out her hand to the young Englishman. + +"How nice! I never really expected to see you again. I understood Lady +Victoria to say you were merely passing through." + +Alexina had not cast him a thought since the night of the ball but she was +hospitable and feminine. + +"I was detained." + +She noted with intense curiosity that his bright color paled and his +sparkling hazel eyes darkened with a sudden look of horror; but the spasm +of memory passed quickly, and once more he was staring at her with frank +capitulation. + +Alexina's head went up a trifle. She was still new to conquest, and +although she had met more than one pair of admiring eyes in the course of +the past season, and received as many compliments as the vainest girl could +wish, few men had had the courage to storm the stern fortress on Ballinger +Hill, or to sit more than once in a drawing-room so darkly reminiscent of +funeral ceremonies that a fellow's nerves began to jump all over him. + +Nor had her fancy been even lightly captured until Mortimer Dwight, that +perfect hero of maiden dreams, had swept her off her dancing feet on the +most memorable night of her life. + +She had quite made up her mind to marry him. The indignant silent hostility +of the family (even Mrs. Ballinger, her moment of weakness passed, having +been swung to the horrified Maria's point of view) had been all that was +necessary to convince the young Alexina that fate had sent her the complete +romance. She hoped the opposition would drive her to an elopement; little +dreaming of the horror with which Mr. Dwight would greet the heterodox +alternative. + +Mrs. Abbott had had a valid excuse for not asking him down: provisions +were scarce, and, so Tom said, he was doing useful work in town. But Olive +Bascom, whose country home was in San Mateo, had invited him for the next +week end, and he had accepted. Alexina was to be one of the small house +party, and there were many romantic walks behind San Mateo. A moon was also +due. + + + +III + + +Still Gathbroke might have entered the race with an even chance, for +maidens of eighteen are merely the blind tools of Nature, had not the +family made the mistake of displaying too warm an approval of the eligible +young Englishman. Mrs. Groome, Mrs. Abbott, Aunt Clara, reenforced even by +the more worldly Mrs. Hunter, who, however, had no children of her own, +treated him throughout the luncheon with an almost intimate cordiality and +a lively personal interest; whereas, if Mrs. Abbott had been driven to keep +her word and invite Mortimer Dwight to her historic board she would have +depressed him with the cool pleasant detachment she reserved for those whom +she knew slightly and cared for not at all; Mrs. Groome, automatically +gracious, would have retired within the formidable fortress of an exterior +built in the still more exclusive eighties; Aunt Clara would have sat +petrified with horror at the desecration; and Mrs. Hunter, free from the +obligations of hospitality, would have been brusque, frankly supercilious, +made him as uncomfortable as possible. + +All this Alexina angrily resented, not knowing that their amiability was +in part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of his +cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him as a +possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them all, even +Mrs. Hunter, acute anxiety. + +Young Gathbroke was handsomer than Dwight. He was younger, and his +circumstances were far more romantic, if romance Alexina must have. It was +plain that he was fascinated by the dear silly child, who, in her turn, +would no doubt promptly forget the ineligible Dwight if the Englishman +proved to be serious and paid her persistent court. + +Nevertheless Gathbroke, before the luncheon was half over, felt that he was +making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on one of +those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive mind, that +these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all its harrowing +details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness +with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a +natural gayety and light chaff that had come back for a moment. + +Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and knew +that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the girl, who, +he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, was making a +desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man. + +Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous +orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris and +revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to add a +British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's possible +torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather despised him +for his surrender before battle, or at all events for hauling down his flag +publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine satisfaction to the calm +smiling dominance, combined with utter devotion, of the man who had won +her as easily as she had conquered Richard Gathbroke. That the young +Englishman's nature was hot and tempestuous, with depths that even he had +not sounded, and her ideal knight's more effective mien but the expression +of a possibly meager and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart +was a well-trained organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that +young Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower +girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was far +too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge would have +affected her had she possessed it. She was in the obstinate phase of +first youth, common enough in girls of her sheltered class, where the +opportunities to study men and their behavior are few. Having persuaded +herself that she was far more romantic than she really was, and that there +would be no possible happiness or indeed interest in life after youth, she +had conceived as her ideal mate the dominant male, the complete master, and +easily persuaded herself that she had found him in Mortimer Dwight....If +she married Gathbroke he would be her slave (so little did she know him.). +Dwight would be her master. (So little did she know him, or herself.) + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +After luncheon, grinning amiably when Mrs. Abbott hinted that Englishmen +liked to be out of doors, she led Gathbroke to the confines of the park, +where they sat down under one of the oaks that reminded him of England; for +which he was in truth desperately homesick, and never more so than at this +moment. + +Everything combined to make him realize uneasily his youth. In England +a man of twenty-three was a man-of-the-world if he had had the proper +opportunities; but this girl who had infatuated him, and even the far more +sympathetic Miss Dwight, made him feel that he was a mere boy; and so had +this entire family, however unwittingly. + + + +II + + +He spoke of Miss Dwight suddenly, for Alexina, who had been duly +enlightened while the men were smoking with Tom, had tactfully conveyed her +sympathy, her eyes almost round with fascinated horror and curiosity. + +He set his teeth and gave a rapid but graphic account of the whole dreadful +episode, willing to interest her at any price; and Alexina, sitting +opposite on the ground, her long spine curved, her long arms embracing her +knees, listened with a breathless interest, spurring him to potent words, +even to stressing of detail. + +"My goodness gracious me!" she ejaculated when he paused. "I should have +gone raving mad. You are a perfect wonder. I never heard of anything so +gor--perfectly thrilling. And that girl, what did you say her name was?" + +Gathbroke, who had purposely withheld it, said explosively: + +"Dwight." + +"Dwight?" + +"I think she is a sister of a friend of yours." And he was made as +miserable as he could wish by a crimson tide that swept straight from her +heart pump up to her widow's peak. + +"Dwight? Sister? I didn't know he had one. I saw him several times during +the fire and he didn't mention her." + +"I suspect he was too absorbed." Gathbroke muttered the words, but man's +instinct of loyalty to his own sex is strong. "A city doesn't burn every +day, you know." + +"Still...what is she like? Like him?" + +"I do not remember him at all...She? Oh, she has a tremendous amount of +dark hair that looks as if falling off the top of her head and down her +face. Uncommonly heavy eyebrows, and very light gray--Ah, I have it! I have +been groping for the word ever since--sinister eyes....That is the effect +in that dark face. She has a curious character, I should think. Not very +frank. She--well, she rather struck me as having been born for drama; +tragic drama, I am afraid." + +"Not a bit like her brother. How old is she?" + +"Twenty-two, she told me." + +"What--what does she do? They are not a bit well off." + +He hesitated a moment. "Well--as I recall it, she is studying something or +other at the University of California." + +"And of course she boards down there with her brother, who takes care of +her while she is studying to be a teacher or something." Alexina having +arranged it to her satisfaction dismissed the subject. She had no mind to +betray herself to this good-looking young Englishman who had been sent +to her providentially on a very dull day. He would, no doubt, have been +frantically interesting if he had not been so idiotic as to fall head over +ears the first shot. + +Still...Alexina examined him covertly as he transferred his gaze for a +moment to the mountains across the distant bay, swimming now in a pale +blue mist with a wide banner of pale pink above them....If she had met him +first, or had never met the other at all...who knew? + + + +III + + +Alexina, for all her passion for romance, had a remarkably level head. She +was quite aware that there had been a certain amount of deliberation in her +own headlong plunge, convinced as she was that high romance belonged to +youth alone, and fearful lest it pass her by; aware also that a part of +Dwight's halo, aside from his looks and manners and chivalrous charm, +consisted in his being a martyr to an unjust fate, and, as such, under the +ban of her august family. It was all quite too perfect....But if Gathbroke +had come first his qualifications might have proved quite as puissant, and +no doubt Tom Abbott, who retained his school-history hatred of the entire +English race, would have provided the opposition and perhaps influenced the +family. + +She swept her intoxicating lashes along the faint bloom high on her olive +cheeks and then raised her eyes suddenly to the tormented ones opposite. +She also smiled softly, alluringly, as little fascinating wretches will who +know nothing of the passions of men. + +"I think you should follow Mr. Gwynne's example and stay here with us." He +thought of silver chimes and contrasted her voice with Gora Dwight's angry +contralto: he always thought of Gora in phrases. "So many Englishmen live +out here and adore it." + +"I'm perfectly satisfied with my own country, thank you." + +Alexina, who was feeling intensely American at the moment, curled her lip. +"Oh, of course. We have had plenty of those, too. Scarcely any of them +becomes naturalized. Just use and enjoy the country and give as little in +return as possible." + +"Really? I fancy they must give rather a lot in return or they would hardly +be tolerated. No native has worked harder than Elton these last days. +I understand most of them are in business or ranching and have married +California girls." + +"Oh, they have redeeming points." And then having satisfied her curiosity +as to how hazel eyes looked when angry she gave him a dazzling smile. "We +love them like brothers, and that is a proof that we are not snobbish, +for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's class--just middle-class +business people at home." + +"Well, you are a business nation, so why not? I have met hardly any but +business men out here and I feel quite at home with them. My mother's +family are in trade and I enjoy myself immensely when I visit them." + +"Oh!" His halo slipped....Still, what did it matter? "I suppose you told +me that to let me know you didn't need to come out here in search of an +heiress. But many of our most charming girls are not. Just now it seems to +me that more young men in California have money than girls...but they are +so uninteresting." + +She looked pathetic, her mouth drooped; then she smiled at him confidingly. + +He knew quite as well as if he had not been hard hit that she was flirting +with him, but as long as she gave him his chance to win her she might do +her transparent little best to make a fool of him. + +"Have you ever been in love?" asked Alexina softly. + +"Oh, about half-way several times, but always drew back in time...knew it +wasn't the real thing...Youth fools itself, you know, for the sake of the +sensation--or the race. Have you?" + +"Oh--" Alexina lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time her +color did not flow. "How is one to tell...a girl in her first season...when +all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with them, when you have +been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a glimpse of life even in +vacation. My New York relatives are terribly old-fashioned. It's great +fun to give one man all the dances and watch the dado of dowagers look +disapproving." And once more she gave him the quick smile of understanding +that springs so spontaneously between youth and youth. + +"Well...you might have given all those dances to me the other night, +instead of to that fellow Dwight." + +"Oh, but you see, I had already promised them to him. Lady Victoria always +comes so late." + +"That's true enough." His spirits rose a trifle. + +"When do you go--back to England, I mean? Not for a good long time, I hope. +We have awfully good times down here. Janet Maynard and Olive Bascom live +at San Mateo in the summer, and Aileen Lawton at Burlingame. They are my +chums and we'd give you a ripping time. We'd like to have you take away the +pleasantest possible memory of California instead of such a terrible one. I +don't mean anything very gay of course. You mustn't think I'm heartless." +And she showed the lower pearl of her eyes and looked like a madonna. + +"I'm afraid I must go soon. I've had an extension of leave already, and +Hofer told me just before we left to-day that he thought he could let me +have his private car inside of a week. They've been using it." + + + +IV + + +There was not a dwelling in sight. The quiet of that old park with its +brooding oaks was primeval. Behind her was the pink and blue glory of sky +and mountain. Her eyes were like stars. + +He burst out boyishly: "If I only had more time! If only I could have met +you even when I first came to San Francisco...before...before...I'd--I'd +like to marry you. It's fearfully soon to say such a thing. I feel like a +fool. But I'm not the first man to fall madly in love at first sight...and +you...you...If I tell you now instead of waiting it's because there's so +little time. Would you...do you think you could marry me?" + +"Oh! Ah!" (She almost said Ow.) After all it was her first proposal. She +was thrilled in spite of the fact that she was in love with another man, +for she felt close to something elemental, hazily understood...something +in her own unsounded depths rushed to meet it. + +But he was too young, and too "easy," and she didn't like his gray flannel +shirt; which, laundry being out of the question, he had bought in Fillmore +Street almost opposite the undertaker's. + +"Suppose we correspond for a year? That is, if you must really go so soon." + +"I must. I want you to go with me." + +His eyes had turned almost black and he had set his jaw in a way she didn't +like at all. In nerving himself to go through the ordeal he had worked up +his fermenting mind into a positively brutal mood. + +"Oh--mercy! I couldn't do that. My people are the most conventional in the +world." + +The situation was getting beyond her. She had not intended to make him +propose for at least a week and then he would have been abject and she +majestic. She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that made +her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at bay as +it were, looked at him with a little frown. + +He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less. + +"Are you refusing me outright?" he demanded. "That would be only fair, you +know, if I have no chance." + +"Well....I think so. That is--" + +"Do you love another man?" + +Coquetry flashed back. Nevertheless, she told the exact truth little as she +suspected it. + +"I love myself, and youth, and life, and liberty. What is a man in +comparison with all that?" + +"This." And before she could make another leap he had her in his arms; and +under the fire of his lips and eyes she lay inert, intoxicated, her first +flash of young passion completely responsive to his. + +But only for a moment. + +She wrenched herself away, her face livid, her eyes black with fury. She +beat his chest with her fists. + +"You! You! How I hate you! To think I should have given that to you...to +think that another man should have been the first to kiss me...I'm in love +with another man, I tell you. Why don't you go? I hate myself and I never +want to lay eyes on you again. Go! Go! Go!" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +During the retreat from Mons and again in those black days of March, +nineteen-eighteen, Gathbroke's tormented mind snapped from the present and +flashed on its screen so startling a resurrection of himself during those +last dreadful days in San Francisco that for the moment he was unconscious +of the world crashing about him. + +He saw himself in long days and nights of anguish and despair, of +embittered love and baffled passion: youth enjoying one of its divine +prerogatives and the fullness thereof! + +Pacing the floor of his room on Russian Hill, tramping over the mountains +across the Bay, doggedly awaiting that sole alleviation of mental suffering +in its early stages, a change of scene. + +Finally the Hofer car was placed at his disposal and he started on his four +days' journey to New York; and this brief chapter, that his friends +thought so gruesome, was the least of his afflictions. The memory of his +twenty-four hours or more of close physical association with his sister's +corpse made any subsequent adventure with the dead seem tame. And at least +he was leaving behind him a State which seemed to have magnetized him +across six thousand miles to experience the horror and misery she had +in pickle for him. He reveled in the audible rush of the train that was +carrying him farther every moment from the girl who had cut down into the +core of his heart and left her indelible image on a remarkably good memory. + + + +II + + +He had asked himself one day--it was his last in California and he had +taken his courage in his teeth and was on his way to call on Gora Dwight at +last, picking his steps through, the still smoking ruins down to Van Ness +Avenue--whether it would be possible for any man to suffer twice in a +lifetime as he had suffered since that hideous moment at Rincona, coming as +it did on top of an uncommon and terrible experience that had racked his +nerves and soul as it might not have done had he been seasoned by war or +even a few years older. At all events it had left him with no reserves even +in his pride to fight his failure and his loss. + +In that shrieking hell of August twenty-sixth, or again when lying +abandoned and gassed in a way-side hut during that ominous retreat of the +Fifth Army, when he had a sudden close vision of himself, trousers tucked +into a pair of Gwynne's hunting boots, swearing now and again as he stepped +on a hot brick; and heard his groping ego whisper the question through his +prostrate mind, he was tempted to answer aloud, to shout "No" above the +shrieking of shells and the groans of men fallen about him. + +He might no longer love Alexina Groome after twelve or even eight years of +complete severance; and, indeed, save in flashing moments like these he had +seldom thought of her after the first two or three years; but at least she +had taken the edge from his power to suffer. + +He had lost his mother soon after his return with the body of her youngest +child, his father had died three years later, and he had accepted these +griefs with the composure of maturity. Although he had had some agreeable +adventures (not that he had had much time for either women or society) +he had taken devilish good care not to get in too deep--even if he still +possessed the power to love at all, which he doubted. + +He remembered also, what he had almost forgotten, that during that walk it +had come to him with the sharpness of surprise that the image of the girl +who clung to his mind with the tentacles of a devil-fish, was as he had +seen her standing under the oak tree while unaware of his presence: older, +a more dignified and thoughtful figure, a woman old enough to be his mate +in something more than youthful passion, the ideal woman of vague sweet +dreams; not as the thoughtless little coquette who had tempted him to ruin +his chances by acting like a cave brute. + +Given a fortnight longer, during which he remained master of himself +instead of a young fool with a smashed temperament, and the unfledged woman +in her, whose subtle projection he had witnessed during that moment of his +capitulation, would have recognized him as her mate; as for the moment she +had in his arms. + +Not the least of his ordeals during those last days was the inevitable call +on Gora Dwight. He felt like a cad, after what she had been to him at the +end of an appalling experience, to have let, nearly three weeks go by with +no apparent recognition of her existence. But he had been unable to find +a messenger, there was no post; and then, after his ill-starred visit to +Rincona, he had forgotten her until his final visit to the undertaker; when +she had seemed to stand, an indignant and reproachful figure, at the head +of the casket. + + + +III + + +He had a note in his pocket and hoped she would be out. But she opened the +door herself, and her dark face, thinner than he recalled it, flushed and +then turned pale. But she said calmly as she extended her hand: "Come in. +I wondered what had become of you." "I'm sorry. But--perhaps--you can +understand--it was not easy for me to come here!" + +"Of course. Come up to my diggings." + +He followed her up to the attic studio, where as before he took the easy +chair and accepted one of her cigarettes; which he professed to be grateful +for as his were exhausted and every decent brand in town had gone up in +smoke. + +Gora was deeply disappointed that she had received no warning of his call, +for she possessed an extremely becoming and richly embroidered silk Chinese +costume, as red as the flames that had devoured Chinatown a few days after +she had bought it at a bankrupt sale. She had put it on every afternoon for +a week, hoping and expecting that he would call; and now that she had on +her second-best tailored suit, and a darned if immaculate shirtwaist, +he had chosen to turn, up!...But at least the lapels of the jacket had +recently been faced with red, and it curved closely over her beautiful +bust. Moreover, she had just finished rearranging the masses of her rich +brown hair when the bell rang. + +And she had him for a time, perhaps for an hour! She set out the tea things +as an intimation of the refreshment he would get at the proper time.... + +She too had suffered during this past interminable fortnight, but Gora was +far more mature than the young Englishman, upon whom life until the last +few weeks had smiled so persistently. She was too complex, she had suffered +in too many ways, from too many causes, not all of them elevating, to be +capable upon so short a notice, even after a night of unique companionship, +of such whole-souled agony and despair. In her imagination, her sense of +drama, her vanity, in the fading of vague dazzling hopes of a future to +which he held the key, and perhaps a little in her stormy heart, she had +felt a degree of harsh disappointment, but she had already half-recovered; +and as she sat looking at his ravaged face she wondered that the death of a +sister, no matter how harrowing the conditions, could make such a wreck of +any man. + +He told her of his difficulties in finding some one to remove the body from +the vault to the undertaker's, of the delay in obtaining a private car, +gave her some idea of his disorganized life since they had parted, but made +no mention of Alexina Groome or Rincona. Then he politely asked her if she +had any new plans for the future. Nobody seemed to look forward to the same +old life. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders with a movement expressive of irritation. "My +brother, who is engaged to Alexina Groome, insists that I give up this +lodging house." + +"Oh, so they are engaged?" Gathbroke lit another cigarette, and his hand +did not tremble; he felt as if his nerves had been immersed in ice water +and frozen. + +"Yes--marvelously. The family, as might be expected, is furious. But the +girl is mad about him and of age. She is just a foolish child and should be +locked up. My brother is not in the least what she imagines him. She wrote +me a letter. Good heaven! One would think she had captured the prince of +a fairy tale, or the hero of an old romantic novel. There should be a +law prohibiting girls from marrying before they are twenty-two at +least....However, the thing is done. And my brother is terribly afraid +they'll find out that I keep a lodging house. He's given them to understand +we both board here. They are prime snobs and so is he. I never dreamed it +was in him until he began to go about in society, but then you never +know what is in anybody. Otherwise, he is harmless enough, and a good +industrious boy, but he'll never make the money to keep up with that set, +and she won't have much. It's a stupid affair all round...." + +"I've refused to budge until he finds me a job. He certainly cannot support +me, even if I were willing to be supported by any one. As far as I am +concerned they could know I kept a lodging house and welcome. It is honest +and it gives me a good living; and, what I value more, many hours of +freedom. But Mortimer is not only positively terrified they'll find it out, +but he is as obstinate over it as--well, as that kind of man always is. +He's looking about, and I fancy my fate is stenography or bookkeeping: I +took a course at a business college shortly before my mother died. I don't +know that he'd like that much better; he hinted that I might be a librarian +in a small town. But I'll be hanged if I fall for that." + +Gathbroke smiled. "Not that. You don't belong to the country town. But I +fancy you'll have to give up the lodging house. Elton Gwynne took me down +the Peninsula one day, and--well--I don't fancy they would stand for it. +Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over. They may talk democracy, +and really modify themselves a bit, but there are certain things they'd +choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't even try. Better +give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I don't fancy you'd +stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. You've got to know and +be more or less intimate with them all--" + +"I'll not be patronized by them. I don't know that I'll go near them. For +years I've resented that I was not one of them, but I don't fancy tagging +in after my brother, treated with pleasant courteous resignation, invited +once a year to a family dinner, and quite forgotten on smart occasions." + +"Quite so. I like your spunk. Have you thought of being a nurse? All work +is hard and I should think that would be interesting. Must meet a jolly lot +of people. You should see the becoming uniforms the London nurses wear. +Prettiest women on the street, by Jove." + +Her heart sank but she replied evenly: "Not a bad idea. I've quite enough +saved to take the course comfortably--" + +He had a flash of memory. "And that would give you time to win your +reputation as a writer. Then the nursing would be merely one more +resource." + +"It was nice of you to remember that. I'll consider the nursing +proposition, and when you have your next war I'll go over and nurse you. +That part of it--a war nurse--would be mighty interesting." + +The words were spoken idly, merely to avert a pause, and forgotten as soon +as uttered. But as a matter of fact the next time they met was when he +looked up from his cot in the hospital after he had been retrieved from the +hut by two of his devoted Tommies, and saw the odd pale eyes of Gora Dwight +close above his own. + + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Gora closed the door of Mrs. Groome's room as the clock struck two, the old +Ballinger clock that had seemed to toll the hours on a deep note of solemn +acquiescence for the past six weeks. + +She crossed the hall and entered Alexina's room without knocking. Mortimer, +during the past fortnight, had moved from the room adjoining his wife's to +one at the back of the house, lest it should be necessary to call Alexina +in the night. He worked very hard. + +Alexina still occupied her old room in the front of the house where the +creaking eucalyptus trees sometimes brushed the window pane. It had been +refurnished and fitted in various elusive shades of pink by Mrs. Abbott as +her wedding present. There was a dim point of light above a gas jet and +Gora saw that Alexina was asleep. The pillows were on the floor. She was +lying flat, her arms thrown out, the dusky fine mass of her hair spread +over the low head board. Her clear olive cheeks were pale with sleep and +her eyelashes looked like two little black clouds. + +Gora watched her for a moment. Why awaken the poor child? She was sleeping +as peacefully as if that tall old clock of her forefathers had not tolled +out the last of another generation of Ballingers. Her soft red lips were +half parted. + +It was now three years since her marriage but she still looked like a very +young girl. Gora always felt vaguely sorry for her although she seemed +happy enough. At all events it was quite obvious that she did little +thinking except when she remembered to wish for a baby. + +Gora wore the white uniform of a nurse, and a little cap with wings on the +coronet of her heavy hair. It was a becoming costume and made her eyes in +their dark setting look less pale and cold. + +She had a secret contempt for most of the old conventions but she had +given her word to awaken Alexina the moment any change occurred, and she +reluctantly shook her sister-in-law's shoulder. + + + +II + + +Alexina sprang out of bed on the instant. + +"Mother?" she cried. "Is she worse?" + +Gora nodded. + +Alexina made a dart for the door, but Gora threw a strong arm about her. +Those arms had held more than one violent man in his bed. "Better wait," +she said softly. + +Alexina's body grew rigid as she slowly drew back on Gora's arm and stared +up at her. In a moment she asked in a hard steady voice: "Is my mother +dead?" + +"Yes. It was very sudden. I had no time to telephone for the doctor; to +call you. She was sleeping. I was sitting beside her. Suddenly I knew that +she had stopped breathing--" + +"Would you mind telephoning to Maria and Sally? Maria will never forgive +herself--but mother seemed so much better--" + +"I will telephone at once. Shall I call Mortimer?" + +"No. Why disturb him?" + +Gora, watching Alexina, saw a curious remoteness enter the depths of her +eyes, and her own narrowed with something of her old angry resentment. +In this hour of profound sorrow, when the human heart is quite honest, +Alexina, however her conscious mind might be averted from the fact, +regarded Mortimer Dwight as an outsider, an agreeable alien who had no +permanent place in the immense permanency of the Ballinger-Groomes. She +wanted only her own family, her own inherent sort. Sally had hastened to +California as soon as her mother's illness had been pronounced dangerous, +and had stayed in the house until a week ago when she had been ordered by +the doctor to Santa Barbara to get rid of a heavy cold on her chest. She +had telegraphed the day before that she was threatened with pneumonia, and +Maria, assured that her mother was in no immediate danger, had gone down to +spend two days with her. + +Possibly Alexina caught a flash from the mind of this strange and +interesting sister-in-law, for she added hastily: + +"You know how hard Mortimer works, poor dear. And I do not feel in the +least like crying. I shall write telegrams to Ballinger and Geary: my +brothers, you know." (Gora ground her teeth.) "It was too sad they could +not get here, but Ballinger is in South America and Geary on a diet. I +must also write a cablegram to an old friend of mine who has married a +Frenchman, Olive de Morsigny. She was always so fond of mother. Would you +also mind telephoning to Rincona about seven?" + +"I'll do all the telephoning. Go back to bed as soon as possible. It is +only a little after two." As Gora turned to leave the room Alexina put her +hand on her arm and summoned a faint sweet smile. + +"I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Gora dear, how grateful we all are. +You have been simply wonderful--" + +"I am a good nurse if I do say it myself," said Gora lightly. "But you must +remember there are others quite as good; and that I--". + +"I know you would do your duty as devotedly by any stranger." Alexina +interrupted her with sweet insistence. "But it has been wonderful to be +able to have you, all the same. It has also given me the chance to know you +at last, and I shall never quite let you go again." + +Gora, to her secret anger, had never accustomed herself to the unswerving +graciousness of these people, and all that it implied, but her sharp mind +had long since warned her that as she had neither the position nor the +training to emulate it, at least she must not betray a sense of social +inferiority by open resentment. + +Her voice was deep and naturally abrupt but she achieved a fair imitation +of Alexina's sweet cordiality. "It has meant quite as much to me, Alexina, +I can assure you. And now that I am on my own and shall have a day or two +between cases I know where I shall spend them. I am only too thankful that +I graduated in time to take care of dear Mrs. Groome. Write your telegrams +and I will give them to the doctor when he comes. I must telephone to him +at once." + + + +III + + +After she had gone Alexina wrote not only her telegrams and cablegrams, but +the "letters to follow." It was nearly four o'clock when she finished. Old +Dr. Maitland had not yet come and she put her bulletins on the table in the +hall. + +She heard Gora moving about her mother's room and retreated into her own. +She did not want to go to her mother yet nor did she care particularly +to see Gora again, although she had certainly been very nice and a great +comfort to them all. + +Alexina was quite unaware that her attitude to her sister-in-law was one of +unconsicous condescension, of a well-bred determination never to wound the +pride of a social inferior. She found Gora an "interesting personality" and +quite extraordinarily efficient. + +It had been the greatest relief to all the family when that very capable +Miss Dwight--Gora, that is; one must remember--had been brought by Dr. +Maitland to take charge of the case after Mrs. Groome's cardiac trouble +became acute and she demanded constant attention. + +Gora had slept in Mrs. Groome's bedroom for six weeks, relieved for several +hours of the afternoon by a member of the family or one of Mrs. Groome's +many anxious friends. It was her first case and it interested her +profoundly. Moreover, her personal devotion placed her for the moment on a +certain basis of equality with a family whose mental processes were quite +transparent to her contemptuous mind. She was excessively annoyed with +herself for still caring, but the roots were too deep, and there had been +nothing in her life during the past three years to diminish her fierce +sense of democracy as she interpreted it. + +Alexina had never given a thought to her sister-in-law's psychology, +although the sensitive plates of her brain received an impression now and +again of a violent inner life behind that business-like exterior. But she +had seen little of her until lately, and during the past six weeks her mind +had been too concentrated upon her mother's sufferings and possible danger +to have any disposition for analysis. + +She certainly did not feel the least need of her now. She wished, indeed, +that she had asked Aileen to remain in the house last night. Aileen was +her own age, they had been intimate since childhood, often without the +slightest regard for each other's feelings, and was more like a sister than +even dear Sally and Maria. + +Suddenly she determined to go to her. She had her own latch key and would +disturb no one but Aileen. She dressed herself warmly and slipped down +stairs and out of the house. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +The city below--the new solid city--was obliterated under a heavy fog, +pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged dark +rocks in that white and tranquil sea. + +On Angel Island and on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells were +tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond the +Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. The bells +sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other sound in the +sleeping city. + +Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the hood +over her head. + +As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with something of +a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she had expressed to +Gora her reluctance to disturb him. + +She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the house at +four o'clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl friend when any +other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) would have flown to +her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms. + +And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as +irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He +assuredly would have said just the right things to her and not have +resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest. + +On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only was +he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was unorthodox, and +he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly. + +Well, she didn't want him and that was the end of it. He didn't fill the +present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had quite +measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made love +charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager +spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o'clock every evening +never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately +afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that they +made a "stunning couple" and that people commented upon their good looks, +their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in nature's +coloring. + + + +II + + +Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her +mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she knew +that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the suddenness of her +mother's death, and that her emotions would be fluid a few hours hence. + +They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother's illness. +As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent him the +insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a modest +exporting and importing house, that being the only business of which he had +any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested that he open an +insurance office, or start himself in any business where little capital +besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs. Groome's advisors they were +averse to launching any of her moderate fortune on a doubtful venture. But +Dwight had insisted that he was more likely to succeed in a business he +understood than in one of which he knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed +with him. Judge Lawton and Abbott paid over the insurance money with the +worst grace possible. + +And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His aunt +Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore soon +after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been recapitalized +and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring's executor had sold her stock for +something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering the proceeds, as +directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, Mortimer and Gora Dwight. + +Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever Harrison +and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a department in +time and safely anchored for life; but he had taken the step, and she +reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a business with +which he had been associated for fourteen years, she knew his energy and +powers of application, and she resented the attitude of "the family." +Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had consented to +invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to make immediate +restitution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his "stock did go up" +with the family, particularly as he seemed to be doing well and had the +reputation of working harder than any young man on the street. As he had +anticipated, a good deal of business was thrown his way. + +He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome's invitation to live with +her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the current +expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would she be lonely +without the child of her old age, but she must desire that Alexina continue +to live in the conditions to which she was accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome +consented to accept would not have kept them in a fashionable family hotel, +much less an apartment with several servants. + +Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live +across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their offspring +never ceased. + +Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed "simply great," +and had continued to feed from her mother's hand even in the matter of pin +money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to put his surplus +profits back in his business; all he could spare he needed for "front," to +say nothing of pleasant little dinners at restaurants to their hospitable +young friends; who thought it no adequate return to be asked to dine on +Ballinger Hill. + +Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have +done, considering the "hard times;" or at least she would have preferred +that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly allowance; +she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure supported by her +husband. + +However, she and her mother assured each other that he was bound to make a +fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large as that of +Sibyl Thorndyke, who had married Frank Bascom. + +It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete +words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no +responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her imagination +on that plane sometimes called the fool's paradise. + + + +III + + +She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for children. +They would have been the real thing, given a serious translation to life. + +But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and +with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long +chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have asked +for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his working +hours were over. + +Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to +watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they +spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter's magnificent "villa" at Burlingame. Even +Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they had spent +the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on equal terms +with many millionaires. + + + +IV + + +It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona during +their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family had grimly +surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement. + +Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on +the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, Susan +Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott's sisters, whose homes were in +Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now Atherton) who had +married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as one united family. They +met every day, wandering in and out at all hours, and although they had +many healthy disagreements they agreed on all the fine old fundamentals, +and they stood by one another through thick and thin. + +The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished +asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and smart as +Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt Clara, who was +only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, and her face +was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as loosely as her old +wrapper. + +All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new +refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the awful +pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and stuffed an +infant's flannel petticoat into her mouth to muffle her giggles. + +Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the +Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, which +was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts to be +"nice" of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he arrived, +and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings must be +spared, every moment. + +Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from under +the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court. + +In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their gracious +civil "kind" attitude had never varied, save only when their consciences +hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they were not only +heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice. + +Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking his +after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines had been +planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of the park +where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of England, the +guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the eighties who +faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott and Coralie +Geary. + +From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he +played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given them +in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he was +duller. + + + +V + + +Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, +Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling. + +For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied +topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely +painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an attempt +merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the mayor, and +his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably resolved itself +into a declaration of war, with State's Prison as its goal, upon some of +the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco. + +The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, bent +upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, and the +basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter of course +that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in private +their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to the board of +supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be only too glad to +expose the malefactors. + +But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of +admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and bribery. +They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or renounce their +great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law had technical +terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so had the public. + +All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city +administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of +which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred thousand +dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. Supervisors, +by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand Jury indicted not +only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of eminent citizens. + +Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now and +again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand Thornton, at +a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, and Mrs. Hofer gave +a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament. + +The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his +historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the +court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his cell. +There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would reinstitute the +lynch law of the fifties. + +Nothing came of it all but such a prolonged exposure of general vileness +that it was possible to effect a certain number of reforms later by popular +vote. The system remained inviolate, even during the mayorship of a fine +old citizen too estimable to build up a rival machine; and the men of the +prosecution, after many bitter harassed months, when they walked and slept +with their lives in their hands, resigned themselves to the fact that no +San Francisco jury would ever convict a man who had the money to bribe it. + +All this had given Mortimer abundant material for conversation and he had +entertained Mrs. Groome and Alexina night after night with a report of the +day's events and the gossip of the street. Mrs. Groome had been intensely +interested, for this upheaval reminded her of personal episodes in the life +of her husband and father, the latter having been a member of the vigilance +committees of the fifties. + +She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to +bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina to +invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle were +accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, nothing +could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to follow the +example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer. + +Alexina had never been interested in the details of the prosecution; the +large moments of the drama and the social convulsions were enough for her. +She refused to cut Mrs. Hofer, although she ceased to call on her, as her +mother and her husband made such a point of it; but she gave little thought +to the sorrows of that ambitious young matron. She had other fish to fry. + +Two great hotels whose interiors had been swept by the fire were renovated +and furnished and their restaurants and ballrooms eagerly patronized. The +Assembly balls were resumed. There were dinners and dances in the Western +Addition, where many of the finest homes in the city had been built during +the past ten or twenty years; and entertaining Down the Peninsula had not +paused for more than two months after the disaster. + +Nevertheless, she had exulted in the fact that the husband of her choice +was able to please and entertain her mother-no easy feat. Moreover, as time +went on and interest in the Graft Prosecution wore thin, it was evident +that Mortimer had established himself firmly in his mother-in-law's graces. +He was not only the perfect husband but the son of her old age. + +She had lost Ballinger and Geary in her comparative youth, and Tom was +rarely in the house when she visited Rincona. But Mortimer was as devoted +to her in the little ways so appreciated by women of any age as he was to +his wife, and he was noiseless in the house and as prompt as the clock. +During her illness his devotion touched even Mrs. Abbott, although Mrs. +Groome was the only member of the family he ever won over. + + + +VI + + +Poor Morty. In a way he was a failure, after all. The men of her set did +not seem to care any more for him than they did before her marriage, +although they were always polite and amiable; and the promise of those old +family friends to throw business in his way seemed to be forgotten as time +went on. + +No doubt they had thought he was able to stand on his own feet after a +while, but he had often looked depressed during the panic of nineteen-seven +and the long period of business drought that had followed. Still, he had +managed to hold his own, and his constitutional optimism was unshaken. He +_knew_ that when times changed he would soon be a rich man, and Alexina +shared his faith. Not that she had ever cared particularly for great +wealth, but he talked so much about it that he had excited her imagination; +after all money was the thing these days, no doubt of that, and she had +heard "poor talk" all her life and was tired of it. + +Moreover, nothing could be more positive than that if Morty's father had +made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and administered it +with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons of rich men to-day +from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he would be as logically +intimate with those young capitalists who were the renewed pillars of San +Francisco society, as she was with the most aloof and important of her own +sex. + +She had heard Judge Lawton and other men say that if a man were still a +clerk at thirty he was hopeless. The ruts were packed with the mediocre +whose destiny was the routine work of the world, whatever might be their +secret opinions of their unrecognized abilities and their resentment +against a system that anchored them. + +The young man of brains and initiative, of energy, ambition, vision +and balance, provided he were honorable as well, and temperate in his +pleasures, was the man the eager world was always waiting for. + +Alexina knew that the United States was almost as prolific in this fine +breed of young men as she still was in opportunities for the exceptional of +every class. + +And it was possible that Mortimer was not one of them. + +Once more she put a fact into bald words. She knew that her butterfly youth +had come to an end with her mother's death, and for a year she should be +very much alone, to say nothing of her new burden of responsibilities. +Thinking during that period was inevitable. She might as well begin now. + +Mortimer had some of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was ambitious +and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his brain was +clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that it lacked +originality. + +Did it also lack initiative, resource, that peculiar alertness and quick +pouncing quality of which she had heard? She wished she knew, but she had +never discussed her husband with any one. Certainly he had stood still. +Or was that merely the fault of the hard times? She had heard other men +complain as bitterly. + +"Fate handed you a lemon, old girl." + +Alexina could almost hear Aileen's mocking voice. She even gave a startled +glance down the quiet avenue. Well, she would never discuss him with Aileen +or any one else. + +Did she love him any longer? Had she ever loved him? What was love? She had +been quite happy with him in her own little way. What did girls of eighteen +know of love? Deliberately in her youthful arrogance and unlicensed +imagination she had manufactured a fool's paradise; and, a hero being +indispensable, had dragged him in after her. + +Perhaps she still loved him. She had read and seen enough to know that +love changed its character as the years went on. She respected his many +admirable qualities and she would never forget his devotion to her mother. + +She certainly liked him. And the family attitude roused her obstinate +championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good +friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately +selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. +He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not the +masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate enough to +have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving devotion to +her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received Bob Cheever one +afternoon when she was alone, and had forbidden her ever to receive a man +in the daytime again. If men wanted to call on a married woman they could +do so in the evening. She no longer danced more than twice with any man at +a party, and he refused to read her favorite books, new or old, and chilled +any attempt to discuss them in his presence. + + + +VII + + +Well, after all, what did it matter? She had dreamed her dream and he was +better than most. She sprang to her feet and ran down the hill and across +the street to the house of Judge Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Gora waited until her brother had finished his bath and returned to his +room. When she was admitted he had a brush in either hand polishing his +pale brown immaculately cut hair. He turned to her, startled, his good +American gray eyes showing no trace of sleep. He always awoke with alert +mind and refreshed body. + +"What is it? Not--" + +Gora nodded. "At two this morning. Alexina wouldn't let me call you--" + +His wide masculine eyebrows met. It was correct to be angry and he was. "I +never heard of such a thing--" + +"She was not a bit overcome and wrote letters to her brothers and friends +for at least two hours. It really wouldn't have been worth while to disturb +you--I must say I was astonished; thought she'd go to pieces--but you never +know." + +"I'll go to her at once." + +"I'd dress first. Aileen Lawton is with her." + +Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned +half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and never +descended to small game. + +"Oh, of course!" Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out a +pair of black socks. "I like Aileen well enough, but she has altogether too +much influence over Alexina. She'd have more than myself if I didn't keep a +close watch." + +"I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as time +goes on. She hasn't that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean things in some +people." + +He gave her a quick suspicious glance, but her pale gray eyes were fixed on +the windmill beyond the window, that odd old landmark in a now fashionable +quarter of San Francisco. + +"I shall always control her," he said, setting his large finely cut lips. +"I wish her to remain a child as long as possible, for she is quite +perfect as she is. She is bright and all that, but of course she has no +intellect--" + +Gora forgot her message of death and laughed outright. + +"Men--American men, anyhow--are really the funniest things in the world. +Even intellectual men are absurd in their patronizing attitude toward the +cleverest of women; but when it conies to mere masculine arrogance...don't +you really respect any woman's brains?" + +"I never denied that some women were clever and all that, but the best of +them cannot compare with men. You must admit that." + +"I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste any +time in argument--" + +"My type?" + +She longed to reply: "The smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his +mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's shell or +the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But she +never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion of his +endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of secret +amusement. + +"Oh, you're all alike," she said lightly, and added: "Don't be too sure +that Alexina hasn't intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from this +beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it might +escape her, and begins to think--" + +"I'll do her thinking." + +"All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job....I'll +clear out; you want to dress--" + +"Wait a moment." He sat down to draw on his socks. "I'm really cut up over +Mrs. Groome's death. She was my only friend in this damn family, and I +coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on for twenty +years." + +"I wondered how you liked them as time went on." + +He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. "I hate the whole +pack of superior patronizing condescending snobs, and it is all I can do to +keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by God!"--he +brought down his fist on his knee--"I'll beat them at their own game yet. I +simply live to make a million and build a house at Burlingame. They really +respect money as much as they think they don't; I've got oil to that. When +I'm a rich roan they'll think of me as their equal and forget I was ever +anything' else." + +"Well, don't speculate," said Gora uneasily. "Remember that luck was left +out of our family." + +"My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to wait +until this period of dry rot passes--" + +"But you're not speculating?" + +He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own. + +"I answer questions about my private affairs to no one." + +"They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital." + +"You have received your interest regularly, have you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well as +the man's opportunities, and you do not." + +"I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you are +doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand--" + +"What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?" + +"Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a fling. +I shall want to go to New York and Europe." + +"And you would throw away your capital!" + +"Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will +find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction writing +for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything published, +and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York magazines: one +of the old group and two of the best of the popular magazines." + +He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to alarm. +"I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think themselves +so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and all that as +about on a level with the working class--" + +"I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They worship +success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for people +engaged in any of the art careers--with whom they practically never come +in contact, by the way--is partly an instinctive distrust of anything they +cannot do themselves and partly because they have an Elizabethan idea that +all artists are common and have offensive manners." + +"I don't like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may +unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living--and that you shall never +do when I am rich--but they have no business putting their names up before +the public like men." + +Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim fathers, +of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact from old John +Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American classic face that is +passing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the last drop from a long +forgotten "tar brush," or the sly recurrent Biblical profile. + +"We will make a bargain," she said calmly. "I will ask you no more +questions about your business for a year--when, if convenient, I should +like my money--and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to +have. It won't do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions +about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina. You've +got your hands full there. See you at breakfast." And she shut the door on +an indignant worried and disgusted brother. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife's door, was bidden to enter he +found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears +running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had +given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took his +wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical in its +reaction from the insensibility of the morning. + +"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his +sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--" + +"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the office +for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; Sally is +better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an hour. Tom and I +will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not to think." + +"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it. But +I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!" + +But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of morning +starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by degrees and sent +him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her grief was over. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's +bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with her +father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear old +thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the days +when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel Hill was +called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they both should +have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the English say. +Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as fond of your +father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine that he is your +father from this time forth, and come to him when you are in doubt about +anything." + +Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. "I have sometimes thought uncle +daddy didn't like Mortimer." + +"On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard +work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But of +course Mortimer is young--in business, that is; and father thinks--but you +had better talk with him." + +"No. Why should I? But I don't mind you. At least I could not discuss +Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me to +put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as trustees--ignoring +Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria's fortune has been kept +intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, but that men in business +are likely to get into tight places and use their wife's money. Nothing +would induce Mortimer to touch my money, but he would feel pretty badly cut +up if I let any one else look after my affairs. Of course I wouldn't even +discuss the matter with Tom. And if Morty does need money at any time I'll +lend it to him. Why not? What else would any one expect me to do?" + +"Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot. +No one doubts Mortimer's good faith, but the times are awful, money has +paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the +stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes you +will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see--the times are so +abnormal, Mortimer hasn't had time to prove his abilities yet; he's just +been able to hold on; and if things don't mend and he should lose out, +why--if you still have your own little fortune, at least you'll not be any +worse off than, you are now. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. They +always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able to hold +on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of course we +shall live here and run the house--as mother did. I couldn't bear to live +anywhere else, and Morty adores it too." + +"Oh, rather. I couldn't imagine you anywhere else." + +"Geary and Ballinger sent me ten thousand dollars for a wedding present and +Morty bought some bonds for me, but I'm going to sell a few and refurnish +the lower rooms. I love the old house but I like cheerful modern things. +The poor old parlors and dining-room do look like sarcophagi." + +"Good. I'll help. We'll have no end of fun." + + + +II + + +There was a pause and then Alexina said: "Mortimer is so determined to be a +rich man and thinks of so little else and works so hard, that he is bound +to be. Otherwise, such gifts would be meaningless." + +She made the statements with an unconscious rising inflection. Aileen did +not answer and turned her sharp revealing green eyes on the eucalyptus +grove which concealed Ballinger House from the vulgar gaze, and +incidentally shut off a magnificent view. + +"I don't know whether I like Gora Dwight or not," she remarked. + +"Neither do I. But I admire her. She is a wonder." + +"Oh, yes, I admire her, and I've a notion she's got something big in her, +some sort of destiny. But those light eyes in that dark face give me the +creeps. It isn't that I don't trust her. I believe her to be insolently +honest and honorable--and just, if you like. But--perhaps it's only the +accident of her queer coloring--she gives me the impression that while she +might go to the stake for her pride, she'd murder you in cold blood if you +got in her way." + +"Poor Gora! You make her all the more interesting." + +"Did she ever tell you that she corresponds with that Englishman who was +out here at the time of the earthquake and fire and had that ghastly +adventure with his sister? We all met him at the Hofer ball--Gathbroke his +name was." + +Alexina was staring at her with an amazed frown. "Correspond--Gora?...I +remember now he told me she helped him to carry his sister's body out to +the old cemetery. Is he interested in her?" + +"I shouldn't wonder. They've corresponded off and on ever since. I +walked, home with her one afternoon before I went south--she interests me +frantically--and she invited me up to her quite artistic attic in Geary +Street, where she still lives, and gave me the most vivid description of +that night. It made me crawl. She stared straight before her as she told +it. Her eyes were just like gray oval mirrors in which it seemed to me I +saw the whole thing pass.... + +"Then she showed me a photograph he had recently sent her--stunning thing +he is, all right, and looks years older than when he was here. She also +alluded to things he had said in a letter or two. So my phenomenally quick +wits inferred that they correspond. Perhaps they are engaged. Pretty good +deal for her." + + + +III + + +Alexina, to her surprise, felt intensely angry, although she had the +presence of mind to cast up her eyes until the white showed below the large +brilliant iris and she looked like a saint in a niche. + +She had kept Gathbroke out of her thoughts for nearly four years, +deliberately. For a time she had hated him. Mortimer's love-making had +seemed tame in comparison with that primitive outburst, and never had she +felt any such fiery response to the man she had loved and chosen as during +those few moments when she had been in that impertinent, outrageous, +loathsome young Englishman's arms. At first she had wondered and resented, +loyally concluding that it was her own fault, or that of fate for endowing +her with such a slender emotional equipment that she used it all up at once +on the wrong man. Finally, she found it wise not to think about it at all +and to dismiss the intruder from her thoughts. + +Now she felt outraged in her sense of possession....Unconsciously she had +enshrined him as the secret mate of her inmost secret self...a self she +was barely conscious of even yet...lurking in her subconsciousness, the +personal and peculiar blend of many and diverse ancestors....Sometimes +she had glimpsed it...wondered a little with a not unpleasant sense of +apprehension.... + +But for the most part Circumstance had decreed that she abide on the +abundant surface of her nature and enjoy a highly enjoyable life as it +came. Now, she had experienced her first grief, which at the same time was +her first set-back. She did not go out at all. She saw much of Mortimer and +little of any one else. It was the summer season and all her friends were +in the country or in Europe. + +She had given Mortimer her power of attorney (largely a gesture of +defiance, this) and he had attended to all details connected with her new +fortune. Between the inheritance tax, small legacies, and depreciations, +she would have a little over six thousand dollars a year; which, however, +with Mortimer's contribution, would run the old house, and keep her +wardrobe up to mark after she went out of mourning. She knew nothing of the +value of money, and was accustomed to having little to spend and everything +provided. But her mind regarding finances was quite at rest. Even if +Mortimer remained a victim of the hard times, they would be quite +comfortable. + +The cares of housekeeping were very light. She discussed the daily menus +with James, but he had run Ballinger House for years, little as Mrs. Groome +had suspected it. Mortimer, shortly after his mother-in-law's death, and +while Alexina was passing a fortnight at Rincona, had given James orders +to collect all bills on the first of every month and hand them to him, +together with a statement of the servants' wages. Mrs. Dwight was not to be +bothered. + +Alexina, when she returned, had made no protest. The details of +housekeeping did not appeal to her. But the arrangement left her without +occupation, and much time for thought. After a long walk morning and +afternoon she had little to do but read. She was an early riser and her +mind was active. + + + +IV + + +Dwight had not the least intention of using his wife's money, for he had +perfect confidence in his change of luck, and in his ability to do great +things with his business as soon as the period of depression had passed. +But he had no faith in any woman's ability to invest and take care of +money, he had fixed ideas in regard to a man being master in his own house, +and he had asked Alexina for her power of attorney more to flaunt her +confidence in him and to annoy her damnable relatives than because there +might possibly be a moment when he should have need of immediate resources. +Like many Americans he chose to keep his wife in ignorance of his business +life, and it would have annoyed him excessively to go to her with an +explanation of temporary difficulties and ask for a loan. + +Moreover, he wished to keep Alexina young and superficial, ignorant of +money matters, indifferent to the sordid responsibilities of life. Not only +was the present Alexina no embarrassment whatever to a man full of schemes, +aside from the slow march of business, for getting rich, but she was +infinitely alluring. + +He detested business women, intellectual women, women with careers; they +tipped the even balance of the man's world; moreover, they had no accepted +place in the higher social scheme. For women wage-earners he had no +antipathy and much sympathy and consideration, although he underpaid them +cheerfully when circumstances would permit. It was an abiding canker that +his sister was obliged to support herself; he was not ashamed of it, for +nursing was an honorable (and altruistic) profession, and several young +women in his new circle bad taken it up; but he hated it as a man and a +brother. As for her turning herself into an authoress, however, he only +hoped he would make his million before she got herself talked about. + +As for Alexina she was the perfect flower of a system lie worshiped and +nothing should mar or change her if his fond surveillance could prevent it. + +On the whole he was quite happy at this time, despite his passionate desire +for wealth and his natural resentment, at the attitude of the Abbotts and +their intimate circle of old friends who were so like them that he always +included them in his mind when speaking of "the family." Although he was +making barely enough to pay his sister the monthly interest on her money, +the salaries of his employees, and, until recently, a monthly contribution +to the household expenses, he had a comfortable and delightful home with +not a few of the minor luxuries, an undisputed position in the best +society, an honorable one in the business world, and a beautiful wife. +Now that the conventions forced them to live the retired life, they could +economize without attracting attention; as he paid the bills Alexina would +not know whether he still contributed his share or not; (in time he meant +to pay the whole and give his wife, with the grand gesture, her entire +income for pin money) and, with Alexina's cordial assent, he had sold the +old carriage, and the horses, which were eating their heads off, dismissed +the coachman-gardener, and found a young Swede to take care of the garden +and outbuildings. + +Later, they would have their car like other people, but there was no need +for it at present, and it was neither the time nor the occasion to exhibit +a tendency to extravagance. In the matter of "front" he knew precisely +where to leave off. + +In a certain small anxious bag-of-tricks way he was clever. But not clever +enough. He knew nothing of Alexina beneath her shining surface. If he +had he would have sought to crowd her mind with the details of the home, +encouraged her to join in the frantic activities of some one of the women's +clubs he held in scorn, persuaded her to play golf daily at the fashionable +club of which they were members, even though she ran the risk of talking, +unchaperoned by himself, with other men. + +He never would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books for +companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in psychology, or +in revelations of the many phases of life of which she was personally so +ignorant); and only his own companionship evening after evening. + +But he had known all the Alexina he was ever to know. Such flashing +glimpses as he was destined to have later so bewildered him that he reacted +obstinately to his original estimate of her,...just a child under the +influence of her family or some of those friends of hers who had always +hated him...erratic and irresponsible like all women...a man never could +understand women because there was nothing to understand...merely a bundle +of contradictions.... + +In some ways his mental equipment was an enviable one. + + + +VI + + +Some of all this Alexina guessed, and although she was nettled at times +that he took no note of her maturing mind and character, she was, on the +whole, more amused. + +Indulgent by nature, and somewhat indolent, she had been more than willing +that Morty should enjoy his new authority, should even delude himself that +he was footing all the bills, poor dear; and she listened raptly to his +evening visions of their future life in Burlingame, alternated with visits +to New York and England, the while she puzzled over the intricacies of some +character portrayed by a master analyst. + +Sometimes he did not talk at all, utterly fagged by a strenuous day in +which he had accomplished precisely nothing. But the more transparent and +truncated and dull he grew the more spontaneous the "niceness" and almost +effusive courtesy of his wife. Insensibly she was veering to the family +attitude, but he had tagged her once for all and never saw it. + +Until this moment, however, when Gathbroke had been jerked from his deep +seclusion within her ivory tower by Aileen's unwelcome news, she had never +had a moment of complete self-revelation....She knew instantly that she had +never loved her husband: he was not her mate and Gathbroke was. She had had +three years of rippling content and light enjoyment with Mortimer, they had +never quarreled seriously, and they had never taken their parts in one +moment of real drama. + +If she had married Gathbroke they would have quarreled furiously, they +would have thrown courtesy and behavior to the winds often enough, +particularly while they were young, for neither would have been in the +least apprehensive of wounding the rank-pride of the other, and such mutual +and passionate love as theirs naturally gave birth to a high state of +irritability; they would have loved and hated and made constant discoveries +about each other...there would have been depths never to be fully explored +but always luring them on...and the perfect companionship...the complete +fusion.... + +How Alexina knew all this after less than three hours' association with +Gathbroke, let any woman answer. She was not so foolish as to imagine +herself the victim of a secret passion, or that she had ever loved the man, +or ever would. She had merely had her chance for the great duodrama, and +thrown it away for a callow dream. She had no passing wish, even in that +moment of visualizing him interlocked with her own wraith in that sacred +inner temple where even she had never intruded before, to meet him again. +She had no intention of passing any of her abundant leisure in dreaming +dreams of him and the perfect bliss. But he had been hers...and +utterly...he had loved her...he had wanted her...he had precipitately +begged her to marry him...he had offered her the homage of complete +brutality. + +Something of him would always be hers. + +And even though she renounced all rights in him because she must, she did +not in the least relish that any one so close to her as Gora Dwight should +have him. She might have heard of his marriage to a girl of his own land +and class with only a passing spasm, but his continued and possibly tender +friendship with her sister-in-law shook her out of the last of her jejunity +and its illusions....She was not exactly a dog in the manger...she was a +maturing woman looking back with anger and dismay not only upon the fatal +mistake of her youth, but upon the inexorable realities of her present +life.... + +The reaction was a more intense feeling of loyalty to Mortimer than ever. +She was entirely to blame. He not only had been innocent of conscious +rivalry, even of pursuit--for she could quite easily have discouraged him +in the earlier stages of his courtship--but he was dependent upon her in +every way: for his happiness, for the secure social position that meant so +much to him, for the greater number of his valuable connections, for even +his comfort and ease of living. + +Something of this had passed through her stunned mind on the morning of her +mother's death. Now it was all as sharply outlined as the etching at which +she was raptly gazing, and she vowed anew that she would never desert him, +never deny him the assistance of the true partner. She had signed a life +contract with her eyes open and she would keep it to the letter. + +Only she hoped to heaven that Gathbroke was not serious about Gora. She +wished never to be reminded of his existence again. + +And, as Aileen talked of Santa Barbara, she wondered vaguely why there +was not a law forbidding girls to marry until they were well into their +twenties....until they had had a certain amount of experience....knew their +own minds....Maria had been right.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +The darkness had come early with the high rolling fog that shut out the +stars. The fog horn and the bells were silent but the wind had a thin +anxious note as if lost, and the long creaking eucalyptus trees angrily +repelled it as if irritated beyond endurance by its eternal visitations. + +Alexina, who had been reading in her bedroom, realized that it must be +quite half an hour since she had turned a page. She lifted her shoulders +impatiently. She was in no humor for reading. + +It was only eight o'clock. Far too early for bed. Mortimer had gone to Los +Angeles on business. He had been gone a week, and she admitted to herself +with the new frankness she had determined to cultivate--that she might +meet, with the clearest possible vision, whatever three-cornered deals +Life might have in store for her--that she had not missed him at all. His +absence had been a heavenly interlude. She and Aileen had gone to the +moving pictures unescorted every night (a performance of which he would +have disapproved profoundly), and they had lunched downtown every day until +Alexina had suddenly discovered that she had no more money in her purse; +and, knowing nothing whatever even of minor finance, was under the +impression that having given Mortimer her power of attorney she would not +be able to draw from the bank. + +Aileen had gone down to Burlingame to visit Sibyl Bascom for a few days. +Alexina had declined to go, although it was a quiet party; it would be +embarrassing not to tip the servants. + +The wind gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the house +and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who shook +it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the window +severely for good measure. + +Alexina was used to San Francisco in all her many moods, but to-night, the +wind and the high gray fog shutting out the stars, the silent house--silent +that is but for the mice playing innocently between the walls--her complete +solitude, made her restless and a little nervous. + +What could she do? + +She knew quite well that she had wanted to go to see Gora for a week. She +had not indulged in any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was curious to +see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her mind that April +day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he had outgrown his +hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, and the inability to +conceal the asinine condition to which she had immediately reduced him, she +might have given him an equal chance with Morty. + +Aileen had said that he looked older. She had a quite natural curiosity to +decide for herself if, had he been born several years earlier, he would +have proved the successful rival in that foundational period of their +youth....Or perhaps she was the reason of his rather sudden maturity. +After all there was no great chasm between twenty-three and twenty-six and +three-quarters. She looked little if any older. Neither did Morty, nor any +one she knew. + +This idea thrilled her, and, grimly determined upon no compromise or +evasion, she admitted it. + +Moreover, she wanted to sound out Gora. + +Somehow she had no real belief that he had transferred his affections to +her dissimilar sister-in-law, but her interest in Gora was growing. She +wanted to know her better. + +Besides, although she had often invited her to tea on her free afternoons, +and to dinner whenever possible, and had occasionally dropped in to see her +while she was still in the hospital, she had never called on her in her +home. As Gora only slept there after a killing day's or night's work, +visitors were anything but welcome; nevertheless she felt that she had been +negligent, rude--three years!--and as Gora was not on a case for a day or +two, now was the time to atone. + +Moreover, she had never been out quite alone at night, except to run down +the avenue and across the street to Aileen's. It was a long way down to +Geary Street, and Fillmore Street at night was "tough." Mortimer would be +furious. + +She hastily changed her dinner gown to a plain walking suit of black tweed +and pinned on a close hat firmly, prepared to defy the wind and thoroughly +to enjoy her little adventure. Not since she had stolen out to go to +forbidden parties with Aileen had she felt such a sense of altogether +reprehensible elation. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Fillmore Street, its low-browed shops dark, but with great arcs of white +lights spanning the streets that ran east and west, long shafts of yellow +light shining across the sidewalk from the restaurants, the candy stores +and the nicolodeons--where the pianola tinkled plaintively--was thronged +with saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious glances at them as she walked +rapidly along. In front of every saloon was a group of young men almost +fascinatingly common to Alexina's cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over +their foreheads at an indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners +of their mouths, or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at +"bunches" of girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, +making strident or stage-whispered comments. + +A great many girls had cavaliers, and these walked with their heads tossed, +unless drooping toward a padded, shoulder; and they wore perhaps a coat or +two less of make-up than their still neglected sisters. These were vividly +earmined, although most of them were young enough to have relied on cold +water and a rough towel; their hair was arranged in enormous pompadours and +topped with "lingerie" or beflowered hats. Their blouses were "peek-a-boo" +and cut low, their skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated +straight front corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced +the debutante slouch and their jaws worked automatically. + +Not all of them were "bad" by any means. Fillmore Street was a promenade +at night for girls who were confined by day: waitresses, shop girls of the +humbler sort, servants, clerks, or younger daughters of poor parents, who +would see nothing of life at all if they sat virtuously in the kitchen +every night. + +The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to +ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and they +were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, the dead +white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, ignoring the "bums" +and "cadets" lounging at the corners or before the saloons, directed intent +long glances at every passing man who looked as if he had the "roll" to +treat them handsomely in the back parlor of a saloon, or possibly stake +them at a gaming table. The town, still in its brief period of insufferable +virtue, was "closed," but the lid was not on as irremovably as the police +led the good mayor to believe; and these girls, who traveled not in +"bunches" but in pairs, if they had not already begun a career of +profitable vice, were anxious to start but did not exactly know how. +Fillmore Street was not the hunting ground of rich men; but men with a +night's money came there, and many "boobs" from the country. + +Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated +everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that +many of these girls were "decent enough"; "much more decent than I would be +in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no place to see a +beau but the street. I'd go straight to the devil and play the only game I +had for all it was worth." + +But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in +"badness." She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the great +juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. Moreover, she +could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars above the fog, and +she had drawn herself up to her full five feet seven, thrown her shoulders +back, lifted her chin and lowered her eyelids the merest trifle. She +fancied that the patrician-beauty type would have little or no attraction +for the men who frequented Fillmore Street. Certainly the bluntest of these +males could see that she was not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum. + +Moreover she was in mourning. + +But she had reckoned without her youth. + + + +II + + +"Say, kid, what you doin' all alone?" + +A hand passed familiarly through her arm. + +Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn upon +him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help? + +Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all terrified; +nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark of the +sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: "When a man is even +half way drunk he doesn't know a lady from a trollop, and ten to one the +lady's a trollop anyhow." + +She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present +moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature? + +She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish +attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and one +girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the situation, +laughed aloud and cried after her: "Don't be frightened, kid. He's not a +slaver." + +Irrepressible curiosity made her send him a swift glance from the corner of +her eye. He was a young man, thick set, with an aggressive nose set in a +round hard face. His small, hard, black eyes were steady, and so were his +feet. He did not look in the least drunk. + +"I think you have made a mistake," she said quietly, and with no pretense +at immense dignity (she could hear Aileen say: "Cut it out. Nothing doing +in that line here"). "I, also, have made a mistake--in walking at night on +this street. Would you mind letting go my arm? I think I'll take a car." + +"No, I think you'll stay just where you are," he said insolently. "You +don't belong here all right, but you've come and you can stand the +consequences. You're just the sort that needs a jolt and I like the idea of +handing it." + +Alexina gave him a coldly speculative glance. "I wonder why?" + +"You would? Well, I'll tell you. Never been out alone at night before, I'll +bet, like these other girls, that ain't got no place on earth to have any +fun but the streets. Never even rubbed against the common herd? Generally +go about in a machine, don't you?" + +"It is quite true that I have never been out alone at night before. I +certainly shall not go again." + +"No, you don't have to! That's the point, all right. And if you weren't +such a beauty, damn you! I'd hate you this minute as I hate your whole +parasite class." + +"Oh, you are a socialist!" Alexina looked at him with frank curiosity. "I +never saw one before." + +He was obviously disconcerted. Then his face flushed with anger. "Yes, I'm +a socialist all right, and you'll see more of us before you're many years +older." + +"You might tell me about it if you _will_ walk with me. I am a long +way from my destination, and that would be far more interesting than +personalities." + +"I've got more personalities where those came from. It makes me sick to see +the difference between you and these poor kids--ready to sell their souls +for pretty clothes and a little fun. There's nothing that has done so much +to inflame class hatred as the pampered delicate satin-skinned women of +your class, who have expensive clothes and 'grooming' to take the place of +slathers of paint and cheap perfume. Raised in a hot house for the use +of the man on top. It's the crowning offense of capitalism, and when the +system goes, they'll all be like you, or you'll be more like them. You'll +come down about a thousand pegs, and the ones down below will be shoved up +to meet you." + +Alexina stood still and faced him. + +"Are you poor?" she asked. + +"What a hell of a question. Have I been talkin' like a plutocrat?" + +"Oh, there are, still, different grades. I was wondering if you would be so +inconsistent as to earn a little money from me and two friends of mine. We +have read socialism a bit, but, we don't understand it very well. I am in +mourning and it would interest me immensely." + +He had dropped her arm and was staring at her. + +"You are not afraid of me, then?" His voice was sulky but his eyes were +less hostile. + +"Oh, not in the least. I fully appreciate that you merely wished to +humiliate me, not to be insulting, as some of these other men might have +been. My name is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. I live on Ballinger Hill--do you +know it? That old house in the eucalyptus grove?" + +"I know it, all right." + +"Then you probably know, also, that I am not rich and never have been. My +husband is a struggling young business man." + +"That cuts no ice. You train with that class, don't you? You're class +yourself, reek with it. You had rich ancestors or you wouldn't be what you +are now." + +"Well, we can discuss that point another time. One of my friends is a +daughter of Judge Lawton--" + +"Hand in glove with every rich grafter in 'Frisco." + +Alexina shuddered. "Please say San Francisco. I am positive you never heard +a word against Judge Lawton's probity, nor that he ever rendered an unjust +decision." + +"He's a wise old guy, all right. But it would be wastin' time tryin' to +make you understand why I have no use for him." + +"Of course you would have no use for the husband of my other friend, Mrs. +Frank Bascom." + +She fully expected that the young millionaire's name would be the final red +rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the benefit of +all Fillmore Street. But he surprised her by saying reluctantly: + +"He's dead straight, all right. He's not a grafter. I've nothing against +him personally, but he's part of a damnable system and I'd clean him out +with the rest." + +"Well, there you have three of us to your hand. Who knows but that you +might convert us? Why not give us the chance? If you will give me your +address I will write to you as soon as my friends come back to town." + +"I don't know whether I want to do it or not. You may be makin' game of me +for all I know." + +"I am quite sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you +something too--what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of +socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask what your +occupation is?" + +"I'm just a plain working-man--housebuilding line." + +"Then you could only come in the evening?" + +"Not at all; I get off at five. You don't have your dinner until eight in +your set, I believe," This with a sneer that curled his upper lip almost to +the septum of his nose. + +"Seven. My husband works until nearly six. He rarely has time for lunch and +comes home very hungry." + +Once more he looked puzzled and disconcerted, but his small steady eyes did +not waver. + +"My name's James Kirkpatrick." He found the stub of a pencil in his pocket +and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it over. Maybe +I'll do it. I dunno, though." + +"I do hope you will. I'm sure we can learn a good deal from each other. +Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don't the socialist +tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?" + +"Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight better, +but I guess there's nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your car." + +He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and +as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself on +having had the last word. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on +the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young +sister-in-law left the car at the corner. + +Gora walked up to meet her guest. "Where on earth have you, been?" she +demanded. "I supposed of course that you'd take a taxi. You should not go +out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest ideas; and +you--" + +"Haven't. Not, any more. I'm tired of being kept in a glass case--being +a parasite." She laughed gayly at Gora's look of amazement. "I've had an +adventure. Almost the first I ever had." + +She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps and +stairs to the attic. + +Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. "Shall you tell Mortimer?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done." + +"But if you study with this man?" + +"There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself as +Morty's partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over anything +yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many things whether +he happens to like it or not. Possibly without consulting him." + +"You've had time to think these past three months for the first time in +your life," said Gora shrewdly. "Here we are. I hope you don't hate stairs. +I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can't give up the old +place....And I've lit the candles in your honor." + + + +II + + +"Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!" + +Thought Gora: "I do hope she's not going to be gracious. I've never liked +her so well before." + +But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome +tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from +respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the +impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had +caught sight immediately of Gathbroke's picture framed and enthroned on the +mantelpiece. + +She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old Chinese +lanterns that held the candles. + +"I am going to refurnish our lower rooms," she said. "If you have time do +help me. Heavens! I wish I could work off some of that old furniture on +you. I like the Italian pieces well enough, but there are too many of them. +That rather low Florentine cabinet in the back parlor would just fit in +this corner...." + +She gave a little girlish exclamation and ran forward. + +"Isn't that young Gathbroke, who was out here at the time of the earthquake +and fire...or an older brother, perhaps?" + +She had taken the photograph from the mantel and was examining it under one +of the lanterns. Her alert ear detected the deeper and less steady note in +Gora's always hoarse voice. + +"It is the same. Did you meet him?...Oh, I remember he told me he met you +at the Hofer ball. He rather raved over you, in fact." + +"Did he? How sweet of him. I met him again, I remember. Mr. Gwynne brought +him down to Rincona one day." + +"Oh?" + +And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit. + +"But he looks much much older." + +"He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey on +him more and more. + +"Oh." + +He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, two +weeks after the fire. + +Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a +coaxing smile. "Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me." + +"No," said Gora, shortly. "We are not engaged. Good friends, that is all, +and write occasionally." + +"Well, he must be very much interested--and you must be a very interesting +correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What does he do, +anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something about the army." + +"He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone +into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me--oh, it must +be nearly two years ago--that if there should be a war he would enlist as a +matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and he was sick +of idleness--his good middle-class energetic blood asserting itself, he +said,--he was going to amuse himself with work, incidentally try to make +a fortune. His mother left a good deal of money, but there are several +children and I guess the present earl needs most of it to keep up his +estates, to say nothing of his position. Fotten law, that--entail, I mean." + +Alexina came and sat down on the divan beside Gora, piling the cushions +behind her. "Are you a socialist?" + +"I am not. I believe in sticking to your own class, whether you have a +grudge against it or not, or even if you think it far from perfection." + +She shot a quick challenging glance at her admittedly aristocratic +sister-in-law, but Alexina had lifted the lower white of her eyes just +above their soft black fringe and looked more innocent than any new born +lamb. As she did not answer Gora continued: + +"I remember that night I sat out with Gathbroke on Calvary he said +something about socialism...that it was a confession of failure. I may feel +so furious with destiny sometimes that I could go out and wave a red flag, +or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers me is the thought +that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a reasonable fortune +I'd have no more use for socialism than for a rattlesnake in my bed. Why +are you interested?" + +"Only as in any subject that interests a few million people. I haven't the +least intention of being converted, but I don't want to be an ignoramus. +Aileen and Sibyl and I did start Marx's _Das Kapital_--in German! We nearly +died of it. But I felt sure that this man, Kirkpatrick, had studied his +subject, if only because his language changed so completely when he talked +about it. It was as if he were quoting, but intelligently. Of course the +poor man had little or no education to begin with. Somehow he struck me as +a pathetic figure. Perhaps when every one is educated--and there must be +many thousands of naturally intelligent men in the working class whose +brains if trained would be mighty useful in Washington--well, all having +had equal opportunities they would surely arrive at some way to improve +conditions without struggling for anything so hopeless as socialism. I +know enough to be sure that it is hopeless, because it antagonizes human +nature." + +"Rather. The trend under all the talk is more and more toward +individualism, not self-effacing communism. As for myself I like the idea +of the fight--for public recognition, I mean; and I don't think I'd be +happy at all if things were made too smooth for me; if, for instance, in +a socialized state it were decided that I could devote all my time to +writing, and that the state would take care of me, publish my work, and +distribute it exactly where it was sure to be appreciated. I haven't any +of the old California gambling blood in me, but I guess the hardy ghost of +those old days still dominates the atmosphere, and I have not been one of +those to escape." + +"It's in mine! Not that I care for gambling, really, like Aileen and Alice. +But I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking long chances, and I +have had inklings that I'll be rather more than less fascinated as I grow +older....When are your stories to be published? I am simply expiring to +read them." + +"Are you?" + + + +III + + +Alexina had thrust her slim index finger unerringly through Gora's +bristling armor and tickled her weakest spot. The fledgling author smiled +into the dazzling eyes opposite and a deep flush rose to her high cheek +bones, + +"Rather!" + +"Then..." Gora rose and took a magazine from the table beside her bed. She +spread it open on her lap, when she had resumed her seat, and handled it as +Alexina had seen young mothers fondle their first-born. + +"It's here. Just out." + +"Oh!" Alexina. gave a little shriek of genuine anticipation. "Read it to +me. Quick. I can't wait." + +Gora led a lonely life outside of her work, a lonely inner life always. She +had never had an intimate friend, and she suddenly reflected that there had +been a certain measure of sadness in her joy both when her manuscripts were +accepted and to-day when for the first time she had gazed at herself in +print....She had had no one to rejoice with her....She felt an overwhelming +sense of gratitude to Alexina. + +But she gave this young wife of her brother whom she knew as little as +Alexina knew her, another swift suspicious glance....No, there was nothing +of Alexina's usual high and careless courtesy in that eager almost excited +face. + +"I'd love to have your opinion....I read very badly....Make allowances...." + +"Oh, fire away. If I'd written a story and had it accepted by that magazine +I'd read it from the housetops." + +Gora read the story well enough, and Alexina's mind did not wander even to +Gathbroke. It was written in a pure direct vigorous English. A little less +self-consciousness and it would have been distinguished. The story itself +was built craftily; she had been coached by a clever instructor who was a +successful writer of short stories himself; and it worked up to a climax of +genuine drama. But this was merely the framework, the flexible technique +for the real Gora. The story had not only an original point of view but it +pulsed with the insurgent resentful passionate spirit of the writer. + +Alexina gave a little gasp as Gora finished. + +"Many people won't like that story," she said. "It shocks and jars and +gives one's smugness a pain in the middle. But those that do like it +will give you a great reputation, and after all there are a few thousand +intelligent readers in the United States. How on earth did that magazine +come to accept it?" + +Gora was staring at Alexina with an uncommonly soft expression in her +opaque light eyes. She felt, indeed, as if her ego would leap through them +and make a fool of her. + +"The editor wrote me something of what you have just said. He wanted +something new--to give his conservative old subscribers a shock. Thought +it would be good for them and for the magazine. You--you--have said what I +should have wanted you to say if I could have thought it out....I think I +should have hated you if you had said, 'How charming!' or 'How frantically +interesting!'" + +"Well, it's the last if not the first. Aileen will say that and mean it. +I'll telephone to the bookstore the first thing Monday morning and get a +copy. Now I must go. It's late." + + + +IV + + +"Let me telephone for a taxi." + +Alexina laughed merrily. "You'll never believe it, but I've just thirty +cents in my purse. I forgot to ask Morty for something before he +left....You see, I happened to find quite a bit in mother's desk and so +I've never thought to ask him for an allowance. But I shall at once." + +"An allowance? But you have your own money? Or is it because the estate +isn't settled? What has Morty to do with that?" + +"I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I +gave my power of attorney to Morty." + +"Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it." + +"Could I? Well! I'll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M." + +"Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?" + +"Oh...why...he asked me to...I know nothing about business, and he +naturally would attend to my affairs." + +"But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And the +executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign such papers +as they advise....Don't he angry, please. I am not insinuating anything +against Morty. He's never bad a dishonest thought in his life...has always +been, the squarest...but..." + +"Well?" + +Alexina's head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott and +Judge Lawton...but for his sister... + +"It's this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, are +just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some are +stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they make up +for it by being weaker in others....I am talking particularly of the money +question, the struggle for existence, which the vast majority of men are +forced to make.... + +"Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have any, +to force success--in one way or another--out of her until the hour they are +able to lay down the burden....Some are too strong and too firm in their +ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and generally they are +strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their way against the +most overwhelming odds....Many are too clever not to find some way of +compromising and circumventing....Others just peg along and barely make +both ends meet....Others go under and down and out. + +"Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and +high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a duck +takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and steady worker +he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market before he was +married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He is frantic to get +rich...for more reasons than one." + +"But he never would do anything dishonorable." + +"No. Nothing he couldn't square with his conscience if it turned out all +right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little difficulty in +arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the possession of the +women of his family, is his if he needs it. + +"Moreover, no doubt you have discovered that Morty is the sort of man who +looks upon women as man's natural inferiors, that if there is any question +of sacrifice the woman is not to be considered for a moment...especially +where no public risk is involved. That sort of man only thinks he is too +honest to refrain from taking some unrelated woman's money, but as a matter +of fact it is because she would send him to State's Prison as readily as a +man would. One's own women are safe. + +"I lent Morty my small inheritance with my eyes open. But he knows a good +deal of that particular business, and I did not dream the times were going +to be so bad....I doubt if I ever see it again....But you must not run the +risk of losing yours. I want you to promise me that on Monday morning you +will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power of attorney. And as +much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps +it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be +infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is +honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position +again, and you would have your own income." + +"But do you mean to say that if I did revoke my power of attorney and he +asked me later for money to save his business that I should not give it to +him?" + +"Yes, I mean just that. Morty will never take any of the prizes in the +business world. He may hold on and make a living, that is all. He has +plenty to start with, and tells me he is doing fairly well, in spite of the +times. But he would do better in the long run as a clerk. In time he +might get a large salary as a sort of general director of all the routine +business of some large house--" + +Alexina curled her lip. "I do not want him to be a clerk." + +"No, of course you don't! But you'd like it still less if he cleaned you +out. You--would have to sell or rent your old home and live on a hundred +and fifty dollars a month in a flat in some out-of-the-way quarter. You +might have to go to work yourself," + +"I shouldn't mind that so much, except that I'm afraid I'd not be good for +much. Perhaps it was snobbish of me to object lo Morty's being a clerk. +But...well, I'm not so sure that it is snobbish to prefer what you have +always been accustomed to--I mean if it is a higher standard. And after all +I married him when he was only a clerk." + +"You are surprisingly little of a snob, all things considered; but you are +a hopeless aristocrat." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"I think the line between the aristocratic and the snobbish attitude of +mind is almost too fine to be put into words. But they are often confused +by the undiscriminating. Will you revoke that power of attorney on Monday?" + +"Shouldn't I wait until Morty is home?...tell him first? It seems rather +taking an advantage...and he will be very angry." + +"That doesn't matter." + +"What excuse shall I give him?" + +"Any one of a dozen. You are bored and want to take care of your +money...intend to learn something of business, as all women should, +and will in time....Ring in the feminist stuff...wife's economic +independence...woman's new position in the world....That will make Morty so +raving angry that he will forget about the other. Will you do it?" + +"Yes, I will. I believe you are right. So were the others...there must be +something in it." + +She told Gora of the advice of Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton. Gora nodded. + +"They meant more than they said. And merely because they are men of the +world, not because they like and trust Morty any the less." + +Alexina did not hear her. She was staring hard at the floor....A year +ago...three months ago...she couldn't have done this thing. She had been +still under the illusion that she loved her husband, that her marriage was +a complete success. She would have sacrificed her last penny rather than +hurt his feelings. Now she only cared that she didn't care....She had +admitted to herself that she did not love her husband but that was +different from committing an overt act that proved it....She felt something +crumbling within her....It was the last of the fairy edifice of her +romance...of her first, her real, youth....What was to take its place? +The future smugly secure on six thousand a year and an inviolate social +position...a good dull husband...not even the prospect of travel.... + + + +V + + +She sprang to her feet and turned away her head. + +"Why don't you come and live with us?" she asked abruptly. "Why should you +keep this on? There are so many vacant bedrooms up there. You could have +one for your study. I'd love to have you. You'd have the most complete +independence. Do." + +Gora shook her head. "I've always this to fall back on." + +"Fall back on?" + +"Oh! I never meant to let that out. However....Perhaps it is as +well....Morty--you know his pride--everybody has his prime weakness and +that is his. Transpose it into snobbery if you like....We did not board +down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid well, but +Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it up. He was +afraid you'd be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, I did. One of +my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I entered the hospital, +but kept on my room as I had to have one somewhere. Eight months later she +married, and I took it back. I found I could run it as well as ever with +the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman she had discovered. But I never told +Morty." + +Alexina laughed. "Better not. But you could run it and live with us all the +same." + +"No. I have too little time. I'd waste it coming back and forth, for I must +be here some time every day....Besides..." + +"Your own precious atmosphere?" + +"You do understand!" + +"Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice." + +"You bet. And now, I'll see you to your car; stay with you until you are +safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don't assert your independence +in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore Street are not +spiteful socialists." + +As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to Gathbroke's +picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into fists. + +"Oh...you...you....Why weren't you....Why didn't you...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his day +on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could always +summon at will, even when all was not well with him. + +To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had been +a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated itself +into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken order, +been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that the retail +merchants of San Francisco bought very sparingly; but he had found in +Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming Japanese +population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure. + + + +II + + +It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury +before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a +cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She +looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure and +her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in France on +a balmy day. But she quaked inside. + +She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile. "I'm +afraid you will be rather cross with me," she said softly. "But I went down +to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney to you." + +"You did what?" The slow blood rose to Dwight's hair. He mechanically took +the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation of falling +through space...out of somewhere.... + +Alexina repeated her statement. + +He recovered himself. "Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or +Judge Lawton." + +"Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own. I +did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up from +Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced Mrs. +Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down there--those that +read the serious new books and go to lectures when there are any worth +while--to join a class in economics. One of the professors at Stanford is +going to teach us. Aileen has lost frightfully at poker lately and wants a +new interest; she put Sibyl up to it--who was delighted with the suggestion +as she hasn't been intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a +practical streak; so that studying economics appealed to her. + +"I jumped at the idea. It was a God-send. I have had so little to do. I +don't care for poker and one can't read all the time....But after they left +I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying economies +in the abstract if I didn't have sense and 'go' enough to manage my own +affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn't draw any money from +the bank because I had given you my power of attorney. Aileen has an +allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually comes out about +even at poker in the course of the month, and if she doesn't she pawns +something. I've been with her to pawn shops and it's the greatest fun. I +don't mind telling you, as I know you never betray a confidence. The Judge +would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and water. + +"Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some +stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs over +it. You know how she entertains. + +"I should never dare admit to them--or to the professor if he asked my +opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out--that I was too lazy +and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went down first +thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I simply couldn't +wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me I shall attend to +everything and not bother you, Morty dear." + + + +III + + +Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina +thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into a +saint. + +"I don't like it. I don't like it at all." + +Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate to +express his feelings. + +"I may be old-fashioned--" + +"You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school of +American husbands--" + +"There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world." + +"So there are, poor dears. It's going to be so hard for them--" + +"Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?" + +"Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my +old-fashioned family. I'd be much the same if I'd never taken any interest +in all these wonderful modern movements." + +"It's those chums of yours--Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly +approve of them." + +"Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference." + +"Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me...disobey me?" + +"Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had at +the rehearsal. You haven't noticed, these three years, that I've had my +way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be your way +too. We've been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just playing about, +with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has changed. We must +look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole burden on your +shoulders--" + +"I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs." + +Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn't done any more. No +woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole burden +of life on her husband's shoulders. You have your own daily battle in the +business world. I will do the rest." + +"What damned emancipated talk." + +"What a funny old-fashioned word. We don't even say advanced or new any +more." + +"It's nonsense anyhow. You're nothing but a child." + +"You may just bet your life I'm not a child. Nor have I awakened all of a +sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of modern +science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always discussing +everything that interests the public; I have even read the newspapers for +two years." + +"Much better you didn't. There is no reason whatever for a woman in your +position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from your +charm." + +"Maybe, but we'll find more charm in Life as we grow older." + +His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something that +looked like a bogey. + +"May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got +everything down to a fine point....It seems too bad you should bother...." + +"Bother? I've been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little +good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James and +I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with +him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over +monthly bills and 'slips' and sign cheques." + +She hesitated. "You mustn't think for a minute that I want to make you +feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come,...Of +course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could simply go on +along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, shortly after +the first of the month, and you'll give me half." + + + +IV + + +Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but in +that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this sheltered +creature, with whom her mother had never discussed household economics, and +from whom he had purposely kept all knowledge of his business, took for +granted that he could pay his share of the monthly expenses, merely because +all the men she knew did twice as much, however they might grumble. For the +matter of that she never saw Tom Abbott that he did not curse the ascending +prices, but there was no change whatever in his bountiful fashion of +living. Alexina knew that the times were bad and that her husband was +having something of a struggle, and, as a dutiful wife, was anxious to +help him out for the present, but it was simply beyond her powers of +comprehension to grasp the fact that he was in no position to pay half the +expenses of their small establishment. + +If he told her...tried to make her understand...even if she did, how would +he appear in her eyes? + +Of all people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina...he had +never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at their worst +than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to and precariously +achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she craved luxury and pomp, +but because she would be forced to look up to him with admiration and a +lively gratitude. He had, in this spirit, given her; in the most casual +manner, handsome presents, or brilliant little dinners at fashionable +restaurants, in all of which she took a fervent young pleasure. He +had dipped into his slender capital, but of this she had not even a +suspicion...he had made some airy remark about celebrating a "good +deal"...no wonder...he had her too well bluffed. + +For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But he +did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl that +short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide astonished +eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set his teeth and +vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand would last several +months, even if he made no more than his expenses meanwhile. + +He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a +lingering and malodorous death. + +"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young and +carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is your own +look-out." + +"Thank you, Morty dear." + +She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the +announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen and +Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of economics +with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had been tutoring +in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to him whom Aileen +disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Mrs. +Francis Leslie Bascom and Miss Aileen Livingston Lawton. + +His reasons for coming to Ballinger House--which even he knew was +inaccessible to the common herd--were separate and tabulated. Alexina had +fascinated him against his best class principles; but he not only jumped at +the chance of meeting her again, he was excessively curious to understand a +woman of her class, to watch her in different moods and situations. He was +equally curious to meet other women of the same breed; he had never brushed +their skirts before, but he had often stood and gazed at them hungrily as +they passed in their limousines or driving their smart little electric +cars. + +He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so much +about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different homes. He +was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and he had a good +healthy class-consciousness and class-hatred. But he also had a large +measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to have the +opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner circles, and when +it came he had only hesitated long enough to search his soul and assure +himself that he was in no danger of growing compliant and soft. Moreover he +might possibly make converts, and in any case it was not a bad way, society +being still what it was, of turning an honest penny. + +But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist serene +in his faith could be. + +The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one elbow +on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair of fixed +and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was only vaguely +aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent streams of +concentrated light. They looked like three little sea-monsters, slim, +flexible, malignant, ready to spring. + +He exaggerated in his embarrassment, but he was not so very far wrong. + +"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach 'em, +all right." + +As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice too +loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that you +don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some." + +"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her high +light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing that makes +us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_." + +"And ain't you?" + +"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although he +is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in Europe +had meant middle-class. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no right to +pervert an honest historic old word into something so different and so +obnoxious." + +"To Marx all capitalists were in the same class. I suppose what you mean is +that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when you have less +capital than some of them that can't get in." + +"Sure thing. Take it from me." + +He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather heavy +sarcasm. + +"Even when they use slang." + +"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-class--bourgeois. Too +sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us." + +Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr. +Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little, but +as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the naughtiness of +Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken a cigarette from a +gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and was asking him for a +light. He gave her measure for measure, for he lifted his heavy boot and +struck a match on the sole. + +"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and +leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious +dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices, which, +however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping everything from +these lessons." + +"Do _you_ smoke?" + +"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve of my +friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots, as Miss +Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke. I'll get you a +cigar." + +She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room. + + + +II + + +Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the +evening paper. + +"Give me a cigar, Morty dear." + +"A cigar? What for?" + +"It would be too mean of those girls to smoke unless Mr. Kirkpatrick did +too, and I am sure we couldn't stand his tobacco. Even a whiff of bad +tobacco makes me feel quite ill." + +"I'll be hanged if I give my cigars to that bounder. The kitchen is the +place for him." + +"But not for us. And our minds are quite made up, you know. We are going +to study with him just to find out what these strange animals called +socialists are like. He is queer enough, to begin, with. And the knowledge +may prove useful one of these days....If you won't give me one I'll send +James out--" + +Mortimer handed over one of his choice cigars with ill grace, and Alexina +returned to the library. Aileen was informing Mr. Kirkpatrick how intensely +she disliked Marx's beard, not only as she had seen it in a photograph, but +as she had smelt it in Spargo's too vivid description. + +He rose awkwardly as she entered, but he rose. She handed him the cigar and +struck a match and held it to one end while he drew at the other. Their +faces were close and she gave him a smile of warm and spontaneous +friendliness. + +Thought Mr. Kirkpatrick: "Oh, Lord, she's got me. I'd better make tracks +out of here. If she was a vamp like that Bascom woman she wouldn't get me +one little bit. Plenty of them where I come from. But she's plain goddess +with eyes like headlights on an engine." + +Perturbed as he was, however, he resumed his seat and drew appreciatively +at the finest cigar that had ever come his way. It had the opportune effect +of causing his class-hatred to flame afresh. No fear that he would be made +soft by teaching in the homes of these pampered cats. For the moment he +hated Alexina, seated in a carved high-back Italian chair like a young +queen on a throne. + +"Well," he growled. "Let's get to business. I've brought Spargo. Marx is +too much for me. He's terrible dull and involved. He was so taken up with +his subject, I guess, that he forgot to learn how to write about it so's +people without much time and education could understand without getting a +pain in their beans. Of course I've heard him expounded many times from the +platform, but there must have been about fifty Marxes, for I've heard--or +read--just about that many expounders of him and no two agree so's you'd +notice it. That, to my mind, is the only stumbling block for socialism +--that we have a prophet who's so hard to understand. + +"So, I've settled on Spargo. He has the name of being about the best +student of Marx and of socialism generally--it's split up quite a bit--and +he's easy reading. I fetched him along." + +He produced "Socialism" from his hat and hesitated. "I don't know noth--a +thing about teaching." + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," drawled Sibyl Bascom in her low voluptuous +voice and transfixing him with narrow swimming eyes; then as he refused to +be overcome, she continued more humanly: "We've been to lots of classes, +you know. There are all sorts of methods. Suppose one of us reads the first +chapter aloud and then you expound. That is, we'll ask you questions." + +"That's fine," said Mr. Kirkpatrick with immense relief. "Fire away." + +And Alexina, who always read prefaces and introductions last, began with +"Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit." + + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Mr. Kirkpatrick realized his ambition to see with his own sharp puncturing +little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a sewing-machine needle +playing staccato) several of the most flagrant examples of capitalistic +extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled away their useless lives +and servitors battened. In other words the extremely comfortable or the +shamelessly luxurious homes built for the most part by still active +business men whose first real period of rest would be in a small stone +residence in a certain silent city Down the Peninsula. + +Several were already occupied by their widows. In a climate where a man can +work three hundred and sixty-five days of the year the temptation to do so +is strong, and not conducive to longevity. + +The Ferdinand Thorntons, Trennahans, Hofers and others who had lost their +city homes on Nob Hill had not rebuilt, but lived the year round in their +country houses at Burlingame, San Mateo, Alta, Menlo Park, Atherton, or +"across the Bay," using the hotels when they came to town for dances, but +motoring home after the theater. + +Fortunately the finest and all of the newest mansions had been built in the +Western Addition and escaped the fire. Sibyl Bascom's father-in-law had +erected, shortly before his death, a large square granite palace more or +less in the Italian style, and as his widow preferred to live in Santa +Barbara, Frank Bascom had taken it over for himself and his bride. + +Olive had carried her millions to France and found her marquis. (As he +was wealthy himself they contributed little to the current gossip of San +Francisco.) + +Janet Maynard lived with her mother, another widow of unrestricted means, +in a large low Spanish house with a patio, built by a famous local +architect with such success that Rex Roberts when he married Polly Luning, +had bought the nearest vacant lot and ordered a romantic mansion as nearly +like that of his wife's intimate friend as possible. He would live in it as +soon as the idiosyncrasies of The Architect and Labor would permit, + +Mrs. Clement Hunter had another pale gray stone palace, supported in front +by noble pillars and commanding a superb view of the Bay, the Golden Gate, +and Mount Tamalpais. + +Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade of +stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted +geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other +nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and +innocent youth. + +Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square bow-windowed +mansard-roofed double house, built in eighteen-seventy-eight, and +unreclaimed. With it went a moderate income, and Alice lived on under the +ugly old roof chaperoned by an aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal +assortment of relatives because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so +terrified of draughts that her absence when convenient could always be +counted on. + + + +II + + +All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined the +class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits among +them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be expected of +"parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress, poker, and some +absorbing creature of the other sex. + +Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen, Mrs. +Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently adopted by +California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of curiosity, having read a +certain amount of socialism, but never met a socialist. + +She confided to Mrs. Thornton that she was not acutely anxious to meet +another, and Mrs. Thornton replied tartly: + +"What do you want to belong to such a class for? It's rank hyprocrisy to +pretend interest in a question we all hate the very name of, and to give +the creature money that he no doubt turns over to the 'cause' with his +tongue in his cheek. I'd never give one of them the satisfaction of knowing +that I recognized his existence." + +Said Maria Abbott firmly: "Exactly. We should ignore them, just as we +ignore envious and spiteful and ill-bred outsiders of any sort." + +"But we may not be able to ignore them," said Mrs. Hunter. "Their +organization is the best of any party even if their numbers are not +overwhelming. If they are content to advance slowly and by purely political +methods there is no knowing who will own this or any government fifty years +hence. For my part I'd rather they all turn raging anarchists; then we +could turn machine guns on them and clean 'em out. I hate them, for I was +too long getting where I am now, and I want to stay. But I don't make the +mistake of ignoring them, and I rather like having a squint at them at +close quarters. Kirkpatrick has taken us to several socialist meetings...we +borrow the servants' coats and mutilate our oldest hats....Socialism seems +to me rather more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick +is about the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict +themselves and one another, wander from the point and never get +anywhere....That would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor +California is a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the +riff-raff and derelicts....My other hope is that even they--that is to say +the least unbalanced of them--will come in time to realize that socialism +is economically unsound--" + +"Do you mean to say," cried Mrs. Abbott, "that Alexina has gone to +socialist meetings?" + +"Rather. She's very keen--" + +"Believes in it?" + +"Rather not. But she is naturally thorough--has a really extraordinary +tendency, for a San Franciscan of her sex and status, to finish anything +she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick she sticks +out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it is. She has him +pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the rest of us alive she +can smooth him down like a regular lion tamer." + +"Well, you're nothing but a lot of parlor socialists," said Mrs. Thornton +disgustedly. "And just as ridiculous as any other hybrids. But I'm relieved +that it hasn't spoiled your taste for the simpler pleasures of life. Maria, +as you don't play poker we'll have a game of bridge, Ladie, ring for +cocktails, will you--or would you rather have a gin fizz? Don't look so +horrified, Maria. We're better than socialists, anyhow; if they did win +out you'd have farther to fall than we, for you're a moss-backed old +conservative who hates change of any sort, while we not only love change of +all sorts but are regular anarchists: do as we please and snap our fingers +at the world. Here we are." + +The three were in Mrs. Thornton's Moorish palace half way between San Mateo +and Burlingame, a situation that symbolized the connecting bridge between +the old and new order for Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Thornton was a lineal +descendant of the Rincon Hill of the sixties and had made her debut with +Maria Groome in the eighties. But she had married an immoderately rich man +and had a barbaric taste for splendor that formed the proper setting for +her own somewhat barbaric beauty, and imperious temper. Her dark and +splendid beauty was waning, for in the matter of giving aid to nature with +secrecy or with art she was faithful to the old tradition. But she was +always an imposing figure and as close to being the first power in San +Francisco society as that happy-go-lucky independent class would ever +tolerate. + + + +III + + +Kirkpatrick liked Mrs. Hunter, regarding her as "an honest plain-spoken +dame without any frills." This estimate applied not only to her temperament +but to her costumes. He admired her severe tailored suits (although he +sensed their cost) and her smart, plain, hard, little hats. + +The "frills and furbelows" of the younger "spenders" irritated the group of +nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond endurance; but +he managed to stand it by reminding himself that irritation of all such was +a healthy sign and vastly preferable to insidious tolerance. + +Mrs. Hunter was also as regular in her attendance as Mrs. Dwight, Miss +Lawton and Mrs. Price Ruyler, and asked fairly intelligent questions. The +others floated in and out, and one by one dropped from the class, until +toward the middle of the second winter none remained but Alexina, Aileen, +Mrs. Hunter and Helene Ruyler, who, like Aileen, found in the "frantic +interest" of the materialistic creed which antagonized every instinct in +them, a distraction from the excessive gambling which had threatened to +wreck their nerves, purses, and peace of mind. They confided this artlessly +to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who replied dryly that they were the best argument he +had in stock. + +But if the major part of his fashionable class deserted him in due course +he had meanwhile seen the inside of their homes; and in each case, Alexina, +who divined his interest, arranged to have him shown over the house from +the kitchens and pantries straight up to the servants' quarters. + +These he found unexpectedly comfortable and complete. In fact, they were so +much more modern and adorned than the little cottage in the Mission where +he lived with his mother that he longed for the immediate installation of a +system that would teach these workers what real work was. What enraged him +further was their "airs." They too obviously looked upon him as an alien +intruder, whereas their mistresses, until socialism bored them, were, for +the most part, as charmingly courteous as his one reliable friend, Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight. + + + +IV + + +During the first winter and spring while his pupils were still fairly +regular in their attendance, he was both incensed and grimly amused by +their various idiosyncrasies. He soon became accustomed to their vanity +boxes and their public application of powder and lip stick, the frank +crossing of their knees that exhibited more diaphanous silk than he had +ever seen in his life before, the polite excitement that any new article +of attire worn by one seemed to induce in all, the wicked but on the whole +good-natured baiting of Aileen Lawton and Polly Roberts, the alternate +insolence and Circean glances of Mrs. Bascom, who amused herself +"practicing on him," and the constant smoking of most of them. + +But what he could neither understand nor accept was their attitude toward +one another. They would all rush at the hostess of the day as they entered, +or at late comers, with the excited enthusiasm of loved and loving +intimates who had not met for months; and Kirkpatrick, who missed nothing, +knew that they met once a day if not oftener. + +In spite of their intimacy their warm enraptured greetings carried a patent +measure of admiration and even respect. It was always at least fifteen +minutes before they would settle down for "work" and meanwhile they +chattered about their common interests, but always with the air of relating +long-delayed information and a frank desire to give of their best. He could +have understood "gush," and sentimentalism, but this attitude of which he +had neither heard nor read bothered him until one day he had a sudden, +flash of enlightenment. + + + +V + + +"Is it class-consciousness?" + +He asked the question of Gora, who dropped in upon a class at Alexina's or +Aileen's sometimes on a free afternoon, and with whom he was walking down +to the trolley car. + +"Something like that. Caste they would call it if they thought about it at +all, which to do them justice they don't....It used to be the fashion +in San Francisco for everybody to 'knock' everybody else. Then came a +revulsion and everybody began to praise and boost. You see it in all +circles, but the way it has taken that crowd is to show their intense +loyalty to one another by a constant reminder of it in manner, and in +refraining from criticism of one another, no matter how much they may +gossip about others outside of their particular set. Once, just to try my +sister-in-law, I told her that in my nursing I had stumbled across evidence +of an illicit love affair going on between one of her friends and a married +man, the husband of my patient. My sister became so remote that I had the +impression for a few moments that she really wasn't there. Once it would +have infuriated me, but I have improved my sense of humor and developed my +philosophy, so I merely turned the conversation, as she wouldn't speak at +all. She had quite withdrawn--still further into the sacred preserves, I +suppose.... + +"They are not only loyal but really seem to have the most exalted +admiration for one another because they are all of the same heaven-born +stock....That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that they get +so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not cultivate as many +kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as their wits are equal to. +When they can, they vary the monotony of life with summers in Europe and +winters in New York--or Santa Barbara, where they meet many interesting +people from the East or England; but some of them won't leave their busy +husbands or the husbands won't be left; or parents are not amenable; so +they try to create an atmosphere of high spirits and sheer delight in youth +and one another, and the result is almost a work of art. I rather respect +them, but I envy them a good deal less than before I knew them so well." + +"Oh, you envied them? They should envy you." + +"Well, they don't! Yes, I envied them because it is my natural right to be +one of them and fate slammed the door before I was born. It embittered my +first youth, and it might have become an obsession after my brother married +into society if I had not found the right kind of work. That and the boring +Sundays I've spent at Rincona, and the experiences I have had with that +young set, who are always at Mrs. Dwight's more or less; besides a profound +satisfaction in accomplishing literary work that not one of them could do +to save their lives--all this has routed a good deal of my old bitterness +of spirit. I am not sorry that I had it and indulged it, however. +Discontent and resentment put spurs on the soul. Anything is better than +smugness," + +"It's made you different enough from these others, all right. Even +from Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself....I'd rather you'd stayed +discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've suffered +from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're jabbering away +about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention to you as they do to +me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as they say. There isn't, +one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't give my eye teeth to see +hanging out the wash or running a machine in a factory."' + +Gora turned to him with a smile. At this time she was as nearly happy as +was possible for that insurgent too aspiring spirit. + +"Nevertheless, they've made you over in a way--Oh, don't flame! I don't +mean your principles...other ways that won't hurt you in the least. You +cut your hair differently. You wear better shoes. You have your clothes +pressed--the suit you wear up here anyhow. You've reformed your speech +somewhat, and you know a good deal more about many things than you did +a few months ago. I am expecting any day to see you wearing a 'boiled' +shirt." + +"Oh, no, not that! It'd never do. It's true enough I got to feeling +self-conscious about my rough clothes and boots, especially after I met +that dude brother of yours one day in the hall and he gave me a once-over +that made me feel like a tramp." + +"Oh!...But he was snubbed himself not so very long ago, and I suppose +it gives him a certain pleasure to snub some one else, I am ashamed of +him....But tell me, don't you like them rather better than you expected? +Find them rather a better sort? You must see that there is practically no +leisure class as far as the men are concerned--" + +"They have time enough to go chicken chasing--" + +"Well, aside from that? At least they do work. And the younger women? You +knew before that they were frivolous because they had too much money and +too few responsibilities. Many of the older women have a serious and useful +side, even if they do waste an unholy amount of time at cards." + +"Well, if you ask me, their manners, when they remember to use 'em, are +better than I expected. Only that Miss Thorndyke is cold and haughty, but +perhaps that's because she's poor (for her), or is covering up something, +or is just plain stupid....Mrs. Dwight's manners are always perfect. She's +my idea of a lady--just! And in the new system there'll be a long sight +more ladies than is possible now, only no aristocrats....Yes, they're +decent enough considering they're rotten poisoned by money and thinkin' +themselves better'n the mass; and I like their affection for one another. +But they could be all that in the socialist state and more too. They'd have +to cut out drink and gambling, and a few other diversions some of 'em'll +drift into, if one or two of 'em haven't already--just through being bored +to death." + +"Do you honestly think socialism means universal virtue?" + +"No, I don't. I'm no such greenhorn; though there's some that does, or +pretends to....But I mean there'd be no _drifting_ into vice like there +is now, no indulgence of any old weakness because temptation was always +following them about or just round the corner. That's the trouble +now....But in the most perfect state some would be watching out for their +chance, just because the old Adam was too strong in spite of the fact that +all the old reminders had disappeared." + +"More likely they'd all murder one another because they were some ten +thousand times more bored than that poor little group whose brains you are +addling." + +"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Miss Gora. You ought to give +that pen of yours to socialism. There would be all the revenge you could +want--and it's what you're entitled to. Then I could call you Comrade +Gora." + +"Call me Comarade by all means if it hurts you to say Miss to a fellow +worker....You admit then that envy of a society you were not born into and +which refuses to acknowledge you as an equal, is the secret of your desire +to pull it down?" + +"Partly that." he admitted cooly. "Not that I'd change places with any of +those fat millionaires I see shuffling down the steps of the Pacific-Union +Club--although I'll admit to you what I wouldn't to these young devils in +my class, that I know some socialists who would. I hate the sight of 'em. +But I want to do away with class-rights and class-distinctions, not only +because I just naturally have no use for them but because I want to put an +end to the misery of the world." + +"You mean the material misery. What would you do with the other seven +hundred different varieties?" + +"Well....I guess each case would have to take care of itself. Perhaps we'd +get round to it after a while. Get power and class-envy out of the world, +and some genius, like as not, would invent a post-graduate course of +colleges for human nature. All things are possible." + +"You are an optimist! Here's our car. Come home with me and share the +supper that I pay for with the tainted money of a plutocrat. Only we +haven't any real plutocrats in San Francisco. Only modest millionaires. +Will you?" + +"Yes." said Mr. Kirkpatrick. "And thank you kindly." He even smiled, for he +was developing a latent heavily overlain seed of humor; inherited from the +full bay tree that had flourished in his grandfather, born in County Clare, +where men sometimes indulged in rebellion but did not take themselves too +seriously withal. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +That winter and the following seasons for the next few years passed very +rapidly for Alexina. Besides her classes and the constant companionship of +her friends (to say nothing of the excitement of helping one or two of them +out of not infrequent scrapes), she had for a time the absorbing interest +of refurnishing the best part of her house. + +The square lower hall which had been scantily furnished with the +grandfather's clock, a hat-rack, and a settee, and whose walls were covered +with "marble paper," was painted, walls and wood, a deep ivory white, and +refurnished with light wicker furniture, palms, and growing plants. The +hat-rack was abolished, and the small library on the left of the entrance +turned into a men's dressing-room. The folding doors were removed from the +great double parlors, the "body brussels" replaced by hardwood floors, the +walls tinted a pale gray as a background for the really valuable pictures +(including the proud and gracious and beautiful Alexina Ballinger, dust +long since in Lone Mountain), and the splendid pieces of Italian furniture +which had always seemed to sulk and bulge against the dull brown walls. +The rep and walnut sets were sent to the auction room and replaced by +comfortable chairs and sofas whose colors varied, but harmonized not only +with one another but with the rugs that Alexina under Gora's direction had +bought at auction. In fact she bought many of her new pieces at auction and +with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over the advertisements and +then go down to the crowded rooms and bid. + +The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her +mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with bookcases to +the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken tables against an +expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a wedding gift from +Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art) that had despoiled a +desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise. + +The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had been +removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den for long +rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer when she +remained in the city. + +The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and gold +wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the sideboards +were built into the wails end could be replaced only at great cost; +they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties, and no doubt +exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs which had been +merely recovered. + +As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced by +electricity. + +All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her +brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to +achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable people +would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative. Moreover, +entertaining at home would be far cheaper for him than at the restaurants. + +He was doing fairly well at this time, for he had learned what commodities +the retail men were likely to buy of a firm as small as his, and he had got +into touch with one or two foreign markets not monopolized by the older +houses. Moreover, he had been speculating a little in the new Nevada mines, +and successfully. He presented Alexina with a Victrola which included the +music for all the new dances, and a long coat of baby lamb lined with her +favorite periwinkle blue. To his sister he returned a thousand dollars of +her money. + +Alexina knew nothing of these speculations and felt that her original faith +in him was justified. He did not offer even yet to pay all the monthly +expenses of the house, explaining casually that the greater part of his +profits went back into the business; but he handed over his share promptly, +and such fleeting doubts and anxieties as may once have visited his still +inexperienced wife faded and finally disappeared. + + + +II + + +They began to entertain a little during the second winter, Mrs. Groome +having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large drawing-room +had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a habit, when there was +"nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and announcing they were coming up +to take a whirl. This led to more telephoning, and some twenty couples +would dance in the long-silent old house at least once and often three +times a week. + +The new order delighted James, who felt young again, and his hastily +improvised suppers were models of unpretentious succulence. There were +always sherry and whiskey in the handsome old decanters on the sideboards; +and, at the equally perfect little dinners, for a time, two bottles of +Alexander Groome's favorite brand of champagne (which he had remembered +with satisfaction on his deathbed that he had not outlived) were brought up +from the cellar by the beaming James. + +When, almost with tears, he informed his mistress' husband that the last +bottle had been served Mortimer could do no less than order up a case. He +had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent native claret +where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to appear a "piker" +in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler. + +He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business." Nearly +all the young men, married or otherwise, that came to his house (Alexina +subtly encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or less importance +or standing in the world of business and finance (two were lawyers in their +first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne), and the more prosperous he +appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the extent of Alexina's income) the +more apt would business be to flow his way, the less likely they would be +to suspect him of playing the stock market. At all events it enhanced his +standing and gave him intense pleasure. + +Moreover, as time passed it became evident to his sensitive ego that he +was no longer looked upon as an outsider. He was accepted as a matter +of course. He was one of them. Neither men nor women (not even Aileen) +continued to ask themselves whether they liked him or not. He was there and +to stay and that was the end of it. They had always liked his manners; he +made a charming host, and, as ever, he danced like "a god with wings on his +heels." + +Quite naturally in due course some one offered to put him up at the most +exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to which +every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance belonged as a +matter of course. Old men whose names had once been potent in the great +banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed with sad and rheumy eyes +down upon the new city in which there was barely a familiar landmark to +remind them of their youth or the years of their power and their pride. +They sat there all day long, day after day; and tourists went away with the +impression that the imposing brown stone mansion on the sacred crest of Nob +Mill was a sumptuously endowed retreat for the incurably aged. + +But the majority of its members were very much alive and still well-padded; +and, far from being on a pale diet, were deeply appreciative of the famous +culinary resources of the chef, and showed it. + +When the offer was made to Mortimer he accepted with a bright: "Oh, thanks, +old chap. I'd like it immensely," But when, on the first day of his +membership, he stood in one of the front windows and gazed out at the ruins +opposite--the Pacific Union Club and the Fairmont Hotel were still two +oases in the rubbled waste of Nob Hill--he felt so exultant and so happy +that he dared not open his lips lest he betray himself. He could mount no +higher socially. All that he had to strive for now was his million--or +millions. When he had half a million he would build a house at Burlingame +that could be enlarged from time to time. + +Only with the "Rincona crowd" he had made no headway. Maria did not +hesitate to comment on the extravagance of doing the house over, the +membership at the club with all it entailed, Alexina's little electric +car, and above all the constant entertaining. A moderate amount was due +Alexina's position; but open house--nothing made money fly so quickly. +Prices were getting higher every day (there came a time, in the wake of the +great war, when she looked back with sad amazement at the morning of her +discontent) and rich people were getting richer while poor people like +themselves (she meant what Alexina still called the A. A.) were growing +poorer. + +Tom Abbott had not put Mortimer up at the club. He happened to know that +although his brother-in-law was doing fairly well he was not making a +fortune, and suspected that he dabbled in stocks. But he said nothing of +this to his wife, and as he knew that Alexina had long since revoked her +power of attorney (she had given him to understand that this was done at +Mortimer's suggestion) he believed that her money at least was safe. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Alexina, although she would have found it impossible, even if she had +so desired, to relapse into the incognitance of the years preceding her +mother's death, had nevertheless locked and sealed and cellared her ivory +tower, those depths of her nature where, she suspected, her true ego dwelt. +It was an ego she had forfeited the right to indulge, nor had she at this +time any desire to know more of herself than she did. Life after all was +very pleasant; she managed to fill it with many little and even a +few absorbing interests; and once she spent a month at Santa Barbara +chaperoning Janet Maynard, where her duties sat lightly upon her and she +would have responded naturally if addressed as Miss Groome, so completely +did Mortimer fade into the background. In the summer of nineteen-thirteen +Judge Lawton and Aileen overcame all protests and took her with them to +Europe, where, after a month in Paris, she visited Olive de Morsigny in her +renaissance chateau on the Loire. The memory of Gathbroke revisited her +and she half-wished the Judge would go to England, but the climate did not +agree with him, and after a few more enchanted weeks, in Italy and Spain, +she returned to Mortimer, who was distinctly duller than ever. + +But she had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her +life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in the +face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as ever +attempted to stand between a girl and her fate. + +Nevertheless, immediately after her return from Santa Barbara in the late +autumn of nineteen-eleven, and wholly without, analysis or pondering, she +made a significant change in the order of her life. Mortimer, who had, +during her absence, occupied a large room at the back of the house visited +by the afternoon sun, found himself invited to retain it....They must avoid +the least possibility of a family until they were better off....She had +been hearing the subject discussed...the most economical baby cost fifty +dollars a month. With a permanent trained nurse, and of course they would +have one, the cost would easily be doubled...thousands were required for +the proper education of a child...even if she had girls she should wish +them to go to college; she was not half educated herself...and boys, with +their extravagances, their debts, they cost a mint; it was better for +children to be born outright in the humbler classes than to be born into a +rich set without riches themselves...it all put her in a panic every time +she thought of it....Morty was so sensible and had such a high sense of +responsibility, of course he understood...children, even when small, would +hamper him fearfully, especially as he had not even begun to make his +million....As for herself she would be more economical than ever and help +him like the good pal she was. + +Mortimer had the sensation of being trussed up with invisible but +inflexible silken thongs. His thoughts need not be recorded. + + + +II + + +Alexina refurnished her bedroom in her favorite periwinkle blue; a low +graceful day-bed with a screen before the stationary washstand helped to +create the atmosphere of a boudoir. It had an intensely personal atmosphere +in which man, more particularly a lawful husband, had no place. + +When Alexina stood on the threshold and surveyed this room, chaste, cool, +proud, and exquisitely lovely, she lifted her hand and blew off a kiss, out +of the window, wafting away the memory of the room as it had been. She +had remarkable powers of obliteration, a sort of River of Lethe among the +backwaters of her mind, where she held below the surface all she wished to +forget until it ceased to struggle. She never again gave a thought to +her early relationship with her husband; not even to the indifference +or distaste which had followed so quickly upon her curiosity and her +determination to feel romantic at all costs. + + + +III + + +Subtly she felt she was happier than she had ever been even in those first +weeks, when she had barred the gates of her fool's paradise behind her; she +felt as free and happy as the birds skimming over the beds of periwinkle +below her window, and (miraculously finding her second youth quite as +productive as her first) took no pains to conceive of anything better. She +looked neither forward nor back, and all was well. + +She even flirted a little, that being the fashion, and, having had enough +of business men, encouraged the devotions of Bascom Luning and Jimmie +Thorne. She saw them when they chose to call in the daytime, and regaled +the glowering Mortimer at the dinner table with scraps of their sapience. + +Mortimer had resigned himself long since to the sacrifice of several of his +bourgeois ambitions, among them to be master in his own house; but not an +iota of his convictions. Although it would not have occurred to him to +distrust his wife if she had chosen to sit up all night with a man, he made +frozen comments upon the impropriety of a woman having men in the house +when her husband was not there, sitting out dances with men, taking long +tramps through Marin County with three men and no one for chaperon but +Alice Thorndyke and Janet Maynard--shocking flirts--whole Sundays--with +lunch heaven knew where, and himself, who hated tramping, not included. + +But these grim remonstrances were met in so gay a spirit of badinage that +he felt ridiculous, particularly as no powers of badinage or of repartee +had been included in his own mental equipment; and he usually relapsed into +a polite and bored silence. + +He never had had much to say at the dinner table when they were alone, and, +as time went on, his comments on the day were exhausted before the soup had +given place to the entree, and Alexina fell into the habit of bringing her +Italian text-book to the table--the study of Italian just then being the +rage in her set--and whatever interesting book she had on hand. Mortimer +made no protest. His brain was fagged at night. It was a relief not to +be expected to talk when they dined alone; those long silences had been +oppresive even to him; he rather welcomed the books. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +This complete new freedom, and personal privacy, entailed in time a result +which Alexina would have been the last to anticipate even if she had +disposed of her husband by death or divorce. + +Owing to the thoroughness of her mental methods she was psychologically +free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been transposed +by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will when it is +strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, thought; but it +has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and in that mysterious +region are the subtle inheritances of mind and character, the springs and +the direction, of all functional life; a fate with a thousand threads on +her wheel, filaments from the souls and the bodies, the minds and the +acts, of every ancestor straight back to that vast impersonal ocean where, +unthinkable millions of years ago proemial life awaited the call of the +worlds. + +This aged untiring fate at the wheel battles unceasingly with the conscious +mind above, for age is prone to live by law and rote. These fates, the +oldest daughters of the Earth-Mother, Nature, know nothing of morals or +manners, assume that men and women are as naive in their normality as the +denizens of forest and field. And so they are while children. + + + +II + + +The eternal pull between civilizing Mind (Oh, centuries yet from being +civilized!) and the memoried but obstinate old lady at the wheel (who +laughs when a man of powerful will and too active mind "wills" sleep; +forcing him finally to choose between the horrors of insomnia, the +insidious tyranny of drugs, and the doubtful and wearisome alternative of +psychotherapeutics)--this pull, automatic in people of low estate, becomes +bitter and often appalling where the mind is highly developed and attuned +besides to the codes and customs of the best that civilization has so far +accomplished. + +The most vital of all these functions, for without it Mother Earth would be +like an ant hill without ants, and all these ancient norms of daughters +as homeless as the rest of the fates, is what man in a spirit of social +compromise has labeled an instinct--the sex-instinct. It is no more +an instinct than recurring sleep, lymphatic action, hunger, thirst, +alimentation. It is a primal function for which Mind, wisely foreseeing the +consequences of too much Nature, long since created laws both civil and +social to curb. There are many impulses, Inherited, from ten thousand +ancestors and constantly jogged by Earth's busy agent, human nature, that +may logically be called instincts (their roots lying in the ancient social +groups and their struggle to exist) but not a function that governs the +law of reproduction, as appetite governs the law of renewing the vital +necessities of the body. + + + +III + + +In the Latin races the conscious war between the brain above and the +sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere +excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect body, +is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence, their +practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to life, +psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple question of +hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of that modern, +development, called romance, which has given birth to a peculiar form of +personal imagination, too often without foundation or logic--all these +preclude that most active of all mental aids to the matter of fact needs of +the body--glamour. + +But it is far otherwise with the English-speaking races--loosely called +Anglo-Saxon, They are powerfully sexed; their feelings and sentiments go +deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but fatal +clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is perhaps the +most precious of their achievements, and they have established a code which +not only demands rectitude of act but suppression of thought and desire +where there is no lawful outlet. + +Nothing, possibly, has more infuriated the old lady at the methodically +performing wheel than this. She takes her revenge and squirts poison into +the physical structure of the brain, obscures the soul with dark and +brooding clouds, and subtly reduces the blood system to such a state that +any germ is welcome. + + + +IV + + +Once more Mind uses its highest faculties and outwits her, having no +intention that civilization shall drop below the plane to which it has been +raised through long laborious centuries of time. Life becomes more diverse, +more complex. The middle classes work harder to live; they have little +leisure for thoughts, for introspection. Punishment is dire....Those that +have leisure and yet not enough to command the more brilliant and special +forms of distraction are supplied with public libraries, gymnasiums, free +medical advice regarding the laws of hygiene in places where they cannot +fail to see it, new forms of cheap amusement; they are subtly encouraged to +take up useful work or study; or there are increasing pressures which may +force even this semi-leisure class to work for luxuries if not for bread. +Tens of thousands of women are led into the passionate diversions of club +life. For them, too, politics with its fierce championships and hatreds +and frictions; the necessity of concentration of thought on the impersonal +plane if only in the matter of getting the best of rivals within the fold; +and if hair flies souls are saved. + +Over the Oldest Profession Mind still scratches its head in vain. It is +ever hopeful, and hamstrings a sovereign patron, like alcohol, now and +again; but the lady at the wheel smiles, for here, in addition to the +unquenchable maternal instinct, the ignorance of the poor, and the glamour +that the men of certain races have learned to give to love, she has her +clearest field. + +Aside from the women of commerce there are, of course, many secret +rebels--now and then only does one make her exit from society through the +courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or capital, +suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies--which are +vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding genius +is more than commonly out of patience--and rise to serene heights or grow +morbid and irritable according to the strength or the meagerness of their +equipment; or the nature of their resources. A cultivated resource is a +persistent fiction that life is as it ought to be, not as it is, and it +is no plan of theirs to read books or witness plays that might carve and +populate a new groove in their brains. + +Let no one imagine that this class will become more "enlightened," +"broader," as time goes on. Not for a century at least. Mind has made too +great a success of this product; she has practically achieved a complete +triumph over the lady at the wheel. It is this class that has made +civilization progress, the solid thing it is to date. The excrescences, the +deserters from the normal, scintillating or subtle, may be tolerated for +the spice they give to life but they will never rule, + +Possibly they do not mind. Life Is made up of compromises and +compensations. + + + +V + + +American women in youth, of the visibly reputable world, may be freely +divided into two classes, the oversexed and those that seem cold to +themselves and others until they are well into the period of their second +youth--between twenty-four and thirty; and a not inconsiderable number are +so and permanently. In the first case they either precipitate themselves +into matrimony or have one or more intrigues until they find the man they +wish to marry, when they settle down and make excellent wives. The others, +if they are imaginative and high-minded, fall in love romantically and +marry far too soon; or they capitalize their youth or beauty and marry to +the best advantage; or they elect to live a life of serene spinsterhood +like Alexina's Aunt Clara, and bring up the family children. A not +inconsiderable number take their fling late. + +When the American girl of the super-refined class, and whose baleful norm +in the crypt was asleep at the wheel in her first blind youth, finds +herself disappointed in the most intimate partnership that exists, the +complaisance, voluntary at the beginning, drifts into habit, more and more +grimly endured. Some have the moral courage to put an end to it as they +would to any false situation, but if individuals were not rare in this +world we should have chaos, not a civilization of sorts which is a pleasant +place to plant the feet, however high into the clouds the head may poke its +investigating nose. + +It is natural that with such women during the period of endurance all love +should seem distasteful, and the mind dwell upon any other subject. But +remove the cause of sex-inertia and there is likely to be the stir and +awakening of spring after a long monotonous winter of hard frost and +blanketing snow. Or a homelier simile: remove the cause of chronic +indigestion and the appetite becomes fresh and normal. + +Thus Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +San Francisco, commencing in September, has three or four months of perfect +weather. The cold fogs and winds cease to pay their daily visits, the rainy +season awaits the new year. The skies are a deep and cloudless blue, the +air is warm and soft and alluring, never too hot, although the overcoats of +summer are discarded. + +The city lies bathed in golden sunlight or the sharp jeweled light of +stars, when the moon is not blazing like a crystal bonfire. Then Mount +Tamalpais and other mountains across the Bay and behind the city take on +a chiseled outline that, particularly at night, makes them look curiously +new, as if but yesterday heaved from the deep, and Nature too busy to +provide them with a background and the soft blurs of time for centuries to +come. This primeval look of bare California mountains on clear nights has +something sinister and menacing in its aspect as if at any moment they +might once more brood alone over the earth. + + + +II + + +Alexina returned from abroad early in November and stood one morning +outside her eucalyptus grove, revolving slowly on one heel, schoolgirl +fashion, as she gazed up at the steep densely populated hill that rose from +the street below her own private little hill, and cut off her view of the +hills of Berkeley and the mountains beyond; at the broad crowded valleys +on the south; the range of hills that hid the Pacific Ocean, and included +Mount Calvary with its cross and the symmetrical mass of Twin Peaks; the +bare brown mountains of the north piling above the green sparkling bay with +its wooded and military islands. + +Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she had +seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it to +art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she had +returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving off the +disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her to admit it. + +San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that compact +mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with sudden +palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the impression +that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike Genoa. But it +seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had just paid her +first brief visit to the old world, an interval, moreover, that had been +without a responsibility, cut her off so completely from her general life +that when variously addressed "Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Senorita," she +ceased almost at once to feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not +forbidden herself to dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with +a future to sketch with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her +pleasure. + +But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in Europe. +She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would +not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters, +with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it +would also deprive him of his surest social prop. People had accepted him +and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good +old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to +anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her +invitations to all important and many small dinners, not avowedly bridge +or poker parties, were as inevitable as crab in season; but there were too +many young men whom girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony +of crab a la poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as +little to say as poor Morty. She had known debutantes who flatly refused to +dance with married men or even to be introduced to them. + +California was her fate. No doubt of that. She might never see Europe +again, for while it was all very well to be a guest once it would be quite +impossible another time. She certainly could not afford it herself and keep +Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as she might if her +home were in New York. + +Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not. +Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him so +depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven. His eyes were as +lifeless as slate, his voice was flat, although for that matter he was +almost dumb. When at home he sat brooding heavily by the open western +windows of the drawing-room, or moved restlessly about. To all her +questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse than +ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As she had not +been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself, and had paid few +week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about and the men talked +of nothing but the business depression....Alexina had shrugged her +shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle reproach for leaving +him to the dull cares of business while she enjoyed herself in Europe. + +She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly +comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money which +with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the household +expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club by the ocean, +and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of his idolatry on +Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was and it was now two +years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a luxurious bachelor at the +back of the house with an always amiable companion at breakfast and dinner. + + + +III + + +Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and +watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty had +consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying him. She +hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be happy in +his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his divagations from the +world--and she could trust him to do that! Now that she had ceased to be +the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves and torpid imagination she +would be the last to condemn him. Human Nature was an ever opening book to +her these days, and she wondered what would happen to herself if any of +several men she liked were capable of making her love him, whipping up a +personal storm in those emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly +intruded themselves upon her consciousness. + +She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the old +world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are or not, +and where life looks to the American the quintessence of romance....She +had concluded that the most satisfactory experience that could come to her +would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a man who possessed all the +requirements to induce it, but who would either be the unsuspecting object, +or, reciprocating, would continue to love her with the world between them. + +For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did +not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might for +a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she recalled +the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were put to meet +their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole drama of man and +woman. + +Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and +society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often +laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when circumstances +have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness even the blind urge +of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go on sullenly feeding the +fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for the astrological moment. + + + +IV + + +Alexina shrugged her shoulders impatiently and went into the house. She +would go down to the bank and clip her coupons. She cultivated assiduously +the practical side of life, making the most of it, delighted when repairs +were needed on her flats, regretting that the greater part of her income +came from ground rents, collected, as ever, by Tom Abbott, and bonds, from +which she still experienced a childish pleasure in cutting the coupons. Her +flats, which were in a humbler part of the western division of the city, +she had never visited, but she received a call every month from the agent, +who brought her the rents and complaints. + +She had made a heroic effort to turn herself into a business woman but +the material had been too slender; and she sometimes wished for a large +independent fortune that would tax her powers to the utmost. But she never +even had any surplus to invest. Her wardrobe was no inconsiderable item; +living prices rose steadily; there were repairs both on her own house and +the flats to be anticipated every year, to say nothing of the fiendish sum +that must be set aside for taxes. But she managed to save the necessary +amount; and if they lived somewhat extravagantly, at least she had never +disturbed her capital. + +On the whole she knew they had managed very well for young people who lived +so much in the world, and she had no intention of economizing further. They +had no children. Her husband was young and energetic and healthy. Her own +little fortune was secure. She purposed to enjoy life as best she could; +and as she could not have done this quite selfishly and been happy, she +included among her yearly expenditures a certain admirable charity presided +over by her equally admirable sister, and even visited it occasionally with +her friends when a serious mood descended abruptly upon them....She was now +on the threshold of her second beautiful youth, and found herself and life +far more interesting than when, a silly girl of eighteen, she had believed +that all life and romance must be crowded into that callow period. She had +no idea of sacrificing this new era vibrating with unknown possibilities +(it was on the cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory +tomb; lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it +difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a +sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the same +time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott (when +Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a----fool, but she was +not a----fool. + + + +V + + +She dressed herself in a black velvet suit made by her New York tailors. +She had spent, a fortnight with her brother Ballinger on her way home, +and he had given her a set of silver fox: a large muff and two of those +priceless animals head to head to keep a small section of her anatomy at +blood heat in a climate never cold enough for furs. + +The day was hot. It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side of +the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and fortunate +woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women everywhere with +a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn is the time to +display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San Francisco woman of +fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in the glorious spring +weather of November if she perished in her furs. + +The coat, bound with silk braid, was lined with periwinkle blue, and there +was a touch of the same color in her large black velvet hat. Nothing could +make the great irises of her black-gray eyes look blue, but they shone out, +dazzling, under the drooping brim; and if she was, perchance, too warm +above, her scant skirt, her thin silk stockings and low patent leather +shoes struck the balance like a brilliant paradox. + +Alexina nodded approvingly at her image in the pier glass, found the key of +her safe deposit box in the cabinet where she had left it, and went down to +the smart little electric car which the gardener had brought to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Alexina stood alone in the strong room of the bank leaning heavily against +the wall with its endless rows of compartments from one of which she had +taken the dispatch box in which she had kept her bonds. + +The box had fallen to the floor. If there had been any one in the room with +her he would have started and turned as the box clanged with a hollow echo +on the steel surface. + +The box was empty. + +It was a large box. It had contained forty thousand dollars' worth of +bonds, nearly a third of her fortune. The securities were among the +soundest the country afforded, for Alexander Groome, wild as he may have +been when relieving the monotony of life with too many diversions, not +the least of which was speculation, never made a mistake in his permanent +investments; and others had been bought with equal prudence by Judge Lawton +or Tom Abbott. + +But the bonds had been negotiable. She recalled Tom Abbott's warning to +keep them always in her safe deposit box and the key hidden. They might be +traced if stolen, but State's Prison for the thief would be cold comfort if +the bonds had been cashed and the money spent. + +She had always had one of the lighter Italian pieces in her bedroom, a +beautiful cabinet of carved and gilded oak nearly black with age. Like all +such it had a secret drawer and here she had kept her keys, and her jewels +during the winter. + +Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain little +gilded face on the panel?...All her friends, of course: Aileen, Sibyl, +Alice, Olive, Janet, Helene....Unthinkable to have a secret drawer in an +old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some Borgia or other, and not +exhibit it to one's chosen friends. + +She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had +kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was +applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They +had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had +remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and +jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe under +the stairs. + +It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable stones, +reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine pieces +she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of the family +out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished but more +opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother slept. Her pearl +necklace had been the present of her more intimate group of friends. + +Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although she +seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went abroad, +in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified glance in the +coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat. + +But her attention riveted itself once more on the empty box at her feet. A +third of her fortune, and gone beyond redemption. Her stunned mind grasped +that fact at once. No one stole bonds to keep them. But who was the thief? + +Not any of her old friends. They might gamble, or drink, or deceive their +legal guardians, but they drew the line at stealing. Certain sins lie +within the social code and others do not. Women of her class, unless +kleptomaniac, did not steal. It wasn't done. With reason or unreason they +classed thieves of any sort with harlots, burglars, firebugs, embezzlers, +forgers, murderers, and common people who overdressed and drank too much in +public; and withdrew their skirts. + +Moreover, Aileen had been with her in Europe. Olive lived there. Janet and +Sibyl had more money than they could spend. The Ruylers were ranching, and +Helene was in Adler's Sanatorium with a new baby. Alice had gone to Santa +Barbara before she left and had not returned. + +It was insulting even to pass them in review, but the mind works in erratic +curves under shock. + +Gora had taken the thousand dollars Mortimer had returned to her and gone +first to Lake Tahoe and then to Honolulu to write a novel. She would return +on the morrow. + +Mortimer. + +It was incredible. Monstrous. She was outrageous even to link his name with +such a deed. He was the soul of honor. He might not be a genius but no man +had a cleaner reputation. She had lived with him now for over six years and +she had never...never...never... + +And she knew, unconsentingly, infallibly, that Mortimer had stolen the +bonds. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Alexina drew the jewel coffer from the depths of the compartment and opened +it with fingers that felt swollen and numb. But the jewels were there, and +she experienced a feeling of fleeting satisfaction. They were no part of +her fortune, for she believed that only want would ever induce her to sell +them, but at least they were her own personal treasure and a part of the +beauty of life. + +She returned the fallen box to its place and locked the little cupboard, +then took herself in hand. Neither the keeper outside the door of the vault +nor those she met above must suspect that anything was wrong with her. What +she should do she had no idea at the moment, but at all events she must +have time to think. + +She left the bank with her usual light step and her head high, and then she +motored down the Peninsula. As she passed the shipyards she saw crowds of +men standing about; some of them turned and scowled after her. They were on +strike and took her no doubt for the wife or daughter of a millionaire; and +in truth there was never any difference superficially in her appearance +from that of her wealthier friends. She had one ear instead of several hut +it was perfect of its kind. Her wardrobe was by no means as extensive as +Sibyl's or Janet's or a hundred others, but what she had came from the best +houses, that use only the costliest materials. Her face was composed and +proud. There was not a signal out, even from her brilliant expressive eyes, +of the storm within. + +Her mind was no longer stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury. How +dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and separate....She +felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if her jewel coffer +instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was the instinct of +possession that had been outraged. What was hers was hers as much as the +hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind...an instinct that harked back +to the oldest of the buried civilizations...she wondered if any socialist +really had cultivated the power to feel differently. She was quite certain +that if Kirkpatrick should see a thief fleeing with his purse he would +chase him, collar him, and either chastise him then and there or drag him +to the nearest police station. + +And the thief was her husband, the man of her choice. Alexina felt that +possibly if a brother had stolen her money she would have been less bitter +because less humiliated; one did not select one's brothers....And if she +had still loved Mortimer it would have been bad enough, although no doubt +with the blindness of youthful passion she would immediately have begun to +make excuses for him, reeling a blow as it would have been. But the one +compensation she had found in her matrimonial wilderness was her pride in +the essential honor of her chosen partner, and her complete trust. If there +had been any necessity for giving a power of attorney when she went +to Europe she would have drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so +completely had she forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution....If +she had, no doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless. + +Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate himself +from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had lost it; that +was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his powers of bluff +failed him matters were serious indeed. + +He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the +last was unpardonable. + +And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his parents' +had they been alive, because however they might lash him with their +contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in society +unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had had forty +thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it would have been +safe no matter what his predicament. He would have accepted the alternative +of bankruptcy without hesitation. + +But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered +something that Gora had once said to the same effect....Yes, she could have +forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be spared this +sickening suffocating sensation of contempt. It was demoralizing. She hated +herself as much as she hated him. Moreover there would have been some +compensation in sending an outsider to San Quentin. + +And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand +dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she was +visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid half the +household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to pay any. +They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay taxes, +subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay the doctor +and the dentist...a hundred and one other incidentals...out of four +thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They would have to +change their mode of living. + +However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a plain +talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even had she +wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have things out +and over with. But it would be horrible...horribly intimate. She had always +deliberately lived on the surface with her family and friends, respected +their privacies as she held hers inviolate. As her mind flashed back over +her life she realized that this would be the first really serious personal +talk she would ever have held with any one. Or, if her family, and +occasionally, Mortimer, had insisted upon being serious she had maintained +her own attitude of airy humor or delicate insolence. + +She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the soul. +Some day...perhaps...but never yet. + + + +II + + +She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries would +run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this time +having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy. She +knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of Mr. James +Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other thoughtful men, +that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty equally divided; +greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and class hatred and the itch +for power on the part of labor leaders; and a stupidity in the mass that +was more pardonable than the short-sighted stupidities of capital....But +what would you? A few centuries hence the world might be civilized, but not +in her time. Nothing gave her mind less exercise. One thing at least was +certain and that was that when strikes lasted too long the laborers and +their families went hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the +question for her and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet +the fashion to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless +between these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.) + +But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her +own....The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life, had +been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she was +bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not noticed it in +time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in its wake....She had +had enough left, more than many women who had made the same blind plunge +into the barbed wire maze of matrimony....And now she had nothing. She +would have liked to drive right out on to a liner about to sail through the +Golden Gate...but she would no doubt have to live on...and on...in changed, +possibly humble, conditions...despising the man she must meet sometime +every day....Yes, she did wish she never had been born. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +She concluded, while she dressed for dinner, that she must be a coward. + +Alexina was far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have +liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power in +the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the national +gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction--racial rather than +individual...qualities that have made the United States lag far behind the +greater European nations in all but material development and a certain +inventiveness; both of which in some cases are outclassed in the older +world. + +A California woman of her mother's generation had become a great and +renowned archaeologist and lived romantically in a castle in the City of +Mexico. She bad often wished, since her serious mental life had begun, that +this gift had descended upon her--the donee had also been a member of +the A. A., and this striking endowment might just as well have tarried a +generation and a half longer. + +She was by no means avid of publicity--people seldom are until they have +tasted of it--but she would have enjoyed a rapid and brilliant development +of her mental faculties with productiveness of some sort either as a sequel +or an interim. It was impossible to advance much farther in her present +circumstances. + +No, she was far from perfect, and willing to admit it; but she had always +assumed that courage, moral as well as physical, was an accompaniment of +race, like breeding and certain automatic impulses. But her hands were +trembling and her cheeks drained of every drop of color because she must +have a plain and serious talk with a guilty wretch. She had nothing to +fear, but she could not have felt worse if she had been the culprit +herself. What was human nature but a bundle of paradoxes? + +At least she had the respite of the dinner hour. Only a fiend would spoil +a man's dinner--and cigar--no matter what he had done. That would make the +full time of her own respite about an hour and twenty minutes. + +In a moment of panic she contemplated telephoning to Aileen and begging +her to come over to dinner. She also no doubt could get Bascom Luning and +Jimmie Thorne. Then it would not be possible to speak to Mortimer before +to-morrow as he always fell asleep at ten o'clock when there was no +dancing....To-morrow it would be easier, and wiser. One should never speak +in anger.... + +But she was quite aware that her anger had burnt itself out. Her mind felt +as cold as her hands. Better have it over. She put on a severe black frock, +not only suitable to the occasion but as a protection from disarming +compliments. Mortimer, who dressed so well himself that it would have been +as impossible for him to overdress as to be rude to a woman, disliked dark +severity in woman's attire. He never criticized his wife's clothes, but +when they displeased him he ignored them with delicate ostentation. + + + +II + + +Alexina had begun to feel that she should scream in the complete silence of +the dining-room when Mortimer unexpectedly made a remark. + +"Gora arrives to-morrow. Will you meet her? I shall not have time." + +"Of course. I shall be delighted to see her again. It would have been an +ideal arrangement if I could have left her here with you when I went to +Europe." + +"Yes. She was here for a week. I missed her when she left." + +"W-h-at? When was she here? You never told me." + +"I forgot. It was soon after you left. The ship was disabled--fire, I +think,--and put back. I asked her to stay here until the next sailing." + +"How jolly." + +Again there was a complete silence. But Alexina did not notice it. Her +brain was whirling. After all, she might be mistaken! Mortimer! He might be +innocent....To think of Gora as a thief was fantastic...was it?...Was she +not Mortimer's sister?...Why he rather than she?...And what after all +did she know of Gora?...She inspired some people with distrust, even +fear....That might be the cause of Mortimer's depression....He knew it.... + +At all events it was a straw and she grasped it as if it had been a plank +in mid-ocean. With even a bare chance that Mortimer was innocent it would +be unpardonable to insult and wound him....Nor was it quite possible to ask +him if his sister were a thief. She must wait, of course. + +And if Gora had taken the bonds they might be recovered. It would be like a +woman to secrete them in a reaction of terror after having nerved herself +up to the deed. + +She wished that Gora had gone to Hong Kong. Bolted. Then she could be +certain. But at least she had a respite, and she felt so ebullient that she +almost forgot her loss, and swept Morty over to the Lawtons after dinner; +and the Judge took them all to the movies. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Alexina would listen to no remonstrance. Gora might send her trunks to +Geary Street if she liked, but she must come home to Ballinger House and +spend at least one night with her brother and sister, who had missed her +quite dreadfully. Gora wondered how Alexina could have missed her so +touchingly in Europe, but accepted the invitation, as a note from the +surgeon to whom she had written by the previous steamer asked her to hold +herself in readiness for an operation a week hence. + +Gora was looking remarkably well, and Alexina assumed it was not only the +six months of mountain life and the three months in the tropics. She had an +air of assured power, rarely absent in a woman who has found herself and +achieved a definite place in life. Besides being one of the best nurses in +San Francisco, in constant demand by the leading doctors and surgeons, +her short stories had attracted considerable attention in the magazines, +although no publisher would risk bringing them out in book form. But they +were invariably mentioned in any summary of the year's best stories, one +had been included in a volume of selected short stories by modern authors, +and one in a recent text-book compiled for the benefit of aspirants in +the same difficult art. The remuneration had been insignificant, for her +stories were not of the popular order, and she had not yet the name that +alone commands the high reward; but she had advanced farther than many +another as severely handicapped, and she knew through her admiring +sister-in-law and Aileen Lawton that her stories were mentioned +occasionally at a San Francisco dinner table and even discussed! She was +"arriving." No doubt of that. + + + +II + + +"When will the novel come out? I can't wait." + +"Not until the spring." + +They were sitting in Alexina's room and Gora had been placed directly in +front of the cabinet, which she did not appear even to see. She had taken +off her hat and coat and was holding the heavy masses of hair away from her +head. + +"Do you mind? I feel as if I had a twenty-pound weight...." + +"What a question! Do what you want." + +Gora took out the pins and let down her hair. It was not as fine as +Alexina's, but it was brown and warm and an unusual head of hair for these +days. It fell down both sides of her face, and her long cold unrevealing +eyes looked paler than ever between her sun-burned cheeks and her low heavy +brows. + +Alexina knew that she had an antagonist far worthier of any weapons she +might find in her armory than poor Morty, but she believed she could trap +her if she were guilty....And she must be...she must.... + +"Didn't you find it too hot in the tropics for writing?" + +"I only copied and revised. The book was finished before I left Lake +Tahoe-an ideal place for work. Some day I shall have a log cabin up there. +May I smoke?" + +"Of course." + +"It is almost a shame to desecrate a flower....I used to come in here +sometimes and look round...the week I spent here....The room is a +poem...like you....Or rather the binding of the prose poem that is +Alexina." + +"I'd love it if you made me the heroine of one of your novels." + +"You'll have much more fun living it yourself." + +"Fine chance. I don't suppose I'll ever get out of California again....I am +afraid that Morty is doing quite badly." + +Gora shrugged her strong square shoulders. "I never expected anything else. +I asked him for another thousand dollars of my money when I was here and he +looked as if he had forgotten he owed me any. Just like a man and Morty in +particular. Then he said he expected to make an immense profit on something +or other he had ordered from the Orient and would pay me off when I +returned. Has he condescended to tell you anything about his affairs?" + +"Not a word. Did you need the money badly? If I had been here I could have +lent it to you." + +"Thanks. I am sure you would. But I dislike the idea of borrowing. It must +be so depressing to pay back....I was in no particular need of it, for of +course I've saved quite a bit. I merely have a natural desire for my own +and thought it was a good opportunity to strike Morty....I suppose he's +been speculating. Fortunes have been made in Tonopah, but he would be sure +to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong mine....Has he ever asked you for +money?" + +"Never. He knows, too, that I have quite a sum in bonds that I could +convert into cash at once." + +"Well, take my advice and hold on to them--to every cent you have. Where do +you keep them?" + +"In the bank...in a safe-deposit vault--Oh, how careless of me! I've left +the key out on the table! I usually keep it...you remember...in the secret +drawer of the cabinet." + +"How I wish I had the courage to write a story about a secret drawer of +an old Italian cabinet!...I wouldn't leave it lying about; although, of +course, no one could use it without a pass also." + +"A what?" + +"They use every precaution. I know, because when I nursed old Mrs. +Beresford for eight months, I was sent down to the vault twice." + +Alexina's head was whirling. The blood burned and beat in her face. + +"Even with her signature I couldn't get by the keeper the first time +because he didn't know me. I had to be identified by her lawyer." + +"I like to feel so well taken care of. What shall you do if your novel is a +great success? Of course it will be. You would never go on being a nurse." + +"I am not so sure it will be a success. Neither is my publisher. He wrote +me a half-whimsical half-complimentary letter saying that I must remember +the average reader was utterly commonplace, with no education in the higher +sense, no imagination, had an extremely limited vocabulary and thought +and talked in ready-made phrases, composed for the most part of the +colloquialisms of the moment. Style, distinction of mind, erected an almost +visible wall between the ambitious writer and this predominant class. If +they found this sort of book interesting-which as a rule they did not--they +felt a sullen sense of inferiority; and if there were too many unfamiliar +words they pitched it across the room with the ultimate adjective of +their disapproval--'highbrow.' But it is more the general atmosphere they +resent--would resent if the book were purposely written with the most +limited vocabulary possible." + +"Our national self-sufficiency, I suppose. Also the fetish of equality that +still persists. We are the greatest nation on earth, of course, but it +isn't democratic for any one of us to be greater than the other." + +"Exactly. I don't say I wouldn't write for the mob if I could. Nice stories +about nice people. Intimate life histories of commonplace 'real Americans,' +touched with a bit of romance, or tragedy-somewhere about the middle--or +adventure, with a bad man or woman for good measure and to prove to the +highbrows that the author is advanced and knows the world as well as the +next, even if he or she prefers to treat of the more 'admirable aspects of +our American life.' Unluckily I cannot read such books nor write them. I +was born with a passion for English and the subtler psychology. I should be +hopeless from any editor's or publisher's standpoint if I didn't happen to +have been fitted out with a strong sense of drama. If I could only set my +stage with commonplace, people no doubt I'd make a roaring hit. But I +can't and I won't. Who has such a chance as an author to get away from +commonplace people? Fancy deliberately concocting new ones!" + +"Not you! But you'll have some sort of success, all the same." + +"Yes, there are publics. Perhaps I'll, hypnotize one of them. As for the +financial end what I hope is that the book will give me a position that +will raise my prices in the magazines." + +"You could live abroad very cheaply." Alexina raised her eyes a trifle and +looked as guileless as her words. + +"Oh, be sure I'll go to Europe and stay there for years as soon as I see my +way ahead. I should find color in the very stones or the village streets." + +"I am told that you can find most comfortable quarters in some of those +English village inns, and for next to nothing. By the way, do you still +correspond with that Englishman who was here during the fire?" + +"Gathbroke? Off and on. T send him my stories and he writes a humorous sort +of criticism of each; says that as I have no humor lie feels a sort of urge +to apply a little somewhere." + +"How interesting. He didn't strike me as humorous." + +"I fancy he wasn't more than about one-fifth developed when he was here. +Men like that, with his advantages, go ahead very rapidly when they get +into their stride. He has already developed from business into politics--he +is in Parliament--and that is the second long stride he has taken in the +past seven years." + +"How interesting it will be for you two to meet, again." Alexina spoke with +languid politeness. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders, "If we do." She might not be able to show the +under-white of her eyes arid look like a seraph, but she had her voice, her +features, under perfect control, and she had never been quick to blush. She +did not suspect that Alexina was angling, but the very sound of Gathbroke's +name was enough to put up her guard. + +"You must have had several proposals, Gora dear. Your profession is almost +as good as a matrimonial bureau. And you look too fetching for words in +that uniform and cap." + +"I've had just two proposals. One was from an old rancher who liked the way +I turned him over in bed and rubbed his back. The other was--well, a nice +fellow, and quite well off. But I'm not keen on marrying any one." + +"Still, if it gave you that much more independence and leisure...travel...a +wider life...." + +"I'd only consider marrying for two reasons: If I met a man who had the +power to make me quite mad about him, or one who could give me a great +position in the world and was not wholly obnoxious. Otherwise, I prefer to +trot alone. Why not? At least I escape monotony; I have what after all +is the most precious thing in life, complete personal freedom; and if I +succeed with my writing I can see the world and attain to position without +the aid of any man. If I don't, I don't, and that is the end of it. I'm a +bit of a fatalist, I think, although to be sure when I want a thing badly +enough I forget all about that and fight like the devil." + +Alexina looked at the square face of her strange sister-in-law, so unlike +her brother; at the high cheek bones, the heavy low brows over the cold +light eyes, the powerful jaw, the wide firm but mobile mouth. + +"Have you any Eussian blood?"' she asked. "'Way back?" + +"Not that I know of. But after all I know little about my family, outside +of the one ancestor that anchors us in the Revolutionary era. He or his son +or his son's son may have married a Russian or a Mongolian for all I know. +Perhaps some one of my old aunts may have worked out a family tree in +cross-stitch, but if so I never heard of it. Well, I'm off to clean up for +dinner." + +Alexina for the first time in their acquaintance flung her arms round +Gora's neck and kissed her warmly. Truth to tell her conscience was +smarting, although she was able to assure herself that not for a moment had +she really believed her sister-in-law to be guilty; she had merely grasped +at a straw. Gora returned the embrace gratefully and without suspicion. As +ever, she was a little sorry for Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina felt only an intolerable ennui. Gora had gone in the morning; +she sat alone in her room. Of course she must have that explanation with +Mortimer, but any time before the first of the month would do. She was far +less concerned with that now than with the problem: what to do with her +life. How was she to continue to live in the same house with him? Perhaps +in far smaller quarters than these? For she could not leave him. She had +no visible excuse, and no desire to admit to the world that she had made +woman's superlative mistake. + +She scowled at the lovely room in which she had expected to find +compensation in dreams, the setting for an unreal and enchanted world. + +Dreams had died out of her. For the first time in her sheltered existence +she appreciated the grim reality of life. She was no longer sheltered, +secluded, one of the "fortunate class." Ways and means would occupy most of +her time henceforth. And it was not the privations she shrank from but +the contacts with the ugly facts of life; a side she had found extremely +picturesque in novels, but knew from, occasional glimpses to be merely +repulsive and demoralizing. + +And of whom could she ask advice! She must make changes and make them +quickly. Four thousand dollars a year!...and taxes--besides the new income +tax--to be paid on the downtown property, the fiats, the land on which her +home stood, Ballinger House itself and all its contents. + +She knew vaguely that many girls these days were given special training of +some sort even where their parents were well off; but more particularly +where the father was what is known as a high-salaried man; or even a +moderately successful professional or business man--all of whose expenses +arid incomes balanced too nicely for investments. + +Not in her set! Joan, bored after her third season with dancing in winter +and "sitting round Alta" in summer, had asked permission to become a +trained nurse like Gora, or go into the decorating business, "any old +thing"; and Maria Abbott had simply stared at her in horror; even her +father had asked her angrily if she wished to disgrace him, advertise him +as unable to provide for his family. No self-respecting American, etc. + +But something must be done. She wished to live on in Ballinger House if +possible, not only because she loved it, or to avoid the commiserations +of the world; she had no desire to live in narrow quarters with her +husband....And she knew nothing, was fit for nothing, belonged to a silly +class that still looked upon women workers as de-classed, although to be +sure two or three whose husbands had left them penniless had gone into +business and were loyally tolerated, if deeply deplored. + +The day after her return from Europe Alice Thorndyke had come into this +room and thrown herself down on the couch, her long, languorous body +looking as if set on steel springs, her angelic blonde beauty distorted +with fury and disgust, and poured out her hatred of men and all their ways, +her loathing for society and gambling and all the stupid vicious round of +the life both public and secret she had elected to lead....She had had +enough of it....After all, she had some brains and she wanted to use them. +She wanted to go into the decorating business. There was an opening. She +had a natural flair for that sort of thing. See what she had managed to do +with that old ark she had inherited, and on five cents a year....When she +had asked her sister to advance the money Sibyl had flown into one of her +worst rages and thrown a gold hair brush through a Venetian mirror. Didn't +she give her clothes by the dozen that she hadn't worn a month? Did any +girl have a better time in society? Was any girl luckier at poker? Was any +girl more popular with men--too bad it was generally the married ones that +lost their heads....Better if she stopped fooling and married. By and by it +would be too late. + +But she didn't want to marry. She was sick of men. She wanted to get out of +her old life altogether and cultivate a side of her mind and character +that had stagnated so far...also to enjoy the independent life of +a money-earner...life in an entirely different world...something +new...new...new. + +Alexina had offered to lend her the capital, for Alice had a hard cool +head. But she had refused, saying she could mortgage her old barrack if +it came to that...but she didn't know...it would he a break....Sib might +never speak to her again...people were such snobs...and she mightn't like +it...she wished she had been born of poor but honest parents and put to +work in a canning factory or married the plumber. + +She had done nothing, and Alexina wondered if she would have the courage to +go into some sort of business with herself...they could give out they +were bored, seeking a new distraction...save the precious pride of their +families. + +She leaned forward and took her head in her hands. If she only had some one +to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in any +one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, even in a +roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet and the other +girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. But her head would +burst if she didn't consult some one. She was too horribly alone. And +after all she was still very young. She had talked largely of her +responsibilities, but as a matter of fact until now she had never had one +worth the name. + +Suddenly she thought of James Kirkpatrick. + + + +II + + +The lessons in socialism had died a natural death long since. But Alexina +and Aileen and Janet had never quite let him go. Whenever there was a great +strike on, either in California or in any part of the nation, they invited +him to take tea with them at least once a week while it lasted and tell +them all the "ins." This he was nothing loath to do, and waived the +question of remuneration aside with a gesture. He was now a foreman, and +vice-president of his union, and it gave him a distinct satisfaction to +confer a favor upon these "lofty dames," whom, however, he liked better as +time went on. Alexina he had always worshiped and the only time he ceased +to be a socialist was when he ground his teeth and cursed fate for not +making him a gentleman and giving him a chance before she was corralled by +that sawdust dude. + +He had also remained on friendly terms with Gora, who had cold-bloodedly +studied him and made him the hero of a grim strike story. But as he never +read polite literature their friendship was unimpaired. + + + +II + + +He came to tea that afternoon in response to a telephone call from Alexina. +She had put on a tea gown of periwinkle blue chiffon and a silver fillet +about her head, and looked to Mr. Kirkpatrick's despairing gaze as she +intended to look--beautiful, of course, but less woman than goddess. +Exquisite but not tempting. She was quite aware of the young workman's +hopeless passion and she managed him as skillfully as she did the more +assured, sophisticated, and sometimes "illuminated" Jimmie Thorne and +Bascom Luning. + +She received him in the great drawing-room behind the tea-table, laden with +the massive silver of dead and gone Ballingers. + +"I've only been home a week," she said gayly. "See what a good friend I am. +I've scarcely seen any one. Did you get my post cards?" + +"I did and I've framed them, if you don't mind my saying so." + +"I hoped you would. I picked out the prettiest I could find. They do have +such beauties in Europe. Just think, it was my first visit. I was wildly +excited. Wouldn't you like to go?" + +"Naw. America's good enough for me. 'Fris--oh, Lord! San Francisco--for +that matter. I'd like to go to the next International Socialist Congress +all right--next year. Maybe I will. I guess that would give me enough of +Europe to last me the rest of my natural life." + +"I met a good many Frenchmen, and I have a friend married to a very clever +one. He says they expect a war with Germany in a year two--" + +"There'll never be another war. Not in Europe or anywhere else. The +socialists won't permit it." + +"There are a good many socialists--and syndicalists--in France, and it's +quite true they're doing all they can to prevent any money being voted +for the army or expended if it is voted; but I happen to know that the +Government has asked the president of the Red Cross to train as many nurses +as she can induce to volunteer, and as quickly as possible. My friend +Madame Morsigny was to begin her training a few days after I left." + +"Hm. So. I hadn't heard a word of it." + +"We get so much European news out here! America first! Especially in the +matter of murders and hold-ups. Who cares for a possible war in Europe when +the headlines are as black as the local crimes they announce?" + +"Sure thing. Great little old papers. But don't let any talk of war from +anywhere at all worry you. And I'll tell you why. At the last International +Congress all the socialists of all the nations were ready to agree that all +labor should lay down its tools--quit work--go on a colossal strike--the +moment those blood-sucking capitalists at the top, those sawdust kings and +kaisers and tsars--or any president for that matter--declared war for any +cause whatsoever. All, that is, but the German delegates. They couldn't see +the light. Now they have. When we meet next August the resolution will +be unanimous. Take it from me. You've read of your last war in some old +history book. Peace from now on, and thank the socialists." + +"I should. But suppose Germany should declare war before next August?" + +"She won't. She ain't ready. She'd have done it after that there 'Agadir +Incident' if she'd dared. That is to say been good and ready. Now she's got +to wait for another good excuse and there ain't one in sight." + +"But you believe she'd like to precipitate a war in Europe for her own +purposes?" + +"She'd like it all right." And he quoted freely from Treitschke and +Bernhardi, while Alexina as ever looked at him in wonder. He seemed to be +more deeply read every time she met him, and he remained exactly the same +James Kirkpatrick. "What an adventitious thing breeding was! Mortimer had +it!" + +"Well, I am glad I spoke of it. You have relieved my mind, for you speak +as one with authority....There is something else I want to talk to you +about....A friend of mine is in a dilemma and I don't quite know how to +advise her....We're all such a silly set of moths--" + +"No moth about you!" interrupted Mr. Kirkpatrick firmly. "Some of +them--those others, if you like. The only redeeming virtue I can see in +most of them is that they are what they are and don't give a damn. But +you--you've got more brains and common sense than the whole bunch of women +in this town put together." + +"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to cultivate +them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my common sense." She +spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, and curve of lip, that +neither then nor later did he suspect that she was the heroine of her own +tale. + +"Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you +anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me." + +"Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you +smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad for my +curtains....This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had a terrible +experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part of her little +fortune whose income enabled them to do something more than keep alive. You +see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he had always been the most +honest creature in the world; and that's as much of a blow as the loss of +the money." + +"What'd he do it for?" + +"Oh, I know so little about business...he wanted to get rich too quickly I +suppose...speculated or something...perhaps got into a hole. This has been +a bad year." + +"Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively. + +"You're not commiserating _him_?" + +"Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper, hasn't +he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and temptations of +the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he wanted to, you can +bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim of a vicious system. +A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in the middle!. Not capital +enough. Hard times and the little man goes under, no matter if he's a darn +sight better fellow than the bloated beast on top--" + +"You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go +under?" + +"I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--" + +"Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and has +always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he were he +wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good start, far +better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country had in their +youth." + +"Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever in +chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's our +job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in which +the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to work will +have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have to work anyhow +or starve....One of the thousand things the matter with the present system +is that the square man is so often in the round hole. In the socialized +state every man will he guided to the place which exactly fits his +abilities. No weaker to the wall there," + +"You think you can defy Nature to that extent!" + +"You bet." + +"Well. I'm too much distracted by my friend's predicament to discuss +socialism....I rather like the idea though of the strong man having the +opportunity to prove himself stronger than Life...find out what, he was put +on earth and endowed with certain characteristics for...rather a pity all +that should atrophy....However--what shall my friend do? Continue to live +with a man she despises?" + +"She's no right to despise him or anybody. It's the system, I tell you. And +no doubt she's just as weak in some way herself. Every man jack of us is so +chuck full of faults and potential crime it's a wonder we don't break out +every day in the week, and if women are going to desert us when the +old Adam runs head on into some one of the devilish traps the present +civilization has set out all over the place, instead of being able to +sidestep it once more, well--she'd best divorce herself from the idea +of matrimony before she goes in for the thing itself. Would I desert my +brother if he got into trouble? Would you?" + +"N--o, I suppose you are right, and I doubt if she would leave him anyway. +However...there's the other aspect. What can a woman in her position do to +help matters out? You have met a good many of her kind here. Fancy Miss +Lawton or Mrs. Bascom or Miss Maynard forced to work--" + +"I can't. If I had imagination enough for that I'd be writin' novels like +Miss Dwight." + +"I believe they'd do better than you think. Well, this friend isn't quite +so much absorbed in society and poker and dress. She's more like--well, +there's Mrs. Ruyler, for instance. She was very much like the rest of us, +and now we never see her. She's as devoted to ranching as her husband." + +"There was sound bourgeois French blood there," he said shrewdly. "And she +wasn't brought up like the rest of you. Don't you forget that." + +"Then you think we're hopeless?" + +"No, I don't. Three or four women of your crowd--a little older, that's +all--are doin' first-rate in business, and they were light-headed enough +in their time, I'll warrant. And you, for instance--if you came up against +it--" + +"Yes? What could I do?" cried Alexina gayly. "But alas! you admit you have +no imagination." + +"Don't need any. You'd be good for several things. You could go into +the insurance business like Mrs. Lake, or into real estate like Mrs. +Cole--people like to have a pretty and stylish young lady showin' 'em +round flats. Or you could buy an orchard like the Ruylers--that'd require +capital. If we had the socialistic state you'd be put on one of the +thinking boards, so to speak. That's the point. You've got no training, but +you've got a thinker. You'd soon learn. But I'm not so sure of your +friend. Somehow, you've given me the impression she's just one of these +lady-birds." + +"I'm afraid she is," said Alexina with a sigh. "But you're so good to take +an interest....Suppose you had the socialistic state now--to-morrow, what +would you do with all these--lady-birds?" + +"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up, and +then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal physical +condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one of 'em." + +"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?" + +"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of the +great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in their +beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers and +civilians were armed to the teeth. + +"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No wonder +some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course they're fools, +just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but you can't blame +'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If Marx had been a +good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day. Things didn't turn out +according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat ain't proletariat any longer, +instead of overrunning the earth; and in place of a handful of great +capitalists to fight we've a few hundred thousand little capitalists, or +good wage earners with white collars on, that have about as much use for +socialism as they have for man-eating tigers. I'm thinking about this +country principally. Too much chance for the individual. Trouble is, the +individual, like as not, don't know what's good for him and goes under, +like the man you've been telling me about." + +"There's only one thing I apprehend in your socialistic state," said +Alexina, who always became frivolous when Kirkpatrick waxed serious, "and +that is universal dissolution from sheer ennui. Either that or we'll go on +eternally rowing about something else. Earth has never been free from war +since the beginning of history, and there is trouble of some sort going on +somewhere all the time--" + +"All due to capitalism." + +"Capitalism hasn't always existed." + +"Human greed has, and the dominance of the strong over the weak." + +"Exactly, and socialism if she ever gets her chance will dominate all she +knows how. Remember what you said just now about forcing the pampered women +to work when they were the underdog. But the point is that Nature made +Earthians a fighting breed. She must have had a good laugh when we named +another planet Mars." + +"Well, we'll fight about worthier things." + +"Don't be too sure. We fight about other things now. All the trouble in the +world isn't caused by money or the want of it. And what about the religious +wars--" + + + +III + + +It was at this inopportune moment that they met Mortimer. If Alexina had +remembered that this was his homing hour she would have parted from her +visitor at the drawing-room door; but in truth she had dismissed Mortimer +from her mind. + +He halted some paces off and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume to +the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue sloped +abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to keep from +grinding his teeth. + +Alexina went forward and placed her hand within his arm, giving it a +warning pressure. + +"Now, at last, you and Mr. Kirkpatrick will meet. You've always so snubbed +our little attempts to understand some of the things that men know all +about, that you've never met any of our teachers. But no one has taught, me +as much as Mr. Kirkpatrick, so shake hands at once and be friends." + +Mortimer extended a straight and wooden hand. Kirkpatrick touched, and +dropped it as if lie feared contamination, Mortimer ascended a few steps +and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated disapproval and +contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the speedy demise of +capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle skirts and fled up the +avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out his pugnacious jaw, his hard +little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. Mortimer, to do him justice, was +entirely without physical cowardice, and continued to look like a stage +lord dismissing a varlet. + +Kirkpatrick caught Alexina's imploring eyes and turned abruptly on his +heel, "So long," he said. "Guess I'd better be getting on." + + + +IV + + +"I won't have that fellow in the house," said Mortimer, in a low tone of +white fury. "To think that my wife--my wife--" + +"If you don't mind we won't talk about it." + +Alexina was on the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the air. +She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop and when +she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to elongate like +the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever happened to have +incurred her wrath. + +Mortimer glowered at her. He had many grievances. For the moment he forgot +that she might have any against him. + +"And out here in broad daylight, almost on the street, in that tea gown--" + +"I have often been quite on the street in similar ones. Going over to +Aileen's. You forget that the Western Addition is like a great park set +with the homes of people more or less intimate." + +Mortimer made no further remarks. He had never pretended to be a match +for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him +temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for +although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more relish. +As he settled himself to his cigar in a comfortable wicker chair on the +terrace and she was about to return to the house he spoke abruptly in a +faint firm voice. + +"Will you stay here? I've got something to say to you." + +"Oh?" + +She wheeled about. His face was a sickly greenish white in the heavy shade +of the trees. + +"It's--it's--something I've been wanting to say--tell you...as well now as +any time." + +"Oh, very well. I must write just one letter." + +She ran into the house and up the stairs and shut herself in the library, +breathless, panic-stricken. He was going to confess! How awful! How awful! +How could she ever go through with it? Why, why, hadn't she spoken at once +and got it over? + +She sat quite still until she had ceased trembling and her heart no longer +pounded and affected her breathing. Then she set her teeth and went +downstairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Mortimer was walking up and down the hall. + +"Come in here," he said. He entered the drawing-room, and Alexina followed +like a culprit led to the bar. Nevertheless, it crossed her mind that he +wanted the moral support of a mantelpiece. + +She almost stumbled into a chair. Mortimer did not avail himself of the +chimneypiece toward which he had unconsciously gravitated, but walked back +and forth. Two electric lights hidden under lamp shades were burning, but +the large room was rather somber. + +Alexina composed herself once more with a violent effort and asked in a +crisp tone: "Well? What is this mystery? Are you in love with some one +else? Been, making love--" + +"Alexina!" + +He confronted her with stricken eyes. "You know that I am literally +incapable of such a thing. But of course you were jesting." + +"Of course. But something is so manifestly wrong with you, and...well...of +course you would be justified." + +"Not in my own eyes. Besides, I shall never give up the hope of winning +you back again. I live for that...although now!...that is the whole +trouble....How am I going to say it?" + +"Well, let me help you out. You took the bonds." + +"You've been to the bank! I wanted to tell you first...the day you came +back....I couldn't...." + +"There is only one thing I am really curious about. How did you get in? Of +course you knew where I kept the key, but--" + +"I--" His voice was so lifeless that if dead men could speak it must be in +the same flat faint tones. "I had the old power of attorney." + +"But I revoked it." + +"I mean the instrument--the paper. You did not ask for it. I did not think +of it either....I trusted to the keeper taking it on its face value, not +looking it up. He didn't. You see--" He gave a dreadful sort of laugh. "I +am well known and have a good reputation." + +"Why didn't you cable and ask me to lend you the money?" + +"There wasn't time. Besides, you might have refused. I was desperate--" + +"I don't want to hear the particulars. I am not in the least curious. What +I must talk to you about--" + +"I must tell you the whole thing. I can't go about with it any longer. +Then, perhaps, you will understand." + +His voice was still flat and as he continued to walk he seemed to draw +half-paralyzed legs after him. Alexina set her lips and stared at the +floor. He meant to talk. No getting out of it. + +"I--I--have only done well occasionally since the very first. It didn't +matter so long as your mother was alive, and for a little while after. But +when you took things into your own hands...after that it was capital I +turned over to you nearly every month--hardly ever profits." + +"What? Why didn't you tell me?" + +"I hadn't the courage. I was too anxious to stand well with you. And I +always hoped, believed, I would do better as times improved. I had great +hopes of myself and I had a pretty good start. But as time went on I grew +to understand that my abilities were third-rate. I should have done all +right with a large capital--say a hundred and fifty thousand dollars--but +only a man far cleverer than I am could have got anywhere in that business +with a paltry sixteen thousand to begin on. I got one or two connections +and did pretty well, off and on, for a time; but if I hadn't made one +or two lucky strikes in stocks my capital would simply have run away in +household expenses long ago." + +"Then why did you join that expensive club?" + +"It was good business," he said evasively. "I meet the right sort of men +there. That's where I got my stock pointers." + +"Did you take the bonds to gamble with?" + +"No. I'd never have done that. I gambled in another way, though. I thought +I saw a chance to sell a certain commodity at that particular time and +I plunged and sent for a large quantity of it. It looked sure. I have a +friend over there and got it on credit. I banked on an immediate sale and +a big profit. But something delayed the shipping in Hong Kong. When it +arrived the market was swamped. Some one else had had the same idea. I had +to pay for the goods, as well as other big outstanding bills, or go into +bankruptcy. So I took the bonds. It wasn't easy. But there was nothing else +to do....There were about ten thousand dollars left and I tried another +coup. That failed too." + +"How is it possible to go on with the business?" + +"It isn't. I have closed out. But I have escaped bankruptcy. People on +the street think that I wanted to get into the real estate business--with +Andrew Weston, a young man who has recently come here from Los Angeles. +He's doing fairly well and has a good office. He wanted a hustler and a +partner who had good connections. But it is slow work. There are the old +firms, again, to compete with. I wouldn't have looked at it if I'd had any +choice, but it was a case of a port in a storm." + +"Well? Is that all? There is another matter to discuss. Our future mode of +living." + +"No, it isn't all. I wish you would tell Gora something. I can never go +through this again. While she was away--in Honolulu--that lawyer of my aunt +sent out ten thousand dollars' worth more of stock, that had been looked +upon as so much waste paper, but suddenly appreciated--some little railroad +that was abandoned half finished, but has since been completed. This had +been left to Gora alone. We had some correspondence and he sent it to me as +Gora was traveling. It came at the wrong time for me...on top of everything +else....I plunged in a new mine Bob Cheever and Baseom Luning were +interested in. It turned out to be no good. We lost every cent." + + + +II + + +Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it had +turned to stone. + +He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together. + +"If you knew...if you knew...what I have been through....At first it was +only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over...when +there was nothing left to speculate with...then I realized what I had +done...I...a thief...a thief....I had been so proud of my honor, my +honesty. I never had believed that I could even be tempted. And I went to +pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its first storm. There's nothing, +it seems, in being well brought up, when circumstances are too strong for +you." + +Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad," she +said, rather at a loss. + +"No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken long +chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in too deep. +But if I could have repaid it all I'd feel nearly as demoralized. That I +should have stolen...and from women...." + +Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on. + +"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn't seem to me that I had +the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest sense of +right and wrong...It does not seem possible even now." + +Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she should +be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him that she +quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She wished that +she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of the physical +demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared to defend him if +need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that she would willingly +die rather than touch him....She wondered if souls in dissolution subtly +wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too close.... + +"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I'll tell Gora and engage +that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now let us +discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to contribute +anything to the household expenses?" + +"I'm afraid not. It takes time to work up a business." + +"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I +suppose I had better look for a job." + +"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her +incredulously. "You?" + +"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the +decorating business." + +"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I +could fool them then!" + +"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have stuck +to the old business if it had paid." + +"It isn't the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go out +to earn money--why, I'd be a laughing stock." + +"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this +lot--" + +"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to your +old home...and after fixing it up...." + +"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can't go on." + +"My brain seems to have stopped. I can't do much thinking. But...well...you +might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my business begins +to pay." + +"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if you +can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--" + +"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that when +you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why couldn't +Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know anything about +Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your family have let me stay +where I was? I should have been head clerk with a good salary by this time, +and we would have arranged our expenses accordingly when your mother +died. Why can't men give a young fellow a better chance when he goes into +business for himself? Every man trying to cut every other man's throat. +"What chance has a young fellow with a small capital?" + +"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However...perhaps +you are right....Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I feel more +inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all the ancestral +inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are made and our +characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at least resign from +the club?" + +He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of character +his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the first +Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in two ways: +they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in the same way +the men who can give me a leg up in business." + +"Are you sure those are the only reasons?" + +To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you +shall go on speculating?" + +"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can help +me in business." + +"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However...At least I'll +send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom no one +will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over. To-morrow I shall +do something. I don't know what it will be, yet." + +He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, "that +you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell this +house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had recovered his +usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes were as stern as his +lips. + +Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that +apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to understand. +She nodded amiably. + +"No doubt I'll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner +time. Don't expect me at breakfast. Good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the +following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park and +signaling to her to stop. + +"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one +ill?" + +"Not so's you'd notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak +after me quietly and don't say a word." + +Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece +by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she had +fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with the +"fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the small +group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly disapproved +of, who entertained in some form or other every day and every night, played +poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of the new dances, made up +brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent stimulants. Two of Joan's +former schoolmates belonged to this active set, but she was only permitted +to meet them at formal dinners and large parties. She had rebelled at +first, but her mother's firm hand was too much for her still undeveloped +will, and later she had concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the +whole tiresome society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she +was socially as conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and +although full of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no +prince having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound +Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and she +had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She worked +off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be indulged in +California for eight months of the year, rode horseback every day, used +all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the society of such +uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided her time. Sooner +or later she was determined to "get out and hustle,"--"shake a leg." That +would be the only complete change from her present life, not matrimony and +running with fast sets. She wanted more money, she wanted to live alone, +and, while devoted to her family, she wanted interests they could not +furnish, "no, not in a thousand years." + + + +II + + +Joan's slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached the +rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy fashion, +feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah did not extend +as far as the music room, which had been built a generation later, and the +windows were some eight feet from the ground. A ladder, however, abridged +the distance, and Alexina, obeying a gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily +as her narrow skirt would permit and peered through the outside shutters, +which had been carefully closed. + +The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and +shone down upon an amazing sight. + +Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the +floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was +evidently talking rapidly. Alexina's mouth opened as widely as her eyes. +She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that took place +at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition been brought to +chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter or Mrs. Thornton, or +any of those fortunate Californians who visited the headquarters of fashion +and sin once a year? They would do a good deal to vary the monotony of +life. But that they should have corrupted Maria...the impeccable, the +superior, the unreorientable Maria! Maria, with whom contentment +and conservatism were the first articles of the domestic and the +socio-religious creed! + +For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face was +a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid floor, +were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, another old +friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom's sister, Susan Delling, austere in her +virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a fine mahogany +complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel not so much a harlot +as a social inferior. + +What on earth...what on earth.... + +The thin loquacious stranger clapped her hands. Up went six pairs of legs. +Two remained in mid-air, Mrs. Geary's and Mrs. Brannan's having met an +immovable obstacle shortly above the hip-joints. Three bent backward slowly +but surely until they approached the region of the neck. Maria's flew +unerringly, effortlessly, up, back, until they tapped the floor behind her +head. Alexina almost shouted "Bravo." Maria was a real sport. + +Six times they repeated this fascinating rite, and then, obeying another +peremptory command, they rolled over abruptly and balanced on all fours. +Alexina could stand no more. She dropped down the ladder and ran after +Joan, who was disappearing round the corner of the house. + + + +III + + +"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Maria! Your mo--" + +"She gained three pounds, for the first time in her life, and you know her +figure is her only vanity. This woman came along and the whole Peninsula is +crazy about her. She's taken the fat off every woman in New York, and came +out with letters to a lot of women. Mother fell for her hard. I nearly +passed away when I peeked through that shutter the first time. Mother! +She's the best of the bunch, though. But they're all having a perfectly +grand time. New interest for middle-age--what?" + +"Don't be cruel. Heavens, how hot they all looked! I could hear them gasp. +Hope their arteries are all right. Are they going to stay to lunch?" + +"No. There's a big one on in Burlingame. Mother's not going, though. It's +at that Mrs. Cutts', new Burlingame stormer, that Anne Montgomery coaches +and caters for and who gives wonderful entertainments. Mother and Aunt +Susan won't go, but nearly all the others do." + +"Anne Montgomery. I haven't seen her since mother died." + +"You look as if an idea had struck you. She's useful no end, they say; is +now a social secretary to a lot of new people, and sells the 'real lace' +and other superfluous luxuries of some of our old families for the cold +coin that buys comforts." + +"Fine idea. But I'm glad your mother will be alone. I've come down to have +a talk with her." + +"Thanks. I'll take the hint." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +Alexina went up to Joan's room to remain until the gong sounded for +luncheon, when she drifted down innocently and kissed the somewhat +furtive-looking Maria, who was in chaste duck and fresh from a bath. + +"So glad to see you, darling," she murmured almost effusively. "I hope you +haven't waited long. A number of my friends have a lesson every Thursday +morning, and meet at one house or another." + +"Irregular French verbs, I suppose. So fascinating, and one does forget so. +I thought I'd never brush up my French." + +Not for anything would she have forced Maria into the most innocent +equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people are +expected to do after their first visit to Europe. + +No time could have been more propitious for this necessary understanding +with Maria, who was feeling amiable, apologetic, as limber as Joan, and +almost as warm. She had also lost two-thirds of a pound. + + + +II + + +Alexina began as soon as Joan left them alone on the shady side of the wide +piazza. + +"I have a lot of things to tell you," she said nervously. "I have to make +certain economies and I want the benefit of your advice." + +Mrs. Abbott looked up from her embroidery. "Of course, darling. I was +afraid you were going a little too fast for young people." + +"That is not it. I always managed well enough....You know we've never gone +the limit: polo at Burlingame and Monterey, gambling, big parties and +all the rest of it. I've never run into debt or spent any of my capital. +But..." + +Maria began to feel anxious and took off the large round shell-rimmed +spectacles that enlarged stitches and print. "Yes?" + +"You know I had bonds--about forty thousand dollars' worth--those that +mother left: I spent those that Ballinger and Geary gave me on the house +and one thing and another." + +"Yes?" Mrs. Abbott was now alarmed. She had a very keen sense of the value +of money, like most persons that have inherited it, and was extremely +conservative in its use. + +"Well, you see, I thought I saw a chance to treble it--we never really had +enough--and I speculated and lost it." + +Alexina was a passionate lover of the truth, but she could always lie like +a gentleman. + +Maria Abbott readjusted her spectacles and took a stitch or two in her +linen. She was aghast and did not care to speak for a moment. She was no +fool and Tom had told her that Mortimer had changed his business and might +bluff the street, but could never bluff him. She knew quite as well as if +Alexina had confessed it that Mortimer had lost the money, either in his +business or in stocks; although of course she was far from suspecting the +whole truth. + + + +III + + +"That is dreadful," she said finally. "I wish you had consulted Tom. He +understands stocks as he does everything else." + +"I thought I had the best tips. However--the thing is done, and the point +is that I must make great changes. Mortimer is not making as much as he +was, either; he came to the conclusion that he couldn't get anywhere in +that business on so small a capital, and has gone into real estate. It will +be some time before he makes enough to keep things going in the old way. +I made all my plans last night and came down to ask you if you could take +James. He has been with us so long; I can't let him go to strangers. Then I +shall turn out all those high-priced servants and get a woman to do general +housework. Alice says her aunt always gets green ones from an agency and +breaks them in. They are quite cheap. I shall help her, of course, and if +she doesn't know much about cooking I know a little and can learn more. I +shall shut up the big drawing-room, put everything into moth balls, and +give out that the doctor has ordered me to rest this winter, to go to bed +every night at eight. That will stop people coming up three or four times a +week to dance. And I can sell the new clothes I brought from Paris and New +York to Polly Roberts. She's just my height and weight. Of course I must +tell the girls the truth--that I'm economizing; but wild horses wouldn't +drag it out of them. I don't care tuppence, but Morty says it would hurt +his business. I rather like the idea of working. I'm tired of the old +round, and would like to get a job if Morty wasn't so opposed--says it +would ruin him." + +"I should think so. At least let us wash our dirty linen at home....I have +been thinking while you talked. I've only spent two whole winters in town +since I married, end I've always thought I'd love to live in the old house. +I've rather envied you, Alexina, dear...it is so full of happy memories for +me. I did have such a good time as a girl...such a good, simple time....I'm +wondering if Tom wouldn't rent it for the winter and spring. He's been +doing splendidly these last two or three years, and he owned some of the +property west of Twin Peaks that is building up so fast. I know he sold it +for quite a lot....And I sometimes wonder if he doesn't get as tired of +living in the same place year after year as I do. He could play golf at +the Ingleside....I am sure he will....It would be the very best thing +all round. Then we could run the house, and you and Mortimer would pay +something--never mind what....People would think it was the other way, if +they thought anything about it. Families often double up in that fashion." + +"Maria! I can't believe it. It would be too perfect a solution, provided of +course that we pay all we cost. I should insist upon keeping the slips as +usual. You are an angel." + +"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The +Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our +parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and I +know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day as be +used to be of the train." + +"It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect +sincerity. She had not faltered before the prospect of work, but that of +Mortimer's society unrelieved for an indefinite time had filled her with +something like panic. It had been the one test of her powers of endurance +of which she had not felt assured. + +"That will give us time, too, to get on our feet again. Morty is very +hopeful of this new business. I shall go out very little, and as Joan will +be the natural center of attraction it will be understood that her friends, +not mine, have the run of the house." + +Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She worries +me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for the winter +and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If you want to be +housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like better than a rest +from ordering dinner, after all these years." + +"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure I +wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and I'd +like to drink your health." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the +immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria Abbott; +there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic wife's +presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs. Moreover he feared +Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered word and he might as well +have told the whole story. Well, he never talked much anyhow; he would +merely talk less. + +When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was forced +to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of resignation. +When she told him what her original plan had been he was so appalled, so +humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a servant's apron (to say +nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he almost warmed to the Abbotts. + + + +II + + +Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of +spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of +something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, received +a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand dollars and +asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where she kept her +savings. + +"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper so +heavily freighted. + +"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus whose +husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy and Anne +advises her." + +"What did you sell? Your jewels?" + +"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste to +wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard to buy +now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people always think +it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest and clumsiest of +the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told her that they were +as good as a passport." + +Mortimer sprang to the only, the naive, the eternal masculine conclusion. + +"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the sudden +rejuvenation of his heavy body. "I never really believed you had ceased to +care....you were capricious like all women...a little spoilt. I knew that +if I had patience...Only a loving wife would do such a thing." + +Alexina made a wry face at the banality of his climax, although the fatuous +outburst had barely amused her. + +"No, I don't love you in the least, Mortimer, and never shall. Make up your +mind to that. Love some one else if you like....I did this for two reasons: +I did not have the courage to tell Gora the truth--and that I was too +unjust and penurious to restore the money you had taken; and as your wife +it would have hurt my pride unbearably." + +"And you are not afraid to trust me with this money?" he asked, his voice +toneless. + +"Not in the least. There's no other way to manage it and I fancy you know +what would happen if you didn't hand it over. There is such a thing as the +last straw." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +It was a week later. Alexina was changing her dress. Maria had asked a +number of her girlhood friends in for luncheon, and they were to exchange +reminiscences in the old house over a table laden as of yore with the +massive Ballinger silver, English cutglass, and French china. Alexina was +about to take refuge with Janet Maynard. + +Her door opened unceremoniously and Gora entered. + +Alexina caught her breath as she saw her sister-in-law's eyes. They looked +like polar seas in a tropical storm. + +"Why, Gora, dear," she said lightly. "I thought you were on an important +case." + +"Man died last night. I have just been to see Mortimer. When I got his +note--just three lines--saying that he had received a cheque from Utica +and deposited it to my account I knew at once--as soon as I had time to +think--there was something wrong. The natural thing would have been to call +me up--couldn't tell me the good news too soon....And there was a hollow +ring about that note....Well, as soon as I woke up to-day I went straight +down to his office. I had to wait an hour. When he came in and saw me he +turned green. I marched him into a back room and corkscrewed the truth out +of him--the whole truth. Then I blasted him. He knows exactly what one +person in this world thinks of him, what everybody else would think of +him if he were found out. I gathered that you had let him down easy. Your +toploftical pride, I suppose. Well, I must have a good plebeian streak in +me somewhere and for the first time I was glad of it. When I left him he +looked shrunken to half his natural size. His eyes looked like a dead +fish's and all the muscles of his face had given Way. He looked as if he +were going to die and I wish he would. Faugh! A thief in the family. That +at least we never had before." + +"Don't be too sure. Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and +everybody'll go on thinking he's honest. Half our friends may be thieves +for all we know, and as for our ancestors--what are you doing?" + + + +II + + +Gora had taken a roll of yellow bills from her purse. She counted them on +the table; ten bills denominating a thousand dollars each. + +"I won't take them." said Alexina stiffy. "I think you are horrid, simply +horrid," + +"And do you imagine I would keep it? I What do you take me for?" + +"I am in a way responsible for Mortimer's debts--his partner." + +"That cuts no ice with me--nor with you. That is not the reason you sold +your jewels and laces and those superb--Oh, you poor child! If I'm furious, +it's more for you than on any other account. You don't deserve such a +fate--" + +"I don't deserve to have you treat me so ungratefully. I can't get my +things back. I wanted you to have the money more than I eared for those +things, anyhow. I have no use for the money. I don't owe anything and the +rent Tom pays me for six months will help me to run the house for the rest +of the year and pay taxes besides. So, you just keep it, Gora. It's yours +and that's the end of it." + +"This is the end of it as far as I'm concerned." She opened the secret +drawer of the cabinet and stuffed in the bills. "They're safe from any sort +of burglars there. But not from fire. Bank them to-morrow." + +"I'll not touch them." + +"Nor I either." + + + +III + + +Gora threw her hat on the floor and sitting down before the table thrust +her hands into her hair and tugged at the roots. "I always do this when +I'm excited--which is oftener than you think. What dreams I had that first +night--I got his note late and was too tired to reason, to suspect....I +just dreamed until I fell asleep. I'd start for England a week later--for +England!" + +Goose flesh made Alexina's delicate body feel like a cold nutmeg grater. +"England?" + +"Yes!...ah...you see, it's the only place where literary recognition counts +for anything." + +"Oh? I rather thought the British authors looked upon Uncle Sam in the +light of a fairy godfather. Our recognition counts for a good deal, I +should say. I never thought you were snobbish." + +"I'm not really. Only London is a sort of Mecca for writers just as Paris +is for women of fashion....Just fancy being feted in London after you had +written a successful novel." + +"I'd far rather receive recognition in my own country," said Alexina, +elevating her classic American profile. She was not feeling in the least +patriotic, however. "You'd see your friend Gathbroke, though. That would be +jolly. Do take the money, Gora, and don't be a goose." + +"That subject's closed. Don't let me keep you. James told me that Maria is +having a luncheon, and I suppose that means you are going out. I'll rest +here for awhile if you don't mind." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +I + + +Mortimer went off that night and got drunk. It was the first time in his +life and possibly his last, but he made a thorough job of it. He took the +precaution to telephone to the house that he was going out of town, but +when he returned two days later he experienced a distinct pleasure in +telling Alexina what he had done. Alexina, who still hoped that she would +always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather sympathized with +him, and assured him that he would have nothing to apprehend from Gora in +the future: she had no more fervent wish than to keep out of his way. + + + +II + + +He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most kind, +Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as well as +she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at home he +undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly grateful; +it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully preserved that the +Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and that all expenses were +equally shared. In time he came to believe it, and his hours of deep +depression, when he had pondered over his inexplicable roguery, grew rarer +and finally ceased. After all he had had nothing to lose as far as Alexina +was concerned; one's sister hardly mattered (Did women matter much, +anyhow?); and his sense of security, which he hugged at this time as the +most precious thing he had ever possessed, at last made him a little +arrogant. He had done what he should not, of course, but it was over and +done with, ancient history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison +for less, he had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew +that he would never do it again and that his position in life was as +assured as it ever had been. + + + +III + + +He spent a good many evenings at the club, and Maria found him a willing +cavalier when Tom "drew the line" at dancing parties. Alexina, who had sold +her car to Janet and her new gowns to Polly, had announced that she was +bored with dancing and should devote the winter to study. She spent the +evenings either in her library upstairs or with her friends. Mortimer saw +her only at the table. + +He wondered if Tom Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant +feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. He +made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to hand +anything over when the first of the month came round--a date that had +haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend it on +himself, and he felt an. increasing pleasure in doing so. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +I + + +Gray naked trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after mile. +Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden fruit. Tall +accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms shivering against a +gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with forest trees, their crests +filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains lifting their bleak ridges above +bare brown hills thirsting for rain. + +The heavy rains were due. It was late in January. Alexina and several of +her friends were motoring back to the city through the Santa Clara Valley, +after luncheon with the Price Ruylers at their home on the mountain above +Los Gatos. As it was Sunday there was an even number of men in the party, +and Alexina, maneuvered into Jimmie Thorne's roadster, was enduring with +none of the sweet womanly graciousness which was hers to summon at will, +one of those passionate declarations of love which no beautiful young woman +out of love with her husband may hope to escape; and not always when in. +Alexina had grown skillful in eluding the reckless verbalisms of love, +but when one is packed into a small motor car with a determined man, +desperately in love, one might as well try to wave aside the whirlwind. + +Jimmie Thorne was a fine specimen of the college-bred young American of +good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this biography +save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's being, and he +fell at Chateau-Thierry. + + + +II + + +Alexina lifted her delicate profile and gave it as sulky an expression as +she could assume. She really liked him, but was annoyed at being trapped. + +"I don't in the least wish to marry you." + +"Everybody knows you don't care a straw for Dwight. You could easily get a +divorce--" + +"On what grounds! Besides, I don't want to. I'd have to be really off my +head about a man even to think of such a thing. Our family has kept out of +the divorce courts. And I don't care two twigs for you, Jimmie dear." + +"I don't believe it. That is, I know I could make you care. You don't know +what love is--" + +"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and that +if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man hasn't come +along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth. I suppose men +will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what is the limit +these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't" + +"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts. God! +I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of studying law +at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won you!" + +"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances +favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even if +I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in love +with you." + +"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all." + +Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming, magnetic, +companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She could feel the +warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats, and her own +trembled a little....It suddenly came to her that she no longer owed +Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved by his own act. +If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something beyond the agreeable +response of the mating-season (any season is the mating season in +California)...that was the trouble. He was not individual enough to hold +her. Life had been too kind to him. Save for this unsatisfied passion he +was perfectly content with life. Such men do not "live." They may have +charm, but not fascination....Perhaps it was as well after all that she +had married Mortimer. Another man might not have been so easily disposed +of. + +"Jimmie dear, if it were a question of a few months, and I made a cult of +men as some women do, it would be all right. But marry another man that I +am not sure--that I know I don't want to spend my life with. Oh, no." + +He looked somewhat scandalized. Like many American men he was even more +conventional than most women are; he was, moreover, a man's man, spending +most of his leisure in their society, either at the club or in out-of-door +sports, and he divided women rigidly into two classes. Alexina was his +first love and his last; and as he went over the top and crumpled up he +thought of her. + +"I wouldn't have a rotten affair with you. You're not made for that sort of +thing--" + +"Well, you're not going to have one, so don't bother to buckle on your +armor." She relented as she looked into his miserable eyes, and took his +hand impulsively. "I'm sorry...sorry....I wish...you are worth it...but +it's not on the map." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +I + + +Gora's novel was published in February. Aileen Lawton, Sibyl Bascom, Alice +Thorndyke, Polly Roberts, and Janet Maynard organized a campaign to make it +the fashion. They went about with copies under their arms, on the street, +in the shops, at luncheons, even at the matinee, and "could talk of nothing +else." Sibyl and Janet bought a dozen copies each and sent them to friends +and acquaintances with the advice to read it at once unless they wished to +be hopelessly out of date: it was "all the rage in New York." + +As a matter of fact, with the exception of Aileen and possibly Janet, the +book almost terrified them with its pounding vigor and grim relentless +logic, even its romantic realism, which made its tragedy more poignant and +sinister by contrast; and, again with the exception of Aileen, they were +little interested in Gora. But they were loyally devoted to Alexina and +obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to help her make the book a +success. They worked with the sterner determination as Alexina in her own +efforts was obliged to be extremely subtle. + +Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but +almost to have her in the family as it were. Their industrious sowing bore +an abundant harvest and Gora's novel became the fashion. Whether people +hated it or not, and most of them did, they discussed it continually, and +when a book meets with that happy fate personal opinions matter little. + + + +II + + +Maria thought the book was "awful" and forbade Joan to read it. Joan +thought (to Alexina) that it was simply the most terribly fascinating book +she had ever read and made her despise society more than ever and more +determined to light out and see life for herself first chance she got. Tom +Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have written; a man +might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice. Mortimer declined to +read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover, although his social position +was now planetary, it annoyed him excessively to hear his sister alluded to +continually as an author. Even the men at the club were reading the damned +book. + + + +III + + +Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned that +Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as she had +been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred that, like many +another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough to acquire material. +When they learned the truth, and particularly after her inescapable +novel appeared, they were indignant that she had not sought her muse at +Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of mutual admiration; affiliated +herself; announced herself, at the very least. There was a very sincere +feeling among them that any attempt on the part of a rank outsider to +achieve literary distinction was impertinent as well as unjustifiable....It +was impossible that he or she could be the real thing. + +When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with fashionable +society, nurse though she might be, and that those frivolous and negligible +beings were not only buying her book by the ton but giving her luncheons +and dinners and teas, their disgust knew no bounds and they tacitly agreed +that she should be tabu in the only circles where recognition counted. + + + +IV + + +But Gora, who barely knew of their existence, little recked that she had +been weighed, judged, and condemned. Her old dream had come true. Society, +the society which should have been her birthright and was not, had thrown +open its doors to her at last and everybody was outdoing everybody else in +flattering and entertaining her. + +Not that she was deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success with +the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the social +heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for the +original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco and +its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her youthful +bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued from +obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph rang hollow, and that she +really cared very little about it; but the strength and tenacity of her +nature alone would have forced her to quaff every drop of the cup so long +withheld. Even if she had been desperately bored she would have accepted +these invitations to houses so long indifferent to her existence, and as a +matter of fact she welcomed the sudden lapse into frivolity after her years +of hard and almost unremitting work. She had played little in her life; and +a year later when she was working eighteen hours a day without rest, in +conditions that seemed to have leapt into life from the blackest pages of +history, she looked back upon her one brief interval of irresponsibility, +gratified vanity, and bodily indolence, as at a bright star low on the +horizon of a dark and terrible night. + + + +V + + +There was one small group of women, Gora soon discovered, that stood for +something besides amusement, sharply as some of them were identified with +all that was brilliant in the social life of the city. They read all that +was best in serious literature and fiction as soon after it came out as +their treadmill would permit, and they gave somewhat more time to it than +to poker. It was this small group, led by Mrs. Hunter, that in common with +several wealthy and clever Jewish women, with intellectual members of old +families that had long since dropped out of a society that gave them too +little to be worth the drain on their limited means, and with one or two +presidents of women's clubs, made up the small attendance at the lectures +on literary and political subjects, delivered either by some local light, +or European specialist in the art of charming the higher intelligence of +American women without subjecting it to undue fatigue. + +This small but distinguished band discussed Gora separately and +collectively and placed the seal of approval upon her. With them her +arrival was genuine and permanent. + +It was hardly a step from their favor to the many women's clubs of the +city, and she was invited to be the luncheon or afternoon guest at one +after another until all had entertained the rising star and she had learned +to make the little speeches expected of her without turning to ice. + + + +VI + + +The local intelligenzia, those that assured one another how great were each +and all, and whose poems or stories found an occasional hospitality in the +eastern magazines, who toiled over "precious" paragraphs of criticism or +whose single achievement had been a play for the mid-summer jinks of the +Bohemian Club; these and their associates, the artists and sculptors, still +held aloof, more and more annoyed that Gora Dwight should have had the bad +taste to be discovered by the Philistines, and should be flying across the +high heavens in spite of their tabu. + +Gora had gradually become aware of their existence, and their attitude, +which both amused and piqued her. She knew now that if she had been one of +them they would have beaten the big drum and proclaimed to the world (of +California) that she was "great," "a genius," the legitimate successor of +Ambrose Bierce, whom she remotely resembled, and Bret Harte, whom she +did not resemble at all. This they would have done if only to prove that +California no longer "knocked" as in the mordant nineties, nor waited for +the anile East to set the seal of its dry approval before discovering that +a new volcano was sending forth its fiery swords in their midst. + +But it was extremely doubtful if society and upper club circles would have +taken any notice of her. Both had acquired the habit, however unjustly, of +regarding their local intelligenzia (with the exception of the few who kept +themselves wholly apart from all groups) as worshipers of small gods, +and preferred to take their cues from London or New York. They plumed +themselves upon having discovered Gora Dwight and sometimes wondered how it +had happened. + +But Bohemia is hardly a trades union; it is indeed anarchistic and knows +no boss. Gora might not be invited to Carmel this many a day, nor yet to +Berkeley, nor to sundry other parnassi, but there was one club in San +Francisco whose curiosity got the better of it, and she was invited to +be the guest of the evening at the home of the Seven Arts Club on the +twentieth of April in the fateful year of nineteen-fourteen. + + + +VII + + +The Seven Arts Club had been organized by a group of painters, architects, +authors, sculptors, musicians, actors and poets, most of whom had long +since found various degrees of fame and moved to New York, Europe, or the +romantic wilderness. + +It still had seventy times seven votaries of the seven arts on its list and +few had found fame as yet outside their hospitable state--where log-rolling +is as amiable as the climate--but all save the elders were expecting it and +many made a fair living. They met once a week, and a part of the evening +pleasure of the literary wing was to "place" authors. They were willing to +swallow the British authors whole (they did in fact "discover" one or +two of them, as the musical critics had discovered such a rara avis as +Tetrazzini, or the dramatic critics many a now famous player); but they +were excessively critical of all who owed their origin to the United States +of America, and particularly of those who had loved and lost the sovereign +state of California. + +Naturally all were more or less radical (except the cynical and now +somewhat anaemic elders who gave up hope for a world that had ceased to +hold out hope to them). The artists were disturbed by futurism and cubism, +although as neither paid they were forced to devote the greater part of +their inspiration to the marketable California scenery. + +But the writers: potential or locally arrived novelists, playwrights, +poets, essayists, were the real intelligenzia! They went about with the +radical weeklies of the East (or Berkeley) under their arms and discoursed +under their breath (when foregathered in small and ardent groups) upon The +Revolution, the day of Judgment for all but honest Labor, and hissed +their hatred of Capital. And if they had much in common with those +"intellectuals" to be found in every land who caress the chin of radicalism +with one hand and plunge the other into the pocket of capital as far as +permitted, who shall blame them? One must live and one must have something +to excite one's intellect when sex, the stand-by, takes its well-earned +rest. + +Several of these ardent ladies and gentlemen, with the sanction of the +Club's President, a business man whose contributions were the financial +mainstay of the Seven Arts, and who sincerely envied the gifted members, +denying them nothing, invited James Kirkpatrick to be the guest of an +evening and deliver an address on Socialism and the Proletariat. He replied +that he would come and spit on them if they liked but that he had as much +use for parlor socialists as he had for damned fools and posers of any +sort. Life was too short. As for Labor it knew how to take care of itself +and had about as crying a need of their "support" as a healthy human body +had of lice and other parasites. + +They were not discouraged however, merely pronouncing him a "creature," +and were not at all flattered or surprised when Gora Dwight accepted their +invitation and asked permission to bring her friends, Mrs. Mortimer Dwight +and Miss Aileen Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +I + + +The wildflowers were on the green hills: the flame-colored velvet skinned +poppy, the purple and yellow lupins, the pale blue "babyeyes," buttercups, +dandelions and sweetbrier, fields of yellow mustard. The gardens about +the Bay and down the Peninsula were almost licentious in their vehement +indulgence in color. Every flower that grows north, south, east, west, on +the western hemisphere and the eastern, was to be found in some one of +these gardens of Central California; the poinsettia cheek by jowl with +periwinkle and the hedges of marguerite; heavy-laden trees of magnolia +above beds of Russian violets. Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, +bridal wreath and camellia, begonia, fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, +chrysanthemums, roses, roses, roses....Little orchards of almond trees, +their blossoms a pink mist against a clear blue sky....The mariposa lily +was awake in the forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet +for the feet of the deer and the puma....In the old Spanish towns of the +south, the Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and +poignant as when Rezanov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of +eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on the +hearts of men in Monterey....From end to end of the great Santa Clara +Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres and more of +pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took Alexina over it +one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from above it looked like a +scented sea that was all foam. + +But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the season +for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the compass at +once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets of the city, +abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking warmth; abruptly +deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights, always searching, +searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San Francisco, for something +lost and never found. + + + +II + + +"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said Aileen, +as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, down to +the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending to prove in +public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast to Bohemia, that +I'm nearly frozen." + +"Keep your wrap on," said Alexina. "Who cares? I have always been wild to +get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead the +most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all, anyhow. +That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and powerful--" + +"Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to meet +to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--" + +"What do you know about them?" + +"I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know more or +less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York I was taken +several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich Village. I could +only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This must be a sort of +chromo of it....Gora, are you as wildly excited as Alex is? I know she is +because her spine is rigid; and she is probably colder than I am." + +"Well, anyhow," said Alexina defiantly, "it will be something I never saw +before." + +"It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you anticipate?" + +Gora laughed. "I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The +circumstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my +imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of +taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this, one +way or another." + + + +III + + +The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the city. +The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor, apparently +very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to be crowded, +were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under the eaves. + +"Looks like the loft of a barn," grumbled Aileen. There was no attendant to +hear. "Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several reasons--only one +of which is that if this room is a sample my ill-covered bones will rattle +together downstairs." + +She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band of +green in her fashionably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft white +satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim and round, +the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her hair was done in +a classic knot and held with a comb--a present from Aileen--designed from +periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling dew-drops. + +Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black satin, +very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort. To-night she +wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out the warm browns +of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and shoulders and bust, and the +skin of her body was a delicate honey color that melted imperceptibly into +the deeper tones of her throat and face. + +"Alexina," she said, "let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your arms +and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born again. +Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid...." + +She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the +discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the +keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered room +they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a new +standard. + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," Aileen began. + +A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came +forward almost panting. "I just ran up those stairs," she cried. "But I was +bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down on Bush +Street--dear Minnie Morrison!" + +She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed button, +eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side. + +"But my mother never went to school in San Francisco," said Gora stiffly, +and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual world with +profound disfavor. + +"Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that dear +Minnie's daughter--" + +"Her name was not Minnie Morrison--" + +'Oh, yes, it was--" + +"Don't mind her so much, Gora dear." Aileen did not trouble to lower her +voice. "She's drunk. Let's go down." + +Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a +stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a +withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the +Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs. + +"I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up here," +she said apologetically. "She is not always herself, poor thing. Once +she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but...well, you +know...all people do not have the good fortune to have their genius +universally recognized, and the results are sometimes disastrous. We are +so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, and--and--your charming +friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared to think no further +explanation necessary. + +"Oh, yes," murmured the bewildered Gora. "It was you who wrote to me." + +"Exactly. I am chairman of the reception committee." She looked expectant, +then piqued, and added hastily: "Will you come downstairs? What lovely +gowns. I should like to paint you all." + +She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen +wickedly), and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from the +same bolt as the gown. + +"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't know--I +thought..." + +"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming, +what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody +criticizes anybody else." + +"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. "You will admit we never found +anything like that before." + +"Just you watch and catch them criticizing us....Rather effective--what?" + +They were descending a staircase that led directly into the crowded room +below, and they looked down upon a mass of upturned expectant faces, Gora +was ahead with Miss Halsey, and as she reached the floor the faces +changed their angle; it was apparent that they were not interested in her +satellites. + +"Let's stop here for a moment and watch," said Alexina. "It's too +interesting. They look as if they'd eat her alive." + +The whole company seemed to be seething about Gora, and as they were +rapidly presented by Miss Halsey and passed on they produced the effect, +in the inner circles, of a maelstrom. On the outer edge the women frankly +stood on chairs to get a better look at the new lion, or pushed forward +with frenzied determination to the fixed center of the whirlpool, whose +gracious smile was becoming strained. + +"Poor Gora!" said Aileen. "We do it better. A few picked souls at a time; +or, even when it's a tea, just casual introductions at decent intervals, +and not too many references to the immortal work." + +"It's simply great for Gora, anyhow; for, big or little, they're her own +sort. And they're not snobs, They don't care tuppence for us." + +"You're right there. I went to a big reception of all the arts in Paris +once and the only people any one kowtowed to were two disgustingly rich +New York women who had never done anything. But no one can be blamed for +national characteristics. Heavens! What an olla podrida!" + +Some of the men were in evening dress, but the greater number were not. +They were of all ages, shaves, neckties and haircuts. The women wore every +variety of hat, from an immense sailor perched above an immense fat face, +above an immense shirtwaist bust, to minute turbans and waving plumes. They +wore tailored suits, high "one piece" frocks of any material from chiffon +to serge, symphonic confections like Miss Halsey's, and flowing robes +presumably artistic. None wore full evening dress except the guests of +honor. All, however, did not wear hats, and they arranged their hair as +individually as Alexina. + + + +IV + + +"This may be our chance to see the art exhibit," said Aileen. "They'll +remember us in time, or Gora will...." + +They descended into the room but had waited too long. Miss Halsey, turning +the guest of honor over to the second in command, a woman of portentous +seriousness, made her way hastily to the mere butterflies; who endeavored +vainly to slink away under cover of the rotating crowd. + +"You won't think me rude, I hope," she cried, "but I had to start things +going, and it is awkward for all to introduce three people at a time." + +"You were most considerate," said Alexina amiably. "But we only came to +witness Gora's triumph, and we enjoy looking on, anyhow....We were about to +look at the pictures...." + +"You must meet some of our more brilliant members," said Miss Halsey +firmly. "They would never forgive me, and have been almost as excited at +meeting two such distinguished members of society as at meeting Miss Dwight +herself. Now, if you...if you...that is..." + +"Our names are Jane Boughton and Mamie Featherhurst," supplied Aileen, +transfixing the lady with her wicked green eyes. + +"Oh, yes, to be sure...there has been so much to think of...but your names +are so often in the society columns...it seems to me I recall that one of +you is the daughter of a famous judge--" + +"Boughton. He's under indictment, you know, for graft, bribery, and +corruption." + +"Oh...ah...how unfortunate," Miss Halsey's jaw fell. Even she had +heard--vaguely in her studio--of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she +wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his +family to the club. + +"You see," said Aileen coolly. "I am not fit to associate with your +members, and as Miss Featherhurst is still my loyal friend, we'll just go +over and sit in a corner--" + +"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind. You are our guests, and--please +for this evening forget everything else." + +"You nasty little beast," hissed Alexina into Aileen's discomforted ear. +"She's worth two of you." + +"So she is," said Aileen contritely, "I'll behave better." + +Miss Halsey, who had been signaling several members and rounding up others, +returned, Alexina blazed her eyes at Aileen, who murmured hastily to the +hostess: "I was just joking. I am Judge Lawton's daughter, and this is Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight, Gora's sister-in-law. I'd never have told such a whopper +but I'm so nervous and shy. I didn't think I could go through the ordeal." + +"Oh, you poor child. Well, you'll find we're not terrible in the least. +Now, don't try to remember names. They'll remember yours--better than I +did!" + +Another small eddying circle formed about the luminaries from a lower +sphere. This proved to be much like similar performances in any stratum of +society. All murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be original +or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves and were +making their way toward the pictures that turned the four walls into a +harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering up. He had bright, +eyes and a pleasant face. + +"Which is Mrs. Dwight?" he asked eagerly. Alexina bent her lofty head and +smiled down upon him. + +"Of course. Little Alexina. I remember you when you were a dear little girl +and I used to see you playing about the house when I went up to have a +good powwow with that clever grandfather of yours, Alex Groome--one of the +ablest politicians this town ever had; and straight, damn straight." + +"Alexander Groome was my father." + +"Oh, no, he wasn't. He was your grandfather. You are the daughter...let me +see...there were two or three young ladies....I remember when they came out +in the eighties...and a boy or two...." + +"I am sorry to be rude, but Alexander Groome was my father. I came along +rather late." + +"Impossible!...Well, I suppose you know best..." and he drifted off. + +"This seems to be a home for incurables," said Aileen. "I am sure I don't +know how I shall get through the evening. Gora has a slight sense of humor, +you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively fiendish....Oh, Lord!" + +Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of +another woman. + +"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up to +look like Carmen." + +The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been +considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had evidently +expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of Nature. Her +unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck with immense +pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade rings dangled in +tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of colored beads covered +the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, beaded gown. She had a +haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, but something, an emanation +perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was still young. + +"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with +whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week but +was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of the +east to our new daughter of the west." + +Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted forward +and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how wonderful I +think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been watching you!" +She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a child, which, oddly, +made her look like a very old woman. + +"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave. + +"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You look +like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh, I do +think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid artists +here will want to paint you." + +Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and unbridled +admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if rather queer. +But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and rushed on. + +"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over +her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style are +unique and she suggests tragedy--with those marvelous pale eyes in that +dark face--those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have +suggested that Folkes--your greatest portrait painter, you know,--paint +her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be of +her!" + +"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in +America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?" + +"I? I am not an artist--with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey +Smith." + +"Oh!..." Aileen's voice trailed off vaguely, "What do you write? Plays? +Essays?..." + +"I--why, I'm one of the best--my stories appear constantly in the best +magazines." Miss Smith, who had been deserted some time since by Miss +Halsey, looked abject, helpless, and infuriated. + +"Oh! We only read the worst. It must be wonderful to be famous. Come, Alex, +we must see the pictures. They're going to have music and supper later." + + + +V + + +"Nevertheless," said Alexina, "they are real as far as they go, and they +really do things, good or bad. They work, they aspire; they dream, and +perhaps with reason, of a glorious future, when they will be as famous and +successful as the founders of the club. Even if they fail they will have +had the wonderful dream. Nothing can take that from them. I envy them--envy +them!" + +They were standing in a far corner of the room, after having examined three +or four admirable and many passable paintings. Aileen looked at her in +surprise. They had both been remarking upon the comic aspects of the +intellectual life, and Alexina's outburst was unexpected. Aileen had +seldom seen her vehement since they had outgrown their youthful habit of +wrangling. She was still more astonished when she turned from a view of the +Latin-seeming roofs of San Francisco from Twin Peaks, to Alexina's face. It +looked drawn and desperate. + +"Well, most of them will fail," she said lightly. "Look at these pictures! +That is what is the matter with California--too much talent. You must be as +individual as a talking monkey to get your head above the crowd. All these +poor devils are doomed to the local reputation." + +"Even so they have something to live for, mean something, do something. +What do I mean to myself or anyone? What have I accomplished? The man I +married is a dummy-husband; means nothing to me nor I to him. I have no +children. Even my housekeeping for Maria is a farce; James really does it +all. I mean nothing to society now that I can no longer entertain it. I +haven't even a decent vice. I don't smoke and gamble like you, nor have +lovers like some of the others. I'm simply a nonentity--nothing!" + +"You have personality...beauty...." Aileen was completely at a loss. "I +hate being banal like that Smith idiot...but you are the perfection of a +type. That is something. And you cultivate your mind--" + +"My mind! What does it amount to? Anybody can pack a brain. I'd like one of +those that gives out something, however little. But I can't help that. The +point is I don't live. I don't care a hang about personality that doesn't +get anywhere, and I care still less about being a finished type--that's the +work of dead and gone ancestors, anyhow, not mine....I wish I could fall in +love with James Kirkpatrick. I'd feel more justified in my own eyes if I +were living with him over in the Mission--" + +"His old mother would chase you out with a broom and use Biblical language. +Of course I know you must be bored, Alex dear. Can't you manage to go +abroad and live for a time?" + +"No, I can't, and I don't see what difference that would make. But I'll +tell you what I shall do. If Tom and Maria want to rent the house next year +they can have it but I'll not live there. I'll not be 'held up' any longer. +I'll stand on my own feet--in other words get a job. No--I've some loose +money, I'll start in business." + +"Good for you. Perhaps dad'll let me go in with you. Don't imagine I don't +get sick of my racketing life; and when I have a spasm of reform I nearly +take seriously to drink, I'm so bored. Would you have me for partner?" + +"Wouldn't I? That is if you would be serious about it. I am, let me tell +you. The whole family can perform suttee for all I care. I'm going to do +something that will give me a place in the main stream of life." + +"Trust me. I have been considering Bob's fifteenth proposal--Mr. Cheever +has promised him a full partnership the day he marries, and it wouldn't +be so bad. Bobby is a good sport, and we'd live the out-door life at +Burlingame instead of the in--sports...tournaments...polo...cut out +dissipation. We've both really had enough of it. But I believe business +would be more interesting. After all that's what you marry for unless you +want children--which I don't--to be interested. What'll we be? Decorators?" + +"I suppose so. But all this has only just come to a head, although I know +now that it has been slowly gathering force in my deepest deeps. If we do +I'll take Alice on. She's sick of the game too and she has simply ripping +ideas." + +"Perfect. 'Dwight, Thorn--', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm too +excited--convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and get out. +It will be our real, our first adventure." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +I + + +But two weeks later Aileen told Alexina that although she had cannily +waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her +father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She +stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a cent +nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had supported +woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed the franchise +and no fair-minded man would withhold it; and if for no other reason he +would forbid his daughter to go out and compete with women who must work +whether they wanted to or not. + +But that was only one point. + +What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher plane +to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died for? It was +their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go up not down. + +Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing +their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and undermined +society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his way not a woman +in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service, should work. He'd +tax every male in the land, according to his income or wage, to say nothing +of the rich women, and keep every last one of the unportioned in idleness +rather than risk the downfall of male supremacy in the world. + +He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had his +way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the public +press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be handed on, +not lowered....Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps, but no further +exposure to the vulgar gaze...he was glad she had never gone in for the +last. + +Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top that +proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the refinements +of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of leisure, of +pleasure--quite as much an art as writing books or painting pictures. + +If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able to +prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and protected +were second to none on this planet, at least. + +If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the +world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization....He was +not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a disgrace for a +lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane and compete with +men for laurels....But when it came to stripping off the delicate badges +that only the higher civilization could confer, and struggling tooth and +nail with the mob for no reason whatever--it was disloyal, ungrateful and +monstrous. + +He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different, yes.) +But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his father +before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his convictions. + +That was all. + + + +II + + +"In short, he's modern but not too modern. My twentieth-century arguments +were brushed aside as mere fads. And yet there's probably not an important +case tried in any court in either hemisphere that he doesn't read--learn +something from if he can. He takes in the leading newspapers and reviews of +America and Europe and even reads the best modern novels as carefully as he +ever read Thackeray and Dickens--says they are the real social chronicles. +He's a profound student of history, and the history of the present +interests him just as much--he has those Balkans under a microscope; and +collects all the data on every important strike here and elsewhere. And yet +where women are concerned he is a fossil. An American fossil--worst sort. +Some of the young ones are just as bad...I'll have to give in. I can't +break his heart. I suppose I'll marry Bobby." + + + +III + + +Alice Thorndyke also shook her head. "I'd like to, Alex, but frankly I +haven't the courage. Your friends all stick to you like perfect dears when +you step down and out and set up shop, and are so kind you feel like a +street walker in a house of refuge. But secretly they hate it and they +don't feel toward you in the same way at all. They may not know enough +to express it, but what they really feel is that you have threatened the +solidity of the order and lowered yourself as well as them. One day they +may have more sense but not in our time, I am afraid." + +Nevertheless, Alexina persisted in her determination. One could succeed +alone. She would not be the first. She was by no means sure, however, what +she wanted to do, and made up her mind to take no step before the following +winter. When the Abbotts returned to Rincona in May they took James with +them. Alexina closed Ballinger House, although Mortimer slept there and a +Filipino came in every morning to make his breakfast and bed; and took a +cottage in Ross with Janet Maynard whose mother had gone south to visit old +lady Bascom, and who craved the wild peace of Marin County after too much +San Francisco and Burlingame. + +Marin, with its magnificent redwood forests on the coast, fed by the fogs +of the Pacific, its ancient sunlit woods of oak and madrono and manzanita, +its mountains and rocky hills and peaceful fertile valleys, is perhaps the +most beautiful county in California, and its towns and villages are still +almost primitive in spite of the many fashionable residents whose homes are +close to or in them. The ocean pounds its western base, Mount Tamalpais is +its proudest possession, it has a haunted looking lake; and a part of it +embraces one of the many ramifications of the Bay of San Francisco, and +commands a superb view of city and island and mountain. But it has a heavy +brooding peace that seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is +intermittent, and its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco +deeply refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a +stark little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San +Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh are +Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries. + + + +IV + + +Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the +sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in the +late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or Belvedere, +perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet was now +twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as seriously to +consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She had great +wealth, she was blasee as a result of doing everything she chose to do, in +public or in private, and she was nearly two generations younger than Judge +Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no allurement in the business world, +and the only alternative seemed marriage. Not in California, however. No +surprises there. She might take her fortune to London and become a peeress +of the realm. When change became imperative better go up than down. + +Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not afflicted +with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and brooding and +intimate personal contacts. She wanted the deep refreshment of the summer +before girding up for the winter--before making her plunge into the world +of business and toil. + +But she was soon to discover that she had girded up her loins, or at all +events brightened up her corpuscles and reposed her brain cells, for a far +different purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +I + + +It is possible that only two people in California, barring German spies, +leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a European +War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and knew his +modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because she recalled +conversations she had had in France the summer before with people close to +the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions in the letters of +Olive de Morsigny; who may have thought it wise not to trust all she knew +to the post, or may have been too busy with her intensive nursing course to +enter into particulars. + +Janet shrugged her large statuesque shoulders when Alexina communicated her +fears. What was war to her? England at least would have sense enough to +keep out of it. Aileen came over after a convincing talk with her father +looking as worried as if some nation or other were training their guns on +the Golden Gate. + +"Dad says it's the world war...that we'll be dragged in...that Germany +has had it up her sleeve for years...believes that bomb was made in +Berlin...nothing under heaven could have averted this impending war but a +huge standing army in Great Britain...hasn't Lord Roberts been crying out +for it?....Dad and I dined at his house one night in London and the only +picture in the dining-room was an oil painting of the Kaiser in a red +uniform, done expressly for Lord Roberts...funny world...and now Britain's +got a civil war on her hands and mutinous officers who won't go over +and shoot men of their own class in Ulster....Russia hasn't built her +strategic railways--all the money used up in graft....Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! +who'd have thought it?...Twentieth century and all the rest of it." + +"Twentieth century...war...how utterly absurd....I don't wish to be +rude...but really..." + +This from every one to whom Alexina and Aileen, or even Judge Lawton, +communicated their fears. + + + +II + + +One day Alexina and Aileen met in San Francisco by appointment and +telephoned to James Kirkpatrick, asking him to lunch with them at the +California Market. He accepted with alacrity, and laughed genially at their +apprehensions. War? War? Not on your life. There'll never be another war. +Socialists won't permit it. The kaiser? To hell with the kaiser. (Excuse +me.) He, James Kirkpatrick, was in frequent correspondence with +certain German socialists. They would declare themselves in the coming +International Congress for the general strike if any sovereign--or +President--dared to try to put over a war on the millions of determined +socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, and communists in Great +Britain and Europe; he'd get the surprise of his life. Socialism was +determined there should never be another war--the burden and life-toll of +which was always borne by the poor man. He didn't believe any of those fool +sovereigns, not even the crazy kaiser, would attempt it, knowing what they +did; but if they turned out to be deaf and blind, well, just watch out for +the Great Strike. That would be the most portentous, the most awe-inspiring +event in history, + +And then he dismissed a prospective European war as unworthy of further +attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the Great +Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the miserable +make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a horror in the +very heart of a great and prosperous nation. But with the new system...the +new system...there would not be even these abominable little civil +wars...for that was what we had right here in our own country...no need to +use up your gray matter bothering about European states.... + +He was so convincing that Alexina and Aileen thanked him warmly and went to +their respective destinations lulled and comforted. + +Nevertheless, the war made its grand debut on August first, and Mr. +Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New York +for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously over the +side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug. + + + +III + + +Two letters came from Olive to Alexina and one to each of her other old +friends, imploring them to come over and help. They could nurse. They could +run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her friends, her +countrywomen, could do. + +But the war would be over in three months....Only Judge Lawton believed +it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a war at +all....Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that wondrous +smiling land could think upon war anywhere?)...It would be too funny if +it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian refugees....Poor +things....Maria and other good women immediately began knitting +for them...sat for hours on the verandahs, all in white, knitting, +knitting...but talking of anything of war....It simply was a horrid +dream and soon would be over....Their husbands all said so...three +months....German army irresistible...modern implements of war must +annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the Germans had the most and +the best....Rotten shame (said Burlingame) and the Germans not even good +sportsmen. + +James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with the +thought that at least Britain would be licked...she'd get what was coming +to her, all right, and Ireland would be free....Anyhow it would soon be +over....When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the socialist party +for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an American first, wasn't +I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag...oh, hell! (Excuse me.)" + + + +IV + + +In December, nineteen-fourteen, Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who grasped +the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went to France. +Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a passionate good-by +to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever. Jimmie Thorne went to +France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning to join the Lafayette +Escadrille. Gora sailed six months later to offer her services to England. +In the case of a nurse there was much red tape to unravel. + +A fair proportion of the women left behind continued to knit. As time went +on branches of certain French war-relief organizations were formed, and +run by such capable women as Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Hunter, who had many +friends among the American women living in France; now toiling day and +night at their oeuvres. + +Alexina and Olive de Morsigny, after a year of nursing, when what little +flesh they had left could stand no more, founded an oeuvre of their own, +and Sibyl Bascom and Aileen Cheever did fairly well with a branch in San +Francisco, Alexina's relatives quite wonderfully in New York and Boston; +although they were already interested in many others. + + + +V + + +Certain interests in California, notably the orchards and canneries, were +violently anti-British during the first years of the war, as the blockade +shut off their immense exports to Germany, and those that failed, or closed +temporarily, realized the incredible: that a war in Europe could affect +California, even as the Civil War affected the textile factories of +England. To them it was a matter of indifference, until nineteen-seventeen, +who won the war so long as one side smashed the other and was quick about +it. + +Owners and directors of copper mines--but let us draw a veil over the +sincere robust instincts of human nature. + +The Club of Seven Arts was proudly and vociferously pro-German. Not that +they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far more +original attitude than all this sobbing over France...and then there was +Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl. And the +atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president resigned, +but no one else paid any attention to them. + +In nineteen-seventeen a few declared themselves pacifists and conscientious +objectors, and, little recking what they were in for, marched off +triumphantly to a military prison, feeling like Christ and longing for a +public cross. + +The others, those that were young enough, shouldered a gun and went to the +front with high hearts and hardened muscles. Democracy ueber alles. The +women enlisted in the Red Cross and the Y.W.C.A., and worked with grim +enthusiasm, either at home or in France. + + + +VI + + +By this time California, almost on another planet as she was, with her +abundance unchecked, and her skies smiling for at least three-fourths of +the year, admitted there was a real war in the world, as bad (or worse) as +any you could read about in history. The war films in the motion picture +houses were quite wonderful, but too terrible. + +They also discussed it, especially on those days when the streets echoed +with the march of departing regiments in khaki, or one's own son, or one's +friend's son enlisted or was drafted, or it was their day at Red Cross +headquarters. + +All the older women were at work now, and all but the most irreclaimably +frivolous of the young ones. Even Tom and Maria Abbott made no protest +against Joan's joining the Woman's Motor Corps; and, dressed in a smart, +gray, boyish uniform, she drove her car at all hours of the day and night. +She was not only sincerely anxious to serve, but she knew, and sheltered +girls all over the land knew,--to say nothing of the younger married +women--that this was the beginning of their real independence, the knell of +the old order. They were freed. Even the reenforced concrete minds of the +last generation imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly modernized +in the rebuilding. + +A good many of the women, old and young, continued to gamble furiously out +of their hours of work; but the majority of the girls did not. Those with +naturally serious minds were absorbed, uplifted, keen, calculating. They +did not even dance. They realized that they had wonderful futures in a +changing world. It was "up to them." + + + +VII + + +Mortimer was beyond the draft age, but, possibly owing to his gallant +fearless appearance, it was rather expected that he would enlist. He did +not, however, nor did he join the Red Cross or the Y.M.C.A., nor volunteer +for some Government work, as so many of the men of his age and class were +doing as a matter of course. + +War news bored him excessively. He was making two or three hundred dollars +a month; he lived at the Club when Maria Abbott occupied Ballinger +House--Tom went to Washington--and he was extremely comfortable. In the +Club he always felt like a blood, forgot for the time being that he was not +a rich man, like the majority of its members, and there was always a group +of nice quiet contented fellows, glad to play bridge with him in the +evening. On the whole, he congratulated himself, he had not done so badly, +although he had resigned all hope of being a millionaire--unless he made a +lucky strike....But it did not make so much difference in California...and +when Alexina had had enough of horrors they would settle down again +very comfortably to the old life....There was very good dancing at the +restaurants (upstairs) where one met nice girls of sorts who didn't care +a hang about this infernal war...one of them...but he was extremely +careful...he would never be divorced; that was positive...as for society he +did not miss it particularly...the dancing at the restaurants was better +and he didn't have to talk...whether people stopped asking him or not, now +that his wife was away, or whether they entertained or not, didn't so much +matter. He had the Club. That was the all important pivot of his life, his +altar, his fetish...a lot he cared what went so long as he had that. + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the +upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal +tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate +the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost +impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate +the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor +after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in +North and South America, and was able to entertain his sovereign out of his +private purse. He had made up his mind to give the first brilliant function +following the sudden end of La Grande Guerre and one that it would be +difficult for even Paris to eclipse. + +All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after +nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and her +eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of her room, +blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the Marquis and +Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long receiving line +where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside the resplendent +ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to a group of +acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling munificence that +seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance. + +They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of +the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her +insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the greatest +function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the long +monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four years, and +the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last year when avions +dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha struck terror to +each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene recalled one's most +extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and Alexina felt like a very +young girl. Even the almost constant sensation of fatigue, mental and +bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had worked from nine until +six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking the miles to and from her +hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains; the distasteful food; the +tremors that had shaken even her tempered soul when the flashing of the +German guns, drawing ever nearer, could be seen at night on the horizon. + +And Paris had been so dark! + +She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast, quite +unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date. For that +matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this year's fashion. +Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the Armistice was +declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion to its ideal +of duty, but that the American officers should have the opportunity to +discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden, the women had not +yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only gowns in the room +less than four years old were worn by the newly arrived Americans of the +Peace Commission and the ladies of the Embassy. The most striking figures +were the French Generals in their horizon blue uniforms and rows of orders +on their hardy chests. + +Of jewels there were few. When the German drive in March seemed +irresistible, jewels had been sent to distant estates, or to banks in +Marseilles and Lyons, and there had been no time to retrieve them after the +ambassador sent out his sudden invitations. Alexina smiled as she recalled +Olive de Morsigny's lament over the absence of her tiara. European women of +society take their jewels very seriously, and there was not a Frenchwoman +present who did not possess a tiara, however old-fashioned. + +But the cold luminosity of jewels would have been extinguished to-night +under this really terrific down-pour of light. The tall candelabra against +the tapestried or the white and gold walls were relieved of duty; Paris had +had enough of candlelight; the four immense chandeliers of this reception +room, either of which would have illuminated a restaurant, had been rewired +and blazed like suns. Suspended from the ceiling, festooned between the +candelabra and the chandeliers, were clusters and loops of glass tupils and +roses, each concealing an electric bulb. Alexina reflected that the soft +haze of candles might be more artistic and becoming, but was grateful +nevertheless for this rather tasteless fury of light, symptomatic as it +was; and understood the ambassador's revolt against the enforced economies +of a long war, his desire to do honor to his unassuming little sovereign. + + + +II + + +The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three +massive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly. Every +embassy was represented, all the grande noblesse of Paris and even a stray +Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more distinguished +American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out of date if as +inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked as hard. But +Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that two American +officers, standing still closer to the window, were talking. One of them +had parted the curtains and was looking out. + +"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows +opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one of +them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist." + +"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the +room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls...feel it a sort of +duty to increase the rapport and all that...but although the married women +and the other sort of girls are a long sight more fascinating than ours, +the upper--" + +"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness +makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King +came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was +leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some +one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that he looked about rather +apprehensively when he arrived, at the station yesterday? No wonder, poor +devil." + + + +III + + +Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to halt +near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door at the +fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond, when, +without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went out. + +Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar cry +of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people in real +life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to relieve her +lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!" + +She waited to hear screams from the women, wild ejaculations from the men. +But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and exalted the +strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor Alexina heard +nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and that was abysmal; +she could not see the white of her gown. + +All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a groan +as the King fell with a knife in his back. + +Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the crowd; +she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later she knew that +a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed him up the room to +place him in front of the central pillar, but at the moment she believed +that they were either carrying out his body, or that a group of anarchists +was escaping. + + + +IV + + +Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving +excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, then +another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and these burned +with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and lit them. All +over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, Alexina saw face +after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were invisible. The faces +hung, pallid disks, in the dark. + +Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady flame +of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an officer recently +discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic and unperturbed and his +eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively curiosity. An Englishman, +probably; nothing there of the severity of the American military +countenance; although, to be sure, that had relaxed somewhat these last +weeks under the blandishments of Paris. Nevertheless...quite apart from +the military, there was the curious unanalyzable difference between the +extremely well-bred American face and the extremely well-bred English +face. It might be that the older civilization did not take itself quite so +seriously.... + + + +V + + +Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the sudden +reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, she took a +match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it and held it below +her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly, opened a little wider, +then narrowed. + +She looked at him steadily...interested...something...somewhere...stirring. +The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished. At the same time +she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond the pillars and that +people were moving on, some retreating toward the hall. She was carried +forward and a little later turned her head, forgetting for a moment the +humorous face that still had seemed to beckon above the white disks that +inspired her with no interest whatever. + +Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him two +officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a great +candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches had been +lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless face of the +King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old cathedral window. + +The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left the +room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his ambassador, whose +face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase. + + + +VI + + +A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of the +dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had been no +attempt at assassination. A lead fuse had melted; the ambassador, who had +taxed his imagination to honor his King, had forgotten to give the order +that electricians remain on guard to avert just such a calamity as this. + +As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter +rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria. But +although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the mild +exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get away. Many +still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the assassins were +lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel. + +Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white and +shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of strong +nerves as well as of untiring effort. + +"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap. "If +he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought Andre would faint. His last +wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who knows?...In +Paris!..." + +Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent friends in +the porte cochere the certainty grew that some one was watching her. That +officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the crowd about her, then into +the densely packed hall behind. But she encountered no pair of eyes even +remotely humorous, no face in any degree familiar....Later she whirled +about again....There was a pillar...easy to dodge behind it....At this +moment Andre took her elbow and gently piloted her into the car. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her pension +in Passy. + +Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left her +free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the great +hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a canteen +in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the Armistice in a +comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de Morsigny, and found +much solace together. But their hotel had been commandeered for one of the +Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with her sister-in-law, and Alexina, +Janet, and Alice had found with no little difficulty vacant rooms in a +second-rate pension in Passy. The food was even worse than at the hotel, +the rooms were barely heated, and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless +and jammed, and taxicabs in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with +drivers of an unsurpassable effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles +a day in all weathers. It is true that she could have rented a limousine +for a thousand francs a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of +her class to economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre +of their devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply +camions of the Y.M.C.A. + + + +II + + +Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door +and inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many +cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard day's +work and the next. She was in no mood for talking. + +Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had +probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of the +long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly in flood +after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and many long +banners of light from the almost festive banks. + +It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved about +her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to discomforts and +thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco, which is seldom +warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts nevertheless. During the +war she had sustained herself with the thought of the men in the trenches, +but now that their lot was ameliorated she felt that she had a right to +what comforts she could find. The difficulty was to find them. With Paris +overflowing. Generals sleeping in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, +even officers, picking up women on the streets if only to have a bed for +the night, and hotel after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace +Commissions and their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow +worse. Olive de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she +preferred her independence. + +To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months. +Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of +hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now that +the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil stove. + +Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her restless. +The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a shock to-night +and not from the imagined assassination of a king. + +She went suddenly to her mirror and looked at herself intently...shook her +head with a frown. She had always been slim; she was now very thin. The +roundness and color had left her cheeks. They were pale--almost hollow. +Janet and Alice had rejoiced in the lack of fats and sweets, both having +a tendency to plumpness had achieved without effort the most fashionable +slenderness that anxious woman could wish. But she had not had a pound to +lose. It seemed to her that she was almost plain. Her eyes retained their +dazzling brilliancy, a trick of nature that old age alone no doubt could +conquer, but there were dark stains beneath the lower lashes. + +She let down her hair. It was the same soft dusky mass as ever. Her teeth +were as even and bright; her lips had not lost their curves, but they were +pink, not red. She was anaemic, no doubt. Why, in heaven's name, shouldn't +she be? Even Olive, whose major domo, driving a Ford, had paid daily visits +to the farms and brought back what eggs, chickens and other succulences the +peasants would part with for coin, had lost her brilliant color and the +full lines of her beautiful figure. She had rouged to-night and looked as +lovely as when Morsigny had captured her, but her magnificent gown had been +too hastily taken in by an elderly inefficient maid--her young one having +patriotically deserted her for munitions long since, and sagged on her +bones as she expressed it. Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered +to lend her one of the new ones she had had the forethought to buy in New +York before sailing, and was only a year old, but Olive had feared the +critical eyes of French women who had not replenished their evening +wardrobe since nineteen-fourteen. + +Alexina did not feel particularly consoled because others had looked no +better than she. Until to-night she had given little thought to her looks, +but she now felt a renewed interest in herself, and the frown was as much +for this revival as for her wilted beauty. + +Her evening wrap was very warm and she sat down in the hard arm-chair and +huddled into its folds, covering the lower part of her body with a hideous +brown quilt. No doubt the sheets were damp, and she knew that she could not +sleep. Why shiver in bed? + + + +III + + +Was it Gathbroke? It was long since she had thought of him. She had not +even seen his photograph for four or five years. If it were, he had changed +even more since that photograph had been taken than after she had dismissed +him at Rincona. + +She was by no means sore that it was he. The light of a briquet was not +precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than +one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in +Paris....It was something in the eyes...she could have vowed they were +hazel...their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat ironic +man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the piercing +alertness of a man of action...but after...was it perhaps an emanation of +the personality that had so impressed her angry young soul and refused to +be obliterated? + +But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers and +soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not already +supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they may have been +before....Life seemed shorter every time they went back to the front. + +And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her for a +moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite youth. That +was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty, to-day, was but +the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks in the California +sunshine and nourished by the California abundance would restore her looks, +no doubt of that. But she would look no better as long as she remained in +Paris....Nor did she wish to return to California...and beyond all question +he must have forgotten, lost all interest in her long since. + +Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes...was it +recognition?...merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match and a +briquet?...No doubt she would never see him again. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Did she want to? + +She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years of +close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as precisely +different from the first twenty-six years of her life as peace from war. + +During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in hospitals +close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage of her nature +which she had inherited from a long line of men who had fought in the Civil +War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars before that, and the tribal +wars that came after, and all that she had inherited from those foremothers +whose courage, as severely tested, had never failed either their men or +their country; in short, the inheritance of the best American tradition; +had risen automatically to sustain her during that period of incessant +danger and horror. She had been firm and smiling for the consolation of +wounded men when under direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity +for the mutilated patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every +selfish impulse fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many +helpless bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of +the eternal motherhood of the world. She had once thrown herself over the +bed of a politely protesting poilu, covering his helpless body with her +own, as a shell from a taube came through the roof. + +That had been a wonderful, a noble and exalted (not to say exhilarating) +period; a period that made her almost grateful for a war that revealed to +her such undreamed of possibilities in her soul. She might smile at it in +satiric wonder in the retrospect, but at least it was ineradicable in her +memory. + +If it could but have lasted! But it had not. Insensibly she accepted +suffering, sacrifice, pity, as a matter of course, even as danger and +death. It had been the romance of war she had experienced in spite of its +horrors, and no romance lives after novelty has fled. For months nothing +seemed to affect her bodily resistance to fatigue, and as exaltation +dropped, as the monotony of nursing, even of danger, left her mind more and +more free, as war grew more and more to seem, the normal condition of life, +more and more she became conscious of herself. + + + +II + + +Life at the front is very primitive. Social relations as the world knows +them cease to exist. The habits of the past are almost forgotten. It is +death and blood; shells shrieking, screaming, whining, jangling; the boom +of great guns as if Nature herself were in a constant electrical orgasm; +hideous stench; torn bodies, groans, cries, still more terrible silences of +brave men in torment; incessant unintermittent danger. Above all, blood, +blood, blood. She believed she should smell it as long as she lived. She +knew it in every stage from the fresh dripping blood of men rushed from the +field to the evacuation hospitals, to the black caked and stinking blood +of men rescued from No Man's Land endless days and nights after they had +fallen. + +All that was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, +full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the +surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate +passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? +What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything else could ever +have mattered. + +Civilization--by which men meant the varied and pleasant times of +peace--seemed incredibly insipid and out of date. It had no more relation +to this war-zone than her youth to this swift and terrible maturity. + +She was in many hospitals--rushed where an indomitable and tireless +auxiliary nurse was most in demand--some under the direction of the +noblesse division of the Red Cross, others under the bourgeois; and in more +than one were English and American girls, long resident in France, or, in +the latter case, come from America like herself to serve the country +for which they had a romantic passion. The majority, of course, were +Frenchwomen, young (in their first freedom), middle-aged, elderly. + +Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently noble, +selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every thought and +deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land. + +But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off +after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day, +accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might +turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly +readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is +the quintessential carnality. Renan once wrote a story of the French +Revolution, "The Abbess Juarre," in which his thesis was that if warning +were given that the world would end in three days the entire population of +the globe would give itself over to an orgy of sex; sex being life itself. +It is the obsession of the doomed consumptive, the doomed spinster, the +last thought of a man with the rope round his neck. + +How much more under the terrific stimulation of war, the constant heedless +annihilation of life in its flower and its maturity? Man's inveterate +enemy, death, shrieking its derision in the very shells of man's one +inviolable right, the right to drift into eternity through the peaceful +corridors of old age. War is a monstrous anachronism and a monstrous +miscarriage of justice. The ignorant feel it less. It is the enlightened, +the intelligent, accustomed to the higher delights of civilization, to the +perfecting of such endowments, however modest, as their ancestors have +transmitted and peace has encouraged, with ambitions and hopes and dreams, +that resent however sub-consciously the constant snarling of death at their +heels. All the forces of mind and body and spirit become formidable in a +reckless hatred of the gross injustice of a fate that individually not one +of them has deserved. + +But the moment remains. They compress into it the desires of a lifetime. +After years of proud individualism they have learned that they are atoms, +cogs, helpless, the sport of iron and steel and powder and the ambitions +and stupidities of men whose lives are never risked. Very well, turn the +ego loose to find what it can. If all they have learned from civilization +is as useless in this shrieking hell, as impotent as the dumb resentment of +the clod, they can at least be animals. + +To talk of the ennobling influences of war is one of the lies of the +conventionalized mind anxious to avoid the truths of life and to extract +good from all evil--worthy but unintelligent. How can men in the trenches, +foul with dirt and vermin, stench forever in their nostrils, callous to +death and suffering, wallowing like pigs in a trough, compulsorily obscene, +be ennobled? Courage is the commonest attribute of man, a universal gift of +Nature that he may exist in a world bristling with dangers to frail human +life; never to be commended, only to be remarked when absent. If men lose +it in the city, the sedentary life, they recover it quickly in the camp. +The exceptions, the congenital cowards, slink out of war on any pretext, +but if drafted are likely to acquit themselves decently unless neurotic. +The cases of cowardice in active warfare are extremely rare; a mechanical +chattering of teeth, or shaking of limbs, but practically never a refusal +to obey the command to advance. But it is this very courage which breeds +callousness, and, combined with bestial conditions, inevitably brutalizes. + +When good people (far, oh far, from the zones of danger) can no longer in +the face of accumulating evidence, cling to their sentimental theory that +war ennobles, they take refuge in the vague but plausible substitute that +at least it makes the good better and the bad worse. Possibly, but it is to +be remembered that there is bad in the best even where there is no good in +the worst. + +Indubitably it leaves its indelible mark in a collection of hideous +memories, on the just and the unjust, alike; as it is more difficult +(Nature having made human nature in an ironical mood) to recall the +pleasant moments of life than the poignantly unpleasant, so is it far more +difficult to recall the moments of exaltation, of that intense spiritual +desire which visits the high and low alike, to give their all for the +safety of their country and the honor of their flag. Moreover, the sublime +indifference in the face of certain death often has its origin in a still +deeper necessity to relieve the insufferable strain on scarified nerves, +and forever. As for the much vaunted recrudescence of the religious spirit +which is one of the recurring phenomena of war, it is merely an instinct +of the subtle mind, in its subtlest depths called soul, to indulge in the +cowardice of dependence since the body must know no fear. + +If men who have been temperate and moral all their lives, or at the worst +indulging in moderation, spend their leaves of absence from the front like +swine, it is not a reaction from the monotony of trench life, or from +the nerve-racking din of war, but merely an extension of the fearful +stimulation of a purely carnal existence, even where the directing mind is +ever on the alert. + +The aggressors of war should be pilloried in life and in history. Men must +defend their country if attacked; to do less would be to sink lower than +the beasts that defend their lairs; and for that reason all pacifists, and +conscientious objectors, are abject, mean, and shabby. In times of national +danger no man has a right to indulge his own conscience; it merges, if he +be a normal courageous man, into the national conscience. But that very +fact lowers the deliberate seekers of war so far below the high plane of +civilization as we know it, that they should be blotted out of existence. + + + +III + + +As regards women Alexina was not likely to remain shocked for long at any +erratic manifestations of temperament. Pride and fastidiousness and the +steel armor fused by circumstances had protected her heretofore from any +divagations of her own; nor had crystallized temptation ever approached +her. + +But her education had been liberal. Several of her intimate friends and +more that she associated with daily made what she euphemistically termed a +cult of men. The naive deliberate immorality of young things not only in +the best society but in all walks of life is far more prevalent than the +good people of this world will ever believe. Those with much to lose +seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection envelops them as a mantle; +although in small towns, where concealments are less simple, the majority +of scandals are not about married women as in a less sophisticated era, but +about girls. + +Alexina had possessed numerous confidences, helped more than once to throw +dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she was +philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact stood out +that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, remained always her favorite +friend. + +An individualist, she felt it no part of her philosophy to criticize the +acts of women with different desires, weaknesses, temptations, equipment +from her own; all other things being equal. That was the point. These girls +who made use of their most secret and personal possession as they saw fit +were as well-bred as herself, honorable in all their dealings with one +another and with society at large, generous, tolerant, exquisite in their +habits, often highly intelligent and studious. Sex was an incident. + +With the peccadillos of married women who were wives she had little +tolerance as they were a breach of faith, a deliberate violation of +contract, and indecent to boot. She was quite aware that Sibyl for all her +posturings, and avidness for sex admiration, and "acting oriental" as the +phrase went, was entirely devoted to Frank. Such of her married friends as +had severed all but the nominal and public bond with their legal husbands, +she placed in the same category as girls as far as her personal attitude +toward them went. + + + +IV + + +Therefore not only did she understand these young women driven by the +horrid stimulus of war; women (or girls) heretofore sheltered, virtuous, +romantic, sentimental, now merely filled with the lust of life. They were, +like herself, devoted and meticulous nurses, brave, high-minded, tender; +practically all, if not from the upper, at least from the educated ranks of +life. But they lived under the daily shadow of death. Even when safe from +the shells of the big guns, the murderous aircraft paid them daily visits, +singling out hospitals with diabolical precision. They were in daily +contact with young torn human bodies from which had gone forever the +purpose for which one generation precedes another. Life was horror. Blood +and death and shattered bodies were their daily portion. No matter how +brave, they heard death scream in every shell. The world beyond existed as +a mirage. No wonder they became primeval. + +Alexina had met Alice Thorndyke in one of these hospitals and observed her +with some curiosity. But Alice was, to use her own vernacular, the best +little bourgeoise of them all. She had had her fling. Men repelled her. She +never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was over she should +live the completely independent life. Nobody would care what economic +liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had liberalized the most +conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was ever inflicted with. + + + +V + + +As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which she +was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle in +itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that savage +lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and powerful +passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect after she +dismissed her husband. + +What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance than +most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud instinct +of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control. + +She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still lurking +desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the complete mating +which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly not in the mere zone +of death. + +She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they had +but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious +mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened and +cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle raging +behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that vulgar +blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the death throe as +incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius. + +This internal silent warfare between her long reed-like body as little +sensible to fatigue as if made of flexible steel and her extremely cold +proud chaste-looking head had grown to be of such absorbing interest that +the knowledge of its cessation was almost a shock. It was after a prolonged +experience in a hospital where they were short of nurses and rest was +almost unknown and the inroads upon her vitality so severe and menacing +that she was finally ordered to Paris to rest, and there found a complete +change of habit in an oeuvre founded by the equally exhausted but always +valiant Olive de Morsigny, that she suddenly realized that somewhere +sometime the battle had finished and mind and body were acting in complete +harmony. + + + +VI + + +To-night she wondered if her imagination, turned loose, stimulated, had +not missed the whole point. There had been no man who had made the direct +irresistible appeal. No concrete temptation....She had after all been a +degree too civilized...or...romantic idealism? + +There had been little to stimulate and excite since she had settled down to +office work in the summer of nineteen-sixteen. Her nerves, always strong, +had become too case-hardened to be affected by avions or the immense +uncertainties of Big Bertha; although the light on the horizon at night +during the last German Drive and the bellow of the guns had shaken her with +a sort of reminiscent excitement. + +But for the most part she had felt frozen, torpid, a cog in the vast +military machine of France, dedicating herself like hundreds of other +women to the succor of men she never saw. That extraordinary abominable +experience at the front was overlaid, almost forgotten. And such news as +one had in Paris was quite enough to exercise the mind....There had been +the downfall of the Russian dynasty...the still more sinister downfall of +the true revolutionists...the Bolshevik monster projecting its murderous +shadow over all Europe, exposing the instability of the entire social +structure.... + + + +VII + + +Was it? Could such an experience ever be forgotten? The grass might grow +over the dead on the battlefields, but the corruption fed the wheat, and +the peogle of France ate the bread. This uninvited thought had intruded +itself the first time she had driven by the Marne battlefields and seen the +numberless crosses in the rich abundant fields. + +She smiled, a small, secret, ruthless smile....That was her residue: +ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone the +savage elementary lust for living at any cost, but she had ineradicably +learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still more tragic +brevity of youth; she had a store of hideous memories which could only be +submerged first in the performance of duty if duty were imperative; then, +duty discharged and finished, in the one thing that during its brief time +gave life any meaning, made this earthly sojourn bearable. If she met the +man she wanted she would have him if she had to fight for him tooth and +nail. + +It was four o 'clock. She went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +The next day Alexina found herself suddenly free of office duty, A very +handsome and wealthy American woman who had not been able to visit her +beloved Paris since the beginning of the World's War, and finding the +State Department obdurate to the whims of pretty women, had induced Mrs. +Ballinger Groome, on one of whose committees she had worked faithfully, to +ask her sister-in-law to inform the Department of State that her services +at the oeuvre in Paris were indispensable. + +Alexina had passed the letter on to the President, Madame de Morsigny, and +forgotten the incident. Olive wrote the necessary letter promptly. Not only +did she believe that the time had come for Alexina to rest, but she longed +for a fresh access of energy in the office that would in a measure relieve +herself. Moreover, Mrs. Wallack was wealthy and had many wealthy friends. +That meant more money for the oeuvre, always in need of money. Olive had +given large sums herself, but the president of a charity is yet to be found +who will not permit its constant demands to be relieved by the generous +public. Mrs. Wallack had not only promised a substantial donation at once, +but a monthly contribution. This had not been named, but Madame de Morsigny +meant that it should be something more than nominal. She could do so much +for Mrs. Wallack socially, now that it was possible to entertain again, +that she felt reasonably confident of rousing the enthusiasm of any +ambitious New Yorker. Moreover, Olive had a very insinuating way with her. + + + +II + + +Mrs. Wallack presented herself at the imposing headquarters of the oeuvre, +radiant, fresh, energetic, beautifully dressed. The war had interested her +and commanded her sympathies to some purpose, but nothing short of personal +affliction could subdue that inexhaustible vitality, and she seemed to +bring into the dark and solemn rooms something of the atmospheric gayety +and sunshine of a land that had done much but suffered little. + +By no one was she received with more warmth of welcome than by Alexina. The +sudden release made her realize sharply her lowered vitality. Moreover, the +semi-yearly income which had just arrived from California was her own now +and she could replenish her wardrobe and feel feminine and irresponsible +once more. The reaction was so violent that after inducting Mrs. Wallack +into the mysteries of her desk she remained in bed, prostrate, for two +days. Then, feeling several years younger, she sallied forth in search of +many things. + + + +III + + +There is no such antidote to the migraines of the woman soul as clothes. +Their only rival is travel and there are cases where they know none. +Sometimes women remember to pity men, that have no such happy playground. + +Alexina for all her ramifications, some of them too deep, had a light and +feminine side. During the following fortnight she gave it full rein; she +was absorbed, almost happy. She spent quite recklessly and after the years +of economy and self-denial this alone gave her an intense satisfaction. In +addition to her income forwarded by Judge Lawton, who had charge of her +affairs, her brother Ballinger, who was as fond of her as of his own +children, and very proud of her--she had received two decorations--sent her +a large check with the mandate to spend it on herself. + + + +IV + + +Even so, she was not always in the shops and the dressmakers' ateliers. She +found much amusement in strolling up and down the arcades of the Rue de +Rivoli, watching the odd throngs at which Paris herself seemed, to bend her +head and stare. + +Some poet had called Paris the mistress of Europe. She looked like an old +trollop. She was dirty and dreary, unpainted and unwashed. The rain +was almost incessant and the shop windows were soon denuded of the few +attractive novelties scrambled together to meet the sudden demand after the +long drought. + +But under the long arcades the curious sauntering throngs were sheltered +from the rain and found all things in Paris novel. Men in the American +khaki, from generals to striplings, were there by the hundred; endless +streams of young women in the uniform of the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., the +Salvation Army; British and American nurses; members of the fashionable +oeuvres artlessly watching this novel phase of Paris; the beautiful violet +uniform of Le Bien-Etre du Blesse; girls with worn faces and relaxed bodies +fresh from the front, hundreds of them, arriving daily in camions and cars, +thanking heaven for the sudden cessation of work, sleeping heaven knew +where. The American women of the Commission, and others who, like Mrs. +Wallack, had invented a plausible excuse to get to Paris and looked almost +anachronistic in their smart gowns, their fresh faces, their bright, +curious, glancing eyes. + +There were also officers in the uniform of Britain, and Alexina regarded +them frankly, with no effort to deceive herself. The spirit of adventure +was awake in her, now that the dark mood had passed, or slept. She hoped to +meet the man of the embassy again, whether he were Gathbroke or another. +She had liked his eyes. + +She had met many charming and interesting men during the last two and +a half years at Olive de Morsigny's table, especially when Andre, +convalescent, was at home. But their eyes had said nothing to her whatever, +if not for the want of trying. Alexina's imagination, torpid for many +months, ran riot. This man might disappoint her, might have nothing in him +for her, but she refused for more than a moment to contemplate anything so +flat. Something must come of that adventure, that vital intensely personal +moment when their eyes had met above flames so tiny the wonder was they +could see anything but a white blur on the dark. She was as sure of meeting +him again as that she trod on air after she had ordered a new gown or +brought an inordinately becoming hat. She had forgotten Mortimer's +existence. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +One day at the Hotel Crillon she thought she had found him. + +She had passed the portals of that fortress with some delay, for the +American Commission protected itself as if it dwelt under the shadow of +imminent assassination and theft; whereas it was merely exclusive. The +sentries at the door demanded her permit, and passed her in with intense +suspicion to the inner guard. This was composed of three polite but very +young lieutenants in smart new uniforms with no blight of war on them, and +flagrantly of the American aristocracy. + +With these she had less trouble, for they recognized her social status and +accepted her explanation that she had been invited for tea with one of the +ladies of the Commission. Nevertheless, they knew their duty and Alexina +was followed up to the door of her hostess' suite by another young guardian +who watched her entrance through the sacred door as carefully as if he +suspected her of carrying a bomb in her muff. + + + +II + + +The party numbered about thirty, and Alexina, after chatting with the few +she knew, was standing apart by a small table drinking a cup of tea +with three lumps of sugar in it and consuming cakes like a greedy +boarding-school girl home for the holidays, when she caught sight of a +man in the British khaki, a major by his insignia, a tall man, thin and +straight, standing with his back to her at the opposite end of the room. He +was talking to the host and a small group of men. She glimpsed something +like half of his profile when he turned from the host for a moment. Like +all men in khaki, when not pronounced brunettes, his complexion and hair +looked the same color as his uniform. + +Nevertheless...if she could only see his eyes...he turned his full +profile...she had never glanced at Gathbroke's profile; he had given her no +opportunity!...Certainly she had not the faintest idea whether the man of +the embassy had had a snub nose or the thin straight feature of this man +who would have attracted her attention in any ease if only because he did +not carry his shoulders with the disillusioning obliquity of the British +Army...why did he not turn round? Alexina felt an impulse to throw her cup +straight across the room at the back of that well-shaped head. + +Suddenly he shook hands with his host, nodded to the others and left the +room. + + + +III + + +Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt her +hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid questions, and +walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a primitive instinct +in woman to chase the male; but civilization having initiated her into the +art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was merely bent upon giving +this man his chance if the interest had been mutual and existed beyond the +moment. + +One lift was descending as she reached the outer corridor and the other +was closed. She ran down the wide staircase as rapidly as a woman in +fashionable skirts may. There was no British uniform in the hall below. + + + +IV + + +She stood for a quarter of an hour under the arcade before the Crillon +waiting for a taxi, staring out into the dreary mist of rain, at the round +soft blurs of light in the Place de la Concorde, but in no wise depressed. +What did it matter if she had not met him to-day? The conviction that she +should meet him before long was as strong as if she were ever hopeful +sixteen....That was the real secret of her elation. She felt very young and +entirely carefree. She reflected that if she had met Gathbroke, or whoever +he might be, during the last three years of the war she would have felt +neither joy nor elation, however interested she might have been. To love +and dream and enjoy when men were falling every minute, writhing in agony, +gasping out their life, would have seemed to her grossly unaesthetic if +nothing worse. It was not in the picture. The primal impulses she had +experienced at the front to that harsh music of Death's orchestra were +natural enough; but safe (comparatively!) in Paris, certainly quiet, the +romance of love would have been as incongruous and heartless as to go out +to the great hospital at Neuilly and tango through a ward of dying men. + +But now! She had done her part. She could do no more. Men still must die, +but in every comfort, with every consolation. And there would be no more +recruits. + +She was free. She was young, young, young again. + +And at this moment her heart emptied itself of song and sank like lead +in her breast. She pressed her muff against her face to hide the sudden +grimace she was sure contorted it; there had been few moments in her life +when she had not been mistress of her features, but this was one of them. + +Gora Dwight was walking rapidly toward her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Gora did not see her sister-in-law for a moment and Alexina had time to +recover her poise and make sharp swift observations. She had not seen Gora +for four years, nor exchanged a line with her. She had almost forgotten +her. The changes were more striking than in herself, who had been always +slight. Gora's superb bust had disappeared; her face was gaunt, throwing +into prominence its width and the high cheek bones. Her eyes were enormous +in her thin brown face; to Alexina's excited imagination they looked like +polar seas under a gray sky brooding above innumerable dead. There were +lines about her handsome mouth, closer and firmer than ever. How she must +have worked, poor thing! What sights, what suffering, what despair...four +long years of it. But she had evidently had her discharge. She wore an +extremely well-cut brown tailored suit, good furs, and a small turban with +a red wing. + +What was she in Paris for?...What...what... + + + +II + + +Gora saw her and almost ran forward, that brilliant inner light that had +always been her chief attraction breaking through her cold face...sunlight +sparkling on polar seas...oh, yes, Gora had her charm! + +"Alexina! It isn't possible! I was going to ask at the American Embassy for +your address. I only arrived last night." + +Alexina had lowered her muff and her face expressed only the warmest +surprise and welcome. "Gora! It's too wonderful! But I suppose you couldn't +go home without seeing Paris?" + +"Rather not! It's the first chance I've had, too. Where can we have a +talk?" + +"It's too late for tea. Come out to my pension and spend the night. Janet +and Alice have gone to Nice for a few days' rest. You'll be hideously +uncomfortable--" + +"Not any more than where I am--sharing a room with three others. Where can +I telephone? In here?" + +"Good heavens, no. Take a liberty with a duke, but with the American +aristocracy, never. Come down to the Meurice. Perhaps we can find a cab +there. This seems to be hopeless. Everybody comes to the Crillon in a +private car or a military automobile. Taxis appear to avoid it." + + + +III + + +It only took half an hour to get the telephone connection and another to +seize by force a taxi, which, however, deposited them at the Etoile. The +driver explained unamiably that he wanted his dinner; and a bribe, unless +unthinkable, would have been useless. In these days taxi drivers made fifty +francs a day in tips, and, as a Frenchman knows exactly what he wants and +calculates to a nicety when he has enough, valuing rest and nutriment above +even the delights of gouging foolish Americans, Alexina knew that it would +be useless to argue and did not even waste energy in announcing her opinion +of him for taking a fare under false pretenses. There was no other cab +in sight and they walked the rest of the way. But both were inured to +hardships and took their mishap good-naturedly, trudging the long distance +under their umbrellas. + + + +IV + + +After a very bad dinner in an airless room as frugally lighted they made +themselves comfortable in Alexina's room over the oil stove she had bought, +and supplied through Olive's influence with the higher powers. She took +off her street clothes and put on a thick dressing gown, giving her +sister-in-law a quilted red wrapper of Janet's, which threw some warmth +into Gora's pale cheeks. She looked comfortable, almost happy, as she +smoked her cigarette in the arm-chair. + +Alexina curled up on the bed. + +"Now, Gora," she said brightly, "give an account of yourself." + +Gora did not reply for a moment and Alexina examining her again came to the +conclusion that she had been spared some of the horrors of the front. As a +head nurse her responsibilities had been too heavy for philanderings, and +having the literary imagination rather than the personal she had no doubt +consigned it to a water-tight compartment and converted herself into a +machine. + +"I don't know that I can talk about it," she said. "I feel much like the +men. It is too close. I am thankful that I Had the experience: not only to +have been of actual service, indispensable, as every good nurse was, but to +have been a part of that colossal drama. But I am even more thankful that +it is over and if I can possibly avoid it I'll never nurse again." + +"I suppose you have had no time to write?" + +"I should think not! During the brief leaves of absence I spent most of the +time in bed. But I have an immense amount of material. I have no idea how +much fiction has been written about the war; there might have been none, so +far as I have had time to discover. I've barely read a newspaper." + +"The only reason I want to go back to America is to hear the news. I see a +New York newspaper once in a while, and it is plain they have it all. We +have next to none in Europe, in France at all events. Shall you write your +stories here or go back to California? That would give you the necessary +perspective, I should think." + +Alexina's eyes were fixed upon an execrable print many inches above the +footboard, and Gora, glancing at her, reflected that she was as beautiful +as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one would be with eyes +that were like stars when they looked at you and a Murillo madonna's when +she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute as she was she had never +penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor suspected the use she made of +those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an abundance of surface it occurred to +few people that she might be both subtle and deep. + +"I...don't know....I rather fear losing the atmosphere...the immediate +stimulation. Shall you go home, now that you are free?" + +"I wonder. Could I stand it? I have longed for a rest--ached would be a +better word....This last year has been full of both nervous strain and +desperate monotony. Nineteen-seventeen was bad enough in another way: the +internal defeatist campaign, the constant menace of mutiny, soviets in the +army, strikes in the munition towns,--all the rest of it....But could one +stand California after such an experience? I know they have done splendid +work since we entered the war, but I know also that they will immediately +subside into exactly what they were before, settle down with a long sigh +of relief to enjoy life and forget that war ever was. It could not be +otherwise in that climate. With that abundance. That remoteness....There +seems no place out there for me. A decorator after this! What funny little +resources we thought out in those days....I do not see myself fitting in +anywhere. Tom wants to buy Ballinger House for Maria and I fancy I'll let +him have it. I can't keep it up unaided and I might as well sell as rent +it. He and Judge Lawton would invest the money and I should have quite a +decent income. As for Mortimer I never want to see him again. He has not +done one thing for this war--he is utterly contemptible-- + +"I've long since given up criticizing Mortimer. My father once sized him +up. He hasn't an ounce of brain. He'd like to be quite different, but you +can stretch Nature's equipment so far and no farther. He stretched his +until it suddenly snapped back and found itself shrunken to less than half +its natural size. Vale Mortimer. Let him rest. Why don't you divorce him? +No doubt he has found some one else-- + +"I couldn't divorce him on that count, for I told him repeatedly to console +himself. It wouldn't be playing the game. Of course there are other +grounds. It would be easy enough. But our family has a strong aversion to +divorce. And a unique record....Not that that would stop me if I found any +one I really wanted to marry. Nothing would stop me, in fact." + +Gora glanced at her quickly, arrested by something in her voice. She had +already noticed that Alexina's limpid musical tones had deepened. Just now +they rang with something of the menace of a deep-toned bell. + +"Have you found him?" she asked smiling. "If there are obstacles, so much +the more interesting. I don't fancy that romantic streak in your nature +which permitted you to idealize Mortimer has quite dried up. Once romantic +always romantic--I deduce from human nature as I have studied it," + +"Well...I am rather afraid of romance. Certainly I'd never be blinded +again. A man might be nine parts demi-god and if I knew--and I should +know--that there was no companionship in him for me I wouldn't marry him." + +"That I believe." Alexina was once more regarding the print. Gora wondered +if sex would influence her at all. + +"But have you met him? You were always an interesting child and you've +roused my curiosity." + +"No...yes...I don't know...later perhaps I'll tell you something. But I'm +far more interested in you. Have you been in France all this time?" + +"Oh, no. I was in Rouen for a year. Then I was in hospitals in England +until the German Drive began in. March when I was sent over again. Oh, God! +what sights! what sounds! what smells!" She huddled into her chair and +stared at the dull flame behind the little door of the stove. + +"Oh, I know them all. Think of something else. Surely you met--but +literally--hundreds of officers, and some must have interested you. The +British officer at best is a superb creature--if he would only stand up +straight. I saw one at the Crillon to-day whose good American shoulders +made me stare at him quite rudely." + +"Who was he?" + +"Haven't the faintest idea. I only saw his back, anyway. Surely you must +have been more than passing interested in one or two." + +"I am not susceptible. And nursing is not conducive to romance." + +"But you never were romantic, Gora dear. And you are good-looking in your +odd way. And that was your great, chance." + +"Well, I'm afraid I was too busy or too tired to take it. +Now...perhaps...but I'm afraid I don't inspire men with either romance +or passion. They like me and are grateful--that is, as grateful as an +Englishman can be; they take most things for granted." + +"The French are so grateful, poor dears. I loved them all. After +all...Frenchmen...." Her voice grew dreamy. + +Again Gora threw her an amused glance. "You must have met many of them at +your friend, Madame de Morsigny's, and under far more attractive conditions +than any man can hope for in a sick bed....I can't imagine any more +appropriate destiny for you...you should be Madame la duchesse at the very +least." + +"Not money enough, and besides they've all grown so religious, or think +they have, they wouldn't stand for divorce. Anyhow it would be so hard on +'The Family'!...Still....But why, Gora dear, do you depreciate yourself? +It seems to me that you are just the type that a certain sort of man would +appreciate--fall in love with. I've heard even American men who play about +in society comment on your looks, different as you are from sport and fluff +and come-hitherness; and you only need a few months' rest to look like your +old self. I should think that a highly intelligent Englishman would find +you irresistible, especially if you had shown your womanly side when he had +holes in him. I've always had an idea that Englishmen weren't nearly as +afraid of intellectual women as American men are." + +"That's true enough. But I doubt if there are any men more susceptible to +beauty, or quite as lustful after it, no matter how romantic they may think +they are feeling. I've talked to a good many of them in the past four +years, and for six months I was in charge of a convalescent hospital in +Kent. I think I've pretty thoroughly plumbed the Englishman. They found me +sympathetic all right, forgot their racial shyness and inadvertently gave +me much valuable material. But I saw no indication that I made any sex +appeal to them whatever." + +"Not one? Not ever?" + +Gora gave a slight withdrawing movement as if something sacred had been +touched. But she answered: "Oh...some day I may have something to tell +you....You said much the same thing to me a little while ago. Tell me +now." + +Alexina turned over on her elbow to beat up her pillows. Then she answered +lightly but firmly: "Not unless you promise to do likewise. Mine is such a +little thing anyhow. I know by the expression of your face--just now--that, +yours is the real thing. Is he in Paris?" + +"I'm...not sure....Yes, there is something...the conditions are very +peculiar...not at all what you think...there is so much more to it....No, I +don't think I can tell you." + +A fortnight ago Alexina could have lifted her eyes and uttered Gathbroke's +name as if groping through a jungle of memories. But she could no more +force his name through her lips now than she could have laid bare all that +was in her tumultuous soul. It was, in fact, all she could do to keep from +screaming. For a moment her excitement was so intense that she jumped from +the bed and ran over and opened the window. + +"This room gets intolerably stuffy. That is the worst of it--freeze or +stifle." + +"Oh, I have been cold so long! Please don't leave it open. That's a +darling." + + + +V + + +Alexina closed it with an amiable smile. "What would you do, Gora, if you +were really mad about a man? Have him at any cost? Annihilate anything that +stood in your way? Anybody, I mean." + +An appalling light came into Gora's pale eyes as she turned them, at first +in some surprise, on her sister-in-law: "Yes, if I thought he cared...could +be made to care if I had the chance...if another woman tried to get him +away...yes, I don't fancy I'd stop at anything....Even if I finally were +forced to believe that he never could care for me in that way, the only way +that counts with men--at first, anyway...well, I believe I'd fight to the +death just the same. When you've waited for thirty-four years...well, you +know what you want! Better die fighting than live on interminably for +nothing...less than nothing....I can't tell you any more. Please don't ask +me." + +"Of course not. I'll tell you my little story." And she gave a rapid vivid +account of the remarkable scene at the Embassy. She concluded abruptly: "Do +you think one could tell that a man's eyes were hazel--the golden-brown +hazel--across a pitch dark room above the flame of a briquet?" + +"Hazel?" Alexina was standing behind Gora. She saw her body stiffen. + +"I could have vowed they were hazel. And that he was English. He also +reminded me of some one I must have met somewhere or other...one meets so +many...possibly it was only a fancy." + +"You didn't see him after the lights went on again?" + +"They didn't. Only candles. We were all too anxious to get away, anyhow. I +fancy the King was in a hurry to get the ambassador upstairs and tell him +what he thought of him--" + +"Don't be flippant. You always did have a maddening habit of being flippant +at the wrong time. Haven't you seen him again anywhere?" + +"I've walked the Rue de Rivoli and lunched at the Ritz looking for him; +but I've never had even a glimpse--unless that was his back I saw at the +Crillon to-day. If I saw his eyes I'd know in a minute." + +"Why should you think it was his back?" + +"Some men have expression in the back of their head. And I just had +an idea--fantastic, no doubt--that my particular Englishman stands up +straight." + +"Yours?" + +"Yes, I'm feeling quite too fearfully romantic. I'm sure he's looking for +me as hard as I am for him. And if I find him I'll keep him." + +She saw Gora's long brown hands slowly clench until they looked like steel. +She glanced at her own slim white hands. They were quite as strong if more +ornamental. She yawned politely. + +"I'm not so romantic as sleepy. I know that you must be dead after your +journey. They say it's more trouble to travel to Paris from London than +from New York. The girls won't be back for a week. You must get your +things to-morrow and come out here. I won't hear of your living in Paris +discomfort with three two empty rooms." + +"That is good of you. Yes, I'll come. And perhaps your landlady, or +whatever they call them here, could put me up later. Now that I have come +to Paris I intend to see it. I believe some of the great galleries and +museums are to be reopened." + +"Andre will arrange it if they're not. How you will enjoy it with your +sensitiveness to all the arts. Take this candle in ease the bulb is burnt +out. It usually is." + + + +VI + + +Gora had risen. Her face wore an expression both puzzled and grim; but she +and Alexina as they said good-night looked full into each other's eyes +without faltering. And Alexina had never looked more ingenuous. + +Perhaps that dim idea...that she had thrown down a challenge...had come +out in the open for a moment...insolently?...honestly?...She _must_ be +completely fagged out after that abominable trip to have such absurd +fancies. She took her candle; and disposed herself in Janet's bed, between +four walls that gave her an unexpected and heavenly privacy, with a deep +sigh of gratitude, dismissing fantasies. + + + +VII + + +During the next ten days Alexina kept as close to Gora as was possible in +the circumstances. She had made many engagements and not all of them were +social; there were still gowns to be fitted, committee meetings to attend. +Twice Gora appeared to have risen with the dawn, and she vanished for the +day. Nevertheless, it grew increasingly evident to Alexina's alert and +penetrating vision that Gora was neither peaceful nor happy; therefore it +was safe to assume that she had not found Gathbroke. For some reason she +had not inquired at the British Embassy. Or a letter to its care had failed +to reach him. Possibly he was enjoying himself without formalities. + +She took Gora twice to the Ritz to luncheon and on several afternoons to +tea. But it was a mob of Americans and members of the various Commissions. +A brilliant sight, but not in the least satisfactory. It was quite patent +from Gora's ever traveling eyes that she sought and never found. + +Therefore when Olive asked Alexina to go to one of the towns where the +oeuvre had a branch and attend to an important matter that Mrs. Wallack +was far too much of a novice to be entrusted with, she agreed at once. She +experienced a growing desire to get away by herself--away from Paris--away +from Gora. She wanted to think. What if Gora did meet him first? She +would be but the more certain to meet him herself. Moreover...give Gora a +sporting chance. + +Janet and Alice had written from Nice that they might be detained for some +time. Gora unpacked her trunk and settled down in the pension with that air +of indestrucible patience that had always made her formidable. She was not +one of Life's favorites, but she had wrung prizes from that unamiable deity +more than once. + +Alexina speculated. Gora had all the brains that Mortimer lacked and +commanding traits of character. She was so striking in appearance even now +that people often turned and stared at her. But unless she possessed the +potent spell of woman for man all her gifts would avail her nothing in this +tragic crisis of her life. Did she possess it I No woman could answer. +Certainly Alexina had never seen evidence of it even in Gora's youth; +although to be sure her opportunities had been few. Still...when a woman +possesses the most subtle and powerful of all the fascinations men are +drawn to it, no matter how dark the sky or high the barriers. Nothing is +keener than the animal essence. Still...she had heard that some women +developed it later than others. Alexina feared nothing else. + +She fancied that Gora took leave of her with a little indrawn sigh of +relief. It was with difficulty that she repressed her own. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +"Can this be Lieutenant James Kirkpatrick?" + +Kirkpatrick wheeled about and snatched off his cap. + +"Mrs. Dwight, by all that's holy! I never expected any such luck as this!" + +They shook hands warmly in the deserted square which had been a shambles +during the first battle of the Marne, and in the days of Caesar and Attila, +of Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little. To-day it was as gray and +peaceful, its houses as aloof and haughty as if war had never been. It was +a false impression, however, for it was the paralysis of war it expressed, +not even the normal peace of a dull provincial town. + +"I've often wondered about you," said Alexina. "But I've been working with +the French Army and had no way of finding out. You don't look as if you had +been wounded." + +"Nary scratch, and in the thick of it. My, but it's good to sec you again." +He stared at her, his face flushed and his breath short. Then he asked +abruptly: "When do you think we're goin' home?" + +Alexina laughed merrily. "That is the first question every officer or +private I have met since the Armistice has asked me. I should feel greatly +flattered, but I fancy the question, being always on the top of your minds, +simply babbles off." + +"You bet. But--Jimminy! I'm glad to see you. You're lookin' thin, though. +Been workin', too, I'll bet." + +"Oh, yes--and all your old class has worked; most of them over here. Mrs. +Cheever couldn't come, as her husband is in the army. But she's worked hard +in California." + +"I believe you. The women have come up to the scratch, no doubt of that. +Although some of them! Good Lord! This isn't my usual language when +speaking of them. But if some came over to do just about as they damn +please, the others strike the balance, and on the whole I think more of +women than I did." + +"That's good news. But you mustn't blame them too severely. I mean those +that really came over with a single purpose and were not proof against the +forcing house of war. As for the others...well, a good many followed their +men over, others came after excitement, others, as you say, to do as +they pleased, with no questions asked--possibly! I shouldn't take enough +interest in them to criticize them if they hadn't used the war-relief +organizations, from the Red Cross down to the smallest oeuvre, as a pretext +to get over, and then calmly throw us down--the oeuvres, I mean. Mine was +'done' several times. But let us be good healthy optimists such as +our country loves and remind ourselves that the worthy outnumber the +unworthy--and that the really bad would have gone the same way sooner or +later." + +"It goes. Optimism for me for ever more once I get out of France." + + + +II + + +They had crossed the square and were walking down a narrow crooked street +as gray as if the dust of ages were in its old walls. Alexina looked at +him curiously. He had never had what might be called a soft and tender +countenance, but now it looked like cast-iron covered with red rust, and +his eyes were more like bits of the same metal, blackened and polished, +than ever. His youth had gone. There were deep vertical lines in his face. +His mouth was cynical. His bullet head, shaved until only a cap of black +stiff hair remained on top, and presumably safe from assault, by no means +added to the general attractiveness of his style. He was straighter, more +compact, than before, however, and his uniform at least did not have the +truly abominable cut of the private. + +"What do you think of war as war?" she asked. + +"Sherman for me. Not that I didn't enjoy sticking Germans with the best of +'em when my blood was up. But the rest of it--God Almighty!" + +They stopped before a solid double door in a high wall. "Will you come and +take tea with me this afternoon? I am staying here for a few days. I'm +afraid I can't offer you sugar, or cakes--" + +"I'll bring the sugar along. I'm in barracks just outside and solid with, +the commissary." + +"Heavens, what a windfall! You'll be sure to come?" + +"Won't I, just? Expect me at four-thirty." He lifted his cap from his +comical head, then sainted, swung on his heel and marched off, swinging +both arms from the shoulders and looking a fine martial figure of a man. + +"But still the same old Kirkpatrick," thought Alexina. "I wonder if he will +go Bolshevik?" + + + +III + + +Her ring was answered by the old woman who toot care of the house and +Alexina entered the wild garden. There was an acre of it, but it had been +so long uncared for that it looked like a jungle caught between four high +gray walls. It was the property of one of the French members of the oeuvre +and was used as a storehouse for hospital supplies and as headquarters for +Alexina when business brought her to this part of the Marne valley. She had +been here several times during the siege of Verdun in nineteen-sixteen when +her bed had quivered all night, and once a big gun had been trained on the +city and a shell had fallen near the headquarters of the staff. Last night +she had lain awake wondering if she did not miss the sound of the distant +guns, as she had in Passy where there was no noisy traffic to take their +place. There is a certain amount of morbidity in all highly strung +imaginative minds, and although she had developed no love for Big Bertha +nor for the sound of high firing guns attacking avions in the middle of the +night, there had been something in that steady boom of cannon whose glare +stained the horizon that had thrilled and excited her. + + + +IV + + +On the right of the main hall of the house was the room she used as an +office; the dining-room was opposite; the salon ran the whole length at the +back. This was quite a beautiful room furnished in the style of the last +Bourbons, and its long windows opened upon a stone terrace leading down +into what was still a picturesque garden in spite of its neglect. There +were three fine oaks, and the chestnut trees along the wall shut off the +town from even the upper windows. + +The oeuvre always managed to keep a load of wood in the cave and to-day the +concierge had raised the temperature of the salon to sixty-five degrees +Fahrenheit Alexina cleared a table and told the woman to set it for tea, +then went upstairs to change her dress. As she had made her trip in one +of the automobiles belonging to the oeuvre she had been able to bring her +little stove, and her bedroom was also warm. + +She had also brought one of her new gowns, knowing that she should receive +visits from several French officers, and she concluded to put it on for +Kirkpatrick. He was worth the delicate compliment; moreover it almost +obliterated the ravages of war, for it was of periwinkle blue velvet edged +with fur about the high square of the neck and at the wrists of the long +sleeves: in these days it was wise to revert to the fashions of the +centuries when palaces and houses alike were cold and gowns were made for +comfort as well as fashion. To complete the proportions it had a train and +the sleeves were slightly puffed. Alexina was quite aware that she "looked +like a picture" in it. + +She still wore her hair brushed softly back and coiled low at the base of +her beautiful curved head. Her pearls were the only jewels she had brought +to France and she always wore them. She sighed as she looked at the vision +in the mirror. For Kirkpatrick! But she was used to the irony of life. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +He arrived promptly at half-past four and in his capacious hands were three +packages which arrested her eyes at once. He presented them one by one. + +"Sugar. Loaf of white bread. Candy--I'm also solid with one of the +doctors." + +"I feel like pinching myself. White bread!--I've only tasted it twice in +two years-both times at the Crillon. And candy--not a sight of it for more +than that. I don't like the heavy French chocolates, which were all one +could get when one could get anything. I shall eat at least half and take +the other half back to Gora." + +"Miss Dwight? She's done good work, I'll bet. Just in her line. Somehow, I +don't see you--What did you do?" + +He watched her hungrily as she made the tea, sitting in a gilt and brocaded +chair, whose high tarnished back seemed to frame her dark head. + +"Oh, Lord!" he sighed. + +"What is it?" + +"Don't ask me. What've you been doing? Yes, I'll drink tea to please you." + +"I nursed at first--as an auxiliary, of course--what is the matter?" + +"Can't bear to think of it. I hope you've not been doin' that for four +years!" + +"Oh, no. I've been at work with a war-relief organization in Paris most of +the time. That was too monotonous to talk about, and, thank heaven, this +will probably end my connection with it. I am much more interested to know +how the war has affected you. Are you still a socialist?" + +"Ain't I!" + +"Not going Bolshevik, I hope." + +"Not so's you'd notice it. I want changes all right and more'n ever, +but I've had enough of blood and fury and mix-ups without copying them +murdering skally-wags. That's all they are. Just out for loot and revenge +and not sense enough to know that to-morrow there'll be no loot, and +revenge'll come from the opposite direction. I may have been in hell but my +head's screwed on in the same place," + +"I wondered...I've heard so many stories about the grievances of the +soldiers." + +"Every last one of 'em got a grievance. Hate their officers, and often +reason enough. Hate the discipline. Hate the food. Hate the neglect in +hospital when the flu is raging. Hate gettin' no letters, and as like as +not no pay and no tobacco. Hate bein' gouged by the French like they were +by the good Americans when they were in camp on the other side. Hate every +last thing a man just naturally would hate when he is livin' in a +filthy trench, or even camp, and homesick in the bargain....But as for +mass-dissatisfaction--not a bit of it. Loyal as they make 'em. Laugh at +Bolshevik propaganda just like they laughed at Hun propaganda. They just +naturally seem to hate every other race, allied or enemy, and that makes +them so all-fired American they're fit to bust. Of course there's plenty +of skallywags--caught in the draft--and just waitin' to get home and turn +loose on the community. But in the good old style: burglars, highwaymen, +yeggs. Not a new frill. Europe hasn't a thing on the good old American +criminal brand. They fought well, too. Any man does who's a man at all. But +Lord! they'll cut loose when they get back. Every wild bad trait they was +born with multiplied by one hundred and fifty...before I go any further I +want to warn you that I'm liable to break out into bad language any minute. +It gets to be a kind of habit in the army to swear every other word like." + +"Don't mind me," said Alexina dryly. "After I was put out of my hotel I +managed to get a room in one of the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli for two +nights before I found my pension in Passy. The walls were thin. The room +next to mine was occupied by two American officers and the one beyond by +two more. They talked back and forth with apparently no thought of +the possibility of being overheard. Such language! And not only swear +words--although one of these to two of any. Such adventures as they +related! Such frankness! Such plain undiluted Anglo-Saxon! Fancy a girl +with all her illusions fresh, and worshiping some heroic figure in khaki, +listening to such a revelation of the nether side of man's life!" + +"Men are hogs, all right. I don't like the idea of your having heard such +things." Kirkpatrick scowled heavily. + +"Nor did I. But I had no cotton to put in my ears. I couldn't sleep in the +street. Nor could I ask them to keep quiet and admit I had heard them." + +"Well, I guess you can forget anything you have a mind to. You couldn't +look like you do--a kind of princess out of a fairy tale and an angel +mixed, if you couldn't." + +"A black-haired angel! And all the princesses of legend had golden hair." + +"Well, that's just another way you're different." He changed the subject +abruptly. "What you goin' to do now!" + +"I wish I knew." + +"Goin' back to California?" + +"If I knew I would tell you. But I don't. You see....Well, I shall not live +with Mr. Dwight again. We had been really separated a long while before I +left--and then he has done nothing for the war. That is only one reason. +What should I do there? I had thought of going into business before I left. +But I shall have a good income, and what right have I to go into business +and use my large connection to get customers away from those that need the +money for their actual bread?" + +"Not the ghost of an excuse. Farce, I call it. As long as the present +system lasts women of your class better be ornamental and satisfied with +that than take the bread out of mouths that need it." + +"I could not settle down to the old life. It isn't that I'm in love with +work. For that matter I'm only too grateful to be able to rest. But I must +fill in, some way. Possibly I could do that better in France or England, +where vita! subjects are always being discussed--and happening!--where I +would not only be interested but possibly useful in many ways. I should +feel rather a brute, knowing the conditions of Europe as I do, to go back +and settle down on the smiling abundance of California. And bored to +death." + +"Then you think you'll stay?...You'd be wasted there--at present--sure +enough." + +"Sometimes I think I'll buy this house. I could for a song. Heavens! _How_ +I have longed for solitude in the last four years! I could have it here +with my books, and go to Paris as often as I wished. It would be an ideal +life. I could afford a car, and to make this house very livable. And that +garden...between those gray high walls...in there...that would...." + +She had forgotten Kirkpatrick and was staring through the long windows at +the dripping trees and the riot of green. "There is something about the old +world...in its byways like this...not in its hateful capitals...." + +"Do you mean there's something you want to forget? That this place would be +consolin' like?" + +She met Kirkpatrick's sharp dilated eyes with smiling composure. "This war, +and much that has happened--incidental to it; yes." + +"You could forget it easier in California." + +"I should forget too much." + +"It's awful to think of you not comin' back, though I understand well +enough. Europe suits you all right. But...but...." + +He rose abruptly almost overturning his fragile chair. + +"Good-by, and as I guess it _is_ good-by I'll tell you something I wouldn't +if there was any chance of my seein' you like I used to. It's this: If I'm +more of a socialist than ever it's because of _you_! If my class hatred's +blacker than ever _you're_ the cause! _You'd_ have made me a socialist if +I wasn't one before. _Jesus Christ_! When I think what I might have had if +we'd all been born alike! Had the same chances! If you hadn't been born at +the top and I down at the bottom...common...not even educated except by +myself after I was too old to get what a boy gets that goes to school long +enough. I wouldn't mind bein' born ugly. There's plenty of men at the top +that's ugly enough, God knows. But just one generation with money irons out +the commonness. That's it! I'm common! Common! Common. _Democracy_! Oh, +God!" + +He caught up his cap and rushed out of the room, + +Alexina ran after him and caught him at the garden door. Like all beautiful +women who have listened to many declarations of love (or avoided them) she +was inclined to be cruel to men that roused no response in her. But she +felt only pity for Kirkpatrick. + +She had intended merely to insist upon shaking hands with him, but when she +saw his contorted face she slipped her arm round his neck and kissed him +warmly on the cheek. + +Then she pushed him gently through the door and locked it. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina had finished giving tea to two officers, a surgeon and a medecin +major, and, enchanted almost as much by the sugar and the white bread as +by their hostess, refreshingly beautiful and elegant in her velvet gown of +pervenche blue, they had lingered until nearly six. As the concierge had +gone out on an errand of her own Alexina had opened the garden door for +them, and after they disappeared she stood looking at the street, which +always fascinated her. + +It was very narrow and crooked and gray. Her house was the only one with a +garden in front; the others rose perpendicularly from the narrow pavement, +tall and close and rather imposing. Each was heavily shuttered, the +shutters as gray as the walls. The town had been evacuated during the +first Battle of the Marne and only the poor had returned. The well-to-do +provincials in this street had had homes elsewhere, perhaps a flat in +Paris; or they had established themselves in the south. + +The street had an intensely secretive air, brooding, waiting. Soon all +these houses would be reopened, the dull calm life of a provincial town +would flow again, the only difference being that the women who went in and +out of those narrow doors and down this long and twisted street would +wear black; but for the most part they would sit in their gardens behind, +secluded from every eye, as indifferent to their neighbors as of old, with +that ingrained unchangeable bourgeois suspicion and exclusiveness; and the +facades, the street itself, would look little less secretive than now. + + + +II + + +Nowhere could she find such seclusion if she wished for it. This house was +the only one in the street that belonged to a member of the noblesse, and +the bourgeoisie had as little "use" for the noblesse as the noblesse for +the bourgeoisie. + +For the moment Alexina felt that the house was hers, and the street itself. +She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up and down +its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt for many days. +There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she never wanted to feel +again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had done much good in the past +four years; she had been, for the most part, high-minded, self-sacrificing, +indifferent to the petty things of life, even to discomfort, and it had +given her a sense of elevation--when she had had time to think about it. It +was only certain extraordinary circumstances that brought other qualities +as inherent as life itself surging to the top. It was demoralizing even to +fight them, for that involved recognition. Better that she protect herself +from their assaults. True, she was young, but she had had her fill of +drama. All her old cravings, never satisfied in the old days of peace +without and insurgence within, had been surfeited by this close personal +contact with the greatest drama in history. + +Why return to Paris at all? Why not settle down here at once, live a life +of thought and study, and give abundant help where help was needed? There +were villages within a few miles where the inhabitants were living in the +ruins. (The Germans in their first retreat had been too hard pressed to +linger long enough to set fire to this large town and they had not been +able to reach it during their second drive.) + +That had been a last flicker of romance at the embassy...a last resurgence +of the evil the war had done her, as she sat in her cold room...a last +blaze of sheer femininity when she discovered that Gora had come to Paris +in search of Gathbroke.... + +She felt as if she had escaped from a bottomless pit....Assuredly she had +the will and the character to make herself now into whatever she chose to +be...let Gora have him if she could find him and keep him....Better that +than hating herself for the rest of her life...love, far from being +ennobling, seemed to her the most demoralizing of the passions...there had +been something ennobling, expanding, soul-stirring in hating the brutal +mediaeval race that had devastated France...but in the reaction from her +fierce registered vow to snatch a man from a forlorn unhappy woman no +matter what her claims and have him for her own, she had shrunk from this +new revelation of her depths in horror....One could not live with that.... + + + +III + + +A man in khaki was walking quickly down the long crooked street. As he +approached she saw the red on his collar. He was a British officer. In +another moment she was shaking hands with Gathbroke, + +She was far more composed than he, although she felt as if the world had +turned over, and there was a roar in her ears like the sound of distant +guns. She had a vague impression that the war had begun again. + +"You are the last person I should have expected to meet here. There is no +British--" + +"I came here to see you. I got your address from Madaine de Morsigny. I saw +her last night at a reception and recognized her. She was at that ball in +San Francisco. I introduced myself at once and asked her if you were in +Paris. I was sure it was you...that night...." + +"Will you come in!" + +He followed her into the salon, softly lit by candles. She felt that +fate for once had been kind. It was difficult to imagine surroundings or +conditions in which she would look lovelier, be seen to greater advantage. +But her hands were cold. + +"It is too late for tea but perhaps you will share my frugal supper." + +"If it won't inconvenience you too much. Thanks." + +She sat down in the wide brocaded chair with its tarnished back. He stood +looking at her for a moment, then took a turn up and down the long room. + +Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and +freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown and +thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle light. His +nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more especially life +in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature with him. His eyes +were still the same bright golden hazel, but their expression was keen +and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could look as hard as those +features more susceptible to modeling. + + + +IV + + +"Smoke if you like." + +"Thanks. I don't want to smoke." + +Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to speak. + +"I feel rather an ass. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer +twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and made +up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety. Somehow I +don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you like a brute +because I wanted you more than anything on earth.... + +"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten you +for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have simply +projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has ever been. +You were there! + +"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits of +your soul to mine--I hate to say what sounds like sentimental rotting, +but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other plane of +consciousness. It takes war to shift a man over the border if only for a +moment. It kept me--lately--from...never mind that now. When I saw your +eyes above that tiny yellow flame...it wasn't only that your eyes are not +to be matched anywhere...it seemed to me that I saw myself in them, They +came as dose as that! Laugh if you like." + +He stood defiantly in front of her. + +"God! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have one. +But you had once, if only for a moment!" + +"I have never had one since--for any one, that is. I hear the concierge. +I'll tell her to set a place for you." + + + +V + + +She left the room and he stared after her. Her words had been full of +meaning but her voice had been even and cold. + +She returned and asked: "Are you in any way committed to Gora Dwight?" + +"No...yes...that is...why do you ask me that?" + +"Are you engaged to her?" + +"I am not. But I came very close--that is, of course if she would have had +me. She nursed me after I was wounded and gassed. She was a wonderful nurse +and there was something almost romantic in meeting her again...as if she +had come straight out of the past. We had an extraordinary experience as +you know. I was not in the least drawn to her at that time. You filled, +possessed me." + +He hesitated. But it was a barrier he had not anticipated and it must go +down. Moreover, it was evident that she wouldn't talk, and he was too +excited for silence on his own part. + +"She was there...when a man is weakest...when he values tenderness above +all things...when he does little thinking on either the past or the future. + +"She has a queer odd kind of fascination too, and any man must admire a +woman so clever and capable and altogether fine. Several times I almost +proposed to her. But there is no privacy in wards. I was sent back to +England and went to my brother's house in Hertfordshire. It was then that +you began to haunt me. She had rejuvenated that California period in my +mind--resuscitated it...but both express what I am trying to say. We had +often talked about California and the fire. She alluded to you, casually, +of course, more than once; but as I looked back I gathered that your +marriage had been a mistake and that you had known it for a long time. + +"She did not come to England until four months later, and then she was +in charge of a hospital. I took her out occasionally--she was very much +confined. I liked her as much as ever. But _I didn't want her_. It seemed +tragic. There was one chance in a million that I should ever meet you +again. Once I deliberately drew her on to talk of you and asked why you +did not divorce your husband. She commented satirically upon the intense +conservatism of your family and of your own inflexible pride. She added +that you were the only beautiful woman she had ever known who seemed to be +quite indifferent to men--sexless, she meant! But no woman knows anything +about other women. I knew better! + +"As I said it was rather tragic. To be haunted by a chimera! I liked her so +much. Admired her. Who wouldn't? If she had been able to take me home, to +remain with me, there is no doubt in the world that I should have married +her if she would have had me....I prefer now to believe that she wouldn't. +Why should she, with a great career in front of her? + +"No doubt I should have loved her--with what little love I had to give. But +those months had taught me that I could do without her, although I enjoyed +her letters. Even so... + +"It was after she came to London that I felt I had to talk to some one and +I went down, to the country to see Lady Vick-Elton Gwynne's mother. She had +founded a hospital and run it, and was resting, worn out. She is a hard +nut, empty, withered, arid. Nothing left in her but noblesse oblige. But +there is little she doesn't know. She was smoking a black cigar that would +have knocked me down and looked like an old sibyl. I told her the whole +story--all of it, that is that was not too sacred. She puffed such, a cloud +of smoke that I could see nothing but her hard, bright, wise, old eyes. 'Go +after her,' she said. 'Find her. Divorce her. Marry her. That's where you +men have the advantage. You can stalk straight out into the open and demand +what you want point blank. No scheming, plotting, deceit, being one thing +and pretending another, in other words ice when you are fire. Beastly role, +woman's--' I interrupted to remind her that it was twelve years since I +had seen you; that you had thrown me down as hard as a man ever got it and +married another man. There was no more reason to believe that I could win +you now. Then she asked me what I had come to see her and bore her to death +for when she was trying to rest. 'If you want a thing go for it and get it, +or if you can't get it at least find out that you can't. Also see her again +and find out whether you want her or not, instead of mooning like a silly +ass.' + +"The upshot was I made tip my mind to go to California as soon as I could +obtain my discharge. It never occurred to me that you were in Paris. Then +I was sent to Paris with the Commission. I have certain expert +knowledge....For some reason I didn't tell Miss Dwight....I wrote her a +hurried note saying that I was obliged to go to Paris for a few weeks. + +"The night after I arrived I saw you at the Embassy. That finished it. If I +hadn't been sent back to England for some papers--twice--I'd have found you +before this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +The concierge announced supper. Alexina had brought food with her and the +little meal was good if not abundant. The dining-room was very dreary, +although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, paneled to +the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little more to define +their lineaments to each other than the flames of briquet and match. + +The concierge served and they talked of the Peace Conference and of +the general pessimism that prevailed. Same old diplomacy. Same old +diplomatists. Same old ambitions. Same old European policies. An idealist +had about as much chance with those astute conventionalized brains dyed in +the diplomatic wiles and methods of the centuries as an unarmed man on +foot with a pack of wolves....At the moment all the other Commissions were +cursing Italy....She might be the stumbling block to ultimate peace....As +for the League of Nations, as well ask for the millenium at once. Human, +nature probably inspired the creed: "As it was in the beginning, is now, +and ever shall be," etc. "What we want" (this, Gathbroke), "is an alliance +between Great Britain, and the United States. They could rule the world. +Let the rest of everlastingly snarling Europe go hang." Elton Gwynne would +work for that. He had already obtained his discharge and returned to +America. He, Gathbroke, 'd work for it too. So would anybody else in the +two countries that had any sense and no personal fish to fry. + + + +II + + +When they returned to the salon he smoked. Alexina was thankful that it was +cigarettes. Mortimer had made her hate cigars. If, like most Englishmen, he +loved his pipe, he had the tact to keep it in his pocket. + +It was she who reopened the subject that filled him. + +"I feel sorry for Gora. Her life has been a tragedy in a way. Of course she +has had her successes, her compensations. But it isn't quite everything +to be the best of nurses, and I don't know that even writing could fill +a woman's life. Not unless she'd had the other thing first. I am afraid +she'll never be very popular anyhow. There are only small groups here and +there in America than can stand intellect in fiction....It seems to me that +she would make a great wife. I mean that. It is a great role and she could +fill it greatly. I don't know, of course, whether she cares for you or not. +I am not in her confidence. She is staying at my pension in Passy and I saw +her constantly for ten days before I came here, but she did not mention +your name....If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one else +and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give up, but +she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest tragedy of all.... + +"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe +that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of her. +I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps forced myself +not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless....Besides I knew +even then the danger of letting myself go...of the unbridled imagination. +Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French marriages would seem to +prove it. But we--your race and mine--have fallen into a sublime sort of +error, and we'll no more reason ourselves out of it than out of the sex +tyranny itself....I don't see how I could be happy with the eternal +knowledge that Gora was miserable--that she would be happy if I had +remained in California...." + +"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as I +was free." + + + +III + + +The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he +remained smoking in his chair and continued: + +"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different beings. +In illness sex is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman or he +doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if she hasn't +the sex pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent demand upon his +passion, there is nothing to build on. I haven't come out alive from that +shrieking hell to be satisfied with second-class emotions. I lay one night +under three dead bodies, not one over twenty-five. I knew them all. Each +was deeply in love with a woman....Well, I knew the value of life that +night if I never did before. And life was given to us, when we can hold on +to it, for the highest happiness of which we are individually capable, no +matter what else we are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest +pitch, not makeshifts....The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our +own characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy +her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief. I'll +have the highest or nothing." + +"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it lasting. +Gora would make a great companion." + +"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you will +understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at all. If you +had not brought her name into it I never should have done so. But now I +feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any cost." + +He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and +snatched her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even more +than she was. + +"I'll have you...have you...." + +She nodded. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Gora entered her room at the pension, mechanically lit the oil stove that +Alexina had procured for her, threw her hat on the bed, sat down in the low +chair and thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair piled as always on +top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror +and wondered absurdly why she should have kept all her hair and lost so +much of her face. She looked more top-heavy than ever. Her face was a small +oblong, her eyes out of all proportion. She thought herself hideous. + +She had heard two hours before that Gathbroke was in Paris attached to +the British Commission. She had met an old acquaintance, a San Francisco +newspaper man, who had taken her to lunch and spoken of him casually. +Gathbroke had good-naturedly given him an Interview when other members of +the Commission had been inaccessible. + +Gathbroke had told her nothing of a definite object when he wrote her that +he was off for Paris. Nor had he mentioned it in the note he had written +her after his arrival. This had been merely to tell her that he was feeling +as well as he ever had felt in his life and was enjoying himself. Polite +admonition not to tire herself out. He was always hers gratefully and her +devoted friend. + +He had written the note at the Rite Hotel, but when, assuming this was +his address, she had called him up on her arrival, she had received the +information that he was not stopping there, nor had been. + +Gora was very proud. But she was also very much in love; and she had been +in love with Gathbroke for twelve years. For the greater part of that time +she had believed it to be hopeless, but it had always been with her, a sad +but not too painful undertone in her busy life. It had kept her from even +a passing interest in another man. She had even felt a Somewhat ironic +gratitude to him and his indifference, for all the forces of her nature, +deprived of their natural outlet, went into her literary work, informing it +with an arresting and a magnetic vitality. She had believed herself to be +without hope, but in the remote feminine fastnesses of her nature she had +hoped, even dreamed--when she had the time. That was not often. Her life, +except when at her desk with her literary faculty turned loose, had been +practical to excess. + +She would have offered her services in any case to one of the warring +allies, no doubt of that; the tremendous adventure would have appealed to +her quite aside from the natural desire to place her high accomplishment as +a nurse at the disposal of tortured men. Nevertheless she was quite aware +that she went to the British Army with the distinct hope of meeting +Gathbroke again; quite as, under the cloak of travel, she would have gone +to England long since had she not been swindled by Mortimer. + +Until she found him insensible, apparently at the point of death, after the +terrible disaster of March, nineteen-eighteen, she had only heard of him +once: when she read in the _Times_ he had been awarded the D.S.O. + +She knew then where he was and maneuvered to get back to France. She found +him sooner than she had dared to hope. And she believed that she had saved +his life. Not only by her accomplished nursing. Her powerful will had +thrown out its grappling irons about his escaping ego and dragged it back +and held it in its exhausted tenement. + +He had believed that also. He had an engaging spontaneity of nature and +he had felt and shown her a lively gratitude. He was restless and frankly +unhappy when she was out of his sight. He had a charming way of Baying +charming things to a woman and he said them to her. But he was also as full +of ironic humor as in his letters and "ragged" her. And he talked to her +eagerly when he was better and she had gone with him to a hospital far back +of the lines. There were intervals when they could talk, and the other men +would listen...and had taken things for granted. + +So had she. He had not made love to her. There was no privacy. Moreover, +she guessed that his keen sense of the ridiculous would not permit him to +make love to any woman when helpless under her hands. + +But how could there be other than one finale to such a story as theirs? +What was fiction but the reflection of life? if she had written a story +with these obvious materials there could have been but one logical +ending--unless, in a sudden spasm of reaction against romance, she had +killed him off. + +But he would live; and not be strong enough to return to the front for +mouths...the war _must_ be over by then....As for romance, well, she was in +the romantic mood. It was a right of youth that she had missed, but a woman +may be quite as romantic at thirty-four as at eighteen, if she has sealed +her fountain instead of splashing it dry when she was too young to know +its preciousness. Once before she had surrendered to romance, fleetingly: +during the week that followed the night she had sat on Calvary with +Gathbroke and watched a sea of flames. + +The mood descended upon her, possessed her. She had other patients. There +were the same old horrors, the same heart-rending duties; but the mood +stayed with her. And after he left, for England. She knew there could, be +but one ending. Her imagination had surrendered to tradition. + +Moreover, she was tired of hard work. She wanted to settle down in a home. +She wanted children. She must always write, of course. Writing was as +natural to her as breathing. And she had already proved that a woman could +do two things equally well. + + + +II + + +She never thought of trying to follow him back to England, to shirk the +increasing terrible duties behind the reorganized but harassed armies. The +wounded seemed to drop through the hospital roof like flies. + +Nevertheless when she was abruptly transferred to London she went without +protest! It was then that she began to have misgivings. She was given +charge of a large hospital just outside of London and her duties were +constant and confining. But she managed to go out to lunch with him twice +and once to dine; after which they drove back to the hospital in a slow and +battered old hansom. + +She returned a few weeks before the Armistice. She had not seen him for +four months. He was well and expecting to be sent back to the front any +day. At present they were making use of him in London. + +If anything he appeared to admire her more than ever, to be more solicitous +for her health. He lamented personally her exacting duties. But it was the +almost exuberant friendliness of one man for another, for a comrade, a good +fellow; although he often paid her quick little diagnostic compliments. If +she hadn't loved him she would have enjoyed his companionship. He had read +and thought and lived. Before the war he had been in active public life. He +had far greater plans for the future. + +He had been almost entirely impersonal. It had maddened her. Even the night +they had driven through the dark streets of London out to her hospital, +although he had talked more or less about himself, even encouraged her to +talk about herself, there had not been one instant of correlation. + +But she had made excuses as women do, in self-defense. He assumed that +he might easily go back to the front just in time to get himself killed, +although the end of the war was in sight....Her utter lack of experience +with men in any sex relation had made her stiff, even in her letters; +afraid of "giving herself away." She had no coquetry. If she had, +pride would have forbidden her to use it. Her ideals were intensely +old-fashioned. She wanted to be pursued, won. The man must do it all. Her +writings had never been in the least romantic. Well, she was, if romance +meant having certain fixed ideals. + +One thing puzzled her. When she wrote she manipulated her men and women in +their mutual relations with a master-hand. But she had not the least idea +how to manage her own affair. What was genius? A rotten spot in the brain, +a displacement of particles that operated independently of personality, of +the inherited ego? Possession? Ancestors come to life for an hour in the +subliminal depths? But what did she care for genius anyhow! + +One thing she would have been willing to do as her part, aside from meeting +him mentally at all points and showing a brisk frank pleasure in his +society: give him every chance to woo and win her, to find her more and +more indispensable to his happiness. But she was no woman of leisure. She +could not receive him in charming toilettes in an equally seductive room. +She had nothing for evening wear but an old black satin gown. After her +arrival in London she had found time to buy a smart enough tailored coat +and skirt, and a hat, but nothing more. + +And after the Armistice was declared she only saw him once. + +Then came his abrupt departure for Paris. His noncommittal note. Even then +she refused to despair. It would be an utterly impossible end to such a +story...after twelve years...not for a moment would she accept that. + + + +III + + +She applied for her discharge. During her long stay in the British service +she had made influential friends. She had also made a high record not only +for ability but for an untiring fidelity. Her vacations had been few and +brief. She obtained her discharge and went to Paris. Her pride would permit +her to telephone. What more natural? Nothing would have surprised him more +than if she had not. She had little doubt of his falling into the habit of +daily companionship. He knew Paris and she did not. He would have seen her +daily in London if she had been free. + +Something, no doubt of that, held him back. He was discouraged...or not +sure of himself....She had assumed as a matter of course that he was at the +Ritz. When she found that he was not, had not been, she realized that he +had omitted to give her an address. + +That might have been mere carelessness....But to find him in Paris! She had +not visualized such swarms of people. She might almost have passed him on +the street and not seen him. But not for a moment did she waver from her +purpose. She held passionately to the belief that were they together day +after day, hours on end.... + +Unbelievable. + + + +IV + + +She had telephoned an hour ago to the hotel where he was staying with other +members of the British Commission and been told that he was out of town, +but might return any moment. + +There was nothing to do but write him a note and wait. She was not equal +to the humiliation of telephoning a third time. She wrote it at the hotel +where her English friends were staying and sent it by messenger, having +heard of the idiosyncracies of the Paris post. + +Hastings, her newspaper friend, had been altogether a bird of ill omen. He +had told her that the American market was glutted with "war stuff." The +public was sick of it. Some of the magazines were advertising that +they would read no more of it. She had told him that her material was +magnificent and he had replied: "Can it. Maybe a year or two from +now--five, more likely. I'm told over here that the war fiction we've had +wished on us by the ton resembles the real thing just about as much as +maneuvers look like the first Battle of the Marne, say, when the Germans +didn't know where they were at; went out quail hunting and struck a jungle +full of tigers....Why not? When most of 'em were written by men of middle +age snug beside a library fire with mattresses on the roof--in America not +even a Zeppelin to warm up their blood. But that doesn't matter. The public +took it all as gospel. Ate it up. Now it is fed up and wants something +else." + +What irony! + +And what a future if he--but that she would not face. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +She heard Janet Maynard, who had returned alone the day before from +Nice, enter the next, room. She kept very still; she had no desire for +conversation. But Janet tapped on her door in a moment and entered looking +very important. + +"I've something to tell you," she announced. "You'd never guess in a +thousand years. Don't get up. 111 sit on the bed-used to any old place. +Only too thankful it isn't a box, or to sit down at all. Try one of mine? +Don't you feel well?" + +"I've a rotten headache." + +"Oh...mind my smoking?" + +"Not a bit. What did you have to tell me?" + +"Well, 'way back in ancient times, B.W., nineteen hundred and six, a young +Englishman named Gathbroke came to California after his sister, who was +ill." She was blowing rings and did not see Gora's face. When she leveled +her eyes Gora was unbuttoning her gaiters. "It seems she died some time +during the fire and he had a perfectly horrid experience getting the body +out to the cemetery. But that has nothing to do with the story. He met +Olive and the rest of us--_and Alexina_--the night of the Hofer ball. I had +forgotten the whole thing until Olive reminded me that we had joked Alex +afterward about the way she had bowled him over. His eyes simply followed +her, but Mortimer gave him no chance. + +"Then. I remembered something else. Isabel Gwynne once told me that her +husband was sure Gathbroke had proposed to Alex one day when he took him +down to Eincona. He was in a simply awful state of nerves afterward. John +thought he was going out of his mind. Now, here's the point. Night before +last Olive was at a, ball and who should come up to her and introduce +himself but Gathbroke. He's changed a lot but she recognized him. Well, he +hardly waited to finish the usual amenities before he asked her plump out +if Alex was in Paris, said he was positive he had seen her at that embassy +ball where all the lights went out and they expected a riot. He turned +white when he did it, but he was as direct as chain lightning. He wanted +her address. Of course he got it. Olive was thrilled. It's safe to assume +that he's with Alex at the present moment. At any rate Olive called him up +this morning intending to ask him to dinner, and was told he was out of +town. Now, isn't that romance for you?" + +"Rather." + +"Twelve years! Fancy a man being faithful all that time. Hadn't got what he +wanted, that's probably why. Have you ever heard Alex speak of him? Think +she'll divorce Mortimer?" + +"I asked her the other night why she didn't. She said it was against the +traditions of the family. But--I recall--she said--it seemed to me there +was a curious sort of meaning in her voice--that if she wanted to marry a +man nothing would stop her." + +"And it wouldn't. Nothing would stop Alexina if anything started her. The +trouble always was to start her. She's indolent and unsusceptible and +fastidious. But deep and intense--Lord! Mark my words, she saw him at the +Embassy. If she did and the thing's mutual she'll give poor old Maria such +a shock that the war will look like ten cents." + +"Possibly." + +"You look really ill, Gora. No wonder you have headaches with that hair. +It's magnificent--but! Go to bed and I'll send up your dinner. Got any +aspirin?" + +"Yes, thanks." + +"Au 'voir." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +The day was fine and Alexina took advantage of the brief interval of grace +and went for a walk. Gathbroke was in Paris but might come out any moment. +She wore a coat and skirt of heavy white English tweed with a silk blouse +of periwinkle blue. The same soft shade lined her black velvet hat. + +She had a number of notes changed at the bank and struck out for one of the +ruined villages. She was in a mood to distribute happiness, and only silver +coin could carry a ray of light into the dark stupefied recesses of those +miserable wretches living in the ruins of homes haunted by memories of +their dead. + +She felt a very torch of happiness herself. Her body and her brain glowed +with it. The currents of her blood seemed to have changed their pace and +their essence. The elixir of life was in them. She felt less woman than +goddess. + +She knew now why she had been born, why she had waited. As long as this +terrible war had to be she was thankful for her intimate contact with the +very martyrdom of suffering; never else could she have known to the full +the value of life and youth and health and the power to be triumphantly +happy in love. She would have liked to wave a wand and make all the world +happy, but as this was as little possible as to remake human nature itself +she soared into an ether of her own to revel in her astounding good +fortune. + + + +II + + +The village she approached was picturesque in its ruin for it climbed the +side of a hill, and although the Germans had set fire deliberately to every +house the shells for the most part remained. Along the low ridge was a row +of brick walls in various stages of gaunt and jagged transfiguration. They +looked less the victims of fire than of earthquake. + +The narrow ascending street was filled with rubble. She picked her way and +peered into the ruins. At first she saw no one; the place seemed to be +deserted. Then some one moved in a dark cellar, and as she stood at the top +of the short flight of steps a very old woman came forward into the light. +There were two children at her heels. + +Alexina suddenly felt very awkward. She had always thought the mere handing +out of money the most detestable part of charity. But there was nothing +here to buy. That was obvious. + +The old woman however relieved her embarrassment. She extended a skinny +hand. The poor of France are not loquacious, but like all their compatriots +they know what they want, and no doubt feel that life is simplified when +they are in a position to ask for it. + +Alexina gratefully handed her a coin and hurried on. Her next experience +was as simple but more delicate. A younger woman had fitted up a corner of +her ruin with a petticoat for roof and a plank supported by two piles of +brick for counter and had laid in a supply of the post cards that pictured +with terrible fidelity the ruins of her village. Alexina bought the entire +stock, "to scatter broadcast in the United States," and promised to send +her friends for more; assuring the woman that when the tourists came to +France once more these ruined villages would be magnets for gold. + +She managed to get rid of her coins without much difficulty, although +comparatively few of the village's inhabitants had returned, and these by +stealth. Many of them had trekked far! Others were still detained at the +hostels in Paris and other cities where they could be looked after without +too much trouble. + +Several had set up housekeeping in the cellars in a fashion not unlike that +of their cave dwelling ancestors, and a few had found a piece of roof above +ground to huddle under when it rained. Some talked to her pleasantly, some +were surly, others unutterably sad. None refused her largesse, and she was +amused to look back and see a little procession making for the town, no +doubt with intent to purchase. + +In one side street less choked with rubbish small boys were playing at war. +But for the most part the children looked very sober. They had been spared +the horrors of occupation but they had suffered privations and been +surrounded by grief and despair. + + + +III + + +When she had exhausted her supplies she took refuge in the church. It was +at the end of the long street on the ridge and after she had rested she +could leave the village by its farther end, and by making a long detour +avoid the painful necessity of refusing alms. + +There was no roof on the church; otherwise it would have been the general +refuge. Part of it including the steeple was some distance away and looked +as if it had been blown off. The rest had gone down with one of the walls. +It was a charred unlovely ruin. Saints and virgins sometimes defied the +worst that war could do, but all had succumbed here. The paneless windows +in the walls that still remained precariously erect framed pictures of a +quiet and lovely landscape. The stone walls were intact about the farms in +which moved a few old men and women in faded cotton frocks that looked like +soft pastels. The oaks were majestic and serene. The hills were lavender in +the distance. But the farm houses were in ruins and so was a chateau on +a hill. Alexina could see its black gaping walls through the grove of +chestnut trees withered by the fire. + +She wandered about looking for a seat however humble but could find nothing +more inviting than piles of brick and twisted iron. She noticed an open +place in the floor and went over to it and peered down. There was a flight +of steps ending in cimmerian darkness. Doubtless the vaults of the great +families of the neighborhood were down there. She wondered if the spite of +the Huns had driven them to demolish the very bones of the race they were +unable to conquer. + + + +IV + + +Suddenly she stiffened. A chill ran up her spine. She had an overwhelming +sense of impending danger and stepped swiftly away from the edge of the +aperture; then turned about, and faced Gora Dwight. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +"Oh," she said calmly, although her nerves still shuddered. "You must walk +like a fairy. I didn't hear you." + +"One must pick one's way through rubbish." + +"Ghastly ruin, isn't it?" + +"Life is ghastly." + +Alexina made no reply lest she deny this assertion out of the wonder of her +own experience. She guessed what Gora had come for and that she was feeling +as elemental as she looked. She herself had recovered from that sudden +access of horror but she moved still further from, that black and waiting +hole. + +"Are you going to marry Gathbroke?" + +The gauntlet was down and Alexina felt a sharp sense of relief. She was in +no mood for the subtle evasion and she had not the least inclination to +turn up her eyes. She made up her mind however to save Gora's pride as far +as possible. + +"Yes," she said. + +"You dare say that to me?" + +Alexina raised her low curved eyebrows. She seldom raised them but when she +did she looked like all her grandmothers. + +"Dare? Did you expect me to lie? Is that what you wish?" + +Gora clutched her muff hard against her throat. (Alexina wondered if she +had a pistol in it.) Her eyes looked over it pale and terrible. Alexina had +the advantage of her in apparent calm, but there was no sign of confusion +in those wide baleful irises with their infinitesimal pupils. + +"You knew that I loved him. That I had loved him for twelve years." + +"I _knew_ nothing of the sort. You had his picture on your mantel and you +corresponded with him off and on but you never gave me a hint that you +loved him. Twelve years! Good heaven! A friendship extending over such a +period was conceivable; natural enough. But a romance! When such an idea +did cross my mind I dismissed it as fantastic. You always seemed to me the +embodiment of common sense." + +"There is no such thing. It is true--that I hardly believed it +then--admitted it. But I knew we should meet again. He never had married. +It looked like destiny when I did meet him. I nursed him--" + +She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed no +understanding and she went on, still watching. + +"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A woman +_knows_ certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have been +alone he would have found out--asked me to marry him. We should be married +to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would have been +the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to him to come to +Paris." + +"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. I had forgotten his +existence until I saw him, for a few seconds, at a reception. Don't forget +that he came to Paris under orders from his Government." + +"But you recognized him that night. You came down here to meet him, to get +away from me." + +"Far from coming here to meet him I had given up all hope of ever seeing +him again. He found out my address and followed me. You also seem to forget +that you never mentioned his name to me in Paris. How was I to know that +you were still interested in him?" + +"That first night...you guessed it...you threw down a sort of challenge. +Deny that if you can!" + +"No! I'll not deny it. I wanted him as badly as you did if with less +reason. Nevertheless...believe it or not as you like...I came down here +as much to leave the field clear to you as for my own peace of mind. I +think...I fancy...I decided to leave the matter on the knees of the gods." + +"Do you mean to tell me that if I had met him while we were together in +Paris, and you knew the truth, that you would not have tried to win him +away from me?" + +"I wonder! I have asked myself that question several times. I like to +think that I should have been noble, and withdrawn. But I am not at all +sure....Yes, I do believe I should, not from noble unselfishness, oh, not +by a long sight, but from pride--if I saw that he was really in love with +you. I'd never descend to scheming and plotting and pitting my fascinations +against another woman--" + +"Oh, damn your aristocratic highfalutin pride. I suppose you mean that +I have no such pride, having no inherited right to it. Perhaps not or I +wouldn't be here to-day. At least I wouldn't be talking to you," she added, +her voice hoarse with significance. + +Once more Alexina eyed the muff. "Did you come here to kill me?" + +"Yes, I did. No, I haven't a pistol. I couldn't get one. I trusted to +opportunity. When I saw you standing at the edge of that hole I thought I +had it." + +Alexina found it impossible to repress a shiver but in spite of those +dreadful eyes she felt no recurrence of fear. + +"What good would that have done you? Murderesses get short shrift in +France. There is none of that sickening sentimentalism here that we are +cursed with in our country." + +"Murders are not always found out. If you were at the bottom of that hole +it would be long before you were found and there is no reason why I should +be suspected. I didn't come through the village. I didn't even inquire at +your house. I saw you leave it and followed at a distance. If I'd pushed +you down there I'd have followed and killed you if you were not dead +already." + +Alexina wondered if she intended to rush her. But she was sure of her +own strength. If one of them went down that hole it would not be she. +Nevertheless she was beginning to feel sorry for Gora. She had never +sensed, not during the most poignant of her contacts with the war, +such stark naked misery in any woman's soul. Its futile diabolism but +accentuated its appeal. + +"Well, you missed your chance," she said coldly. Gora was in no mood to +receive sympathy! "And if you hadn't and escaped detection I don't fancy +you would have enjoyed carrying round with you for the next thirty or forty +years the memory of a cowardly murder. Too bad we aren't men so that we +could have it out in a fair fight. My ancestors were all duellists. No +doubt yours were too," she added politely. + +"Perhaps you are right." For the first time there was a slight hesitation +in Gora's raucous tones. But she added in a swift access of anger: "I +suppose you mean that your code is higher than mine. That you are incapable +of killing from behind." + +"Good heavens! I hope so!...Still...I will confess I have had my +black moods. It is possible that I might have let loose my own devil +if--if--things had turned out differently." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't! Not when it came to the point. You would have +elevated your aristocratic nose and walked off." She uttered this dictum +with a certain air of personal pride although her face was convulsed with +hate. + +"Gora, you are really making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more +time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such +melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of +murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for some +sort of revenge but I should have expected something more original--" + +"Murder's natural enough when you've seen nothing else as long as I have. +And as for human life--how much value do you suppose I place on it after +four years of war? I had almost reached the point where death seemed more +natural than life." + +"Oh, yes...but later....There are tremendous reactions after war. Settled +down once more in our smiling land my ghost would be an extremely +unpleasant companion. You see, Gora, you are just now in that abnormal +state of mind known as inhibition. But, unfortunately, perhaps, in spite +of the fact that you have proved yourself to be possessed of a violence of +disposition--that I rather admire--you were not cut out to be the permanent +villain. You have great qualities. And for thirty-four years of your life +you have been a sane and reasonable member of society. For four of those +years you have been an angel of mercy....Oh, no. If you had killed me you +would have killed yourself later. You couldn't live with Gathbroke for you +couldn't live with yourself. Silly old tradition perhaps, but we are made +up of traditions....That was one reason I left Paris, gave up trying to +find him....I knew that I could have him. But I also knew that you had had +some sort of recent experience with him, that you had come to Paris to +find him, that possibly if left with a clear field you could win him. I +knew--Oh, yes, I knew!--that he would know instantly he was mine if we +met. But...well, I too have to live with myself. It might be that he was +committed to you, that if he married you, you would both be happy enough. +"When he did come nothing would have tempted me to accept him if I had +still believed--" + +"Did he tell you? Tell you how close he came? Tell you that I was in love +with him?" + +"My dear Gora, I fancy that if he were capable of that you would not be +capable of loving him. I certainly should not." There was a slight movement +in her throat as if she were swallowing the rest of the truth whole. She +had adhered to it where she could but Gora's face must be saved. "Your name +was not mentioned. I asked him no questions about his past. I am not the +heroine of a novel, old style. He told me that he loved me, that he had +never loved any other woman, never asked any other woman to marry him. +That was enough for me. I had no place in my mind for you or any one else. +Perhaps you don't know--how could you--that years ago, when he was in +California, he asked me to marry him." + +"Calf love! If you had not been here now--" + +"He would have gone to California as soon as he could get away. He had made +up his mind to that before he came to Paris." + +"What!" + +Gora's arms dropped to her sides and she stared at the floor. Then +she laughed, "O God, what irony! I talked of you more or Jess as was +natural...and he remembered...we had recalled the past vividly enough.... +Why couldn't one of those instincts in which we are supposed to be prolific +have warned me?....Much fiction is like life!...Any heroine I could have +created would have had it...had more sense....I have botched the thing from +beginning to end." + +She raised her head and stared at Alexina with somber eyes; the insane +light had died out of them. They took in every detail of that enhanced +beauty, of that inner flame, white hot, that made Alexina glow like a +transparent lamp. + +She also recalled that she had watched her pack her bags...that pervenche +velvet gown...Alexina had described the quaint old salon....Her +imagination, flashed out that first interview with Gathbroke with a +tormenting conjuring of detail.... + +"Yon are one of the favorites of life," she admitted in her bitter despair. +"You have been given everything--" + +"I drew Mortimer," Alexina reminded her. + +"True. But you dusted him out of your life with an ease and a thoroughness +that has never been surpassed. Think what you might have drawn. No, you +are lucky, lucky! The prixes of life are for your sort. I am one of the +overlooked or the deliberately neglected. Not a fairy stood at my cradle. +All things have come to you unsought. Beauty. Birth. Position. Sufficient +wealth. Power over men and women. An enchanting personality. All the social +graces. You have had ups and downs merely because after all you are +a mortal; and as a matter of contrast--to heighten your powers of +appreciation. No doubt the worst is over for you. I have had to take life +by the throat and wring out of her what little I have. That is what makes +life so hopeless, so terrible. No genius for social reform will ever +eliminate the inequality of personality, of the inner inheritance. Nature +meant for her own sport that a few should live and the rest should die +while still alive." + +"Gora, I don't want to sound like the well-meaning friends who tell a +mother when she loses her child that it is better off, but I can't help +reminding you that a very large and able-bodied fairy presided at your +cradle. You have a great gift that I'd give my two eyes for; and you know +perfectly well--or you will soon--that you will get over this and forget +that Gathbroke ever existed, while you are creating men to suit yourself." +Her incisive mind drove straight to the truth. "You will write better than +ever. Possibly the reason that you have not reached the great public is +because your work lacks humanity, sympathy. You never lived before. You +were all intellect. Now you have had a terrific upheaval and you seem to +have experienced about everything, including the impulse to murder. Most +writers would appear to live uneventful lives judging from their extremely +dull biographies. But they must have had the most tremendous inner +adventures and soul-racking experiences--the big ones--or they couldn't +have written as they did....This must be the more true in regard to women." + +Gora continued to stare at her. The words sank in. Her clear intellect +appreciated the truth of them but they afforded her no consolation. All +emotion had died out of her. She felt beaten, helpless. + +She was obliged to look up as she watched Alexina's subtly transfigured +face, fascinated. It made her feel even her physical insignificance; the +more as she had lost the flesh that had given her short stature a certain +majesty. + +"Oh, life is unjust, unjust." She no longer spoke with bitterness, merely +as one forced to state an inescapable fact. "Injustice! The root of all +misfortune." + +"Life is a hard school but where she has strong characters to work on she +turns out masterpieces. You will be one of them, Gora. And I fancy that +women born with great gifts were meant to stand alone and to be trained in +that hard school. It is only when women of your sort have a passing attack +of the love germ that they imagine they could go through life as a half +instead of a whole. When you are in the full tide of your powers with +the public for a lover I fancy you will look back upon this episode with +gratitude, if you remember it at all." + +"Perhaps. But that, is a long way off! I have just been told that the order +of fiction with which my mind is packed at present is not wanted. It has +been contemptuously rejected by the American public as 'war stuff.'" + +"Good heaven! That _is_ a misfortune!" + +For a moment Alexina was aghast. Here was the real tragedy. She almost +prayed for inspiration, for it lay with her to readjust Gora to life. To no +one else would Gora ever give her confidence. + +"I don't believe for a moment," she said, "that the intelligent public +will ever reject a great novel or story dealing with the war. The masterly +treatment of any subject, the new point of view, the swift compelling +breathless drama that is your peculiar gift, must triumph over any mood of +the moment. Moreover, when you are back in California you will see these +last four years in a tremendous perspective. And no contrast under heaven +could be so great. You probably won't hear the war mentioned once a +month. No doubt much that crowds your mind now will cease to interest the +productive tract of your brain and you will write a book with the war as +a mere background for your new and infinitely more complete knowledge of +human psychology. No novel of any consequence for years to come will be +written without some relationship to the war. Stories long enough to be +printed in book form perhaps, but not the novel: which is a memoir of +contemporary life in the form of fiction. No writer with as great a gift as +yours could have anything but a great destiny. Go back to California and +bang your typewriter and find it out for yourself." + +For the first time something like a smile flitted over Gora's drawn face. +"Perhaps. I hope you are right. I don't think I could ever really lose +faith in that star." She was thinking: Oh, yes! I'll go back to California +as quickly as I can get there--as a wounded animal crawls back to its lair. + +She would have encircled the globe three times to get to it. _Her state_. +To her it was what family and friends and home and children were to +another. It was literally the only friend she had in the world. She would +have flown to it if she could, sure of its beneficence. + +"I shall go as soon as I can get passage," she said. "And you?" + +"I must go too unless I can get a divorce here. I shall know that in a few +days." + +"Well, we travel on different steamers if you do go! I shall stop off at +Truckee and go to Lake Tahoe. It will be a long while before I go to any +place that reminds me of you. I no longer want to kill you but I want to +forget you. Good-by." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +When she reached the foot of the hill she turned and looked back. Alexina +was standing in one of the jagged window casements of the church. The +bright warm sun was overhead in a cloudless sky. Its liquid careless rays +flooded the ruin. Alexina's tall white figure, the soft blue of her hat +forming a halo about her face, was bathed in its light; a radiant vision in +that shattered town whose very stones cried out against the injustice of +life. + +Alexina, who was feeling like anything but a madonna in a stained glass +window, waved a questing hand. + +"The fortunate of earth!" thought Gora. + +She set her lips grimly and walked across the valley with a steady stride. +At least she could be one of the strong. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters-In-Law, +by Gertrude Atherton + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + +This file should be named 7sist10.txt or 7sist10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7sist11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7sist10a.txt + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Sisters-In-Law + +Author: Gertrude Atherton + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8535] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +THE SISTERS-IN-LAW + +A NOVEL OF OUR TIME + +BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON + + + + + + +TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO + + + + + + +Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading characters +in other novels and stories of the "California Series," which covers the +social history of the state from the beginning of the last century. They +are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel Otis and the Hofers +in ANCESTORS; the Randolphs in A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE; Lee Tarlton, Lady +Barnstable, Lady Arrowmount, Coralie Geary, the Montgomerys and Trennahans +in TRANSPLANTED and THE CALIFORNIANS; Rezánov in the novel of that name, +and Chonita Iturbi y Moncada in THE DOOMSWOMAN, both bound in the volume, +BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME; The Price Ruylers in THE AVALANCHE. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest +crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even +by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the +Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue +that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's "early +days," perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city of a +hundred hills. + +She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an adventurous +spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the verandah at +night when her legs were longer than her years, and during the past winter +to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door when her worthy but +hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was the first time that she +had been out after midnight. + +And it was five o'clock in the morning! + +She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother's pet aversion, to a party +given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if crumbling +pillar of San Francisco's proud old aristocracy, held in pious disdain, and +had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the tireless exhilaration of +her eighteen years until the weary band had played Home Sweet Home. + +She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant, even +among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many flowers +even in California. Her own coming-out party in the dark double parlors of +the old house among the eucalyptus trees, whose moans and sighs could be +heard above the thin music of piano and violin, had been so formal and dull +that she had cried herself to sleep after the last depressed member of the +old set had left on the stroke of midnight. Even Aileen's high mocking +spirits had failed her, and she had barely been able to summon them for +a moment as she kissed the friend, to whom she was sincerely devoted, a +sympathetic good-night. + +"Never mind, old girl. Nothing can ever be worse. Not even your own +funeral. That's one comfort." + + + +II + + +That had been last November. During the ensuing five months Alexina had +been taken by her mother to such entertainments as were given by other +members of that distinguished old band, whose glory, like Mrs. Groome's +own, had reached its meridian in the last of the eighties. + +Not that any one else in San Francisco was quite as exclusive as Mrs. +Groome. Others might be as faithful in their way to the old tradition, be +as proud of their inviolate past, when "money did not count," and people +merely "new," or of unknown ancestry, did not venture to knock at the +gates: but the successive flocks of young folks had overpowered their +conservative parents, and Society had loosened its girdle, until in this +year of grace nineteen-hundred-and-six, there were few rich people so +hopelessly new that their ball rooms either in San Francisco or "Down the +Peninsula," were unknown to a generation equally determined to enjoy life +and indifferent to traditions. + +Mrs. Groome alone had set her face obdurately against any change in the +personnel of the eighties. She had the ugliest old house in San Francisco, +and the change from lamps to gas had been her last concession to the march +of time. The bath tubs were tin and the double parlors crowded with the +imposing carved Italian furniture whose like every member of her own set +had, in the seventies and eighties, brought home after their frequent and +prolonged sojourns abroad: for the prouder the people of that era were of +their lofty social position on the edge of the Pacific, the more time did +they spend in Europe. + +Mrs. Groome might be compelled therefore to look at new people in the homes +of her friends--even her proud daughter, Mrs. Abbott, had unaccountably +surrendered to the meretricious glitter of Burlingame--but she would not +meet them, she would not permit Alexina to cross their thresholds, nor +should the best of them ever cross her own. + +Poor Alexina, forced to submit, her mother placidly impervious to coaxings, +tears, and storms, had finally compromised the matter to the satisfaction +of herself and of her own close chosen friend, Aileen Lawton. She +accompanied her mother with outward resignation to small dinner dances and +to the Matriarch balls, presided over by the newly elected social leader, +a lady of unimpeachable Southern ancestry and indifference to wealth, +who pledged her Virginia honor to Mrs. Groome that Alexina should not be +introduced to any young man whose name was not on her own visiting list; +and, while her mother slept, the last of the Ballinger-Groomes accompanied +Aileen (chaperoned by an unprincipled aunt, who was an ancient enemy of +Maria Groome) to parties quite as respectable but infinitely gayer, and +indubitably mixed. + +She was quite safe, for Mrs. Groome, when free of social duties, retired on +the stroke of nine with a novel, and turned off the gas at ten. She never +read the society columns of the newspapers, choked as they were with +unfamiliar and plebeian names; and her friends, regarding Alexina's gay +disobedience as a palatable joke on "poor old Maria," and sympathetic with +youth, would have been the last to enlighten her. + + + +III + + +Alexina had never enjoyed herself more than to-night. Young Mrs. Hofer, who +had bought and remodeled the old Polk house on Nob Hill--the very one in +which Mrs. Groome's oldest daughter had made her début in the far-off +eighties--had turned all her immense rooms into a bower of every variety of +flower that bloomed on the rich California soil. It was her second great +party of the season, and it had been her avowed intention to outdo the +first, which had attempted a revival of Spanish California and been the +talk of the town. The decorations had been done by a firm of young women +whose parents and grandparents had danced in the old house, and the +catering by another scion of San Francisco's social founders, Miss Anne +Montgomery. + +To do Mrs. Groome full justice, all of these enterprising young women were +welcome in her own home. She regarded it as unfortunate that ladies were +forced to work for their living, but had seen too many San Francisco +families in her own youth go down to ruin to feel more than sorrow. In +that era the wives of lost millionaires had knitted baby socks and starved +slowly. Even she was forced to admit that the newer generation was more +fortunate in its opportunities. + +Alexina had not gone to Mrs. Hofer's first party, Aileen being in Santa +Barbara, but she had sniffed at the comparisons of the more critical girls +in their second season. She was quite convinced that nothing so splendid +had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. She had had +the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so charming a young +man as Mortimer Dwight. + +"Some party," she thought as she ran up the steep avenue to her sacrosanct +abode, where her haughty mother was chastely asleep, secure in the belief +that her obedient little daughter was dreaming in her maiden bower. + +"What the poor old darling doesn't know 'll never hurt her," thought +Alexina gayly. "She really is old enough to be my grandmother, anyhow. I +wonder if Maria and Sally really stood for it or were as naughty as I am." + +Alexina was the youngest of a long line of boys and girls, all of whom +but five were dead. Ballinger and Geary practiced law in New York, having +married sisters who refused to live elsewhere. Sally had married one +of their Harvard friends and dwelt in Boston. Maria alone had wed an +indigenous Californian, an Abbott of Alta in the county of San Mateo, and +lived the year round in that old and exclusive borough. She was now so like +her mother, barring a very slight loosening of her own social girdle, that +Alexina dismissed as fantastic the notion that even a quarter of a century +earlier she may have had any of the promptings of rebellious youth. + +"Not she!" thought Alexina grimly. "Oh, Lord! I wonder if my summer destiny +is Alta." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +She was quite breathless as she reached the eucalyptus grove and paused for +a moment before slipping into the house and climbing the stairs. + +The city lying in the valleys and on the hills arrested her attention, for +it was a long while since she had been awake and out of doors at five in +the morning. + +It looked like the ghost of a city in that pallid dawn. The houses seemed +to have huddled together as if in fear before they sank into sleep, to +crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the ugly dome of +the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower held up +their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of outline, of +alertness, as if ready to spring. + +In that far-off district known as "South of Market Street," which she had +never entered save in a closed carriage on her way to the Southern Pacific +Station or to pay a yearly call on some old family that still dwelt on +that oasis, Rincon Hill--sole outpost of the social life of the +sixties--infrequent thin lines of smoke rose from humble chimneys. It +was the region of factories and dwellings of the working-class, but its +inhabitants were not early risers in these days of high wages and short +hours. + +Even those gray spirals ascended as if the atmosphere lay heavy on them. +They accentuated the lifelessness, the petrifaction, the intense and +sinister quiet of the prostrate city. + +Alexina shuddered and her volatile spirits winged their way down into those +dark and intuitive depths of her mind she had never found time to plumb. +She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined +a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh +lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous +invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of +a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy +accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate with a sneer. + +Alexina, holding her breath, glanced upward. That ghost of evening's +twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the crimson +rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely blue. It +looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface presently, and +then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave way. + + + +II + + +Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming. She barely had +time to brace herself when she saw the sleeping city jar as if struck by a +sudden squall, and with the invisible storm came a loud menacing roar of +imprisoned forces making a concerted rush for freedom. + +She threw her arms about one of the trees, but it was bending and groaning +with an accent of fear, a tribute it would have scorned to offer the mighty +winds of the Pacific. Alexina sprang clear of it and unable to keep her +feet sat down on the bouncing earth. + +Then she remembered that it was a rigid convention among real Californians +to treat an earthquake as a joke, and began to laugh. There was nothing +hysterical in this perfunctory tribute to the lesser tradition and it +immediately restored her courage. Moreover, the curiosity she felt for all +phases of life, psychical and physical, and her naïve delight in everything +that savored of experience, caused her to stare down upon the city now +tossing and heaving like the sea in a hurricane, with an almost impersonal +interest. + +The houses seemed to clutch at their precarious foundations even while they +danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the ascending +roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of steeples, the dome +of the City Hall, of brick buildings too hastily erected, of ten thousand +falling chimneys; of creaking and grinding timbers, and of the eucalyptus +trees behind her, whose leaves rustled with a shrill rising whisper that +seemed addressed to heaven; the neighing and pawing of horses in the +stables, the sharp terrified yelps of dogs; and through all a long +despairing wail. The mountains across the bay and behind the city were +whirling in a devil's dance and the scattered houses on their slopes looked +like drunken gnomes. The shot tower bowed low and solemnly but did not +fall. + + + +III + + +As the earth with a final leap and twist settled abruptly into peace, the +streets filled suddenly with people, many in their nightclothes, but +more in dressing-gowns, opera cloaks, and overcoats. All were silent and +apparently self-possessed. Whence came that long wail no one ever knew. + +Alexina, remembering her own attire, sprang to her feet and ran through the +little side door and up the stair, praying that her mother, with her usual +monumental poise, would have disdained to rise. She had never been known to +leave her room before eight. + +But as Alexina ran along the upper hall she became only too aware that Mrs. +Groome had surrendered to Nature, for she was pounding on her door and in a +haughty but quivering voice demanding to be let out. + +Alexina tiptoed lightly to the threshold of her room and called out +sympathetically: + +"What is the matter, mother dear! Has your door sprung?" + +"It has. Tell James to come here at once and bring a crow-bar if +necessary." + +"Yes, darling." + +Alexina let down her hair and tore off her evening gown, kicking it into a +closet, then threw on a bathrobe and ran over to the servants' quarters in +an extension behind the house. They were deserted, but wild shrieks and +gales of unseemly laughter arose from the yard. She opened a window and saw +the cook, a recent importation, on the ground in hysterics, the housemaid +throwing water on her, and the inherited butler calmly lighting his pipe, + +"James," she called. "My mother's door is jammed. Please come right away." + +"Yes, miss." He knocked his pipe against the wall and ground out the +life of the coal with his slippered heel. "Just what happened to your +grandmother in the 'quake of sixty-eight. I mind the time I had getting her +out." + + + +IV + + +It was quite half an hour before the door yielded to the combined efforts +of James and the gardener-coachman, and during the interval Mrs. Groome +recovered her poise and made her morning toilette. + +She had taken her iron-gray hair from its pins and patted the narrow row of +frizzes into place; the flat side bands, the concise coil of hair on top +were as severely disdainful of untoward circumstance or passing fashion as +they had been any morning these forty years or more. + +She wore old-fashioned corsets and was abdominally correct for her years; a +long gown of black voile with white polka dots, and a guimpe of white net +whose raff of chiffon somewhat disguised the wreck of her throat. On her +shoulders, disposed to rheumatism, she wore a tippet of brown marabout +feathers, and in her ears long jet earrings. + +She had the dark brown eyes of the Ballingers, but they were bleared at +the rims, and on the downward slope of her fine aquiline nose she wore +spectacles that looked as if mounted in cast iron. Altogether an imposing +relic; and "that built-up look" as Aileen expressed it, was the only one +that would have suited her mental style. Mrs. Abbott, who dressed with a +profound regard for fashion, had long since concluded that her mother's +steadfast alliance with the past not only became her but was a distinct +family asset. Only a woman of her overpowering position could afford it. + +Mrs. Groome's skin had never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or +powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at least +as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois adjective--twin +to genteel--had been synchronous with the equally obsolete word swell, but +it had never occurred to even the more modern Mrs. Abbott and her select +inner circle of friends, dwelling on family estates in the San Mateo +valley, to change in this respect at least with the changing times. + + + +V + + +Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a morning +frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's dressmaker but +by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the fashion of the +moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at the base of her +beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, their large irises +very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, had the favor of black +lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and very narrow black polished +eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly touched with color, although +the rather large mouth with its definitely curved lips was scarlet. Her +long throat like the rest of her body was white. + +All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes, +consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by surprise +when the little Alexina came along several years after her mother was +supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors hurriedly and +quite forgotten her usual nice proportions. + +The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, for +the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short straight thin +nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a regularity, and the +thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and shook quite alarmingly +when she was angry. + +These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality were +concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the brilliant happy +candid eyes (which she could convert into a madonna's by the simple trick +of lifting them a trifle and showing a lower crescent of devotional white), +the love of life and eagerness to enjoy that radiated from her thin +admirably proportioned body, which, at this time, held in the limp +slouching fashion of the hour, made her look rather small. In reality she +was nearly as tall as her mother or the dignified Mrs. Abbott, who rejoiced +in every inch of her five feet eight, and retained the free erect carriage +of her girlhood. + +Alexina, with a sharp glance about her disordered room, hastily disarranged +her bed, and, sending her ball slippers after the gown, ran across the hall +and threw herself into her mother's arms. + +"Some earthquake, what? You are sure you are not hurt, mommy dear? The +plaster is down all over the house." + +"More slang that you have learned from Aileen Lawton, I presume. +It certainly was a dreadful earthquake, worse than that of +eighteen-sixty-eight. Is anything valuable broken? There is always less +damage done on the hills. What is that abominable noise?" + +The cook, who had recovered from her first attack, was emitting another +volley of shrieks, in which the word "fire" could be distinguished in +syllables of two. + +Mrs. Groome rang the bell violently and the imperturbable James appeared. + +"Is the house on fire?" + +"No, ma'am; only the city. It's worth looking at, if you care to step out +on the lawn." + +Mrs. Groome followed her daughter downstairs and out of the house. Her +eyebrows were raised but there was a curious sensation in her knees that +even the earthquake had failed to induce. She sank into the chair James had +provided and clutched the arms with both hands. + +"There are always fires after earthquakes," she muttered. "Impossible! +Impossible!" + +"Oh, do you think San Francisco is really going?" cried Alexina, but there +was a thrill in her regret. "Oh, but it couldn't be." + +"No! impossible, impossible!" + +Black clouds of smoke shot with red tongues of flame overhung the city at +different points, although they appeared to be more dense and frequent down +in the "South of Market Street" region. There was also a rolling mass of +flame above the water front and sporadic fires in the business district. + +The streets were black with people, now fully dressed, and long processions +were moving steadily toward the bay as well as in the direction of the +hills behind the western rim of the city. James brought a pair of field +glasses, and Mrs. Groome discovered that the hurrying throngs were laden +with household goods, many pushing them in baby carriages and wheelbarrows. +It was the first flight of the refugees. + +"James!" said Mrs. Groome sharply. "Bring me a cup of coffee and then go +down and find out exactly what is happening." + +James, too wise in the habits of earthquakes to permit the still distracted +cook to make a fire in the range, brewed the coffee over a spirit lamp, and +then departed, nothing loath, on his mission. Mrs. Groome swallowed the +coffee hastily, handed the cup to Alexina and burst into tears. + +"Mother!" Alexina was really terrified for the first time that morning. +Mrs. Groome practiced the severe code, the repressions of her class, and +what tears she had shed in her life, even over the deaths of those almost +forgotten children, had been in the sanctity of her bedroom. Alexina, who +had grown up under her wing, after many sorrows and trials had given her a +serenity that was one secret of her power over this impulsive child of +her old age, could hardly have been more appalled if her mother had been +stricken with paralysis. + +"You cannot understand," sobbed Mrs. Groome. "This is my city! The city of +my youth; the city my father helped to make the great and wonderful city +it is. Even your father--he may not have been a good husband--Oh, no! Not +he!--but he was a good citizen; he helped to drag San Francisco out of the +political mire more than once. And now it is going! It has always been +prophesied that San Francisco would burn to the ground some time, and now +the time has come. I feel it in my bones." + +This was the first reference other than perfunctory, that Alexina had ever +heard her mother make to her father, who had died when she was ten. The +girl realized abruptly that this elderly parent who, while uniformly kind, +had appeared to be far above the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, had an +inner life which bound her to the plane of mere mortals. She had a sudden +vision of an unhappy married life, silently borne, a life of suppressions, +bitter disappointments. Her chief compensation had been the unwavering +pride which had made the world forget to pity her. + +And it was the threatened destruction of her city that had beaten down the +defenses and given her youngest child a brief glimpse of that haughty but +shivering spirit. + + + +VI + + +Alexina's mind, in spite of a great deal of worldly garnering with an +industrious and investigating scythe, was as immature as her years, for +she had felt little and lived not at all. But she had swift and deep +intuitions, and in spite of the natural volatility of youth, free of care, +she was fundamentally emotional and intense. + +Swept from her poor little girlish moorings in the sophisticated sea of the +twentieth-century maiden, she had a sudden wild access of conscience; +she flung herself into her mother's arms and poured out the tale of her +nocturnal transgressions, her frequent excursions into the forbidden realm +of modern San Francisco, of her immense acquaintance with people whose very +names were unknown to Mrs. Groome, born Ballinger. + +Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together, +expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires in +this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the exaggerations +of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if her mother, +masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as elementary as the forces +that had devastated San Francisco. + +But there was only dismay in Mrs. Groome's eyes as she stared at her +repentant daughter. Her heart sank still lower. She had never been a vain +woman, but she had prided herself upon not feeling old. Suddenly, she felt +very old, and helpless. + +"Well," she said in a moment. "Well--I suppose I have been wrong. There are +almost two generations between us. I haven't kept up. And you are naturally +a truthful child--I should have--" + +"Oh, mother, you are not blaming yourself!" Alexina felt as if the earth +once more were dancing beneath her unsteady feet. "Don't say that!" + +The sharpness of her tone dispelled the confusion in Mrs. Groome's mind. +She hastily buckled on her armor. + +"Let us say no more about it. I fancy it will be a long time before there +are any more parties in San Francisco, but when there are--well, I shall +consult Maria. I want your youth to be happy--as happy as mine was. I +suppose you young people can only be happy in the new way, but I wish +conditions had not changed so lamentably in San Francisco....Who is this?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +As Alexina followed her mother's eyes she flushed scarlet and turned away +her head. A young man was coming up the avenue. He was a very gallant +figure, moderately tall and very straight; he held his head high, his +features were strong in outline. But the noticeable thing about him at +this early hour of the morning and in the wake of a great disaster was his +consummate grooming. + +"That--that--" stammered Alexina, "is Mr. Dwight. I met him last night at +the Hofers'." + +The young man raised his hat and came forward quickly. "I hope you will +forgive me," he said with a charming deference, "but I couldn't resist +coming to see if you were all right. So many people are frightened of +fire--in their own houses." + +"Mr. Dwight--my mother--" + +He lifted his hat again. Mrs. Groome in her chastened mood regarded +him favorably, and for the moment without suspicion. At least he was a +gentleman; but who could he be? + +"Dwight," she murmured. "I do not know the name. Were you born here?" + +"I was born in Utica, New York. My parents came here when I was quite +young. We--always lived rather quietly." + +"But you go about now? To all these parties?" + +"Oh, yes. I like to dance after the day's work. But I am not what you would +call a society man. I haven't the time." + +Mrs. Groome was not usually blunt, but she suddenly scented danger and she +had not fully recovered her poise. + +"You are in business?" She disliked business intensely. All gentlemen of +her day had followed one of the professions. + +"I am in a wholesale commission house. But I hope to be in business for +myself one day." + +"Ah." + +Still, all young men in this terrible twentieth century could not be +lawyers. Mrs. Groome knew enough of the march of time to be aware of the +increasing difficulties in gaining a bare livelihood. Tom Abbott was a +lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the fifties. It +was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent +and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a +man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. + +And at least this young man did not look like an idler or a wastrel. No man +could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the morning +if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she knew the +external seals. + +"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply. + +"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me the +honor to ask me to call." + +"I think the more highly of you. Judge Lawton is an old friend of mine. His +wife, who was much younger than the Judge, was an intimate friend of my +daughter, Mrs. Abbott. Alexina and Aileen have grown up together. I find it +impossible to forbid her the house. But I disapprove of her in every way. +She paints her lips, smokes cigarettes, boasts that she drinks cocktails, +and uses the most abominable slang. I kept my daughter in New York for two +years as much to break up the intimacy as to finish her education, but the +moment we returned the intimacy was renewed, and for my old friend's sake I +have been forced to submit. He worships that--that--really ill-conditioned +child." + +"Oh--Miss Lawton is a good sort, and--well--I suppose her position is so +strong that she feels she can do as she pleases. But she is all right, and +not so different--" + +"Do you mean to tell me that you approve of girls--nice +girls--ladies--painting themselves, smoking, drinking cocktails?" + +"I do not." His tones were emphatic and his good American gray eyes +wandered to the fresh innocent face of the girl who had captivated him last +night. + +"I should hope not. You look like an exceptionally decent young man. +Have you had breakfast? Alexina, go and ask Maggie, if she has recovered +herself, to make another cup of coffee." + + + +II + + +Alexina disappeared, repressing a desire to sing; and young Dwight, +receiving permission, seated himself on the grass at Mrs. Groome's feet. He +was lithe and graceful and as he threw back his head and looked up at his +hostess with his straight, honest glance the good impression he had made +was visibly enhanced. Mrs. Groome gave him the warm and gracious smile that +only her intimate friends and paid inferiors had ever seen. + +"The young men of to-day are a great disappointment to me," she observed. + +"Oh, they are all right, I guess. Most of the men that go about have rich +fathers--or near-rich ones. I wish I had one myself." + +"And you would be as dissipated as the rest, I presume." + +"No, I have no inclinations that way. But a man gets a better start in +life. And a man's a nonentity without money." + +"Not if he has family." + +"My family is good--in Utica. But that is of no use to me here." + +"But your family _is_ good?" + +"Oh, yes, it goes 'way back. There is a family mansion in Utica that is +over two hundred years old. But when the business district swamped that +part of the old town it was sold, and what it brought was divided among +six. My father came out here but did not make much of a success of himself, +so that he and my mother might as well have been on the Fiji Islands for +all the notice society took of them." + +He spoke with some bitterness, and Mrs. Groome, to whom dwelling beyond the +outer gates of San Francisco's elect was the ultimate tragedy, responded +sympathetically. + +"Society here is not what it used to be, and no doubt is only too glad +to welcome presentable young men. I infer that you have not found it +difficult." + +"Oh, I dance well, and my employer's son, Bob Cheever, took me in. But I'm +only tolerated. I don't count." + +The old lady looked at him keenly. "You are ambitious?" + +He threw back his head. "Well, yes, I am, Mrs. Groome. As far as society +goes it is a matter of self-respect. I feel that I have the right to go in +the best society anywhere--that I am as good as anybody when it comes to +blood. And I'd like to get to the top in every way. I don't mean that I +would or could do the least thing dishonest to get there, as so many men +have done, but--well, I see no crime in being ambitious and using every +chance to get to the top. I'd like not only to be one of the rich and +important men of San Francisco, but to take a part in the big civic +movements." + +Mrs. Groome was charmed. She was by no means an impulsive woman, but she +had suddenly realized her age, and if she must soon leave her youngest +child, who, heaven knew, needed a guardian, this young man might be a +son-in-law sent direct from heaven--via the earthquake. If he had real +ability the influential men she knew would see that he had a proper start. +But she had no intention of committing herself. + +"And what do you think of what is now called San Francisco society?" she +demanded. + +He was quite aware of Mrs. Groome's attitude. Who in San Francisco was not? +It was one of the standing jokes, although few of the younger or newer set +had ever heard of her until her naughty little daughter danced upon the +scene. + +"Oh, it is mixed, of course. There are many houses where I do not care to +go. But, well, after all, the rich people are rather simple for all their +luxury, and as for the old families there are no more real aristocrats in +England itself." + +Mrs. Groome was still more charmed. "But you were at Mrs. Hofer's last +night. I never heard of her before." + +"Her husband is one of the most important of the younger men. His father +made a fortune in lumber and sent his son to Yale and all the rest of it. +He is really a gentleman--it only takes one generation out here--and at +present he's bent upon delivering the city from this abominable ring +of grafters...There is no water to put out the fires because the City +Administration pocketed the money appropriated for a new system; the pipes +leading from Spring Valley were broken by the earthquake." + +"And who was she?" + +Mrs. Groome asked this question with an inimitable inflection inherited +from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had been guardians of San +Francisco society in their day. The accent was on the "who." Bob Cheever, +whose grandmother had asked or answered the same question in dark old +double parlors filled with black walnut and carved oak, would have +muttered, "Oh, hell!" but Mr. Dwight replied sympathetically: "Something +very common, I believe-south of Market Street. But her father was very +clever, rose to be a foreman of the iron works, and finally went into +business and prospered in a small way. He sent his daughter to Europe to be +educated...and even you could hardly tell her from the real thing." + +"And you go down to Burlingame, I suppose! That is a very nest of these new +people, and I am told they spend their time drinking and gambling." + +He set his large rather hard lips. "No, I have never been asked down to +Burlingame-nor down the Peninsula anywhere. You see, I am only asked out in +town because an unmarried dancing man is always welcome if there is nothing +wrong with his manners. To be asked for intimate week-ends is another +matter. But I don't fancy Burlingame is half as bad as it is represented to +be. They go in tremendously for sport, you know, and that is healthy and +takes up a good deal of time. After all when people are very rich and have +more leisure than they know what to do with--" + +"Many of the old set in Alta, San Mateo, Atherton and Menlo Park have +wealth and leisure-not vulgar fortunes, but enough-and for the most part +they live quite as they did in the old days." + +His eyes lit up. "Ah, San Mateo, Alta, Atherton, Menlo Park. There you have +a real landed aristocracy. The Burlingame set must realize that they would +be nobodies for all their wealth if they could not call at all those old +communities down the Peninsula." + +"Not so very many of them do. But I see you have no false values. You. must +go down with us some Sunday to Alta. I am sure you would like my oldest +daughter. She is very smart, as they call it now, but distinctly of the old +régime." + +"There is nothing I should like better. Thank you so much." And there was +no doubting the sincerity of his voice, a rather deep and manly voice which +harmonized with the admirable mold of his ancestors. + + + +III + + +Alexina appeared. "Breakfast is ready for all of us," she announced. "We +cooked it on the old stove in the woodhouse. I helped, for Maggie is a +wreck. Martha has swept the plaster out of the dining-room. Come along. I'm +starved." + +Young Dwight sprang to his feet and stood over Mrs. Groome with his +charming deferential manner, but he had far too much tact to offer +assistance as she rose heavily from her chair. + +"Are you really going to give me breakfast? I am sure I could not get any +elsewhere." + +"We are only too happy. Your coming has been a real God-send. Will you give +me your arm? This morning--not the earthquake but those dreadful fires--has +quite upset me." + +He escorted her into the dark old house with glowing eyes. He had seen so +little of the world that he was still very young at thirty and his nature +was sanguine, but he had never dared to dream of even difficult access to +this most exclusive home in San Francisco. Its gloom, its tastelessness, +relieved only by the splendid Italian pieces, but served to accentuate +its aristocratic aloofness from those superb but too recently furnished +mansions of which he knew so little outside of their ballrooms. + +And he was breakfasting with the sequestered Mrs. Groome and the loveliest +girl he had ever seen, at seven o 'clock in the morning. + +He looked about eagerly as they entered the dining-room.. It was long and +narrow with a bow window at the end. The furniture was black walnut; two +immense sideboards were built into the walls. It looked Ballinger, and it +was. + +It was heavily paneled; the walls above were tinted a pale buff and set +with cracked oil paintings of men in the uniforms of several generations. +The ceiling was frescoed with fish and fowl. There had been a massive +bronze chandelier over the table. It now lay on the floor, but as James had +turned off the gas in the meter while the earthquake was still in progress +the air of the large sunny room was untainted, and the windows were open. + +The breakfast was smoked but not uneatable and the strong coffee raised +even Mrs. Groome's wavering spirits. They were all talking gayly when James +entered abruptly. He was very pale. + +"City's doomed, ma'am. Thirty fires broke out simultaneous, and the wind +blowing from the southeast. A chimney fell on the fire-chief's bed and he +can't live. People runnin' round like their heads was cut off and thousands +pouring out of the city--over to Oakland and Berkeley. Lootin' was awful +and General Funston has ordered out the troops. Pipes broken and not a drop +of water. They're goin' to dynamite, but only the fire-chief knew how. +Everybody says the whole city'll go, Doomed, that's what it is. Better let +me tell Mike to harness up and drive you down to San Mateo." + +Mrs. Groome had also turned pale, but she cut a piece of bacon with +resolution in every finger of her large-veined hands. + +"I do not believe it, and I shall not run--like those people south of +Market Street. I shall stay until the last minute at all events. The roads +at least cannot burn." + +"This house ought to be safe enough, ma 'am, standin' quite alone on +this hill as it does; but it's a question of food. We never keep much +of anything in the house, beyond what's needed for the week, and the +California Market's right in the fire zone. And the smoke will be something +terrible when the fire gets closer." + +"I shall stay in my own house. There are grocery stores and butcher shops +in Fillmore Street. Go and buy all you can." She handed him a bunch of +keys. "You will find money in my escritoire. Tell the maids to fill the +bathtubs while there is any water left in the mains. You may go if you are +frightened, but I stay here." + +"Very well, and you needn't have said that, ma'am. I've been in this +family, man and boy, Ballinger and Groome, for fifty-two years, and you +know I'd never desert you. But no doubt those hussies in the kitchen will, +with a lot of others. A lot of stoves have already been set up in the +streets out here and ladies are cookin' their own breakfasts." + +"Forgive me, James. I know you will never leave me. And if the others do +we shall get along. Miss Alexina is not a bad cook." And she heroically +swallowed the bacon. + + + +IV + + +James departed and she turned to Dwight, who was on his feet. + +"You are not going?" + +"I think I must, Mrs. Groome. There may be something I can do down there. +All able-bodied men will be needed, I fancy." + +"But you'll come back and see us?" cried Alexina. + +"Indeed I will. I'll report regularly." + +He thanked Mrs. Groome for her hospitality and she invited him to take +pot luck with her at dinner time. After he had gone Alexina exclaimed +rapturously: + +"Oh, you do like him, don't you, mommy dear?" + +And Mrs. Groome was pleased to reply, "He has perfect manners and certainly +has the right ideas about things. I could do no less than ask him to dinner +if he is going to take the trouble to bring us the news." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +That was a unique and vivid day for young Alexina Groome, whose disposition +was to look upon life as drama and asked only that it shift its scenes +often and be consistently entertaining and picturesque. + +Never, so James told her, since her Grandmother Ballinger's reign, had +there been such life and movement in the old house. All Mrs. Groome's +intimate friends and many of Alexina's came to it, some to make kindly +inquiries, others to beg them to leave the city, many to gossip and +exchange experiences of that fateful morning; a few from Rincon Hill and +the old ladies' fashionable boarding-house district to claim shelter until +they could make their way to relatives out of town. + +Mrs. Groome welcomed her friends not only with the more spontaneous +hospitality of an older time but in that spirit of brotherhood that +every disaster seems to release, however temporarily. Brotherhood is +unquestionably an instinct of the soul, an inheritance from that sunrise +era when mutual interdependence was as imperative as it was automatic. The +complexities of civilization have overlaid it, and almost but not wholly +replaced it by national and individual selfishness. But the world as yet is +only about one-third civilized. Centuries hence a unified civilization may +complete the circle, but human nature and progress must act and react a +thousand times before the earthly millenium; and it cannot be hastened by +dreamers and fanatics. + +All Mrs. Groome's spare rooms were placed at the service of her friends, +and cots were bought in the humble Fillmore Street shops and put up in the +billiard room, the double parlors, the library and the upper hall. Some +forty people would sleep under the old Ballinger roof that night--dynamite +permitting. Mrs. Groome was firm in her determination not to flee, and as +James and Mike were there to watch, she had graciously given a number +of the gloomy refugees from the lower regions permission to camp in the +outhouses and grounds. + + + +II + + +Alexina spent the greater part of the day with Aileen Lawton, Olive Bascom, +and Sibyl Thorndyke, out of doors, fascinated by the spectacle of the +burning city. + +The valley beyond Market Street, and the lower business district, were a +rolling mass of smoke parting about pillars of fire, shot with a million +glittering sparks when a great building was dynamited. All the windows in +those sections of the city as yet beyond the path of the fire were open, +for although closed windows might have shut out the torrid atmosphere, the +explosions would have shattered them. + +"Oh, dear," sighed Olive Bascom, "there goes my building. The smoke lifted +for a moment and I saw the flames spouting out of the windows. A cool +million and uninsured. We thought Class A buildings were safe from any sort +of fire." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Alexina naïvely, "I wish I had a million-dollar +building down in that furnace. It must be a great sensation to watch a +million dollars go up in sparks." + +"I hope your mother hasn't any buildings down in the business district," +said Aileen anxiously. "I've heard dad talk about her ground rents. She'll +get those again soon enough. I fancy the old tradition survives in this +town and they'll begin to draw the plans for the new city before the fire +is out. It used to burn down regularly in the fifties, dad says." + +"I don't fancy we have much of anything," said Alexina cheerfully. "I think +mother has only a life interest in a part of father's estate, and I heard +her tell Maria once that she intended to leave me all she had of her own, +this place and a few thousand a year in bonds and some flats that are +probably burning up right now. I gathered from the conversation that father +didn't have much left when he died and that it was understood mother was +to look out for me. I believe he gave a lot to the others when he was +wealthy." + +"Good Lord!" Aileen sighed heavily. "It won't pay your dressmakers' bills, +what with taxes and all. I won't be much better off. We'll have to marry +Rex Roberts or Bob Cheever or Frank Bascom--unless he's going up in smoke +too, Olive dear. But there are a few others." + +Alexina shook her head. Her color could not rise higher for her face was +crimson from the heat; like the others she had a wet handkerchief on her +head. "There is not a grain of romance in one of them," she announced. +"Curious that the sons of the rich nearly always have round faces, +no particular features, and a tendency to bulge. I intend to have a +romance--old style--good old style--before the vogue of the middle-class +realists. There's nothing in life but youth and you only have it once. +I'm going to have a romance that means falling wildly, unreasonably, +uncalculatingly in love." + +"You anticipate my adjectives," said Aileen drily. "Although not all. But +let that pass. I'd like to know where you expect to find the opposite +lead, as they say on the stage. Our men are not such a bad sort, even the +richest--with a few exceptions, of course. They may hit it up at week-ends, +generally at the country clubs, but they're better than the last generation +because their fathers have more sense. I'll bet they're all down there now +fighting the fire with the vim of their grandfathers....But romantic! Good +Lord! I'll marry one of them all right and glad of the chance--after I've +had my fling. I'm in no hurry. I'd have outgrown my illusions in any case +by that time, only Nature did the trick by not giving me any." + +"Don't you believe there isn't a man in all San Francisco able to inspire +romance." If Alexina could not blush her dark gray eyes could sparkle and +melt. "All the men we meet don't belong to that rich group." + +"Bunch, darling. Where--will you give us the pointer?--are to be found the +romantic knights of San Francisco? 'Frisco as those tiresome Eastern people +call it. Makes me sick to think that they are even now pitying 'poor +'Frisco.' "Well?--I could beat my brains and not call one to mind." + +"Oh!" + +"What does that mean, Alex Groome? When you roll up your eyes like that you +look like a love-sick tomato." + +"Mortimer Dwight was most devoted last night," said Sibyl Thorndyke. "She +danced with him at least eight times." + +"You must have sat out alone to know what I was doing," Alexina began +hotly, but Aileen sprang at her and gripped her shoulders. + +"Don't tell me that you are interested in that cheap skate. Alexina Groome! +You!" + +"He's not a cheap skate. I despise your cheap slang." + +"He's a rank nobody." + +"You mean he isn't rich. Or his family didn't belong. What do you suppose I +care? I'm not a snob." + +"He is. A climbing, ingenuous, empty-headed snob." + +"You are a snob. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"I've a right to be a snob if I choose, and he hasn't. My snobbery is the +right sort: the 'I will maintain' kind. He'd give all the hair on his head +to have the right to that sort of snobbery. His is" (she chanted in a +high light maddening voice): "Oh, God, let me climb. Yank me up into the +paradise of San Francisco society. Burlingame, Alta, Menlo Park, Atherton, +Belvidere, San Rafael. Oh, God, it's awful to be a nobody, not to be in +the same class with these rich fellers, not to belong to the Pacific-Union +Club, not to have polo ponies, not to belong to smart golf clubs, to the +Burlingame Club. Not to get clothes from New York and London--" + +"You keep quiet," shrieked Alexina, who with difficulty refrained from +substituting: "You shut up." She flung off Aileen's hands. "What do you +know about him? He doesn't like you." + +"Never had a chance to find out." + +"What can you know about him, then?" + +"Think I'm blind? Think I'm deaf? Don't I know everything that goes on in +this town? Isn't sizing-up my long suit? And he's as dull as--as a fish +without salt. I sat next to him at a dinner, and all he could talk about +was the people he'd met--our sort, of course. And he was dull even at that. +He's all manners and bluff--" + +"You couldn't draw him out. He talked to me." + +"What about? I'm really interested to know. Everybody says the same thing. +They fall for his dancing and manners, and--well, yes--I 'll admit it--for +his looks. He even looks like a gentleman. But all the girls say he bores +'em stiff. They have to talk their heads off. What did he say to you that +was so frantically interesting?" + +"Well, of course--we danced most of the time." + +"That's just it. He's inherited the shell of some able old ancestor and not +a bit of the skull furniture. Nature often plays tricks like that. But I +could forgive him for being dull if he weren't such a damn snob." + +"You shan't call him names. If he wants to be one of us, and life was +so unkind as to--to--well, birth him on the outside, I'm sure that's no +crime." + +"Snobbery," said Miss Thorndyke, who was intellectual at the moment and +cultivating the phrase, "is merely a rather ingenuous form of aspiration. I +can't see that it varies except in kind from other forms of ambition. And +without ambition there would be no progress." + +"Oh, can it," sneered Judge Lawton's daughter. "You're all wrong, anyhow. +Snobbery leads to the rocks much oftener than to high achievement. I've +heard dad say so, and you won't venture to assert that _he_ doesn't +know. It bears about the same relation to progress that grafting does to +legitimate profits. Anyhow, it makes me sick, and I'm not going to have +Alex falling in love with a poor fish--" + +"Fish?" Alexina's voice rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare--and you +think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? What do +you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but drinking and +sport, whether they attend to business or not?--their fathers make them, +anyhow. And you want to marry one of them! They're fish, if you like." + +The two girls were glaring at each other. Gray eyes were blazing, green +eyes snapping. Two sets of white even teeth were bared. They looked like a +couple of belligerent puppies. Another moment and they would have forgotten +the sacred traditions of their class and flown at each other's hair. But +Miss Bascom interposed. Even the loss of her uninsured million did not +ruffle her, for she had another in Government and railroad bonds, and full +confidence in her brother, who was an admirable business man, and not in +the least dissipated. + +"Come, come," she said. "It's much too hot to fight. Dwight is not good +enough for Alex--from a worldly point of view, I mean," as Alexina made a +movement in her direction. "We should none of us marry out of our class. It +never works, somehow. But Mr. Dwight is really quite all right otherwise. I +like him very much, Alex darling, and I don't mind his being an outsider +in the least--so long as he doesn't try to marry one of us. He's _too_ +good-looking, and his heels are fairly inspired. No one questions the fact +that he is an honorable and worthy young man, working like a real man to +earn his living. It isn't at all as if he were an adventurer. He has never +struck me as being more of a snob than most people, and I don't see why I +haven't thought to ask him down to San Mateo for a week-end." + +"You'll certainly have a friend for life if you do," said Aileen +satirically. "Fall in love with him yourself if you choose. You can afford +it." + +"No fear. I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry a French marquis." + +"What?" Even Alexina forgot Mortimer Dwight. "Who is he? Where did you meet +him?" + +"I haven't met him yet. But I shall. I'm going to Paris next winter to +visit my aunt, and I'll find one. You get anything in this world you go +for hard enough. To be a French marquise is the most romantic thing in the +world." + +"Why not Elton Gwynne? It's an open secret that he's an English marquis. Or +that young Gathbroke Lady Victoria brought last night?" + +"He's a younger son, and he never looked at any one but Alex. And Isabel +Otis has preëmpted Mr. Gwynne. And I adore France and don't care about +England." + +"Well, that is romantic if you like!" cried Aileen, her green eyes dancing" +"You have my best wishes. Doesn't it make your Geary Street knight look +cheap--he boards somewhere down on Geary Street." + +"No, it doesn't! And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. +Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told mother +so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title." + +"I wish your mother could hear you. So--he's been getting round her has +he? Where on earth did he meet her?" + +Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the +favorable impression he had made. + +Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank +outsider--superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. I'll +put a flea in her ear--" + +"You dare!" + +Aileen lifted her shoulders. "Well, as a matter of fact I can't. Tattling +just isn't in my line. But if I can queer him with you I will." + +"I won't talk about him any more." Alexina drew herself up with immense +dignity. She had the advantage of Aileen not only in inches but in a +natural repose of manner. The eminent Judge Lawton's only child, upon whom, +possibly, he may have lavished too much education, had a thin nervous +little body that was seldom in repose, and her face, with its keen +irregular features and brilliant green eyes, shifted its surface +impressions as rapidly as a cinematograph. Olive Bascom had soft blue eyes +and abundant brown hair, and Sibyl Thorndyke had learned to hold her long +black eyes half closed, and had the black hair and rich complexion of a +Creole great-grandmother. Alexina was admittedly the "beauty of the bunch." +Nevertheless, Miss Lawton had informed her doting parent before this, her +first season, was half over, that she was _vivid_ enough to hold her own +with the best of them. The boys said she was a live wire and she preferred +that high specialization to the tameness of mere beauty. + + + +IV + + +Said Alexina: "Sibyl, what are you going to do with your young life? Shall +you marry an English duke or a New York millionaire?" + +But Miss Thorndyke smiled mysteriously. She was not as frank as the other +girls, although by no means as opaque as she imagined. + +Aileen laughed. "Oh, don't ask her. Doubt if she knows. To-day she's all +for being intellectual and reading those damn dull Russian novelists. +To-morrow she may be setting up as an odalisque. It would suit her style +better." + +Miss Thorndyke's face was also crimson from the heat, but she would not +have flushed had it been the day before. She was not subject to sudden +reflexes. + +"Your satire is always a bit clumsy, dear," she said sweetly. "The +odalisque is not your rôle at all events." + +"I don't go in for rôles." + +And the four girls wrangled and dreamed and planned, while a city burnt +beneath them; some three hundred million dollars flamed out, lives were +ruined, exterminated, altered; and Labor sat on the hills and smiled +cynically at the tremendous impetus the earth had handed them on that +morning of April eighteenth, nineteen hundred and six. + +They were too young to know or to care. When the imagination is trying its +wings it is undismayed even by a world at war. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +That night Alexina knew that romance had surely come to her. She shared her +room with three old ladies who slept fitfully between blasts of dynamite. +But she sat at the window with no desire for oblivion. + +On the lawn paced a young man with a rifle in the crook of his arm. He was +tall and young and very gallant of bearing; no less a person than Mortimer +Dwight, who had been sworn in that morning as a member of the Citizens' +Patrol, and at his own request detailed to keep watch over the house of +Mrs. Groome. + +He had not been able to pay his promised visits during the day but had +arrived at seven o'clock, dining beside Mrs. Abbott, and surrounded by old +ladies whose names were as historic as Mrs. Groome's. The cook had deserted +after the second heavy shock, and, with her wardrobe in a pillow case, had +tramped to the farthest confines of the Presidio. It was not fear alone +that induced her flight. There was a rumor that the Government would feed +the city, and why should not a hard-working woman enjoy a month or two of +sheer idleness? Let the quality cook for themselves. It would do them good. + +James and the housemaid had cooked the dinner, and Alexina and her friends +waited on the table. Then the girls, to Alexina's relief, went home to +inquire after their families, and she accompanied Mr. Dwight while he +explored every corner of the grounds to make sure that no potential thieves +lurked in the heavy shadows cast by the trees. + +He had been very alert and thorough and Alexina admired him consumedly. +There was no question but that he was one of those men--Aileen called it +the one hundred per cent male--upon whose clear brain and strong arm a +woman might depend even in the midst of an infuriated mob. He had an +opportunity that comes to few aspiring young men born into the world's +unblest millions, and if he made the most of it he was equally assured that +he was acting in strict accord with the instincts and characteristics that +had descended upon him by the grace of God. + + + +II + + +There was no physical cowardice in him; and if he would have preferred a +life of ease and splendor, he had no illusions regarding the amount +of "hustling" necessary to carry him to the goal of his desires and +ambitions--unless he made a lucky strike. He played the stock market in a +small way and made a few hundred dollars now and then. + +He would have been glad to marry a wealthy girl, Olive Bascom, by +preference, for he had an inner urge to the short cut, but he had found +these spoiled daughters of San Francisco unresponsive...and then, suddenly, +he had fallen in love with Alexina Groome. + +His past was green and prophylactic. He was moral both by inheritance +and necessity, and his parents, people of fair intelligence, if rather +ineffective, stern principles, and good old average ideals, had taken their +responsibilities toward their two children very seriously. People who +talked with young Dwight might not find him resourceful in conversation but +they were deeply impressed with his manners and principles. The younger +men, with the exception of Bob Cheever, who respected his capacity for +work, did not take to him; principally, no doubt, he reflected with some +bitterness, because he was not "their sort." + +He never admitted to himself that he was a snob, for something deep and +still unfaced in his consciousness, bade him see as little fault in himself +as possible, forbade him to admit the contingency of a failure, impelled +him to call such weaknesses as the fortunate condemned by some one of those +interchangeable terms with which the lexicons are so generous. + +But if he would not face the word snob he told himself proudly that he was +ambitious; and why should he not aspire to the best society? Was he not +entitled to it by birth? His family may not have been prominent to excess +in Utica, but it was indisputably "old." However, he assured himself that +the chief reason for his determination to mingle with the social elect +of San Francisco was not so much a tribute to his ancestors, or even the +insistence of youth for the decent pleasures of that brief period, but +because of the opportunities to make those friends indispensable to +every young man forced to cut his own way through life. Even if his good +conscience had compelled him to admit that he was a snob he would have +reminded it there was no harm in snobbery anyway. It was the most amiable +of the vices. But he thought too well of himself for any such admission, +and his mind had not been trained to fish, even, in shallow waters. + +Nor did he admit that if the lovely Miss Groome had been a stenographer +he would not have looked at her. He would indeed have turned his face +resolutely in the other direction if she had happened to sit in his +employer's office. Fate forbade him a marriage of that sort, and dalliance +with an inferior was forbidden both by his morals and his social integrity. + +But that Alexina Groome should be beautiful, as exaltedly born as only +a San Franciscan of the old stock might be, with a determinate income, +however modest, with a background of friendly males, as substantial +financially as socially, who would be sure to give a new member of the +family a leg-up (he liked the atmosphere and flavor of the lighter English +novels), and, above all, responsive, seemed to him a direct reward for the +circumspect life he had lived and his fidelity to his chosen upward path. + + + +III + + +He was free to fall in love as profoundly as was in him, and during that +early hour of the agitated night, with that pit of hell roaring below to +the steady undertone of a thousand tramping feet, he felt, despite the fact +that all business was moribund for the present and his savings were in the +hot vaults of a dynamited bank, that he was a supremely fortunate young +man. + +Moreover, this disaster furnished a steady topic for conversation. He was +aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a dinner +table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he assured +himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, and that no +one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to sport, still +there had been times when he was painfully aware that a dinner partner or +some bright charming creature whose invitation to call he had accepted, +looked politely bored or chattered desperately to cover the silences into +which he abruptly relapsed; when, "for the life of him he had not been able +to think of a thing to say." + +Then, briefly, he had felt a bitter rebellion at fate for having denied him +the gift of a lively and supple mind, as well as those numberless worldly +benefits lavished on men far less deserving than he. + +He felt dull and depressed after such revelations and sometimes considered +attending evening lectures at the University of California with his sister. +But for this form of mental exertion he had no taste, keenly as he applied +himself to his work during the hours of business; and he assured himself +that such knowledge would do him no good anyway. It did not seem to be +prevalent in society. If he had been a brilliant hand at bridge or poker, +the inner fortifications of society would have gone down before him, but +his courage did not run to card gambling with wealthy idlers who set their +own pace. On the stock market he could step warily and no one the wiser. +It would have horrified him to be called a piker, for his instincts were +really lavish, and the economical habit an achievement in which he took a +resentful pride. + + + +IV + + +On this evening he had talked almost incessantly to Alexina, and she, +in the vocabulary of her years and set, had thought him frantically +interesting as he described the immediate command of the city assumed by +General Funston, the efforts of the Committee of Fifty, formed early that +morning by leading citizens, to help preserve order and to give assistance +to the refugees; of rich young men, and middle-aged citizens who had not +spent an afternoon away from their club window for ten years, carrying +dynamite in their cars through the very flames; of wild and terrible +episodes he had witnessed or heard of during the day. + +His brain was hot from the mental and physical atmosphere of the perishing +city, the unique excitement of the day: when he had felt as if snatched +from his quiet pasture by the roots; and by the extraordinary good fortune +that had delivered this perfect girl and her formidable parent almost into +his hands. Under his sternly controlled exterior his spirits sang wildly +that his luck had turned, and dazzling visions of swift success and +fulfillment of all ambitions snapped on and off in his stimulated brain. + +Alexina thought him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to her +own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a romantic +maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her brilliant long +eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth wore a constant alluring +smile. + +A declaration trembled on his tongue, but he felt that he would be taking +an unfair advantage and restrained himself. Besides, he wished to win Mrs. +Groome completely to his side, to say nothing of the still more alarming +because more worldly Mrs. Abbott. _She_ was a snob, if you like! + + + +V + + +At nine o'clock, after he had given the inmates of the house and +outbuildings stern orders not to light a candle or lamp under any +circumstances--such was the emergency law--he bade Alexina a gallant +good-night, and betook himself to the lawn within the grove of sighing +eucalyptus trees, to pace up and down, his rifle in his arm, his eyes +alert, and quite aware of the admiring young princess at the casement +above. + +He did his work very thoroughly, visiting outhouses at intervals and +sharply inspecting the weary occupants, as well as the prostrate forms +under the trees. They were all far too tired and apprehensive to dream of +breaking into the house that had given them hospitality, even had they been +villains, which they were not. + +But they did not resent his inspection; rather they felt a sense of +security in this watching manly figure with the gun, for they were rather +afraid of villains themselves: it was reported that many looters had +been stood against hissing walls and shot by the stern orders of General +Punston. They asked their more immediate protector questions as to the +progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as befitted his office. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +MRS. ABBOTT entered Alexina's room and caught her hanging out of the +window. She had motored up to the city during the afternoon, and, after +a vain attempt to persuade her mother to go down at once to Alta, had +concluded to remain over night. The spectacle was the most horrifyingly +interesting she had ever witnessed in her temperate life, and her +self-denying Aunt Clara was in charge of the children. Her husband had +driven himself to town as soon as he heard of the fire and been sworn in a +member of the Committee of Fifty. + +"Darling," she said firmly to the sister who was little older than +her first-born, "I want to have a talk with you. Come into papa's old +dressing-room. I had a cot put there, and as there is no room for another I +am quite alone." + +Alexina followed with lagging feet. She had always given her elder sister +the same surface obedience that she gave her mother. It "saved trouble." +But life had changed so since morning that she was in no mood to keep +up the rôle of "little sister," sweet and malleable and innocent as a +Ballinger-Groome at the age of eighteen should be. + + + +II + + +She dropped on the floor and embraced her knees with her arms. Mrs. Abbott +seated herself in as dignified an attitude as was possible on the edge of +the cot. Even the rocking-chairs had been taken down to the dining-room. + +"Well?" queried Alexina, pretending to stifle a yawn. "What is it? I am too +sleepy to think." + +"Sleepy? You looked sleepy with your eyes like saucers watching that young +man." + +"Everybody that can is watching the fire--" + +"Don't quibble, Alexina. You are naturally a truthful child. Do you mean to +tell me you were not watching Mr. Dwight?" + +"Well, if I say yes, it is not because I care a hang about living up to my +reputation, but because I don't care whether you know it or not." + +"That is very naughty--" + +"Stop talking to me as if I were a child." + +"You are excited, darling, and no wonder." + +Maria Abbott was in the process of raising a family and she did it with +tact and firmness. Nature had done much to assist her in her several +difficult rôles. She was very tall straight and slender, with a haughty +little head, as perfect in shape as Alexina's, set well back on her +shoulders, and what had been known in her Grandmother Ballinger's day as a +cameo-profile. Her abundant fair hair added to the high calm of her mien +and it was always arranged in the prevailing fashion. On the street she +invariably wore the tailored suit, and her tailor was the best in New York. +She thought blouses in public indecent, and wore shirtwaists of linen or +silk with high collars, made by the same master-hand. There was nothing +masculine in her appearance, but she prided herself upon being the best +groomed woman even in that small circle of her city that dressed as well as +the fashionable women of New York. At balls and receptions she wore gowns +of an austere but expensive simplicity, and as the simple jewels of her +inheritance looked pathetic beside the blazing necklaces and sunbursts +(there were only two or three tiaras in San Francisco) of those new people +whom she both deplored and envied, she wore none; and she was assured that +the lack added to the distinction of her appearance. + +But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, determined +as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was alive, push the +aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was a strict conformer +to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts to enhance and preserve +youth as the converse of respectable. Her once delicate pink and white skin +was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose had never known powder; but even +in the glare of the fire her skin looked cool and pale, for the heat had +not crimsoned her. Her blood was rather thin and she prided herself +upon the fact. She may have lost her early beauty, but she looked the +indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, as her more naïve grandmothers would +have phrased it. + +It sufficed. + + + +III + + +By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance she +was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress like +her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were known, no +doubt." + +In reality she was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and +sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all events +her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He had his +reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her own old +set, she was intensely loyal; and although she had a cold contempt for the +institution of divorce, if one of that select band strayed into it, no +matter at which end, her loyalty rose triumphant above her social code, and +she was not afraid to express it publicly. + +Toward Alexina she felt less a sister than a second mother, and gave her +freely of her abundant maternal reservoir. That "little sister" had at +times sulked under this proud determination to assist in the bringing-up +of the last of the Ballinger-Groomes, did not discourage her. She might be +soft in her affections but she never swerved from her duty as she saw it. +Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only needed a firm hand to guide +her along that proud secluded old avenue of the city's elect, until she had +ambled safely to established respectability and power. + +She had been alarmed at one time at certain symptoms of cleverness she +noticed in the child, and at certain enthusiastic remarks in the letters of +Ballinger Groome, with whose family Alexina had spent her vacations during +her two years in New York at school. But there had been no evidence of +anything but a young girl's natural love of pleasure since her début in +society, and she was quite unaware of Alexina's wicked divagations. She +had spent the winter in Santa Barbara, for the benefit of her oldest, boy, +whose lungs were delicate, and, like her mother, never deigned to read the +society columns of the newspapers. Her reason, however, was her own. In +spite of her blood, her indisputable position, her style, she cut but a +small figure in those columns. She was not rich enough to vie with those +who entertained constantly, and was merely set down as one of many guests. +The fact induced a slight bitterness. + + + +IV + + +She began tactfully. "I like this young Mr. Dwight very much, and shall ask +him down, as mother desires it. But I hope, darling, that you will follow +my example and not marry until you have had four years of society, in other +words have seen something of the world--" + +"California is not the world." + +"Society, in other words human nature, is everywhere much alike. As you +know, I spent a year in England when I was a young lady, and was presented +at court--by Lady Barnstable, who was Lee Tarlton, one of us. It was +merely San Francisco on a large scale, with titles, and greater and older +houses and parks, and more jewels, and more arrogance, and everything much +grander, of course. And they talked politics a great deal, which bored +me as I am sure they would bore you. The beauty of our society is its +simplicity and lack of arrogance--consciousness of birth or of wealth. +Even the more recent members of society, who owe their position to their +fortunes, have a simplicity and kindness quite unknown in New York. Eastern +people always remark it. And yet, owing to their constant visits to the +East and to Europe, they know all of the world there is to know." + +"So do the young men, I suppose! I never heard of their doing much +traveling--" + +"I should call them remarkably sophisticated young men. But the point is, +darling, that if you wait as long as I did you will discover that the men +who attract a girl in her first season would bore her to extinction in her +fourth." + +"You mean after I've had all the bloom rubbed off, and men are forgetting +to ask me to dance. Then I'll be much more likely to take what I can get. I +want to marry with all the bloom on and all my illusions fresh." + +"But should you like to have them rubbed off by your husband? You've heard +the old adage: 'marry in haste and repent--'" + +"I've been brought up on adages. They are called bromides now. As for +illusions, everybody says they don't last anyway. I'd rather have them +dispelled after a long wonderful honeymoon by a husband than by a lot of +flirtations in a conservatory and in dark corners--" + +"Good heavens! Do you suppose that I flirted in a conservatory and in dark +corners?" + +"I'll bet you didn't, but lots do. And in the haute noblesse, the ancient +aristocracy! I've seen 'em." + +"It isn't possible that you--" + +"Oh, no, I love to dance too much. But I'm not easily shocked. I 'll tell +you that right here. And I 'll tell you what I confessed to mother this +morning." + + + +V + + +When she had finished Mrs. Abbott sat for a few moments petrified; but +she was thirty-eight, not sixty-five, and there was neither dismay nor +softening in her narrowed light blue eyes. + +"But that is abominable! Abominable!" + +And Alexina, who was prepared for a scolding, shrank a little, for it was +the first time that her doting sister had spoken to her with severity. + +"I don't care," she said stubbornly, and she set her soft lips until they +looked stern and hard. + +"But you must care. You are a Groome." + +"Oh, yes, and a Ballinger, and a Geary, and all the rest of it. But I'm +also going to annex another name of my own choosing. I'll marry whom I damn +please, and that is the end of it." + +"Alexina Groome!" Mrs. Abbott arose in her wrath. "Cannot you see for +yourself what association with all these common people has done to you? +It's the influence--" + +"Of two years in New York principally. The girls there are as hard as +nails--try to imitate the English. Ours are not a patch, not even Aileen, +although she does her best. But I hadn't finished--I even powder my face." +Alexina grinned up at her still rudderless sister. "After mother is asleep +and I am ready to slip out." + +"I thought you were safe in New York under the eyes of Ballinger and Geary, +or rather of Mattie and Charlotte. They are such earnest good women, so +interested in charities--" + +"Deadly. But you don't know the girls," + +"And I have told mother again and again that she should not permit you to +associate with Aileen Lawton." + +"She can't help herself. Aileen is one of us. Besides, mother is devoted to +the Judge." + +"But powder! None of us has ever put anything but clean cold water on her +face." + +"You'd look a long sight better if you did. Cold cream, too. You +wouldn't have any wrinkles at your age, if you weren't so damn +respectable-aristocratic, you call it. It's just middle class. And as out +of date as speech without slang. As for me, I'd paint my lips as Aileen +does, only I don't like the taste, and they're too red, anyhow. It's much +smarter to make up than not to. Times change. You don't wear hoopskirts +because our magnificent Grandmother Ballinger did. You dress as smartly as +the Burlingame crowd. Why does your soul turn green at make-up? All these +people you look down upon because our families were rich and important in +the fifties are more up-to-date than you are, although I will admit that +none of them has the woman-of-the-world air of the smartest New York women +--not that terribly respectable inner set in New York--Aunt Mattie's and +Aunt Charlotte's--_that_ just revels in looking mid-Victorian....The newer +people I've met here--their manners are just as good as ours, if not +better, for, as you said just now, they don't put on airs. You do, darling. +You don't know it, but you would put an English duchess to the blush, when +you suddenly remember who you are--" + +Mrs. Abbott had resumed her seat on the cot. "If you have finished +criticizing your elder sister, I should like to ask you a few questions. Do +you smoke and drink cocktails?" + +"No, I don't. But I should if I liked them, and if they didn't make me feel +queer." + +"You--you--" Mrs. Abbot's clear crisp voice sank to an agonized whisper. +For the first time she was really terrified. "Do you gamble?" + +"Why, of course not. I have too much fun to think of anything so stupid." + +"Does Aileen Lawton gamble?" + +"She just doesn't, and don't you insinuate such a thing." + +"She has bad blood in her. Her mother--" + +"I thought her mother was your best friend." + +"She was. But she went to pieces, poor dear, and Judge Lawton wisely sent +her East. I can't tell you why. There are things you don't understand." + +"Oh, don't I? Don't you fool yourself." + +Mrs. Abbott leaned back on the cot and pressed it hard with either hand. + +"Alexina, I have never been as disturbed as I am at this moment. When +Sally and I were your age, we were beautifully innocent. If I thought that +Joan--" + +"Oh, Joan'll get away from you. She's only fourteen now, but when she's my +age--well, I guess you and your old crowd are the last of the Mohicans. I +doubt if there'll even be any chaperons left. Joan may not smoke nor drink. +Who cares for 'vices,' anyhow? But you haven't got a moat and drawbridge +round Rincona, and she'll just get out and mix. She'll float with the +stream--and all streams lead to Burlingame." + +"I have no fear about Joan," said Mrs. Abbott, with dignity. "Four years +are a long time. I shall sow seeds, and she is a born Ballinger--I am +dreadfully afraid that my dear father is coming out in you. Even the boys +are Ballingers--" + + + +VI + + +"Tell me about father?" coaxed Alexina, who was repentant, now that +the excitement of the day had reached its climax in the baiting of her +admirable sister and was rapidly subsiding. "Mother let fall something this +morning; and once Aileen...she began, but shut up like a clam. Was he so +very dreadful?" + +"Well, since you know so much, he was what is called fast. Married men of +his position often were in his day--quite openly. Yesterday, I should have +hesitated--" + +"Fire away. Don't mind me. Yes, I know what fast is. Lots of men are +to-day. Even members of the A. A." + +"A. A.?" + +"Ancient Aristocracy. The kind England and France would like to have." + +"I'm ashamed of you. Have you no pride of blood? The best blood of the +South, to say nothing of--" + +"I'm tickled to death. I just dote on being a Groome, plus Ballinger, plus. +And I'm not guying, neither. I'd hate like the mischief to be second rate, +no matter what I won later. It must be awful to have to try to get to +places that should be yours by divine right, as it were. But all that's no +reason for being a moss-back, a back number, for not having any fun--to +be glued to the ancestral rock like a lot of old limpets....And it should +preserve us from being snobs," she added. + +"Snobs?" + +"The 'I will maintain' sort, as Aileen puts it." + +"Don't quote that dreadful child to me. I haven't an atom of snobbery in my +composition. I reserve the right to know whom I please, and to exclude from +my house people to whom I cannot accustom myself. Why I know quite a number +of people at Burlingame. I dined there informally last night." + +"Yes, because it has the fascination for you that wine has for the +clergyman's son." Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the only +people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those of the +old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were one of us. +They went there to live because they were tired of being moss-backs. Why +don't you follow their example and go the whole hog? They--and their +girls--have a ripping time." + +"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the young +people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women drink and +smoke quite openly on the verandah." + +"You may bet your sweet life they do. They are honest, and quite as sure of +their position as you are. But tell me about father. How did mother come to +marry him? If he was such a naughty person I should think she would have +exercised the sound Ballinger instincts and thrown him down." + +"Mother met him in Washington. Grandfather Ballinger was senator at the +time--" + +"From Virginia or California?" + +"It is shocking that you do not know more of the family history. From +California, of course. He had great gifts and political aspirations, +and realized that there would be more opportunity in the new state-- +particularly in such a famous one--than in his own where all the men +in public life seemed to have taken root--I remember his using that +expression. So, he came here with his bride, the beauty of Richmond--" + +"Oh, Lord, I know all about her. Remember the flavor in my mother's milk--" + +"Well, you'd look like her if you had brown eyes and a white skin, and if +your mouth were smaller. And until you learn to stand up straight you'll +never have anything like her elegance of carriage. However....Of course +they had plenty of money--for those days. They had come to Virginia in the +days of Queen Elizabeth and received a large grant of land--" + +"Don't fancy I haven't heard _that_!" + +"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--" + +"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his +ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!" + +"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new community, +and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that small band of +social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs. Hunt McLane, the +Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the Gearys, the Talbots, +the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom's grandmother--" + +"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother, +although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she was a +leader herself and 'money wasn't everything.' We never had so much of it +anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle old house--" + +Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were +talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was. + +"This house and its traditions are sacred--" + +"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast man." + +"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He was a +young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the first year of +the war and returned at once to California; of course he had been one of +the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by no means poor. Of +course in Washington he was asked to the best houses. At that time he was +very ambitious and absorbed in politics and the advancement of California. +Afterward he renounced Washington for reasons I never clearly understood; +although he told me once that California was the only place for a man +to live; and--well--I am afraid he could do more as he pleased out here +without criticism--from men, at least. The standards--for men--were very +low in those days. But when he met mother--" + +"Was mother ever very pretty?" + +"She was handsome," replied Mrs. Abbott guardedly. "Of course she had the +freshness and roundness of youth. I am told she had a lovely color and the +brightest eyes. And she had a beautiful figure. She had several proposals, +but she chose father." + +"And had the devil's own time with him. She let out that much this +morning." + +"I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was +determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child's brain +was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at the +revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the problem of +"handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made generalities. + +"Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time and +held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever accused him +of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes more than one +reform to his determination and ability. + +"He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, for +he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; what men +call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a brilliant group of +disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married +women here have always been great gossips. Well--you may as well know +it--it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary, +who are the most abstemious of men--he drank and gambled and had too much +to do with those unspeakable women.... + +"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he +hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks), +he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only +have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off +when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after +marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a +visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys +a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married. +But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he +had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her +share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her +share of the Ballinger estate--not very much." + + + +VII + + +"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?" + +"Mother did everything a good woman could do." + +"Maybe she was too good." + +"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good." + +"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has +different tastes." + +"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower +herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father." + +"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why didn't +mother get a divorce?" + +"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been +divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very dear friends +had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I didn't approve +even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home." + +"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for +instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and he +was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I did +decide to marry Mr. Dwight--mind, I don't say I care the tip of my little +finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have to admit +that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he doesn't drink, +or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works hard and is as steady +as--I was going to say as a judge, but I've been told that all judges, in +this town at least, are not as steady as you think. Anyhow, he is. His +family is as old as ours, even if it did have reverses or something. And +you can't deny that he is a gentleman, every inch of him." + +"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But--well, he +was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents. He +admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a broker's +office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it." + +"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what power +you have left." + +She rose and stretched and yawned in a most unladylike fashion. + +"I'm going to make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little chat +with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can stop me, for +you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! We shall have to +shout. It will be more than proper. Good night, darling." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora Dwight with a quick turn of a strong and supple wrist flung a folding +chair up through the trap door of the roof. She followed with a pitcher of +water, opened the chair, and sat down. + +It was the second day of the fire, which was now raging in the valleys +north of Market Street and up the hills. It was still some distance from +all but the lower end of Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that divides the +eastern and western sections of the city, as Market Street divides the +northern and southern, and her own home on Geary Street was beyond Franklin +and safe for the present. It was expected that the fire would be halted +by dynamiting the blocks east of the avenue, but as it had already leapt +across not far from Market Street and was running out toward the Mission, +Gora pinned her faith in nothing less than a change of wind. + +Life has many disparate schools. The one attended by Miss Gora Dwight had +taught her to hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be thankful +if she escaped (to use the homely phrase; one rarely found leisure for +originality in this particular school) by the skin of her teeth. + +Gora fully expected to lose the house she sat on, and had packed what few +valuables she possessed in two large bags: the fine underclothes she had +made at odd moments, and a handsome set of toilet articles her brother had +given her on the Christmas before last. He had had a raise of salary and +her experiment with lodgers had proved even more successful than she had +dared to hope. On the following Christmas he had given her a large book +with a fancy binding (which she had exchanged for something she could +read). After satisfying the requirements of a wardrobe suitable for the +world of fashion, supplemented by the usual toll of flowers and bon-bons, +he had little surplus for domestic presents. + +Gora's craving for drama was far deeper and more significant than young +Alexina Groome's, and she determined to watch until the last moment the +terrific spectacle of the burning city. The wind had carried the smoke +upward for a mile or more and pillars of fire supported it at such +irregular intervals that it looked like a vast infernal temple in which +demons were waging war, and undermining the roof in their senseless fury. + +In some places whole blocks of houses were blazing; here and there high +buildings burned in solitary grandeur, the flames leaping from every window +or boiling from the roof. Sometimes one of these buildings would disappear +in a shower of sparks and an awful roar, or a row of humbler houses was +lifted bodily from the ground to burst into a thousand particles of flying +wood, and disappear. + +The heat was overpowering (she bathed her face constantly from the pitcher) +and the roar of the flames, the constant explosions of dynamite, the loud +vicious crackling of wood, the rending and splitting of masonry, the hoarse +impact of walls as they met the earth, was the scene's wild orchestral +accompaniment and, despite underlying apprehension and horror, gave Gora +one of the few pleasurable sensations of her life. + +But she moved her chair after a moment and fixed her gaze, no longer rapt +but ironic, on the flaming hillcrests, the long line of California Street, +nucleus of the wealth and fashion of San Francisco. The Western Addition +was fashionable and growing more so, but it had been too far away for the +pioneers of the fifties and sixties, the bonanza kings of the seventies, +the railroad magnates of the eighties, and they had built their huge and +hideous mansions upon the hill that rose almost perpendicularly above the +section where they made and lost their millions. Some wag or toady had +named it Nob Hill and the inhabitants had complacently accepted the title, +although they refrained from putting it on their cards. And now it was in +flames. + + + +II + + +Gora recalled the day when she had walked slowly past those mansions, +staring at each in turn as she assimilated the disheartening and +infuriating fact that she and the children that inhabited them belonged to +different worlds. + +Her family at that time lived in a cottage at the wrong end of Taylor +Street Hill, and, Mrs. Dwight having received a small legacy from a sister +recently deceased which had convinced her, if not her less mercurial +husband, that their luck had finally turned, had sent Gora, then a rangy +girl of thirteen, fond of books and study, to a large private school in the +fashionable district. + +Gora, after all these years, ground her teeth as she had a sudden blighting +vision of the day a week later, when, puzzled and resentful, she had walked +up the steep hill with several of the girls whose homes were on California +and Taylor Streets, and two of whom, like herself, were munching an apple. + +They had hardly noticed her sufficiently to ignore her, either then or +during the previous week, so absorbed were they in their own close common +interests. She listened to allusions which she barely could comprehend, but +it was evident that one was to give a party on Friday night and the others +were expected as a matter of course. Gora assumed that Jim and Sam and Rex +and Bob were brothers or beaux. Last names appeared to be no more necessary +than labels to inform the outsider of the social status of these favored +maidens, too happy and contented to be snobs but quite callous to the +feelings of strange little girls. + +They drifted one by one into their opulent homes, bidding one another a +careless or a sentimental good-by, and Gora, throwing her head as far back +on her shoulders as it would go without dislocation, stalked down to the +unfashionable end of Taylor Street and up to the solitude of her bedroom +under the eaves of the cottage. + +On the following day she had lingered in the school yard until the other +girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular hill so +rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a pain in her +side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the imposing homes +of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and puzzled eyes, her young +soul in tumult. It was the old inarticulate cry of class, of the unchosen +who seeks the reason and can find none. + + + +III + + +As she had a tendency not only to brood but to work out her own problems it +was several days before she demanded an explanation of her mother. + +Mrs. Dwight, a prematurely gray and wrinkled woman, who had once +been handsome with good features and bright coloring, and who wore a +deliberately cheerful expression that Gora often wanted to wipe off, was +sitting in the dining-room making a skirt for her daughter; which, Gora +reflected bitterly, was sure to be too long on one side if not in front. + +Mrs. Dwight's smile faded as she looked at the somber face and huddled +figure in the worn leather arm-chair in which Mr. Dwight spent his silent +evenings. + +"Why, my dear, you surely knew long before this that some people are rich +and others poor--to say nothing of the betwixts and betweens." She was an +exact woman in small matters. "That's all there is to it. I thought it a +good idea to send you to a private school where you might make friends +among girls of your own class." + +"Own class? They treat me like dirt. How am I of their class when they live +in palaces and I in a hovel?" + +"I have reproved you many times for exaggerated speech. What I meant was +that you are as well-born as any of them (better than many) only we have +been unfortunate. Your father tried hard enough, but he just doesn't seem +to have the money-making faculty like so many men. Now, we've had a little +luck I'm really hopeful. I've just had a nice letter from your Aunt Eliza +Goring--I named you for her, but I couldn't inflict you with Eliza. You +know she is many years older than I am and has no children. She was out +here once just before you were born. We--we were very hard up indeed. It +was she who furnished this cottage for us and paid a year's rent. Soon +after, your father got his present position and we have managed to +get along. She always sends me a little cheque at Christmas and I am +sure--well, there are some things we don't say....But this legacy from your +Aunt Jane is the only real stroke of luck we ever had, and I can't help +feeling hopeful. I do believe better times are coming....It used to seem +terribly hard and unjust that so many people all about us had so much and +we nothing, and that in this comparatively small city we knew practically +no one. But I have got over being bitter and envious. You do when you are +busy every minute. And then we have the blessing of health, and Mortimer is +the best boy in the world, and you are a very good child when you are not +in a bad temper. I think you will be handsome, too, although you are pretty +hopeless at present; but of course you will never have anything like +Mortimer's looks. He is the living image of the painting of your +Great-great-great-grandfather Dwight that used to hang in the dining-room +in Utica, and who was in the first Congress. Now, do try and make friends +with the nicer of the children." + +But Gora's was not a conciliating nor a compromising nature. Her idea +of "squaring things" was to become the best scholar in her classes and +humiliate several young ladies of her own age who had held the first +position with an ease that had bred laxity. Greatly to the satisfaction +of the teachers an angry emulation ensued with the gratifying result that +although the girls could not pass Gora, their weekly marks were higher, and +for the rest of the term they did less giggling even after school hours, +and more studying. + +But Gora would not return for a second term. She had made no friends among +the girls, although, no doubt, having won their respect, they would, with +the democracy of childhood, have admitted her to intimacy by degrees, +particularly if she had proved to be socially malleable. + +But for some obscure reason it made Gora happier to hate them all, and when +she had passed her examinations victoriously, and taken every prize, except +for tidiness and deportment, she said good-by with some regret to the +teachers, who had admired and encouraged her but did not pretend to love +her, and announced as soon as she arrived at home that she should enter the +High School at the beginning of the following term. + + + +IV + + +Her parents were secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future +prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her sister +Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but unfortunately Mrs. +Goring had amused herself with speculation in her old age, and had left +barely enough to pay her funeral expenses. + +Mrs. Dwight broached the subject of their immediate future to her husband +that evening. She had some time since made up her mind, in case the school +experiment was not a success, to furnish a larger house with what remained +of the legacy, and take boarders. + +"I wouldn't do it if Gora had made the friends I hoped for her," she said, +turning the heel of the first of her son's winter socks, "and there's no +such thing as a social come-down for us; for that matter, there is more +than one lady, once wealthy, who is keeping a boarding-house in this town. +Gora will have to work anyhow, and as for Mortimer--" she glanced fondly at +her manly young son, who was amiably playing checkers in the parlor with +his sister, "he is sure to make his fortune." + +"I don't know," said Mr. Dwight heavily. "I don't know." + +"Why, what do you mean?" asked his wife sharply. + +Mrs. Dwight belonged to that type of American women whose passions in youth +are weak and anæmic, not to say exceedingly shame-faced, but which in +mature years become strong and selfish and jealous, either for a lover or a +son. Mrs. Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had centered all the +accumulated forces of her being on the son whom she idealized after the +fashion of her type; and as she had corrected his obvious faults when he +was a boy, it was quite true that he was kind, amiable, honest, honorable, +patriotic, industrious, clean, polite, and moral; if hardly as handsome as +Apollo or as brilliant and gifted as she permitted herself to believe. + +"What do you mean?" she repeated, although she lowered her voice. It was +rarely that it assumed an edge when addressing her husband. She had never +reproached him for being a failure, for she had recognized his limitations +early and accepted her lot. But something in his tone shook her maternal +complacence and roused her to instant defense. + +Mr. Dwight took his pipe from his mouth and also cast a glance toward the +parlor, but the absorbed players were beyond the range of his rather weak +voice. + +"I mean this," he said with nothing of his usual vague hesitancy of speech. +"I'm not so sure that Morty is beyond clerk size." + +"You--you--John Dwight--your son--" The thin layer of pale flesh on +Mrs. Dwight's face seemed to collapse upon its harsh framework with the +terrified wrath that shook her. Her mouth fell apart, and hot smarting +tears welled slowly to her eyes, faded with long years of stitching; not +only for her own family but for many others when money had been more than +commonly scarce. "Mortimer can do anything. Anything." + +"Can he?" Why doesn't he show it then? He went to work at sixteen and is +now twenty-two. He is drawing just fifty dollars a month. He's well liked +in the firm, too." + +"Why don't they raise his salary?" + +"Because that's all he's worth to them. He's a good steady honest clerk, +nothing more." + +"He's very young--" + +"If a man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in his +brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two--if he has been in that +forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of this +country. And employers are always on the look-out for those qualities +and only too anxious to find them and push a young man on and up. Many +a president of a great business started life as a clerk, or even office +boy--" + +"That is what I have always known would happen to Morty. I am sure, sure, +that you are doing him a cruel injustice." + +"I hope I am. But I am a failure myself and I know what a man needs in the +way of natural equipment to make a success of his life." + +"But he is so energetic and industrious and honorable and likable and--" + +"I was all that." + +"Then--" Mrs. Dwight's voice trailed off; it sounded flat and old. "What do +you both lack?" + +"Brains." + + + +V + + +Mrs. Dwight had repeated this conversation to Gora shortly before her +death, and the girl in her reminiscent mood recalled it as she stared with +somber eyes and ironic lips at the havoc the fire was playing with those +lofty mansions which had stood to her all these intervening years as +symbols of the unpardonable injustice of class. + +She recalled another of the few occasions when Mrs. Dwight, who believed +in acceptance and contentment, had been persuaded to discuss the +idiosyncrasies of her adopted city. + +"It isn't that money is the standard here as it is in New York. Of course +there is a very wealthy set these late years and they set a pace that makes +it difficult for the older families, like the Groomes for instance--I met +Mrs. Groome once at a summer resort where I was housekeeper that year, and +I thought her very typical and interesting. She was so kind to me without +seeing me at all....But those fine old families, who are all of good old +Eastern or Southern stock--if they manage to keep in society are still the +most influential element in it....Family....Having lived in California long +enough to be one of that old set....To be, without question, one of them. +That is all that matters. I've come in contact with a good many of them +first and last in my poor efforts to help your father, and I believe the +San Franciscans to be the most loyal and disinterested people in the +world-to one another. + +"But if you come in from the outside you must bring money, or tremendous +family prestige, or the right kind of social personality with the best +kind of letters. We just crept in and were glad to be permitted to make a +living. Why should they have taken any notice of us? They don't go hunting +about for obscure people of possibly gentle blood. That doesn't happen +anywhere in the world. You must be reasonable, my dear child. That is life, +'The World.'" + +But Gora was not gifted with that form of reasonableness. She had wished in +her darker moments that she had been born outright in the working-class; +then, no doubt, she would have trudged contentedly every morning (except +when on strike) to the factory or shop, or been some one's cook. She was an +excellent cook. What galled her was the fact of virtually belonging to the +same class as these people who were still unaware of the existence of her +family, although it had lived for over thirty years in a city numbering +to-day only half a million inhabitants. + +She was almost fanatically democratic and could see no reason for +differences of degree in the aspiring classes. To her mind the only line of +cleavage between the classes was that which divided people of education, +refinement of mind manners and habits, certain inherited traditions, and +the mental effort no matter how small to win a place in this difficult +world, from commonness, ignorance, indifference to dirt, coarse pleasures. +and habits, and manual labor. She respected Labor as the solid foundation +stones upon which civilization upheld itself, and believed it to have been +biologically chosen; if she had been born in its class she would have had +the ambition to work her way out of it, but without resentment. + +There her recognition of class stopped. That wealth or family prominence +even in a great city or an old community should create an exclusive and +favored society seemed to her illogical and outrageous. A woman was a lady +or she wasn't. A man was a gentleman or he wasn't. That should be the +beginning and the end of the social code....When she had been younger +she had lamented her mean position because it excluded her from the +light-hearted and brilliant pleasures of youth; but as she grew older +this natural craving had given place to a far deeper and more corrosive +resentment. + +She had no patience with her brother's ingenuous snobbery. A good-natured +friend had introduced him to one or two houses where there were young +people and much dancing and he had been "taken up." Nothing would have +filled Gora with such murderous rage as to be taken up. She wanted her +position conceded as a natural right. + +Had it been in her power she would have forced her conception of democracy +upon the entire United States. But as this was quite impossible she longed +passionately for some power, personal and irresistible, that would compel +the attention of the elect in the city of her birth and ultimately bring +them to her feet. And here she had a ray of hope. + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile it was some satisfaction to watch them being burned out of house +and home. + +Then she gave a short impatient sigh that was almost a groan, as she +wondered if her own home would go. The family had moved into it eight years +ago; and after Mr. Dwight's death his widow had barely made a living for +herself and her daughter out of the uncertain boarders. Mortimer had paid +his share, but she had encouraged him to dress well and no one knew the +value of "front" better than he. After her death, three years ago, Gora had +turned out the boarders and the last slatternly wasteful cook and let her +rooms to business women who made their morning coffee over the gas jet. +The new arrangement paid very well and left her time for lectures at the +University of California, and for other studies. A Jap came in daily to put +the rooms in order and she cooked for herself and her brother. So unknown +was she that even Aileen Lawton was unaware that the "boarding-house down +on Geary Street" was a lodging house kept by Mortimer Dwight's sister. +Fortunately Gora was spared one more quivering arrow in her pride. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +There was a tremendous burst of dynamite that rocked the house. Then she +heard her brother's voice: + +"Gora! Gora! Where are you?" + +She let herself through the trap door and ran down to the first floor. + +Her brother was standing in the lower hall surrounded by several of their +lodgers, competent-looking women, quite calm and business like, but dressed +as for a journey and carrying suitcases and bags. + +"You are all ordered out," he was saying. "A change of the wind to the +south would sweep the fire right up this hill, and it may cross Van Ness +Avenue again at any time. So everybody is ordered out to the western hills, +or the Presidio, or across the Bay, if they can make it." + +He had no private manners and greeted his sister with the same gallant +smile and little air of deference which always carried him a certain +distance in public. "You had better take out a mattress and blanket," he +said. "I wish I could do it for you--for all of you--but I am under orders +and must patrol where I am sent. When I finish giving the orders down here +I must go back to the Western Addition." + +"Don't worry about us," said Gora drily. "We are all quite as capable as +men when it comes to looking out for ourselves in a catastrophe. I hear +that several wives led their weeping stricken husbands out of town +yesterday morning. Are you sure the fire will cross Van Ness Avenue +to-night?" + +"It may be held back by the dynamiting, but one can be sure of nothing. Of +course the wind may shift to the west any minute. That would save this part +of the city." + +"Well, don't let us keep you from your civic duties. You look very well in +those hunting boots. Lucky you went on that expedition last summer with Mr. +Cheever." + +Mortimer frowned slightly and turned to the door. The brother and sister +rarely talked on any but the most impersonal subjects, but more than once +he had had an uneasy sense that she knew him better than he knew himself. +His consciousness had never faced anything so absurd, but there were times +when he felt an abrupt desire to escape her enigmatic presence and this was +one of them. + + + +II + + +The lodgers were permitted by the patrol to cook their luncheon on the +stove that had been set up in the street, the orders being that they should +leave within an hour. After their smoky meal they departed, carrying +mattresses and blankets. + +Gora had no intention of following them unless the flames were actually +roaring up the block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. She felt +quite positive that she could outrun any fire. + +The last of the lodgers, at her request, shut the front door and made a +feint of locking it, an unnecessary precaution in any case as all the +windows were open; and as the sentries had been ordered to "shoot to kill," +and had obeyed orders, looting had ceased. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death, she +had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin bluish +green material and there were several pieces of good furniture that she had +picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered with book shelves +which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter nights and they were filled +with the books she had found in second-hand shops. A number of them bore +the autographs of men once prosilient in the city's history but long since +gone down to disaster. There were a few prints that she had found in the +same way, but no oils or water colors or ornaments. She despised the +second-rate, and the best of these was rarely to be bought for a song even +at auction. + +She sighed as she reflected that if obliged to flee to the hills there was +practically nothing she could save beyond the contents of her bags; but at +least she could remain with her treasures until the last minute, and she +pinned the curtains across the small windows and lit several candles. + +Between the blasts of dynamite the street was very quiet. She could hear +the measured tread of the sentry as he passed, a member of the Citizens' +Patrol, like her brother. Suddenly she heard a shot, and extinguishing the +candles hastily she peered out of a window from behind the curtains. The +sentry was pounding on a door opposite with the butt of his rifle. It was +the home of an eccentric old bachelor who possessed a fine collection of +ceramics and a cellar of vintage wine. + +The door opened with obvious reluctance and the head of Mr. Andrew Bennett +appeared. + +"What you doin' here?" shouted the sentry. "Haven't all youse been told +three hours ago to light out for the hills? Git out--" + +"But the fire hasn't crossed Van Ness Avenue. I prefer--" + +"Your opinion ain't asked. Git out." + +"I call that abominable tyranny." + +"Git out or I'll shoot. We ain't standin' no nonsense." + +Gora recognized the voice as that of a young man, clerk in a butcher shop +in Polk Street, and appreciated the intense satisfaction he took in his +brief period of authority. + +Mr. Bennett emerged in a moment with two large bags and walked haughtily up +the street at the point of the bayonet. Gora stood expectantly behind her +curtain, and some ten minutes later saw him sneak round the eastern end of +his block, dart back as the sentry turned suddenly, and when the footsteps +once more receded run up the street and into his house. She laughed +sympathetically and hoped he would not be caught a second time. + + + +II + + +Suddenly another man, carrying a woman in his arms, turned the same corner. +He was staggering as if he had borne a heavy burden a long distance. + +Gora ran down to the first floor and glanced out of the window of the front +room. The sentry had crossed the far end of the street and was holding +converse with another member of the patrol. As the refugee staggered past +the house she opened the front door and called softly. + +"Come up quickly. Don't let them see you." + +The man stumbled up the steps and into the house. + +"You can put her on the sofa in this room." Gora led the way into what had +once been the front parlor and was now the chamber of her star lodger. "Is +she hurt?" + +The man did not answer. He followed her and laid down his burden. Gora +flashed her electric torch on the face of the girl and drew back in horror. + +"Dead?" + +"Yes, she is dead." The young man, who looked a mere boy in spite of his +unshaven chin and haggard eyes, threw himself into a chair and dropping his +face on his arms burst into heavy sobs. + +Gora stared, fascinated, at the sharp white face of the girl, the rope of +fair hair wound round her neck like something malign and muscular that had +strangled her, the half-open eyes, whose white maleficent gleam deprived +the poor corpse of its last right, the aloofness and the majesty of death. +She may have been an innocent and lovely young creature when alive, but +dead, and lacking the usual amiable beneficencies of the undertaker, she +looked like a macabre wax work of corrupt and evil youth. + +And she was horribly stiff. + + + +III + + +Gora went into the kitchen and made him a cup of coffee over a spirit lamp. +He drank it gratefully, then followed her up to the attic as she feared +their voices might be overheard from the lower room. There he took the easy +chair and the cigarette she offered him and told his story. + +The young girl was his sister and they were English. She had been visiting +a relative in Santa Barbara when a sudden illness revealed the fact that +she had a serious heart affection. He had come out to take her home +and they had been staying at the Palace Hotel waiting for suitable +accommodations before crossing the continent. + +His sister--Marian--had been terrified into unconsciousness by the +earthquake and he had carried her down the stairs and out into Market +Street, where she had revived. She had even seemed to be better than usual, +for the people in their extraordinary costumes, particularly the opera +singers, had amused her, and she had returned to the court of the hotel +and listened with interest to the various "experiences." Finally they had +climbed the four flights of stairs to their rooms and he had helped her to +dress--her maid had disappeared. They had remained until the afternoon when +the uncontrolled fires in the region behind the hotel alarmed them, and +with what belongings they could carry they had gone up to the St. Francis +Hotel, where they engaged rooms and left their portmanteaux, intending to +climb to the top of the hill, if Marian were able, and watch the fire. + +Half way up the hill she had fainted and he had carried her into a house +whose door stood open. There was no one in the house, and after a futile +attempt to revive her, he had run back to the hotel to find a doctor. But +among the few people that had the courage to remain so close to the fire +there was no doctor. The hotel clerk gave him an address but told him +not to be too sure of finding his man at home as all the physicians were +probably attending the injured, helping to clear the threatened hospitals, +or at work among the refugees, any number of women having embraced the +inopportune occasion to become mothers. + +The doctor whose address was given him not only was out but his house was +deserted; and, distracted, he returned to his sister. + +He knew at once that she was dead. + +He sat beside her for hours, too stunned to think....It was some time +during the night that the roar of the fire seemed to grow louder, the smoke +in the street denser. Then it occurred to him that the inhabitants of +this house as well as of the doctor's, which was close by, would not have +abandoned their homes if they had not believed that some time during the +night they would be in the path of the flames. And he had heard that the +pipes of the one water system had been broken by the earthquake. + +He had caught up the body of his sister and walked westward until, worn +out, he had entered the basement of another empty house, and there he had +fallen asleep. When he awakened he was under the impression for a moment +that he was in the crater of a volcano in eruption. Dynamite was going off +in all directions, he could hear the loud crackling of flames behind his +refuge; and as he took the body in his arms once more and ran out, the fire +was sweeping up the hill not a block below. + +In spite of the smoke he inferred that the way was clear to the west, and +he had run on and on, once narrowly escaping a dynamiting area where he +saw men like dark shadows prowling and then rushing off madly in an +automobile...dodging the fire, losing his way, once finding himself +confronting a wall of flames, finally crossing a wide avenue...stumbling +on...and on.... + + + +IV + + +Gora decided that blunt callousness would help him more than sympathy. He +had recovered his self-control, but his eyes were still wide with pain and +horror. + +"Cremation is a clean honest finish for any one," she remarked, lighting +another cigarette and offering him her match. "I should have left her if +she had been my sister in that first house...." + +"I might have done it--in London. But...perhaps I was not quite myself....I +couldn't leave her to be burned alone in a strange country. Besides, the +horror of it would have killed my mother. Marian was the youngest. I felt +bound to do my best....Perhaps I didn't think at all....If this house is +threatened I shall take her out to the Presidio, where I happen to know a +man--Colonel Norris. Thanks to your hospitality I can make it." + +"But naturally you cannot go very fast...and these sentries...I am not +sure....I don't see how you escaped others...the smoke and excitement, I +suppose....I think if you are determined to take her it would be better if +I helped you to carry her out to the cemetery. We can put her on a narrow +wire mattress and cover her, so that it will look as if we were rescuing an +invalid. Out there you can put her in one of the stone vaults. Some of the +doors are sure to have been broken by the earthquake." + +The young man, who had given his name as Richard Gathbroke, gratefully +rested in her brother's room while she kept watch on the roof. It was night +but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well as the +approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks fell on the +roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making him welcome to +her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious water. When he joined +her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and she saw that he looked +both older and younger than Americans of his age; which, he had told her, +was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled face was now composed and his hazel +eyes were brilliant and steady. He had a tall trim military body, and very +straight bright brown hair; a rather conventional figure of a well-bred +Englishman, Gora assumed; intelligent, and both more naif and more +worldly-wise than young Americans of his class: but whose potentialities +had hardly been apprehended even by himself. + +They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a +spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small tins +of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the smaller +bedrooms to the front room on the first floor. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +The patrol had been relieved by another, an older man, and sober. He +merely reproved them for disobeying orders, glanced sympathetically at the +presumed invalid, and directed them to one of the temporary hospitals some +blocks farther west. + +Gora, like all imaginative people, had a horror of the corpse, and averted +her eyes from the head of the dead girl outlined under the veil she had +thrown over it, Gathbroke was obliged to walk backward, and as both were +extremely uncomfortable, there was no attempt at conversation until they +reached the gates of the old cemetery the great pioneers had called Lone +Mountain and their more commonplace descendants rechristened Laurel Hill. + +The glare of the distant fire illuminated the silent city where a thousand +refugees slept as heavily as the dead, and as they ascended the steep path +they examined anxiously the vaults on either side. Finally Gora exclaimed: + +"There! On the right." + +The iron doors of a once eminent resident's last dwelling had been half +twisted from their rusty hinges. Gathbroke threw his weight on them and +they fell at his feet. He and Gora carried in the body and lifted it to an +empty shelf. + +"Good!" Gora gave a long sigh of relief. "Nothing can happen to her now. +Even the entrance faces away from the fire and there is nothing but grass +in the cemetery to burn, anyhow." She held her electric torch to the +inscription above the entrance. "Better write down the name--Randolph. +There's one of the tragedies of the sixties for you! An Englishman the +hero, by the way. Nina Randolph is a handful of dust in there somewhere. +Heigho! What's the difference, anyway? Even if she'd been happy she'd be +dead by this time--or too old to have a past." + +Gathbroke replaced the gates, for he feared prowling dogs, and they walked +down to the street and sat on the grass, leaning against the wall of the +cemetery, as dissociated as possible from the rows of uneasy sleepers. + + + +II + + +They slept a little between blasts of dynamite, the snoring of men and +women and cries of children; finally at Gora's suggestion climbed to the +steep bare summit of Calvary to observe the progress of the fire. + +The unlighted portion of the city beneath them looked like a dead planet. +Beyond was a tossing sea of flame whose far-reaching violent glare seemed +to project it illimitably. + +"Nothing can stop it!" gasped Gora; and that terrific red mass of energy +and momentum did look as if its only curb would be the Pacific Ocean. + +They talked until morning. He was very frank about himself, finding no +doubt a profound comfort in human companionship after those long hours of +ghastly communion down in that flaming jungle. + +He was a younger son and in the army, not badly off, as his mother made him +a goodish allowance. She had come of a large manufacturing family in the +North and had brought a fortune to the empty treasury of the young peer she +had--happily for both--fallen in love with. + +He had wanted to go into business--politics later perhaps--after he left +Eton, feeling that he had inherited some of the energy of his maternal +grandfather, but his mother had insisted upon the army and as he really +didn't care so very much, he had succumbed. + +"But I'm not sure I shan't regret it. It isn't as if there were any +prospect of a real war. I'd like a fighting career well enough, but not +picayune affairs out in India or Africa. I can't help thinking I have a +talent for business. Sounds beastly conceited," he added hastily. It was +evident that he was a modest youth. "But after all one of us should inherit +something of the sort. Perhaps, later, who knows? At least I can thank +heaven that I wasn't born in my brother's place. He likes politics, and his +fate is the House of Lords. A man might as well go and embalm himself at +once. Do you know Gwynne? Elton Gwynne? John Gwynne he calls himself out +here." + +"I've heard of him. He's been written up a good deal. I don't know any one +of that sort." + +"Really? Well, don't you see? he inherited a peerage; grandfather died and +his cousin shot himself to cover up a scandal. Gwynne was in the full tide +of his career in the House of Commons and simply couldn't stand for it. +He cut the whole business and came out here where he and his mother had +a large estate--Lady Victoria's mother or grandmother was a +Spanish-Californian. Of course he chucked the title. He's a sort of cousin +of mine and I looked him up, and dined with him the other night. He was +born in the United States, by a fluke as it were, and has made up his mind +to be an American for the rest of his life and carve out a political +career in this country. I'd have done the same thing, by Jove! First-class +solution...although it's a pretty hard wrench to give up your own country. +But when a man is too active to stagnate--there you are....I wish I had +known where to find him to-day, but he lives on his ranch and I've +only seen him once since. Lady Victoria took me to a ball night before +last--Good God! Was it only that?...and we were to have met again for lunch +to-day." + +"It is very easy and picturesque to renounce when you possess just about +everything in life! If I attempted to renounce any of my privileges, for +instance. I should simply move down and out." + + + +III + + +He turned his head and regarded her squarely for the first time. Heretofore +she had been simply a friend in need, a jolly good sport, incidentally a +female. If she had been beautiful he should have noted that fact at once, +for he could not imagine the circumstances in which beauty would not exert +an immediate and powerful influence, however transitory. + +Miss Dwight was not beautiful, but he concluded during that frank stare +that her face was interesting; disturbingly so, although he was unable at +the moment to find the reason. It was possible that in favorable conditions +she would be handsome. + +She had a mass of dark brown hair that seemed to sink heavily over her low +forehead until it almost met the heavy black eyebrows. She had removed her +hat and the thick loose coils made her look topheavy; for the face, if wide +across the high cheek-bones and sharply accentuated with a salient jaw, was +not large. The eyes were a light cold gray, oval and far apart. Her nose +was short and strong and had the same cohibitive expression as the straight +sharply-cut mouth--when not ironic or smiling. Her teeth were beautiful. + +She had put on her best tailored suit and he saw that her "figger" was good +although too short and full for his taste. He liked the long and stately +slenderness that his own centuries had bred. But her hands and well-shod +feet were narrow if not small, and he decided that she just escaped +possessing what modern slang so aptly expressed as "class," Possibly it was +the defiance in her square chin, the almost angry poise of her head, that +betrayed her as an unwilling outsider. + +"Bad luck!" he asked sympathetically. + +She gave him a brief outline of her family history, overemphasizing +as Americans will--those that lay any claim to descent--the previous +importance of the Dwights and the Mortimers in Utica, N.Y. Incidentally, +she gave him a flashlight picture of the social conditions in San +Francisco. + +He was intensely interested. "Really! I should have said there would be the +complete democracy in California if anywhere. Of course no Englishman of my +generation expects to find San Franciscans in cowboy costume; but I must +say I was astonished at the luxury and fashion not only at those Southern +California hotels, where, to be sure, most of the guests are from your +older Eastern states, but at that ball Lady Victoria took me to. It was +magnificent in all its details, originality combined with the most perfect +taste. Of course there were not as many jewels as one would see at a great +London function, but the toilettes could not have been surpassed. And as +for the women--stunning! Such beauty and style and breeding. I confess I +didn't expect quite all that. Miss Bascom, Miss Thorndyke, and an exquisite +young thing, Miss Groome--" + +"Oh, those are the haute noblesse." Gora's tipper lip curled satirically. +"No doubt they lay claim that their roots mingle with your own." + +"Well, we'd be proud of 'em." + +"That was the Hofer ball, wasn't it! Do you mean to say that Alexina Groome +was there? Mrs. Groome, who is the most imposing relic of the immortal +eighties, is supposed to know no one of twentieth-century vintage." + +"I am sure of it. I danced with her twice and would have jolly well liked +to monopolize her, but she was too plainly bowled over by a fellow--your +name, by Jove--Dwight. Good-looking chap, clean-cut, fine shoulders, danced +like a god--if gods do dance. I'm an awful duffer at it, by the way." + +"Mortimer? Is it possible? And he--was he bowled over?" + +"Ra--ther! A case, I should say." + +"How unfortunate. Of course he hasn't the ghost of a chance. Mrs. Groome +won't have a young man inside her doors whose family doesn't belong root +and branch to her old set. Fine prospect for a poor clerk!" + +"Jove! I've a mind to stay and try my luck. Oh!" He dropped his face in his +hands. "I'm forgetting!" + +"Well, forget again." Gora's voice expressed more sympathy than she felt. +She deeply resented his immediate acceptance of her social alienage, even +relegating her personal appearance to another class than that of the +delicate flora he had seen blooming for the night against the most artful +background of the season. + +However...he was the first man she had ever met in her limited experience +who seemed to combine the three magnetisms....Who could tell.... + +"I should be delighted if you would cut my brother out before it goes any +further," she said untruthfully. "It will save him a heartache....Where +could you meet her now? Society is disrupted here. But of course Mr. Gwynne +visits down the peninsula. He could take you to any one of those exclusive +abodes where you would be likely to meet the little Alexina. She is only +eighteen, by the way." + +"That is rather young," he said dubiously. "I don't fancy her conversation +would be very interesting, and, after all, that is what it comes down to, +isn't it? I've been disappointed so often." He sighed and looked quite +thirty-five. "Still, she has personality. Five or six years hence she may +be a wonder....I don't think I'd care about educating and developing a +girl--I like a pal right away....What an ass I am, rotting like this. Tour +brother has as much chance as I have. Younger sons with no prospect of +succession are of exactly no account with the American mamma. I've met a +few of them." + +"Oh, I fancy birth would be enough for Mrs. Groome. She's quite dotty on +the subject, and the people out here are simpler than Easterners, anyhow. +Simpler and more ingenuous." + +"How is it you know so much about it, all, if you are not, as you +say--pardon me--a part of it?" + +"I wonder!" She gave a short hard little laugh. "I don't know that I could +explain, except that it all has seemed to me from birth a part of my blood +and bones and gristle. An accident, a lucky strike on my father's part when +he first came out here, and they would know me as well to-day as I know +them. And then...of course...it is a small community. We live on the +doorsteps of the rich and important, as it were. It would be hard for us +not to know. It just comes to us. We are magnets. I suppose all this seems +to you--born on the inside--quite ignominious." + +"Well, my mother would have remained on the outside--that is to say a quiet +little provincial--if her father hadn't happened to make a fortune with his +iron works. I can understand well enough, but, if you don't mind my saying +so, I think it rather a pity." + +"Pity?" + +"I mean thinking so much about it, don't you know? I fancy it's the result +of living in a small city where there are only a few hundred people between +you and the top instead of a few hundred thousand. I express, myself so +badly, but what I mean is--as I make it out--it is, with you, a case of +so near and yet so far. In a great city like London now (great in +generations--centuries--as well as in numbers) you'd just accept the bare +fact and go about your business. Not a ghost of a show, don't you see? Here +you've just missed it, and, the middle class always flowing into the upper +class, you feel that you should get your chance any minute. Ought to have +had it long ago....I can't imagine, for instance, that if my mother had +married the son of my grandfather's partner that I should have wasted much +time wondering why I wasn't asked to the Elizabethan Hail on the hill. Of +course I don't mean there isn't envy enough in the old countries, but it's +more passive...without hope...." + +He felt awkward and officious but he was sorry for her and would have +liked to discharge his debt by helping her toward a new point of view, if +possible. + +She replied: "That's easy to say, and besides you are a man. My brother, +who is only a clerk in a wholesale house, has been taken up and goes +everywhere. They don't know that I even exist." + +"Well, that's their loss," he said gallantly. "Can't you make 'em sit tip, +some way? Women make fortunes sometimes, these days, And they're in about +everything except the Army and Navy. Business? Or haven't you a talent of +some sort? You have--pardon me again, but we have been uncommonly personal +to-night--a strong and individual face...and personality; no doubt of +that." + +Gora would far rather he had told her she was pretty and irresistible, but +she thrilled to his praise, nevertheless. It was the first compliment she +had ever received from any man but the commonplace and unimportant friends +her brother had brought home occasionally before he had been introduced to +society; he took good care to bring home none of his new friends. + +Her heart leapt toward this exalted young Englishman, who might have +stepped direct from one of the novels of his land and class...even the +stern and anxious moderns who had made England's middle-class the fashion, +occasionally drew a well-bred and attractive man from life....She turned to +him with a smile that banished the somber ironic expression of her face, +illuminating it as if the drooping spirit within had suddenly lit a torch +and held it behind those strange pale eyes. + +"I'll tell you what I've never told any one--but my teacher; I've taken +lessons with him for a year. He is an instructor in the technique of the +short story, and has turned out quite a few successful magazine writers. He +believes that I have talent. I have been studying over at the University to +the same end--English, biology, psychology, sociology. I'm determined not +to start as a raw amateur. Oh! Perhaps I have made a mistake in telling +you. You may be one of those men that are repelled by intellectual women!" + +"Not a bit of it. Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't +like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that are +so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder sister--she's +thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, although she doesn't +pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any but clever and +exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents hate it--she lives +alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. My grandfather Doubleton +liked her a lot and left her two thousand a year. I wish you knew her. She +is charming and feminine, as much so as any of those I met at the ball; and +so are many of the women that go to her flat--" + +"Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way +of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under her +fingernail. + +Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes. + +"Well...not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the +fighter...but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he added +hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns were lowering +at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit." + +Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have +said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I had +worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair marcelled like +every other woman present--except those embalmed relics of the seventies, +who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a great ball is given, +and appear in a built-up red-brown wig....And a string of pearls round my +throat? My neck and arms are quite good; although I've never possessed an +evening gown, I know I'd look quite well in one...my best." + +He laughed. "It does make a difference. I wish you had been there. I am +sure you are as good a dancer as you are a pal. But still...I think I +should have recognized the fighter, even if you had been born in the +California equivalent for the purple. I fancy you would have found some +cause or other to get your teeth into once in a while. Tell me, don't +you rather like the idea of taking Life by the throat and forcing it to +deliver?" + +"I wonder?...perhaps...but that does not mitigate my resentment that I am +on the outside of everything when I belong on the in. I should never have +been forced to strive after what is mine by natural right." + +"Well, don't let it make a socialist of you. That is such a cheap revenge +on society....Confession of failure; and nothing in it." + + + +IV + + +He looked at his watch: "Eight o'clock. I'll be getting on to the Presidio. +Why don't you come with me?" + +Gora's feminine instincts arose from a less perverted source than her +social. She shook her head with a smile. + +"I don't want to go any farther from my house. I shall slip down my first +chance; and I have plenty to eat. Perhaps you will come to see me before +you go if my house is spared." + +"Rather. What is the number? And if the house goes I'll find you somehow." + +He took her hand in both his and shook it warmly. "You are the best pal in +the world--" + +"Now don't make me a nice little speech. I'm only too glad. Go out to the +Presidio and get a hot breakfast and attend--to--to your affairs. I am sure +everything will be all right, although you may not be able to get away as +soon as you hope." + +"I don't like leaving you alone here--" + +"Alone?" She waved her hand at the hundreds of recumbent forms in the +cemeteries and on the lower slopes of Calvary. "I probably shall never be +so well protected again. Please go." + +He shook her hand once more, ran down the hill, turned and waved his cap, +and trudged off in the direction of the Presidio. + + + +V + + +She slept in her own house that night, for dynamiting by miners summoned +from Grass Valley by General Funston, and a change of wind, had saved +the western portion of the city. For the first time in her life Gora +experienced a sense of profound gratitude, almost of happiness. She felt +that only a little more would make her quite happy. Her lodgers, even her +absorbed brother, noticed that her manner, her expression, had perceptibly +softened. She herself noticed it most of all. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +Gathbroke met Alexina Groome again a week later. + +On Saturday, when the fire was over, and she could retreat decently and +in good order, Mrs. Groome, to her young daughter's secret anguish, had +consented to rest her nerves for a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's home +in Alta. + +As Gora had predicted, Gathbroke found that it would have been hardly more +difficult to move his sister's body, now at an undertaker's in Fillmore +Street, out of the state in war-time than in the wake of a city's disaster, +which was scattering its population to every point of the railroad compass. +He had refused the space in the baggage car offered to him by the company; +it should: be a private car or nothing; and for that, in spite of all the +influence Gwynne and his powerful friends could bring to bear, he must +wait. + +Meanwhile Gwynne had asked him to stay with himself and his mother, Lady +Victoria Gwynne, at the house of his fiancée, Isabel Otis, on Russian Hill; +a massive cliff rising above one of the highest of the city's northern +hills, whose old houses, clinging to its steep sides had escaped the fire +that roared about its base. To-day it was a green and lofty oasis in the +midst of miles of smoking ruins. + +Gathbroke was as nervous as only a young Englishman within his immemorial +armor can be. Gwynne, who had gone through the same nerve-racking crisis, +although from different causes, understood what he suffered and pressed him +into service in the distribution of government rations, and garments to +the different refugee camps. But Gathbroke had the active imagination of +intelligent youth, and he never forgot to blame himself for lingering in +New York with some interesting chaps he had met on the _Majestic_, and +afterward in Southern California, seduced by its soft climate and violent +color. Unquestionably, if he had stayed on his job, as these expressive +Americans put it, his sister would have been in New York, possibly on the +Atlantic Ocean when San Francisco shook herself to ruin. + +"But not necessarily alive," said Lady Victoria callously, removing her +cigar, her heavy eyes that looked like empty volcanos, staring down over +the smoldering waste. "People with heart disease don't invariably wait for +an earthquake to jolt them out of life. Assume that her time had come and +think of something else or you'll become a silly ass of a neurotic." + +Gwynne, more sympathetic, continued to find him what distraction he could, +and one day drove him down the Peninsula with a message from the Committee +of Fifty to Tom Abbott; who had caught a heavy cold during those three days +when he had driven a car filled with dynamite and had had scarcely an hour +for rest. He was now at home in bed. + + + +II + + +The Abbott's place, Rincona, stood on a foothill behind the other estates +of Alta and surrounded by a park of two hundred acres set thick with +magnificent oaks. Gathbroke had never seen finer ones in England or France. +Gwynne before entering the avenue drove to an elevation above the house and +stopped the car for a moment. + +The great San Mateo valley looked like a close forest of ancient oaks +broken inartistically by the roofs of houses shorn of their chimneys. +Beyond, on the eastern side of a shallow southern arm of the Bay of San +Francisco, was the long range of the Contra Costa mountains, its waving +indented slopes incredibly graceful in outline and lovely in color. Gwynne +had pointed out their ever changing tints and shades as they drove through +the valley; at the moment they were heliotrope deepening to purple in the +hollows. + +Behind the foothills above Rincona rose the lofty mountains which in +Maria Abbott's youth had seemed to tower above the valley a solid wall of +redwoods; but long since plundered and defaced for the passing needs of +man. + +"Great country--what?" said Gwynne, starting the car. "You couldn't pry me +away from it--that is, unless I have the luck to represent it in Washington +half the year. You'll be coming back yourself some day." + +"I? Never. I hate the sight of its grinning blue sky after the red horror +of those three days. I haven't seen a cloud as big as my hand, and in +common decency it should howl and stream for months." + +"Well, forget it for a day. Perhaps you will be placed next the fair +Alexina at luncheon--" + +"Alexina...?" + +"Groome. You must have met her at the Hofer ball." + +"She--what--possible--" + +Gwynne looked at his stuttering and flushed young cousin and burst into +laughter. + +"As bad as that, was it? Well, she's not bespoken as far as I know. Wade in +and win. You have my blessing. She is almost as beautiful as Isabel--" + +"She's quite as beautiful as Miss Otis." + +"Oh, very well. No doubt I'd think so myself if I hadn't happened to meet +Isabel first, and if I were not too old for her anyway." + +Gwynne could think of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a +flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a living +companion for his trying journey to England so much the better. + +Gathbroke's excitement subsided quickly. He was in no condition for +sustained enthusiasm. He felt as if quite ten years had passed since he +had half fallen in love with Alexina Groome in a ball room that was now +a charred heap in the sodden wreck of a city he barely could conjure in +memory. + +Besides, he had half fallen in love so often. And she was too young. He had +really been more drawn to that strange Miss Dwight; upon whom, however, he +had not yet called. + +He felt thankful that the girl _was_ too young for his critical taste. He +wanted nothing more at present in the way of emotions. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Rincona had been named in honor of Rincon Hill, where Tom Abbott's +grandmother had reigned in the sixties; a day, when in order to call on her +amiable rival, Mrs. Ballinger, her stout carriage horses were obliged to +plow through miles of sand hills, and to make innumerable détours to avoid +the steep masses of rock, over which in her grandson's day cable car and +trolley glided so lightly until that morning of April eighteen, nineteen +hundred and six. + +When her husband, in common with other distinguished citizens, bought an +estate in the San Mateo Valley, she named it Rincona, to the secret wrath +of other eminent ladies who had not thought of it in time. + +The house had as little pretensions to architectural beauty as others +of its era, but it was a large compact structure of some thirty rooms, +exclusive of the servants' quarters, and with as many outbuildings as a +Danish, farm. Long French windows opened upon a wide piazza, whose pillars +had disappeared long since under a luxuriant growth of rose vines and +wistaria. At its base was a bed of Parma violets, whose fragrance a +westerly breeze wafted to the end of the avenue a quarter of a mile away. +All about the house, breaking the smooth lawns, were beds and trees of +flowers, at this time of the year a glowing exotic mass of color; but in +the park that made up the greater part of the estate exclusive of the +farms, the grass under the superb oaks was merely clipped, the weeds +and undergrowth removed. The oaks had been evenly shorn of their lower +branches, which gave them a formal and somewhat arrogant expression, as of +cardinals and kings lifting their skirts. + +Alexina hated the enormous rooms with their high frescoed ceilings and +heavy Victorian furniture; but Maria Abbott loved and revered the old +house, emblem that it was of a secure proud family that had defied that +detestable (and disturbing) old phrase: "Three generations from shirt +sleeves to shirt sleeves." The Abbotts, like the Ballingers and Groomes +and Gearys and many others of that ilk, had not come to California in the +fifties and sixties as adventurers, but with all that was needed to give +them immediate prestige in the new community; and, among those that still +retained their estates in the San Mateo Valley, at least, there was as +little prospect of their reversion to shirt sleeves as of their conversion +to the red shirt of socialism. Their wealth might be moderate but it was +solid and steadfast. + + + +II + + +The entertaining of the Abbotts, Yorbas, Hathaways, Montgomerys, Brannans, +Trennahans, and others of what Alexina irreverently called the A.A., had +always been ostentatiously simple, albeit a butler and a staff of maids had +contributed to their excessive comfort. In the eighties, evening toilettes +during the summer were considered immoral; but by degrees, as time tooled +in its irresistible modernities, they gradually fell into the habit of +wearing out their winter party gowns at the evening diversions of the +country season. Burlingame, that borough of concentrated opulence founded +in the early nineties as a fashionable colony, began its career with +a certain amount of simplicity; but its millions increased to tens of +millions; and what in heaven's name, as Mrs. Clement Hunter, a leader and +an individual, once remarked, is the use of having money if you don't dress +and entertain as you would dream of dressing and entertaining if you didn't +have a cent? + +Mrs. Hunter, who had formed an incongruous and somewhat hostile alliance +with Mrs. Abbott, knew that her valuable friend, like others of that "small +and early" band, resented the fact that their standards no longer counted +outside of their own set. Mrs. Abbott had turned a haughty shoulder to Mrs. +Hunter for a time, for she remembered her as, in their school days, the +socially obscure Lidie McKann; now, however, her husband turning all he +touched to gold, she had, incredibly, become one of the most important +women in San Francisco and Burlingame. + +When Maria Abbott finally succumbed she assured herself that curiosity to +see the more ambushed glitter of that meretricious faubourg had nothing +to do with it; it was easy to persuade herself that she hoped, being an +indisputably smart woman herself, gradually to impose her simpler and more +appropriate standards upon these people who sorely threatened the continued +dominance of the old régime. + +Mrs. Hunter soon disabused her of any such notion, and during the early +days of their acquaintance, after Mrs. Abbott came to one of her luncheons +attired in a pique skirt and severe shirtwaist, impeccably cut and worn, +but entirely out of place in an Italian palace, where forty fashionable +women, some of whom had motored sixty miles to attend the function, were +dressed as they would be at a Newport luncheon, Mrs. Hunter attended the +next solemn affair at Rincona so overdressed and made up that the outraged +Altarinos (as Alexina irreverently called them) were reduced to a horrified +silence that was almost hysterical. + +But one morning Mrs. Abbott caught Mrs. Hunter digging in her private +vegetable garden behind the palace, and wearing a garment that her second +gardener's wife would have scorned, her unblemished face beaming under a +battered straw hat. Both women had the humor to laugh, and their intimacy +dated from that moment, Mrs. Hunter confessing that stuff on her face made +her sick; but adding that she adored dress and thought that any rich woman +was a fool who didn't. + +After that there was a compromise on both sides. Mrs. Hunter lunched or +dined at Rincona in her simplest frocks and Mrs. Abbott wore her best when +honoring Mrs. Hunter and others at Burlingame. She even went so far as to +have some extremely smart silk voiles (the fashionable material of the +moment) and linens made, and when asked to a wedding, a garden party, or +a great function given to some visitor of distinction, complimented the +occasion to the limit of her resources. + + + +III + + +Mrs. Hunter, in white duck, a sailor hat perched above her angular somewhat +masculine face, was sitting on the Abbott verandah as the two Englishmen +drove up. She waved her cigarette and cried gayly in her hearty resonant +voice: + +"Two men! What luck! And in time for lunch. I've hardly seen a man since +the first day of the fire. Leave your car anywhere and come in out of the +sun. I'll call Maria, and, incidentally, mention whiskey and soda." + +"The whiskey and soda is all right," said Gwynne mopping his brow; Nature, +having wreaked her worst on California, seemed determined to atone by +unseasonably brilliant weather, and the day under the blazing blue vault +was very hot. + +Mrs. Abbott appeared in a few moments, smiling, cool, in immaculate white, +the collar of her shirtwaist high and unwilted. Her weather-beaten face +looked years older than Mrs. Hunter's, who, although plain by comparison +with the once beautiful Maria Groome, had treated her clean healthy skin +with marked respect. + +But as the butler had preceded her with whiskey and soda and ice, Mrs. +Abbott might already have achieved the mahogany tints of her mother and she +would have been regarded as enthusiastically by two hot and dusty men. + +"Of course you will stay to luncheon," she said as naturally as she had +said it these many years, and as two hospitable generations had said it on +that verandah before her. She turned to young Gathbroke with a smile, for +Mrs. Hunter, who was in her confidence, had detained her for a moment with +a few sharp incisive words. "I have a very bored little sister, who will be +glad to sit next to a young man once more." + +And although Gathbroke almost frowned at this fresh reminder of the callow +years of the girl whose sheer loveliness had haunted his imagination, +he went off with a not disagreeable titillation of the nerves, at Mrs. +Abbott's suggestion, to find her in the park and bring her back to luncheon +in half an hour. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +He was light of step and made no sound on the heavy turf; he saw her +several minutes before she was aware of his presence and stood staring at +her, feeling much as he had done during the progress of the earthquake. + +She was standing under one of the great oaks whose lower limbs had been +trimmed so evenly some seven feet above the ground that they made a compact +symmetrical roof above the dark head of the girl, who, being alone, had +abandoned the limp curve of fashion and was standing very erect, drawn up +to her full five feet seven. Alexina had no intention of being afflicted +with rounded shoulders when the present mode had passed. + +But her face expressed no guile as she stood there in her simple white +frock with a bunch of periwinkles in her belt, her delicate profile turned +to Gathbroke as she gazed at the irregular majesty of the Coast Range, dark +blue under a pale blue haze. He had retained the impression of starry eyes +and vivid coloring and eager happy youth, a body of perfect slenderness +and grace, whose magnetism was not that of youth alone but personal and +individual. + +Now he saw that although her fine little profile was not too regular, and +as individual as her magnetism, the shape of her head was classic. It was +probable that she was not unaware of the fact, for its perfect lines and +curves were fully revealed by the severe flatness of the dusky thickly +planted hair, which was brushed back to the nape of her neck and then drawn +up a few inches and flared outward. The little head was held high on the +long white stem of the throat; and the pose, with the dropping eyelids, +gave her, in that deep shade, the illusion of maturity. Gathbroke realized +that he saw her for the moment as she would look ten years hence. Even the +full curved red lips were closed firmly and once the nostrils quivered +slightly. + +The narrow black eyebrows following the subtle curve of her eyelids, the +low full brow with its waving line of soft black hair, seemed to brood over +the lower part of the face with its still indeterminate curves, over the +wholly immature figure of a very young girl. + +Gathbroke surrendered then and there. This radiation of mystery, of +complexity, this secret subtle visit of maturity to youth, the hovering +spirit of the future woman, was unique in his experience and went straight +to his head. He forgot his sister, dismissed the thought of Dwight with a +gesture of contempt. He might be modest and rather diffident in manner, +owing to racial shyness, but he had a fine sustaining substructure of sheer +masculine arrogance. + + + +II + + +As he walked forward swiftly Alexina turned; and immediately was the young +thing of eighteen and of the early twentieth century. Her spine drooped +into an indolent curve, her soft red lips fell apart, her black-gray eyes +opened wide as she held out her hand to the young Englishman. + +"How nice! I never really expected to see you again. I understood Lady +Victoria to say you were merely passing through." + +Alexina had not cast him a thought since the night of the ball but she was +hospitable and feminine. + +"I was detained." + +She noted with intense curiosity that his bright color paled and his +sparkling hazel eyes darkened with a sudden look of horror; but the spasm +of memory passed quickly, and once more he was staring at her with frank +capitulation. + +Alexina's head went up a trifle. She was still new to conquest, and +although she had met more than one pair of admiring eyes in the course of +the past season, and received as many compliments as the vainest girl could +wish, few men had had the courage to storm the stern fortress on Ballinger +Hill, or to sit more than once in a drawing-room so darkly reminiscent of +funeral ceremonies that a fellow's nerves began to jump all over him. + +Nor had her fancy been even lightly captured until Mortimer Dwight, that +perfect hero of maiden dreams, had swept her off her dancing feet on the +most memorable night of her life. + +She had quite made up her mind to marry him. The indignant silent hostility +of the family (even Mrs. Ballinger, her moment of weakness passed, having +been swung to the horrified Maria's point of view) had been all that was +necessary to convince the young Alexina that fate had sent her the complete +romance. She hoped the opposition would drive her to an elopement; little +dreaming of the horror with which Mr. Dwight would greet the heterodox +alternative. + +Mrs. Abbott had had a valid excuse for not asking him down: provisions +were scarce, and, so Tom said, he was doing useful work in town. But Olive +Bascom, whose country home was in San Mateo, had invited him for the next +week end, and he had accepted. Alexina was to be one of the small house +party, and there were many romantic walks behind San Mateo. A moon was also +due. + + + +III + + +Still Gathbroke might have entered the race with an even chance, for +maidens of eighteen are merely the blind tools of Nature, had not the +family made the mistake of displaying too warm an approval of the eligible +young Englishman. Mrs. Groome, Mrs. Abbott, Aunt Clara, reënforced even by +the more worldly Mrs. Hunter, who, however, had no children of her own, +treated him throughout the luncheon with an almost intimate cordiality and +a lively personal interest; whereas, if Mrs. Abbott had been driven to keep +her word and invite Mortimer Dwight to her historic board she would have +depressed him with the cool pleasant detachment she reserved for those whom +she knew slightly and cared for not at all; Mrs. Groome, automatically +gracious, would have retired within the formidable fortress of an exterior +built in the still more exclusive eighties; Aunt Clara would have sat +petrified with horror at the desecration; and Mrs. Hunter, free from the +obligations of hospitality, would have been brusque, frankly supercilious, +made him as uncomfortable as possible. + +All this Alexina angrily resented, not knowing that their amiability was +in part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of his +cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him as a +possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them all, even +Mrs. Hunter, acute anxiety. + +Young Gathbroke was handsomer than Dwight. He was younger, and his +circumstances were far more romantic, if romance Alexina must have. It was +plain that he was fascinated by the dear silly child, who, in her turn, +would no doubt promptly forget the ineligible Dwight if the Englishman +proved to be serious and paid her persistent court. + +Nevertheless Gathbroke, before the luncheon was half over, felt that he was +making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on one of +those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive mind, that +these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all its harrowing +details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness +with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a +natural gayety and light chaff that had come back for a moment. + +Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and knew +that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the girl, who, +he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, was making a +desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man. + +Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous +orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris and +revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to add a +British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's possible +torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather despised him +for his surrender before battle, or at all events for hauling down his flag +publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine satisfaction to the calm +smiling dominance, combined with utter devotion, of the man who had won +her as easily as she had conquered Richard Gathbroke. That the young +Englishman's nature was hot and tempestuous, with depths that even he had +not sounded, and her ideal knight's more effective mien but the expression +of a possibly meager and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart +was a well-trained organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that +young Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower +girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was far +too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge would have +affected her had she possessed it. She was in the obstinate phase of +first youth, common enough in girls of her sheltered class, where the +opportunities to study men and their behavior are few. Having persuaded +herself that she was far more romantic than she really was, and that there +would be no possible happiness or indeed interest in life after youth, she +had conceived as her ideal mate the dominant male, the complete master, and +easily persuaded herself that she had found him in Mortimer Dwight....If +she married Gathbroke he would be her slave (so little did she know him.). +Dwight would be her master. (So little did she know him, or herself.) + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +After luncheon, grinning amiably when Mrs. Abbott hinted that Englishmen +liked to be out of doors, she led Gathbroke to the confines of the park, +where they sat down under one of the oaks that reminded him of England; for +which he was in truth desperately homesick, and never more so than at this +moment. + +Everything combined to make him realize uneasily his youth. In England +a man of twenty-three was a man-of-the-world if he had had the proper +opportunities; but this girl who had infatuated him, and even the far more +sympathetic Miss Dwight, made him feel that he was a mere boy; and so had +this entire family, however unwittingly. + + + +II + + +He spoke of Miss Dwight suddenly, for Alexina, who had been duly +enlightened while the men were smoking with Tom, had tactfully conveyed her +sympathy, her eyes almost round with fascinated horror and curiosity. + +He set his teeth and gave a rapid but graphic account of the whole dreadful +episode, willing to interest her at any price; and Alexina, sitting +opposite on the ground, her long spine curved, her long arms embracing her +knees, listened with a breathless interest, spurring him to potent words, +even to stressing of detail. + +"My goodness gracious me!" she ejaculated when he paused. "I should have +gone raving mad. You are a perfect wonder. I never heard of anything so +gor--perfectly thrilling. And that girl, what did you say her name was?" + +Gathbroke, who had purposely withheld it, said explosively: + +"Dwight." + +"Dwight?" + +"I think she is a sister of a friend of yours." And he was made as +miserable as he could wish by a crimson tide that swept straight from her +heart pump up to her widow's peak. + +"Dwight? Sister? I didn't know he had one. I saw him several times during +the fire and he didn't mention her." + +"I suspect he was too absorbed." Gathbroke muttered the words, but man's +instinct of loyalty to his own sex is strong. "A city doesn't burn every +day, you know." + +"Still...what is she like? Like him?" + +"I do not remember him at all...She? Oh, she has a tremendous amount of +dark hair that looks as if falling off the top of her head and down her +face. Uncommonly heavy eyebrows, and very light gray--Ah, I have it! I have +been groping for the word ever since--sinister eyes....That is the effect +in that dark face. She has a curious character, I should think. Not very +frank. She--well, she rather struck me as having been born for drama; +tragic drama, I am afraid." + +"Not a bit like her brother. How old is she?" + +"Twenty-two, she told me." + +"What--what does she do? They are not a bit well off." + +He hesitated a moment. "Well--as I recall it, she is studying something or +other at the University of California." + +"And of course she boards down there with her brother, who takes care of +her while she is studying to be a teacher or something." Alexina having +arranged it to her satisfaction dismissed the subject. She had no mind to +betray herself to this good-looking young Englishman who had been sent +to her providentially on a very dull day. He would, no doubt, have been +frantically interesting if he had not been so idiotic as to fall head over +ears the first shot. + +Still...Alexina examined him covertly as he transferred his gaze for a +moment to the mountains across the distant bay, swimming now in a pale +blue mist with a wide banner of pale pink above them....If she had met him +first, or had never met the other at all...who knew? + + + +III + + +Alexina, for all her passion for romance, had a remarkably level head. She +was quite aware that there had been a certain amount of deliberation in her +own headlong plunge, convinced as she was that high romance belonged to +youth alone, and fearful lest it pass her by; aware also that a part of +Dwight's halo, aside from his looks and manners and chivalrous charm, +consisted in his being a martyr to an unjust fate, and, as such, under the +ban of her august family. It was all quite too perfect....But if Gathbroke +had come first his qualifications might have proved quite as puissant, and +no doubt Tom Abbott, who retained his school-history hatred of the entire +English race, would have provided the opposition and perhaps influenced the +family. + +She swept her intoxicating lashes along the faint bloom high on her olive +cheeks and then raised her eyes suddenly to the tormented ones opposite. +She also smiled softly, alluringly, as little fascinating wretches will who +know nothing of the passions of men. + +"I think you should follow Mr. Gwynne's example and stay here with us." He +thought of silver chimes and contrasted her voice with Gora Dwight's angry +contralto: he always thought of Gora in phrases. "So many Englishmen live +out here and adore it." + +"I'm perfectly satisfied with my own country, thank you." + +Alexina, who was feeling intensely American at the moment, curled her lip. +"Oh, of course. We have had plenty of those, too. Scarcely any of them +becomes naturalized. Just use and enjoy the country and give as little in +return as possible." + +"Really? I fancy they must give rather a lot in return or they would hardly +be tolerated. No native has worked harder than Elton these last days. +I understand most of them are in business or ranching and have married +California girls." + +"Oh, they have redeeming points." And then having satisfied her curiosity +as to how hazel eyes looked when angry she gave him a dazzling smile. "We +love them like brothers, and that is a proof that we are not snobbish, +for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's class--just middle-class +business people at home." + +"Well, you are a business nation, so why not? I have met hardly any but +business men out here and I feel quite at home with them. My mother's +family are in trade and I enjoy myself immensely when I visit them." + +"Oh!" His halo slipped....Still, what did it matter? "I suppose you told +me that to let me know you didn't need to come out here in search of an +heiress. But many of our most charming girls are not. Just now it seems to +me that more young men in California have money than girls...but they are +so uninteresting." + +She looked pathetic, her mouth drooped; then she smiled at him confidingly. + +He knew quite as well as if he had not been hard hit that she was flirting +with him, but as long as she gave him his chance to win her she might do +her transparent little best to make a fool of him. + +"Have you ever been in love?" asked Alexina softly. + +"Oh, about half-way several times, but always drew back in time...knew it +wasn't the real thing...Youth fools itself, you know, for the sake of the +sensation--or the race. Have you?" + +"Oh--" Alexina lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time her +color did not flow. "How is one to tell...a girl in her first season...when +all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with them, when you have +been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a glimpse of life even in +vacation. My New York relatives are terribly old-fashioned. It's great +fun to give one man all the dances and watch the dado of dowagers look +disapproving." And once more she gave him the quick smile of understanding +that springs so spontaneously between youth and youth. + +"Well...you might have given all those dances to me the other night, +instead of to that fellow Dwight." + +"Oh, but you see, I had already promised them to him. Lady Victoria always +comes so late." + +"That's true enough." His spirits rose a trifle. + +"When do you go--back to England, I mean? Not for a good long time, I hope. +We have awfully good times down here. Janet Maynard and Olive Bascom live +at San Mateo in the summer, and Aileen Lawton at Burlingame. They are my +chums and we'd give you a ripping time. We'd like to have you take away the +pleasantest possible memory of California instead of such a terrible one. I +don't mean anything very gay of course. You mustn't think I'm heartless." +And she showed the lower pearl of her eyes and looked like a madonna. + +"I'm afraid I must go soon. I've had an extension of leave already, and +Hofer told me just before we left to-day that he thought he could let me +have his private car inside of a week. They've been using it." + + + +IV + + +There was not a dwelling in sight. The quiet of that old park with its +brooding oaks was primeval. Behind her was the pink and blue glory of sky +and mountain. Her eyes were like stars. + +He burst out boyishly: "If I only had more time! If only I could have met +you even when I first came to San Francisco...before...before...I'd--I'd +like to marry you. It's fearfully soon to say such a thing. I feel like a +fool. But I'm not the first man to fall madly in love at first sight...and +you...you...If I tell you now instead of waiting it's because there's so +little time. Would you...do you think you could marry me?" + +"Oh! Ah!" (She almost said Ow.) After all it was her first proposal. She +was thrilled in spite of the fact that she was in love with another man, +for she felt close to something elemental, hazily understood...something +in her own unsounded depths rushed to meet it. + +But he was too young, and too "easy," and she didn't like his gray flannel +shirt; which, laundry being out of the question, he had bought in Fillmore +Street almost opposite the undertaker's. + +"Suppose we correspond for a year? That is, if you must really go so soon." + +"I must. I want you to go with me." + +His eyes had turned almost black and he had set his jaw in a way she didn't +like at all. In nerving himself to go through the ordeal he had worked up +his fermenting mind into a positively brutal mood. + +"Oh--mercy! I couldn't do that. My people are the most conventional in the +world." + +The situation was getting beyond her. She had not intended to make him +propose for at least a week and then he would have been abject and she +majestic. She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that made +her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at bay as +it were, looked at him with a little frown. + +He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less. + +"Are you refusing me outright?" he demanded. "That would be only fair, you +know, if I have no chance." + +"Well....I think so. That is--" + +"Do you love another man?" + +Coquetry flashed back. Nevertheless, she told the exact truth little as she +suspected it. + +"I love myself, and youth, and life, and liberty. What is a man in +comparison with all that?" + +"This." And before she could make another leap he had her in his arms; and +under the fire of his lips and eyes she lay inert, intoxicated, her first +flash of young passion completely responsive to his. + +But only for a moment. + +She wrenched herself away, her face livid, her eyes black with fury. She +beat his chest with her fists. + +"You! You! How I hate you! To think I should have given that to you...to +think that another man should have been the first to kiss me...I'm in love +with another man, I tell you. Why don't you go? I hate myself and I never +want to lay eyes on you again. Go! Go! Go!" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +During the retreat from Mons and again in those black days of March, +nineteen-eighteen, Gathbroke's tormented mind snapped from the present and +flashed on its screen so startling a resurrection of himself during those +last dreadful days in San Francisco that for the moment he was unconscious +of the world crashing about him. + +He saw himself in long days and nights of anguish and despair, of +embittered love and baffled passion: youth enjoying one of its divine +prerogatives and the fullness thereof! + +Pacing the floor of his room on Russian Hill, tramping over the mountains +across the Bay, doggedly awaiting that sole alleviation of mental suffering +in its early stages, a change of scene. + +Finally the Hofer car was placed at his disposal and he started on his four +days' journey to New York; and this brief chapter, that his friends +thought so gruesome, was the least of his afflictions. The memory of his +twenty-four hours or more of close physical association with his sister's +corpse made any subsequent adventure with the dead seem tame. And at least +he was leaving behind him a State which seemed to have magnetized him +across six thousand miles to experience the horror and misery she had +in pickle for him. He reveled in the audible rush of the train that was +carrying him farther every moment from the girl who had cut down into the +core of his heart and left her indelible image on a remarkably good memory. + + + +II + + +He had asked himself one day--it was his last in California and he had +taken his courage in his teeth and was on his way to call on Gora Dwight at +last, picking his steps through, the still smoking ruins down to Van Ness +Avenue--whether it would be possible for any man to suffer twice in a +lifetime as he had suffered since that hideous moment at Rincona, coming as +it did on top of an uncommon and terrible experience that had racked his +nerves and soul as it might not have done had he been seasoned by war or +even a few years older. At all events it had left him with no reserves even +in his pride to fight his failure and his loss. + +In that shrieking hell of August twenty-sixth, or again when lying +abandoned and gassed in a way-side hut during that ominous retreat of the +Fifth Army, when he had a sudden close vision of himself, trousers tucked +into a pair of Gwynne's hunting boots, swearing now and again as he stepped +on a hot brick; and heard his groping ego whisper the question through his +prostrate mind, he was tempted to answer aloud, to shout "No" above the +shrieking of shells and the groans of men fallen about him. + +He might no longer love Alexina Groome after twelve or even eight years of +complete severance; and, indeed, save in flashing moments like these he had +seldom thought of her after the first two or three years; but at least she +had taken the edge from his power to suffer. + +He had lost his mother soon after his return with the body of her youngest +child, his father had died three years later, and he had accepted these +griefs with the composure of maturity. Although he had had some agreeable +adventures (not that he had had much time for either women or society) +he had taken devilish good care not to get in too deep--even if he still +possessed the power to love at all, which he doubted. + +He remembered also, what he had almost forgotten, that during that walk it +had come to him with the sharpness of surprise that the image of the girl +who clung to his mind with the tentacles of a devil-fish, was as he had +seen her standing under the oak tree while unaware of his presence: older, +a more dignified and thoughtful figure, a woman old enough to be his mate +in something more than youthful passion, the ideal woman of vague sweet +dreams; not as the thoughtless little coquette who had tempted him to ruin +his chances by acting like a cave brute. + +Given a fortnight longer, during which he remained master of himself +instead of a young fool with a smashed temperament, and the unfledged woman +in her, whose subtle projection he had witnessed during that moment of his +capitulation, would have recognized him as her mate; as for the moment she +had in his arms. + +Not the least of his ordeals during those last days was the inevitable call +on Gora Dwight. He felt like a cad, after what she had been to him at the +end of an appalling experience, to have let, nearly three weeks go by with +no apparent recognition of her existence. But he had been unable to find +a messenger, there was no post; and then, after his ill-starred visit to +Rincona, he had forgotten her until his final visit to the undertaker; when +she had seemed to stand, an indignant and reproachful figure, at the head +of the casket. + + + +III + + +He had a note in his pocket and hoped she would be out. But she opened the +door herself, and her dark face, thinner than he recalled it, flushed and +then turned pale. But she said calmly as she extended her hand: "Come in. +I wondered what had become of you." "I'm sorry. But--perhaps--you can +understand--it was not easy for me to come here!" + +"Of course. Come up to my diggings." + +He followed her up to the attic studio, where as before he took the easy +chair and accepted one of her cigarettes; which he professed to be grateful +for as his were exhausted and every decent brand in town had gone up in +smoke. + +Gora was deeply disappointed that she had received no warning of his call, +for she possessed an extremely becoming and richly embroidered silk Chinese +costume, as red as the flames that had devoured Chinatown a few days after +she had bought it at a bankrupt sale. She had put it on every afternoon for +a week, hoping and expecting that he would call; and now that she had on +her second-best tailored suit, and a darned if immaculate shirtwaist, +he had chosen to turn, up!...But at least the lapels of the jacket had +recently been faced with red, and it curved closely over her beautiful +bust. Moreover, she had just finished rearranging the masses of her rich +brown hair when the bell rang. + +And she had him for a time, perhaps for an hour! She set out the tea things +as an intimation of the refreshment he would get at the proper time.... + +She too had suffered during this past interminable fortnight, but Gora was +far more mature than the young Englishman, upon whom life until the last +few weeks had smiled so persistently. She was too complex, she had suffered +in too many ways, from too many causes, not all of them elevating, to be +capable upon so short a notice, even after a night of unique companionship, +of such whole-souled agony and despair. In her imagination, her sense of +drama, her vanity, in the fading of vague dazzling hopes of a future to +which he held the key, and perhaps a little in her stormy heart, she had +felt a degree of harsh disappointment, but she had already half-recovered; +and as she sat looking at his ravaged face she wondered that the death of a +sister, no matter how harrowing the conditions, could make such a wreck of +any man. + +He told her of his difficulties in finding some one to remove the body from +the vault to the undertaker's, of the delay in obtaining a private car, +gave her some idea of his disorganized life since they had parted, but made +no mention of Alexina Groome or Rincona. Then he politely asked her if she +had any new plans for the future. Nobody seemed to look forward to the same +old life. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders with a movement expressive of irritation. "My +brother, who is engaged to Alexina Groome, insists that I give up this +lodging house." + +"Oh, so they are engaged?" Gathbroke lit another cigarette, and his hand +did not tremble; he felt as if his nerves had been immersed in ice water +and frozen. + +"Yes--marvelously. The family, as might be expected, is furious. But the +girl is mad about him and of age. She is just a foolish child and should be +locked up. My brother is not in the least what she imagines him. She wrote +me a letter. Good heaven! One would think she had captured the prince of +a fairy tale, or the hero of an old romantic novel. There should be a +law prohibiting girls from marrying before they are twenty-two at +least....However, the thing is done. And my brother is terribly afraid +they'll find out that I keep a lodging house. He's given them to understand +we both board here. They are prime snobs and so is he. I never dreamed it +was in him until he began to go about in society, but then you never +know what is in anybody. Otherwise, he is harmless enough, and a good +industrious boy, but he'll never make the money to keep up with that set, +and she won't have much. It's a stupid affair all round...." + +"I've refused to budge until he finds me a job. He certainly cannot support +me, even if I were willing to be supported by any one. As far as I am +concerned they could know I kept a lodging house and welcome. It is honest +and it gives me a good living; and, what I value more, many hours of +freedom. But Mortimer is not only positively terrified they'll find it out, +but he is as obstinate over it as--well, as that kind of man always is. +He's looking about, and I fancy my fate is stenography or bookkeeping: I +took a course at a business college shortly before my mother died. I don't +know that he'd like that much better; he hinted that I might be a librarian +in a small town. But I'll be hanged if I fall for that." + +Gathbroke smiled. "Not that. You don't belong to the country town. But I +fancy you'll have to give up the lodging house. Elton Gwynne took me down +the Peninsula one day, and--well--I don't fancy they would stand for it. +Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over. They may talk democracy, +and really modify themselves a bit, but there are certain things they'd +choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't even try. Better +give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I don't fancy you'd +stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. You've got to know and +be more or less intimate with them all--" + +"I'll not be patronized by them. I don't know that I'll go near them. For +years I've resented that I was not one of them, but I don't fancy tagging +in after my brother, treated with pleasant courteous resignation, invited +once a year to a family dinner, and quite forgotten on smart occasions." + +"Quite so. I like your spunk. Have you thought of being a nurse? All work +is hard and I should think that would be interesting. Must meet a jolly lot +of people. You should see the becoming uniforms the London nurses wear. +Prettiest women on the street, by Jove." + +Her heart sank but she replied evenly: "Not a bad idea. I've quite enough +saved to take the course comfortably--" + +He had a flash of memory. "And that would give you time to win your +reputation as a writer. Then the nursing would be merely one more +resource." + +"It was nice of you to remember that. I'll consider the nursing +proposition, and when you have your next war I'll go over and nurse you. +That part of it--a war nurse--would be mighty interesting." + +The words were spoken idly, merely to avert a pause, and forgotten as soon +as uttered. But as a matter of fact the next time they met was when he +looked up from his cot in the hospital after he had been retrieved from the +hut by two of his devoted Tommies, and saw the odd pale eyes of Gora Dwight +close above his own. + + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Gora closed the door of Mrs. Groome's room as the clock struck two, the old +Ballinger clock that had seemed to toll the hours on a deep note of solemn +acquiescence for the past six weeks. + +She crossed the hall and entered Alexina's room without knocking. Mortimer, +during the past fortnight, had moved from the room adjoining his wife's to +one at the back of the house, lest it should be necessary to call Alexina +in the night. He worked very hard. + +Alexina still occupied her old room in the front of the house where the +creaking eucalyptus trees sometimes brushed the window pane. It had been +refurnished and fitted in various elusive shades of pink by Mrs. Abbott as +her wedding present. There was a dim point of light above a gas jet and +Gora saw that Alexina was asleep. The pillows were on the floor. She was +lying flat, her arms thrown out, the dusky fine mass of her hair spread +over the low head board. Her clear olive cheeks were pale with sleep and +her eyelashes looked like two little black clouds. + +Gora watched her for a moment. Why awaken the poor child? She was sleeping +as peacefully as if that tall old clock of her forefathers had not tolled +out the last of another generation of Ballingers. Her soft red lips were +half parted. + +It was now three years since her marriage but she still looked like a very +young girl. Gora always felt vaguely sorry for her although she seemed +happy enough. At all events it was quite obvious that she did little +thinking except when she remembered to wish for a baby. + +Gora wore the white uniform of a nurse, and a little cap with wings on the +coronet of her heavy hair. It was a becoming costume and made her eyes in +their dark setting look less pale and cold. + +She had a secret contempt for most of the old conventions but she had +given her word to awaken Alexina the moment any change occurred, and she +reluctantly shook her sister-in-law's shoulder. + + + +II + + +Alexina sprang out of bed on the instant. + +"Mother?" she cried. "Is she worse?" + +Gora nodded. + +Alexina made a dart for the door, but Gora threw a strong arm about her. +Those arms had held more than one violent man in his bed. "Better wait," +she said softly. + +Alexina's body grew rigid as she slowly drew back on Gora's arm and stared +up at her. In a moment she asked in a hard steady voice: "Is my mother +dead?" + +"Yes. It was very sudden. I had no time to telephone for the doctor; to +call you. She was sleeping. I was sitting beside her. Suddenly I knew that +she had stopped breathing--" + +"Would you mind telephoning to Maria and Sally? Maria will never forgive +herself--but mother seemed so much better--" + +"I will telephone at once. Shall I call Mortimer?" + +"No. Why disturb him?" + +Gora, watching Alexina, saw a curious remoteness enter the depths of her +eyes, and her own narrowed with something of her old angry resentment. +In this hour of profound sorrow, when the human heart is quite honest, +Alexina, however her conscious mind might be averted from the fact, +regarded Mortimer Dwight as an outsider, an agreeable alien who had no +permanent place in the immense permanency of the Ballinger-Groomes. She +wanted only her own family, her own inherent sort. Sally had hastened to +California as soon as her mother's illness had been pronounced dangerous, +and had stayed in the house until a week ago when she had been ordered by +the doctor to Santa Barbara to get rid of a heavy cold on her chest. She +had telegraphed the day before that she was threatened with pneumonia, and +Maria, assured that her mother was in no immediate danger, had gone down to +spend two days with her. + +Possibly Alexina caught a flash from the mind of this strange and +interesting sister-in-law, for she added hastily: + +"You know how hard Mortimer works, poor dear. And I do not feel in the +least like crying. I shall write telegrams to Ballinger and Geary: my +brothers, you know." (Gora ground her teeth.) "It was too sad they could +not get here, but Ballinger is in South America and Geary on a diet. I +must also write a cablegram to an old friend of mine who has married a +Frenchman, Olive de Morsigny. She was always so fond of mother. Would you +also mind telephoning to Rincona about seven?" + +"I'll do all the telephoning. Go back to bed as soon as possible. It is +only a little after two." As Gora turned to leave the room Alexina put her +hand on her arm and summoned a faint sweet smile. + +"I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Gora dear, how grateful we all are. +You have been simply wonderful--" + +"I am a good nurse if I do say it myself," said Gora lightly. "But you must +remember there are others quite as good; and that I--". + +"I know you would do your duty as devotedly by any stranger." Alexina +interrupted her with sweet insistence. "But it has been wonderful to be +able to have you, all the same. It has also given me the chance to know you +at last, and I shall never quite let you go again." + +Gora, to her secret anger, had never accustomed herself to the unswerving +graciousness of these people, and all that it implied, but her sharp mind +had long since warned her that as she had neither the position nor the +training to emulate it, at least she must not betray a sense of social +inferiority by open resentment. + +Her voice was deep and naturally abrupt but she achieved a fair imitation +of Alexina's sweet cordiality. "It has meant quite as much to me, Alexina, +I can assure you. And now that I am on my own and shall have a day or two +between cases I know where I shall spend them. I am only too thankful that +I graduated in time to take care of dear Mrs. Groome. Write your telegrams +and I will give them to the doctor when he comes. I must telephone to him +at once." + + + +III + + +After she had gone Alexina wrote not only her telegrams and cablegrams, but +the "letters to follow." It was nearly four o'clock when she finished. Old +Dr. Maitland had not yet come and she put her bulletins on the table in the +hall. + +She heard Gora moving about her mother's room and retreated into her own. +She did not want to go to her mother yet nor did she care particularly +to see Gora again, although she had certainly been very nice and a great +comfort to them all. + +Alexina was quite unaware that her attitude to her sister-in-law was one of +unconsicous condescension, of a well-bred determination never to wound the +pride of a social inferior. She found Gora an "interesting personality" and +quite extraordinarily efficient. + +It had been the greatest relief to all the family when that very capable +Miss Dwight--Gora, that is; one must remember--had been brought by Dr. +Maitland to take charge of the case after Mrs. Groome's cardiac trouble +became acute and she demanded constant attention. + +Gora had slept in Mrs. Groome's bedroom for six weeks, relieved for several +hours of the afternoon by a member of the family or one of Mrs. Groome's +many anxious friends. It was her first case and it interested her +profoundly. Moreover, her personal devotion placed her for the moment on a +certain basis of equality with a family whose mental processes were quite +transparent to her contemptuous mind. She was excessively annoyed with +herself for still caring, but the roots were too deep, and there had been +nothing in her life during the past three years to diminish her fierce +sense of democracy as she interpreted it. + +Alexina had never given a thought to her sister-in-law's psychology, +although the sensitive plates of her brain received an impression now and +again of a violent inner life behind that business-like exterior. But she +had seen little of her until lately, and during the past six weeks her mind +had been too concentrated upon her mother's sufferings and possible danger +to have any disposition for analysis. + +She certainly did not feel the least need of her now. She wished, indeed, +that she had asked Aileen to remain in the house last night. Aileen was +her own age, they had been intimate since childhood, often without the +slightest regard for each other's feelings, and was more like a sister than +even dear Sally and Maria. + +Suddenly she determined to go to her. She had her own latch key and would +disturb no one but Aileen. She dressed herself warmly and slipped down +stairs and out of the house. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +The city below--the new solid city--was obliterated under a heavy fog, +pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged dark +rocks in that white and tranquil sea. + +On Angel Island and on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells were +tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond the +Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. The bells +sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other sound in the +sleeping city. + +Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the hood +over her head. + +As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with something of +a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she had expressed to +Gora her reluctance to disturb him. + +She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the house at +four o'clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl friend when any +other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) would have flown to +her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms. + +And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as +irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He +assuredly would have said just the right things to her and not have +resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest. + +On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only was +he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was unorthodox, and +he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly. + +Well, she didn't want him and that was the end of it. He didn't fill the +present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had quite +measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made love +charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager +spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o'clock every evening +never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately +afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that they +made a "stunning couple" and that people commented upon their good looks, +their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in nature's +coloring. + + + +II + + +Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her +mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she knew +that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the suddenness of her +mother's death, and that her emotions would be fluid a few hours hence. + +They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother's illness. +As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent him the +insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a modest +exporting and importing house, that being the only business of which he had +any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested that he open an +insurance office, or start himself in any business where little capital +besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs. Groome's advisors they were +averse to launching any of her moderate fortune on a doubtful venture. But +Dwight had insisted that he was more likely to succeed in a business he +understood than in one of which he knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed +with him. Judge Lawton and Abbott paid over the insurance money with the +worst grace possible. + +And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His aunt +Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore soon +after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been recapitalized +and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring's executor had sold her stock for +something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering the proceeds, as +directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, Mortimer and Gora Dwight. + +Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever Harrison +and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a department in +time and safely anchored for life; but he had taken the step, and she +reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a business with +which he had been associated for fourteen years, she knew his energy and +powers of application, and she resented the attitude of "the family." +Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had consented to +invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to make immediate +restitution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his "stock did go up" +with the family, particularly as he seemed to be doing well and had the +reputation of working harder than any young man on the street. As he had +anticipated, a good deal of business was thrown his way. + +He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome's invitation to live with +her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the current +expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would she be lonely +without the child of her old age, but she must desire that Alexina continue +to live in the conditions to which she was accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome +consented to accept would not have kept them in a fashionable family hotel, +much less an apartment with several servants. + +Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live +across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their offspring +never ceased. + +Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed "simply great," +and had continued to feed from her mother's hand even in the matter of pin +money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to put his surplus +profits back in his business; all he could spare he needed for "front," to +say nothing of pleasant little dinners at restaurants to their hospitable +young friends; who thought it no adequate return to be asked to dine on +Ballinger Hill. + +Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have +done, considering the "hard times;" or at least she would have preferred +that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly allowance; +she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure supported by her +husband. + +However, she and her mother assured each other that he was bound to make a +fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large as that of +Sibyl Thorndyke, who had married Frank Bascom. + +It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete +words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no +responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her imagination +on that plane sometimes called the fool's paradise. + + + +III + + +She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for children. +They would have been the real thing, given a serious translation to life. + +But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and +with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long +chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have asked +for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his working +hours were over. + +Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to +watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they +spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter's magnificent "villa" at Burlingame. Even +Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they had spent +the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on equal terms +with many millionaires. + + + +IV + + +It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona during +their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family had grimly +surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement. + +Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on +the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, Susan +Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott's sisters, whose homes were in +Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now Atherton) who had +married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as one united family. They +met every day, wandering in and out at all hours, and although they had +many healthy disagreements they agreed on all the fine old fundamentals, +and they stood by one another through thick and thin. + +The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished +asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and smart as +Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt Clara, who was +only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, and her face +was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as loosely as her old +wrapper. + +All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new +refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the awful +pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and stuffed an +infant's flannel petticoat into her mouth to muffle her giggles. + +Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the +Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, which +was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts to be +"nice" of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he arrived, +and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings must be +spared, every moment. + +Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from under +the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court. + +In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their gracious +civil "kind" attitude had never varied, save only when their consciences +hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they were not only +heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice. + +Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking his +after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines had been +planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of the park +where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of England, the +guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the eighties who +faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott and Coralie +Geary. + +From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he +played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given them +in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he was +duller. + + + +V + + +Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, +Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling. + +For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied +topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely +painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an attempt +merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the mayor, and +his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably resolved itself +into a declaration of war, with State's Prison as its goal, upon some of +the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco. + +The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, bent +upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, and the +basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter of course +that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in private +their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to the board of +supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be only too glad to +expose the malefactors. + +But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of +admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and bribery. +They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or renounce their +great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law had technical +terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so had the public. + +All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city +administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of +which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred thousand +dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. Supervisors, +by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand Jury indicted not +only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of eminent citizens. + +Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now and +again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand Thornton, at +a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, and Mrs. Hofer gave +a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament. + +The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his +historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the +court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his cell. +There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would reinstitute the +lynch law of the fifties. + +Nothing came of it all but such a prolonged exposure of general vileness +that it was possible to effect a certain number of reforms later by popular +vote. The system remained inviolate, even during the mayorship of a fine +old citizen too estimable to build up a rival machine; and the men of the +prosecution, after many bitter harassed months, when they walked and slept +with their lives in their hands, resigned themselves to the fact that no +San Francisco jury would ever convict a man who had the money to bribe it. + +All this had given Mortimer abundant material for conversation and he had +entertained Mrs. Groome and Alexina night after night with a report of the +day's events and the gossip of the street. Mrs. Groome had been intensely +interested, for this upheaval reminded her of personal episodes in the life +of her husband and father, the latter having been a member of the vigilance +committees of the fifties. + +She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to +bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina to +invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle were +accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, nothing +could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to follow the +example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer. + +Alexina had never been interested in the details of the prosecution; the +large moments of the drama and the social convulsions were enough for her. +She refused to cut Mrs. Hofer, although she ceased to call on her, as her +mother and her husband made such a point of it; but she gave little thought +to the sorrows of that ambitious young matron. She had other fish to fry. + +Two great hotels whose interiors had been swept by the fire were renovated +and furnished and their restaurants and ballrooms eagerly patronized. The +Assembly balls were resumed. There were dinners and dances in the Western +Addition, where many of the finest homes in the city had been built during +the past ten or twenty years; and entertaining Down the Peninsula had not +paused for more than two months after the disaster. + +Nevertheless, she had exulted in the fact that the husband of her choice +was able to please and entertain her mother-no easy feat. Moreover, as time +went on and interest in the Graft Prosecution wore thin, it was evident +that Mortimer had established himself firmly in his mother-in-law's graces. +He was not only the perfect husband but the son of her old age. + +She had lost Ballinger and Geary in her comparative youth, and Tom was +rarely in the house when she visited Rincona. But Mortimer was as devoted +to her in the little ways so appreciated by women of any age as he was to +his wife, and he was noiseless in the house and as prompt as the clock. +During her illness his devotion touched even Mrs. Abbott, although Mrs. +Groome was the only member of the family he ever won over. + + + +VI + + +Poor Morty. In a way he was a failure, after all. The men of her set did +not seem to care any more for him than they did before her marriage, +although they were always polite and amiable; and the promise of those old +family friends to throw business in his way seemed to be forgotten as time +went on. + +No doubt they had thought he was able to stand on his own feet after a +while, but he had often looked depressed during the panic of nineteen-seven +and the long period of business drought that had followed. Still, he had +managed to hold his own, and his constitutional optimism was unshaken. He +_knew_ that when times changed he would soon be a rich man, and Alexina +shared his faith. Not that she had ever cared particularly for great +wealth, but he talked so much about it that he had excited her imagination; +after all money was the thing these days, no doubt of that, and she had +heard "poor talk" all her life and was tired of it. + +Moreover, nothing could be more positive than that if Morty's father had +made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and administered it +with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons of rich men to-day +from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he would be as logically +intimate with those young capitalists who were the renewed pillars of San +Francisco society, as she was with the most aloof and important of her own +sex. + +She had heard Judge Lawton and other men say that if a man were still a +clerk at thirty he was hopeless. The ruts were packed with the mediocre +whose destiny was the routine work of the world, whatever might be their +secret opinions of their unrecognized abilities and their resentment +against a system that anchored them. + +The young man of brains and initiative, of energy, ambition, vision +and balance, provided he were honorable as well, and temperate in his +pleasures, was the man the eager world was always waiting for. + +Alexina knew that the United States was almost as prolific in this fine +breed of young men as she still was in opportunities for the exceptional of +every class. + +And it was possible that Mortimer was not one of them. + +Once more she put a fact into bald words. She knew that her butterfly youth +had come to an end with her mother's death, and for a year she should be +very much alone, to say nothing of her new burden of responsibilities. +Thinking during that period was inevitable. She might as well begin now. + +Mortimer had some of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was ambitious +and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his brain was +clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that it lacked +originality. + +Did it also lack initiative, resource, that peculiar alertness and quick +pouncing quality of which she had heard? She wished she knew, but she had +never discussed her husband with any one. Certainly he had stood still. +Or was that merely the fault of the hard times? She had heard other men +complain as bitterly. + +"Fate handed you a lemon, old girl." + +Alexina could almost hear Aileen's mocking voice. She even gave a startled +glance down the quiet avenue. Well, she would never discuss him with Aileen +or any one else. + +Did she love him any longer? Had she ever loved him? What was love? She had +been quite happy with him in her own little way. What did girls of eighteen +know of love? Deliberately in her youthful arrogance and unlicensed +imagination she had manufactured a fool's paradise; and, a hero being +indispensable, had dragged him in after her. + +Perhaps she still loved him. She had read and seen enough to know that +love changed its character as the years went on. She respected his many +admirable qualities and she would never forget his devotion to her mother. + +She certainly liked him. And the family attitude roused her obstinate +championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good +friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately +selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. +He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not the +masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate enough to +have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving devotion to +her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received Bob Cheever one +afternoon when she was alone, and had forbidden her ever to receive a man +in the daytime again. If men wanted to call on a married woman they could +do so in the evening. She no longer danced more than twice with any man at +a party, and he refused to read her favorite books, new or old, and chilled +any attempt to discuss them in his presence. + + + +VII + + +Well, after all, what did it matter? She had dreamed her dream and he was +better than most. She sprang to her feet and ran down the hill and across +the street to the house of Judge Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Gora waited until her brother had finished his bath and returned to his +room. When she was admitted he had a brush in either hand polishing his +pale brown immaculately cut hair. He turned to her, startled, his good +American gray eyes showing no trace of sleep. He always awoke with alert +mind and refreshed body. + +"What is it? Not--" + +Gora nodded. "At two this morning. Alexina wouldn't let me call you--" + +His wide masculine eyebrows met. It was correct to be angry and he was. "I +never heard of such a thing--" + +"She was not a bit overcome and wrote letters to her brothers and friends +for at least two hours. It really wouldn't have been worth while to disturb +you--I must say I was astonished; thought she'd go to pieces--but you never +know." + +"I'll go to her at once." + +"I'd dress first. Aileen Lawton is with her." + +Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned +half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and never +descended to small game. + +"Oh, of course!" Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out a +pair of black socks. "I like Aileen well enough, but she has altogether too +much influence over Alexina. She'd have more than myself if I didn't keep a +close watch." + +"I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as time +goes on. She hasn't that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean things in some +people." + +He gave her a quick suspicious glance, but her pale gray eyes were fixed on +the windmill beyond the window, that odd old landmark in a now fashionable +quarter of San Francisco. + +"I shall always control her," he said, setting his large finely cut lips. +"I wish her to remain a child as long as possible, for she is quite +perfect as she is. She is bright and all that, but of course she has no +intellect--" + +Gora forgot her message of death and laughed outright. + +"Men--American men, anyhow--are really the funniest things in the world. +Even intellectual men are absurd in their patronizing attitude toward the +cleverest of women; but when it conies to mere masculine arrogance...don't +you really respect any woman's brains?" + +"I never denied that some women were clever and all that, but the best of +them cannot compare with men. You must admit that." + +"I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste any +time in argument--" + +"My type?" + +She longed to reply: "The smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his +mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's shell or +the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But she +never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion of his +endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of secret +amusement. + +"Oh, you're all alike," she said lightly, and added: "Don't be too sure +that Alexina hasn't intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from this +beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it might +escape her, and begins to think--" + +"I'll do her thinking." + +"All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job....I'll +clear out; you want to dress--" + +"Wait a moment." He sat down to draw on his socks. "I'm really cut up over +Mrs. Groome's death. She was my only friend in this damn family, and I +coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on for twenty +years." + +"I wondered how you liked them as time went on." + +He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. "I hate the whole +pack of superior patronizing condescending snobs, and it is all I can do to +keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by God!"--he +brought down his fist on his knee--"I'll beat them at their own game yet. I +simply live to make a million and build a house at Burlingame. They really +respect money as much as they think they don't; I've got oil to that. When +I'm a rich roan they'll think of me as their equal and forget I was ever +anything' else." + +"Well, don't speculate," said Gora uneasily. "Remember that luck was left +out of our family." + +"My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to wait +until this period of dry rot passes--" + +"But you're not speculating?" + +He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own. + +"I answer questions about my private affairs to no one." + +"They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital." + +"You have received your interest regularly, have you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well as +the man's opportunities, and you do not." + +"I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you are +doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand--" + +"What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?" + +"Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a fling. +I shall want to go to New York and Europe." + +"And you would throw away your capital!" + +"Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will +find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction writing +for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything published, +and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York magazines: one +of the old group and two of the best of the popular magazines." + +He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to alarm. +"I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think themselves +so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and all that as +about on a level with the working class--" + +"I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They worship +success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for people +engaged in any of the art careers--with whom they practically never come +in contact, by the way--is partly an instinctive distrust of anything they +cannot do themselves and partly because they have an Elizabethan idea that +all artists are common and have offensive manners." + +"I don't like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may +unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living--and that you shall never +do when I am rich--but they have no business putting their names up before +the public like men." + +Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim fathers, +of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact from old John +Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American classic face that is +passing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the last drop from a long +forgotten "tar brush," or the sly recurrent Biblical profile. + +"We will make a bargain," she said calmly. "I will ask you no more +questions about your business for a year--when, if convenient, I should +like my money--and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to +have. It won't do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions +about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina. You've +got your hands full there. See you at breakfast." And she shut the door on +an indignant worried and disgusted brother. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife's door, was bidden to enter he +found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears +running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had +given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took his +wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical in its +reaction from the insensibility of the morning. + +"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his +sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--" + +"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the office +for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; Sally is +better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an hour. Tom and I +will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not to think." + +"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it. But +I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!" + +But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of morning +starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by degrees and sent +him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her grief was over. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's +bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with her +father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear old +thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the days +when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel Hill was +called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they both should +have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the English say. +Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as fond of your +father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine that he is your +father from this time forth, and come to him when you are in doubt about +anything." + +Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. "I have sometimes thought uncle +daddy didn't like Mortimer." + +"On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard +work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But of +course Mortimer is young--in business, that is; and father thinks--but you +had better talk with him." + +"No. Why should I? But I don't mind you. At least I could not discuss +Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me to +put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as trustees--ignoring +Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria's fortune has been kept +intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, but that men in business +are likely to get into tight places and use their wife's money. Nothing +would induce Mortimer to touch my money, but he would feel pretty badly cut +up if I let any one else look after my affairs. Of course I wouldn't even +discuss the matter with Tom. And if Morty does need money at any time I'll +lend it to him. Why not? What else would any one expect me to do?" + +"Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot. +No one doubts Mortimer's good faith, but the times are awful, money has +paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the +stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes you +will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see--the times are so +abnormal, Mortimer hasn't had time to prove his abilities yet; he's just +been able to hold on; and if things don't mend and he should lose out, +why--if you still have your own little fortune, at least you'll not be any +worse off than, you are now. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. They +always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able to hold +on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of course we +shall live here and run the house--as mother did. I couldn't bear to live +anywhere else, and Morty adores it too." + +"Oh, rather. I couldn't imagine you anywhere else." + +"Geary and Ballinger sent me ten thousand dollars for a wedding present and +Morty bought some bonds for me, but I'm going to sell a few and refurnish +the lower rooms. I love the old house but I like cheerful modern things. +The poor old parlors and dining-room do look like sarcophagi." + +"Good. I'll help. We'll have no end of fun." + + + +II + + +There was a pause and then Alexina said: "Mortimer is so determined to be a +rich man and thinks of so little else and works so hard, that he is bound +to be. Otherwise, such gifts would be meaningless." + +She made the statements with an unconscious rising inflection. Aileen did +not answer and turned her sharp revealing green eyes on the eucalyptus +grove which concealed Ballinger House from the vulgar gaze, and +incidentally shut off a magnificent view. + +"I don't know whether I like Gora Dwight or not," she remarked. + +"Neither do I. But I admire her. She is a wonder." + +"Oh, yes, I admire her, and I've a notion she's got something big in her, +some sort of destiny. But those light eyes in that dark face give me the +creeps. It isn't that I don't trust her. I believe her to be insolently +honest and honorable--and just, if you like. But--perhaps it's only the +accident of her queer coloring--she gives me the impression that while she +might go to the stake for her pride, she'd murder you in cold blood if you +got in her way." + +"Poor Gora! You make her all the more interesting." + +"Did she ever tell you that she corresponds with that Englishman who was +out here at the time of the earthquake and fire and had that ghastly +adventure with his sister? We all met him at the Hofer ball--Gathbroke his +name was." + +Alexina was staring at her with an amazed frown. "Correspond--Gora?...I +remember now he told me she helped him to carry his sister's body out to +the old cemetery. Is he interested in her?" + +"I shouldn't wonder. They've corresponded off and on ever since. I +walked, home with her one afternoon before I went south--she interests me +frantically--and she invited me up to her quite artistic attic in Geary +Street, where she still lives, and gave me the most vivid description of +that night. It made me crawl. She stared straight before her as she told +it. Her eyes were just like gray oval mirrors in which it seemed to me I +saw the whole thing pass.... + +"Then she showed me a photograph he had recently sent her--stunning thing +he is, all right, and looks years older than when he was here. She also +alluded to things he had said in a letter or two. So my phenomenally quick +wits inferred that they correspond. Perhaps they are engaged. Pretty good +deal for her." + + + +III + + +Alexina, to her surprise, felt intensely angry, although she had the +presence of mind to cast up her eyes until the white showed below the large +brilliant iris and she looked like a saint in a niche. + +She had kept Gathbroke out of her thoughts for nearly four years, +deliberately. For a time she had hated him. Mortimer's love-making had +seemed tame in comparison with that primitive outburst, and never had she +felt any such fiery response to the man she had loved and chosen as during +those few moments when she had been in that impertinent, outrageous, +loathsome young Englishman's arms. At first she had wondered and resented, +loyally concluding that it was her own fault, or that of fate for endowing +her with such a slender emotional equipment that she used it all up at once +on the wrong man. Finally, she found it wise not to think about it at all +and to dismiss the intruder from her thoughts. + +Now she felt outraged in her sense of possession....Unconsciously she had +enshrined him as the secret mate of her inmost secret self...a self she +was barely conscious of even yet...lurking in her subconsciousness, the +personal and peculiar blend of many and diverse ancestors....Sometimes +she had glimpsed it...wondered a little with a not unpleasant sense of +apprehension.... + +But for the most part Circumstance had decreed that she abide on the +abundant surface of her nature and enjoy a highly enjoyable life as it +came. Now, she had experienced her first grief, which at the same time was +her first set-back. She did not go out at all. She saw much of Mortimer and +little of any one else. It was the summer season and all her friends were +in the country or in Europe. + +She had given Mortimer her power of attorney (largely a gesture of +defiance, this) and he had attended to all details connected with her new +fortune. Between the inheritance tax, small legacies, and depreciations, +she would have a little over six thousand dollars a year; which, however, +with Mortimer's contribution, would run the old house, and keep her +wardrobe up to mark after she went out of mourning. She knew nothing of the +value of money, and was accustomed to having little to spend and everything +provided. But her mind regarding finances was quite at rest. Even if +Mortimer remained a victim of the hard times, they would be quite +comfortable. + +The cares of housekeeping were very light. She discussed the daily menus +with James, but he had run Ballinger House for years, little as Mrs. Groome +had suspected it. Mortimer, shortly after his mother-in-law's death, and +while Alexina was passing a fortnight at Rincona, had given James orders +to collect all bills on the first of every month and hand them to him, +together with a statement of the servants' wages. Mrs. Dwight was not to be +bothered. + +Alexina, when she returned, had made no protest. The details of +housekeeping did not appeal to her. But the arrangement left her without +occupation, and much time for thought. After a long walk morning and +afternoon she had little to do but read. She was an early riser and her +mind was active. + + + +IV + + +Dwight had not the least intention of using his wife's money, for he had +perfect confidence in his change of luck, and in his ability to do great +things with his business as soon as the period of depression had passed. +But he had no faith in any woman's ability to invest and take care of +money, he had fixed ideas in regard to a man being master in his own house, +and he had asked Alexina for her power of attorney more to flaunt her +confidence in him and to annoy her damnable relatives than because there +might possibly be a moment when he should have need of immediate resources. +Like many Americans he chose to keep his wife in ignorance of his business +life, and it would have annoyed him excessively to go to her with an +explanation of temporary difficulties and ask for a loan. + +Moreover, he wished to keep Alexina young and superficial, ignorant of +money matters, indifferent to the sordid responsibilities of life. Not only +was the present Alexina no embarrassment whatever to a man full of schemes, +aside from the slow march of business, for getting rich, but she was +infinitely alluring. + +He detested business women, intellectual women, women with careers; they +tipped the even balance of the man's world; moreover, they had no accepted +place in the higher social scheme. For women wage-earners he had no +antipathy and much sympathy and consideration, although he underpaid them +cheerfully when circumstances would permit. It was an abiding canker that +his sister was obliged to support herself; he was not ashamed of it, for +nursing was an honorable (and altruistic) profession, and several young +women in his new circle bad taken it up; but he hated it as a man and a +brother. As for her turning herself into an authoress, however, he only +hoped he would make his million before she got herself talked about. + +As for Alexina she was the perfect flower of a system lie worshiped and +nothing should mar or change her if his fond surveillance could prevent it. + +On the whole he was quite happy at this time, despite his passionate desire +for wealth and his natural resentment, at the attitude of the Abbotts and +their intimate circle of old friends who were so like them that he always +included them in his mind when speaking of "the family." Although he was +making barely enough to pay his sister the monthly interest on her money, +the salaries of his employees, and, until recently, a monthly contribution +to the household expenses, he had a comfortable and delightful home with +not a few of the minor luxuries, an undisputed position in the best +society, an honorable one in the business world, and a beautiful wife. +Now that the conventions forced them to live the retired life, they could +economize without attracting attention; as he paid the bills Alexina would +not know whether he still contributed his share or not; (in time he meant +to pay the whole and give his wife, with the grand gesture, her entire +income for pin money) and, with Alexina's cordial assent, he had sold the +old carriage, and the horses, which were eating their heads off, dismissed +the coachman-gardener, and found a young Swede to take care of the garden +and outbuildings. + +Later, they would have their car like other people, but there was no need +for it at present, and it was neither the time nor the occasion to exhibit +a tendency to extravagance. In the matter of "front" he knew precisely +where to leave off. + +In a certain small anxious bag-of-tricks way he was clever. But not clever +enough. He knew nothing of Alexina beneath her shining surface. If he +had he would have sought to crowd her mind with the details of the home, +encouraged her to join in the frantic activities of some one of the women's +clubs he held in scorn, persuaded her to play golf daily at the fashionable +club of which they were members, even though she ran the risk of talking, +unchaperoned by himself, with other men. + +He never would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books for +companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in psychology, or +in revelations of the many phases of life of which she was personally so +ignorant); and only his own companionship evening after evening. + +But he had known all the Alexina he was ever to know. Such flashing +glimpses as he was destined to have later so bewildered him that he reacted +obstinately to his original estimate of her,...just a child under the +influence of her family or some of those friends of hers who had always +hated him...erratic and irresponsible like all women...a man never could +understand women because there was nothing to understand...merely a bundle +of contradictions.... + +In some ways his mental equipment was an enviable one. + + + +VI + + +Some of all this Alexina guessed, and although she was nettled at times +that he took no note of her maturing mind and character, she was, on the +whole, more amused. + +Indulgent by nature, and somewhat indolent, she had been more than willing +that Morty should enjoy his new authority, should even delude himself that +he was footing all the bills, poor dear; and she listened raptly to his +evening visions of their future life in Burlingame, alternated with visits +to New York and England, the while she puzzled over the intricacies of some +character portrayed by a master analyst. + +Sometimes he did not talk at all, utterly fagged by a strenuous day in +which he had accomplished precisely nothing. But the more transparent and +truncated and dull he grew the more spontaneous the "niceness" and almost +effusive courtesy of his wife. Insensibly she was veering to the family +attitude, but he had tagged her once for all and never saw it. + +Until this moment, however, when Gathbroke had been jerked from his deep +seclusion within her ivory tower by Aileen's unwelcome news, she had never +had a moment of complete self-revelation....She knew instantly that she had +never loved her husband: he was not her mate and Gathbroke was. She had had +three years of rippling content and light enjoyment with Mortimer, they had +never quarreled seriously, and they had never taken their parts in one +moment of real drama. + +If she had married Gathbroke they would have quarreled furiously, they +would have thrown courtesy and behavior to the winds often enough, +particularly while they were young, for neither would have been in the +least apprehensive of wounding the rank-pride of the other, and such mutual +and passionate love as theirs naturally gave birth to a high state of +irritability; they would have loved and hated and made constant discoveries +about each other...there would have been depths never to be fully explored +but always luring them on...and the perfect companionship...the complete +fusion.... + +How Alexina knew all this after less than three hours' association with +Gathbroke, let any woman answer. She was not so foolish as to imagine +herself the victim of a secret passion, or that she had ever loved the man, +or ever would. She had merely had her chance for the great duodrama, and +thrown it away for a callow dream. She had no passing wish, even in that +moment of visualizing him interlocked with her own wraith in that sacred +inner temple where even she had never intruded before, to meet him again. +She had no intention of passing any of her abundant leisure in dreaming +dreams of him and the perfect bliss. But he had been hers...and +utterly...he had loved her...he had wanted her...he had precipitately +begged her to marry him...he had offered her the homage of complete +brutality. + +Something of him would always be hers. + +And even though she renounced all rights in him because she must, she did +not in the least relish that any one so close to her as Gora Dwight should +have him. She might have heard of his marriage to a girl of his own land +and class with only a passing spasm, but his continued and possibly tender +friendship with her sister-in-law shook her out of the last of her jejunity +and its illusions....She was not exactly a dog in the manger...she was a +maturing woman looking back with anger and dismay not only upon the fatal +mistake of her youth, but upon the inexorable realities of her present +life.... + +The reaction was a more intense feeling of loyalty to Mortimer than ever. +She was entirely to blame. He not only had been innocent of conscious +rivalry, even of pursuit--for she could quite easily have discouraged him +in the earlier stages of his courtship--but he was dependent upon her in +every way: for his happiness, for the secure social position that meant so +much to him, for the greater number of his valuable connections, for even +his comfort and ease of living. + +Something of this had passed through her stunned mind on the morning of her +mother's death. Now it was all as sharply outlined as the etching at which +she was raptly gazing, and she vowed anew that she would never desert him, +never deny him the assistance of the true partner. She had signed a life +contract with her eyes open and she would keep it to the letter. + +Only she hoped to heaven that Gathbroke was not serious about Gora. She +wished never to be reminded of his existence again. + +And, as Aileen talked of Santa Barbara, she wondered vaguely why there +was not a law forbidding girls to marry until they were well into their +twenties....until they had had a certain amount of experience....knew their +own minds....Maria had been right.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +The darkness had come early with the high rolling fog that shut out the +stars. The fog horn and the bells were silent but the wind had a thin +anxious note as if lost, and the long creaking eucalyptus trees angrily +repelled it as if irritated beyond endurance by its eternal visitations. + +Alexina, who had been reading in her bedroom, realized that it must be +quite half an hour since she had turned a page. She lifted her shoulders +impatiently. She was in no humor for reading. + +It was only eight o'clock. Far too early for bed. Mortimer had gone to Los +Angeles on business. He had been gone a week, and she admitted to herself +with the new frankness she had determined to cultivate--that she might +meet, with the clearest possible vision, whatever three-cornered deals +Life might have in store for her--that she had not missed him at all. His +absence had been a heavenly interlude. She and Aileen had gone to the +moving pictures unescorted every night (a performance of which he would +have disapproved profoundly), and they had lunched downtown every day until +Alexina had suddenly discovered that she had no more money in her purse; +and, knowing nothing whatever even of minor finance, was under the +impression that having given Mortimer her power of attorney she would not +be able to draw from the bank. + +Aileen had gone down to Burlingame to visit Sibyl Bascom for a few days. +Alexina had declined to go, although it was a quiet party; it would be +embarrassing not to tip the servants. + +The wind gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the house +and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who shook +it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the window +severely for good measure. + +Alexina was used to San Francisco in all her many moods, but to-night, the +wind and the high gray fog shutting out the stars, the silent house--silent +that is but for the mice playing innocently between the walls--her complete +solitude, made her restless and a little nervous. + +What could she do? + +She knew quite well that she had wanted to go to see Gora for a week. She +had not indulged in any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was curious to +see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her mind that April +day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he had outgrown his +hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, and the inability to +conceal the asinine condition to which she had immediately reduced him, she +might have given him an equal chance with Morty. + +Aileen had said that he looked older. She had a quite natural curiosity to +decide for herself if, had he been born several years earlier, he would +have proved the successful rival in that foundational period of their +youth....Or perhaps she was the reason of his rather sudden maturity. +After all there was no great chasm between twenty-three and twenty-six and +three-quarters. She looked little if any older. Neither did Morty, nor any +one she knew. + +This idea thrilled her, and, grimly determined upon no compromise or +evasion, she admitted it. + +Moreover, she wanted to sound out Gora. + +Somehow she had no real belief that he had transferred his affections to +her dissimilar sister-in-law, but her interest in Gora was growing. She +wanted to know her better. + +Besides, although she had often invited her to tea on her free afternoons, +and to dinner whenever possible, and had occasionally dropped in to see her +while she was still in the hospital, she had never called on her in her +home. As Gora only slept there after a killing day's or night's work, +visitors were anything but welcome; nevertheless she felt that she had been +negligent, rude--three years!--and as Gora was not on a case for a day or +two, now was the time to atone. + +Moreover, she had never been out quite alone at night, except to run down +the avenue and across the street to Aileen's. It was a long way down to +Geary Street, and Fillmore Street at night was "tough." Mortimer would be +furious. + +She hastily changed her dinner gown to a plain walking suit of black tweed +and pinned on a close hat firmly, prepared to defy the wind and thoroughly +to enjoy her little adventure. Not since she had stolen out to go to +forbidden parties with Aileen had she felt such a sense of altogether +reprehensible elation. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Fillmore Street, its low-browed shops dark, but with great arcs of white +lights spanning the streets that ran east and west, long shafts of yellow +light shining across the sidewalk from the restaurants, the candy stores +and the nicolodeons--where the pianola tinkled plaintively--was thronged +with saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious glances at them as she walked +rapidly along. In front of every saloon was a group of young men almost +fascinatingly common to Alexina's cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over +their foreheads at an indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners +of their mouths, or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at +"bunches" of girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, +making strident or stage-whispered comments. + +A great many girls had cavaliers, and these walked with their heads tossed, +unless drooping toward a padded, shoulder; and they wore perhaps a coat or +two less of make-up than their still neglected sisters. These were vividly +earmined, although most of them were young enough to have relied on cold +water and a rough towel; their hair was arranged in enormous pompadours and +topped with "lingerie" or beflowered hats. Their blouses were "peek-a-boo" +and cut low, their skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated +straight front corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced +the débutante slouch and their jaws worked automatically. + +Not all of them were "bad" by any means. Fillmore Street was a promenade +at night for girls who were confined by day: waitresses, shop girls of the +humbler sort, servants, clerks, or younger daughters of poor parents, who +would see nothing of life at all if they sat virtuously in the kitchen +every night. + +The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to +ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and they +were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, the dead +white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, ignoring the "bums" +and "cadets" lounging at the corners or before the saloons, directed intent +long glances at every passing man who looked as if he had the "roll" to +treat them handsomely in the back parlor of a saloon, or possibly stake +them at a gaming table. The town, still in its brief period of insufferable +virtue, was "closed," but the lid was not on as irremovably as the police +led the good mayor to believe; and these girls, who traveled not in +"bunches" but in pairs, if they had not already begun a career of +profitable vice, were anxious to start but did not exactly know how. +Fillmore Street was not the hunting ground of rich men; but men with a +night's money came there, and many "boobs" from the country. + +Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated +everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that +many of these girls were "decent enough"; "much more decent than I would be +in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no place to see a +beau but the street. I'd go straight to the devil and play the only game I +had for all it was worth." + +But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in +"badness." She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the great +juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. Moreover, she +could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars above the fog, and +she had drawn herself up to her full five feet seven, thrown her shoulders +back, lifted her chin and lowered her eyelids the merest trifle. She +fancied that the patrician-beauty type would have little or no attraction +for the men who frequented Fillmore Street. Certainly the bluntest of these +males could see that she was not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum. + +Moreover she was in mourning. + +But she had reckoned without her youth. + + + +II + + +"Say, kid, what you doin' all alone?" + +A hand passed familiarly through her arm. + +Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn upon +him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help? + +Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all terrified; +nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark of the +sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: "When a man is even +half way drunk he doesn't know a lady from a trollop, and ten to one the +lady's a trollop anyhow." + +She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present +moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature? + +She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish +attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and one +girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the situation, +laughed aloud and cried after her: "Don't be frightened, kid. He's not a +slaver." + +Irrepressible curiosity made her send him a swift glance from the corner of +her eye. He was a young man, thick set, with an aggressive nose set in a +round hard face. His small, hard, black eyes were steady, and so were his +feet. He did not look in the least drunk. + +"I think you have made a mistake," she said quietly, and with no pretense +at immense dignity (she could hear Aileen say: "Cut it out. Nothing doing +in that line here"). "I, also, have made a mistake--in walking at night on +this street. Would you mind letting go my arm? I think I'll take a car." + +"No, I think you'll stay just where you are," he said insolently. "You +don't belong here all right, but you've come and you can stand the +consequences. You're just the sort that needs a jolt and I like the idea of +handing it." + +Alexina gave him a coldly speculative glance. "I wonder why?" + +"You would? Well, I'll tell you. Never been out alone at night before, I'll +bet, like these other girls, that ain't got no place on earth to have any +fun but the streets. Never even rubbed against the common herd? Generally +go about in a machine, don't you?" + +"It is quite true that I have never been out alone at night before. I +certainly shall not go again." + +"No, you don't have to! That's the point, all right. And if you weren't +such a beauty, damn you! I'd hate you this minute as I hate your whole +parasite class." + +"Oh, you are a socialist!" Alexina looked at him with frank curiosity. "I +never saw one before." + +He was obviously disconcerted. Then his face flushed with anger. "Yes, I'm +a socialist all right, and you'll see more of us before you're many years +older." + +"You might tell me about it if you _will_ walk with me. I am a long +way from my destination, and that would be far more interesting than +personalities." + +"I've got more personalities where those came from. It makes me sick to see +the difference between you and these poor kids--ready to sell their souls +for pretty clothes and a little fun. There's nothing that has done so much +to inflame class hatred as the pampered delicate satin-skinned women of +your class, who have expensive clothes and 'grooming' to take the place of +slathers of paint and cheap perfume. Raised in a hot house for the use +of the man on top. It's the crowning offense of capitalism, and when the +system goes, they'll all be like you, or you'll be more like them. You'll +come down about a thousand pegs, and the ones down below will be shoved up +to meet you." + +Alexina stood still and faced him. + +"Are you poor?" she asked. + +"What a hell of a question. Have I been talkin' like a plutocrat?" + +"Oh, there are, still, different grades. I was wondering if you would be so +inconsistent as to earn a little money from me and two friends of mine. We +have read socialism a bit, but, we don't understand it very well. I am in +mourning and it would interest me immensely." + +He had dropped her arm and was staring at her. + +"You are not afraid of me, then?" His voice was sulky but his eyes were +less hostile. + +"Oh, not in the least. I fully appreciate that you merely wished to +humiliate me, not to be insulting, as some of these other men might have +been. My name is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. I live on Ballinger Hill--do you +know it? That old house in the eucalyptus grove?" + +"I know it, all right." + +"Then you probably know, also, that I am not rich and never have been. My +husband is a struggling young business man." + +"That cuts no ice. You train with that class, don't you? You're class +yourself, reek with it. You had rich ancestors or you wouldn't be what you +are now." + +"Well, we can discuss that point another time. One of my friends is a +daughter of Judge Lawton--" + +"Hand in glove with every rich grafter in 'Frisco." + +Alexina shuddered. "Please say San Francisco. I am positive you never heard +a word against Judge Lawton's probity, nor that he ever rendered an unjust +decision." + +"He's a wise old guy, all right. But it would be wastin' time tryin' to +make you understand why I have no use for him." + +"Of course you would have no use for the husband of my other friend, Mrs. +Frank Bascom." + +She fully expected that the young millionaire's name would be the final red +rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the benefit of +all Fillmore Street. But he surprised her by saying reluctantly: + +"He's dead straight, all right. He's not a grafter. I've nothing against +him personally, but he's part of a damnable system and I'd clean him out +with the rest." + +"Well, there you have three of us to your hand. Who knows but that you +might convert us? Why not give us the chance? If you will give me your +address I will write to you as soon as my friends come back to town." + +"I don't know whether I want to do it or not. You may be makin' game of me +for all I know." + +"I am quite sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you +something too--what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of +socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask what your +occupation is?" + +"I'm just a plain working-man--housebuilding line." + +"Then you could only come in the evening?" + +"Not at all; I get off at five. You don't have your dinner until eight in +your set, I believe," This with a sneer that curled his upper lip almost to +the septum of his nose. + +"Seven. My husband works until nearly six. He rarely has time for lunch and +comes home very hungry." + +Once more he looked puzzled and disconcerted, but his small steady eyes did +not waver. + +"My name's James Kirkpatrick." He found the stub of a pencil in his pocket +and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it over. Maybe +I'll do it. I dunno, though." + +"I do hope you will. I'm sure we can learn a good deal from each other. +Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don't the socialist +tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?" + +"Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight better, +but I guess there's nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your car." + +He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and +as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself on +having had the last word. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on +the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young +sister-in-law left the car at the corner. + +Gora walked up to meet her guest. "Where on earth have you, been?" she +demanded. "I supposed of course that you'd take a taxi. You should not go +out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest ideas; and +you--" + +"Haven't. Not, any more. I'm tired of being kept in a glass case--being +a parasite." She laughed gayly at Gora's look of amazement. "I've had an +adventure. Almost the first I ever had." + +She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps and +stairs to the attic. + +Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. "Shall you tell Mortimer?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done." + +"But if you study with this man?" + +"There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself as +Morty's partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over anything +yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many things whether +he happens to like it or not. Possibly without consulting him." + +"You've had time to think these past three months for the first time in +your life," said Gora shrewdly. "Here we are. I hope you don't hate stairs. +I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can't give up the old +place....And I've lit the candles in your honor." + + + +II + + +"Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!" + +Thought Gora: "I do hope she's not going to be gracious. I've never liked +her so well before." + +But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome +tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from +respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the +impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had +caught sight immediately of Gathbroke's picture framed and enthroned on the +mantelpiece. + +She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old Chinese +lanterns that held the candles. + +"I am going to refurnish our lower rooms," she said. "If you have time do +help me. Heavens! I wish I could work off some of that old furniture on +you. I like the Italian pieces well enough, but there are too many of them. +That rather low Florentine cabinet in the back parlor would just fit in +this corner...." + +She gave a little girlish exclamation and ran forward. + +"Isn't that young Gathbroke, who was out here at the time of the earthquake +and fire...or an older brother, perhaps?" + +She had taken the photograph from the mantel and was examining it under one +of the lanterns. Her alert ear detected the deeper and less steady note in +Gora's always hoarse voice. + +"It is the same. Did you meet him?...Oh, I remember he told me he met you +at the Hofer ball. He rather raved over you, in fact." + +"Did he? How sweet of him. I met him again, I remember. Mr. Gwynne brought +him down to Rincona one day." + +"Oh?" + +And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit. + +"But he looks much much older." + +"He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey on +him more and more. + +"Oh." + +He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, two +weeks after the fire. + +Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a +coaxing smile. "Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me." + +"No," said Gora, shortly. "We are not engaged. Good friends, that is all, +and write occasionally." + +"Well, he must be very much interested--and you must be a very interesting +correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What does he do, +anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something about the army." + +"He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone +into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me--oh, it must +be nearly two years ago--that if there should be a war he would enlist as a +matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and he was sick +of idleness--his good middle-class energetic blood asserting itself, he +said,--he was going to amuse himself with work, incidentally try to make +a fortune. His mother left a good deal of money, but there are several +children and I guess the present earl needs most of it to keep up his +estates, to say nothing of his position. Fotten law, that--entail, I mean." + +Alexina came and sat down on the divan beside Gora, piling the cushions +behind her. "Are you a socialist?" + +"I am not. I believe in sticking to your own class, whether you have a +grudge against it or not, or even if you think it far from perfection." + +She shot a quick challenging glance at her admittedly aristocratic +sister-in-law, but Alexina had lifted the lower white of her eyes just +above their soft black fringe and looked more innocent than any new born +lamb. As she did not answer Gora continued: + +"I remember that night I sat out with Gathbroke on Calvary he said +something about socialism...that it was a confession of failure. I may feel +so furious with destiny sometimes that I could go out and wave a red flag, +or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers me is the thought +that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a reasonable fortune +I'd have no more use for socialism than for a rattlesnake in my bed. Why +are you interested?" + +"Only as in any subject that interests a few million people. I haven't the +least intention of being converted, but I don't want to be an ignoramus. +Aileen and Sibyl and I did start Marx's _Das Kapital_--in German! We nearly +died of it. But I felt sure that this man, Kirkpatrick, had studied his +subject, if only because his language changed so completely when he talked +about it. It was as if he were quoting, but intelligently. Of course the +poor man had little or no education to begin with. Somehow he struck me as +a pathetic figure. Perhaps when every one is educated--and there must be +many thousands of naturally intelligent men in the working class whose +brains if trained would be mighty useful in Washington--well, all having +had equal opportunities they would surely arrive at some way to improve +conditions without struggling for anything so hopeless as socialism. I +know enough to be sure that it is hopeless, because it antagonizes human +nature." + +"Rather. The trend under all the talk is more and more toward +individualism, not self-effacing communism. As for myself I like the idea +of the fight--for public recognition, I mean; and I don't think I'd be +happy at all if things were made too smooth for me; if, for instance, in +a socialized state it were decided that I could devote all my time to +writing, and that the state would take care of me, publish my work, and +distribute it exactly where it was sure to be appreciated. I haven't any +of the old California gambling blood in me, but I guess the hardy ghost of +those old days still dominates the atmosphere, and I have not been one of +those to escape." + +"It's in mine! Not that I care for gambling, really, like Aileen and Alice. +But I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking long chances, and I +have had inklings that I'll be rather more than less fascinated as I grow +older....When are your stories to be published? I am simply expiring to +read them." + +"Are you?" + + + +III + + +Alexina had thrust her slim index finger unerringly through Gora's +bristling armor and tickled her weakest spot. The fledgling author smiled +into the dazzling eyes opposite and a deep flush rose to her high cheek +bones, + +"Rather!" + +"Then..." Gora rose and took a magazine from the table beside her bed. She +spread it open on her lap, when she had resumed her seat, and handled it as +Alexina had seen young mothers fondle their first-born. + +"It's here. Just out." + +"Oh!" Alexina. gave a little shriek of genuine anticipation. "Read it to +me. Quick. I can't wait." + +Gora led a lonely life outside of her work, a lonely inner life always. She +had never had an intimate friend, and she suddenly reflected that there had +been a certain measure of sadness in her joy both when her manuscripts were +accepted and to-day when for the first time she had gazed at herself in +print....She had had no one to rejoice with her....She felt an overwhelming +sense of gratitude to Alexina. + +But she gave this young wife of her brother whom she knew as little as +Alexina knew her, another swift suspicious glance....No, there was nothing +of Alexina's usual high and careless courtesy in that eager almost excited +face. + +"I'd love to have your opinion....I read very badly....Make allowances...." + +"Oh, fire away. If I'd written a story and had it accepted by that magazine +I'd read it from the housetops." + +Gora read the story well enough, and Alexina's mind did not wander even to +Gathbroke. It was written in a pure direct vigorous English. A little less +self-consciousness and it would have been distinguished. The story itself +was built craftily; she had been coached by a clever instructor who was a +successful writer of short stories himself; and it worked up to a climax of +genuine drama. But this was merely the framework, the flexible technique +for the real Gora. The story had not only an original point of view but it +pulsed with the insurgent resentful passionate spirit of the writer. + +Alexina gave a little gasp as Gora finished. + +"Many people won't like that story," she said. "It shocks and jars and +gives one's smugness a pain in the middle. But those that do like it +will give you a great reputation, and after all there are a few thousand +intelligent readers in the United States. How on earth did that magazine +come to accept it?" + +Gora was staring at Alexina with an uncommonly soft expression in her +opaque light eyes. She felt, indeed, as if her ego would leap through them +and make a fool of her. + +"The editor wrote me something of what you have just said. He wanted +something new--to give his conservative old subscribers a shock. Thought +it would be good for them and for the magazine. You--you--have said what I +should have wanted you to say if I could have thought it out....I think I +should have hated you if you had said, 'How charming!' or 'How frantically +interesting!'" + +"Well, it's the last if not the first. Aileen will say that and mean it. +I'll telephone to the bookstore the first thing Monday morning and get a +copy. Now I must go. It's late." + + + +IV + + +"Let me telephone for a taxi." + +Alexina laughed merrily. "You'll never believe it, but I've just thirty +cents in my purse. I forgot to ask Morty for something before he +left....You see, I happened to find quite a bit in mother's desk and so +I've never thought to ask him for an allowance. But I shall at once." + +"An allowance? But you have your own money? Or is it because the estate +isn't settled? What has Morty to do with that?" + +"I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I +gave my power of attorney to Morty." + +"Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it." + +"Could I? Well! I'll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M." + +"Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?" + +"Oh...why...he asked me to...I know nothing about business, and he +naturally would attend to my affairs." + +"But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And the +executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign such papers +as they advise....Don't he angry, please. I am not insinuating anything +against Morty. He's never bad a dishonest thought in his life...has always +been, the squarest...but..." + +"Well?" + +Alexina's head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott and +Judge Lawton...but for his sister... + +"It's this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, are +just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some are +stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they make up +for it by being weaker in others....I am talking particularly of the money +question, the struggle for existence, which the vast majority of men are +forced to make.... + +"Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have any, +to force success--in one way or another--out of her until the hour they are +able to lay down the burden....Some are too strong and too firm in their +ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and generally they are +strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their way against the +most overwhelming odds....Many are too clever not to find some way of +compromising and circumventing....Others just peg along and barely make +both ends meet....Others go under and down and out. + +"Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and +high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a duck +takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and steady worker +he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market before he was +married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He is frantic to get +rich...for more reasons than one." + +"But he never would do anything dishonorable." + +"No. Nothing he couldn't square with his conscience if it turned out all +right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little difficulty in +arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the possession of the +women of his family, is his if he needs it. + +"Moreover, no doubt you have discovered that Morty is the sort of man who +looks upon women as man's natural inferiors, that if there is any question +of sacrifice the woman is not to be considered for a moment...especially +where no public risk is involved. That sort of man only thinks he is too +honest to refrain from taking some unrelated woman's money, but as a matter +of fact it is because she would send him to State's Prison as readily as a +man would. One's own women are safe. + +"I lent Morty my small inheritance with my eyes open. But he knows a good +deal of that particular business, and I did not dream the times were going +to be so bad....I doubt if I ever see it again....But you must not run the +risk of losing yours. I want you to promise me that on Monday morning you +will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power of attorney. And as +much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps +it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be +infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is +honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position +again, and you would have your own income." + +"But do you mean to say that if I did revoke my power of attorney and he +asked me later for money to save his business that I should not give it to +him?" + +"Yes, I mean just that. Morty will never take any of the prizes in the +business world. He may hold on and make a living, that is all. He has +plenty to start with, and tells me he is doing fairly well, in spite of the +times. But he would do better in the long run as a clerk. In time he +might get a large salary as a sort of general director of all the routine +business of some large house--" + +Alexina curled her lip. "I do not want him to be a clerk." + +"No, of course you don't! But you'd like it still less if he cleaned you +out. You--would have to sell or rent your old home and live on a hundred +and fifty dollars a month in a flat in some out-of-the-way quarter. You +might have to go to work yourself," + +"I shouldn't mind that so much, except that I'm afraid I'd not be good for +much. Perhaps it was snobbish of me to object lo Morty's being a clerk. +But...well, I'm not so sure that it is snobbish to prefer what you have +always been accustomed to--I mean if it is a higher standard. And after all +I married him when he was only a clerk." + +"You are surprisingly little of a snob, all things considered; but you are +a hopeless aristocrat." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"I think the line between the aristocratic and the snobbish attitude of +mind is almost too fine to be put into words. But they are often confused +by the undiscriminating. Will you revoke that power of attorney on Monday?" + +"Shouldn't I wait until Morty is home?...tell him first? It seems rather +taking an advantage...and he will be very angry." + +"That doesn't matter." + +"What excuse shall I give him?" + +"Any one of a dozen. You are bored and want to take care of your +money...intend to learn something of business, as all women should, +and will in time....Ring in the feminist stuff...wife's economic +independence...woman's new position in the world....That will make Morty so +raving angry that he will forget about the other. Will you do it?" + +"Yes, I will. I believe you are right. So were the others...there must be +something in it." + +She told Gora of the advice of Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton. Gora nodded. + +"They meant more than they said. And merely because they are men of the +world, not because they like and trust Morty any the less." + +Alexina did not hear her. She was staring hard at the floor....A year +ago...three months ago...she couldn't have done this thing. She had been +still under the illusion that she loved her husband, that her marriage was +a complete success. She would have sacrificed her last penny rather than +hurt his feelings. Now she only cared that she didn't care....She had +admitted to herself that she did not love her husband but that was +different from committing an overt act that proved it....She felt something +crumbling within her....It was the last of the fairy edifice of her +romance...of her first, her real, youth....What was to take its place? +The future smugly secure on six thousand a year and an inviolate social +position...a good dull husband...not even the prospect of travel.... + + + +V + + +She sprang to her feet and turned away her head. + +"Why don't you come and live with us?" she asked abruptly. "Why should you +keep this on? There are so many vacant bedrooms up there. You could have +one for your study. I'd love to have you. You'd have the most complete +independence. Do." + +Gora shook her head. "I've always this to fall back on." + +"Fall back on?" + +"Oh! I never meant to let that out. However....Perhaps it is as +well....Morty--you know his pride--everybody has his prime weakness and +that is his. Transpose it into snobbery if you like....We did not board +down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid well, but +Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it up. He was +afraid you'd be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, I did. One of +my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I entered the hospital, +but kept on my room as I had to have one somewhere. Eight months later she +married, and I took it back. I found I could run it as well as ever with +the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman she had discovered. But I never told +Morty." + +Alexina laughed. "Better not. But you could run it and live with us all the +same." + +"No. I have too little time. I'd waste it coming back and forth, for I must +be here some time every day....Besides..." + +"Your own precious atmosphere?" + +"You do understand!" + +"Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice." + +"You bet. And now, I'll see you to your car; stay with you until you are +safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don't assert your independence +in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore Street are not +spiteful socialists." + +As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to Gathbroke's +picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into fists. + +"Oh...you...you....Why weren't you....Why didn't you...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his day +on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could always +summon at will, even when all was not well with him. + +To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had been +a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated itself +into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken order, +been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that the retail +merchants of San Francisco bought very sparingly; but he had found in +Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming Japanese +population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure. + + + +II + + +It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury +before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a +cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She +looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure and +her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in France on +a balmy day. But she quaked inside. + +She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile. "I'm +afraid you will be rather cross with me," she said softly. "But I went down +to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney to you." + +"You did what?" The slow blood rose to Dwight's hair. He mechanically took +the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation of falling +through space...out of somewhere.... + +Alexina repeated her statement. + +He recovered himself. "Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or +Judge Lawton." + +"Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own. I +did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up from +Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced Mrs. +Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down there--those that +read the serious new books and go to lectures when there are any worth +while--to join a class in economics. One of the professors at Stanford is +going to teach us. Aileen has lost frightfully at poker lately and wants a +new interest; she put Sibyl up to it--who was delighted with the suggestion +as she hasn't been intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a +practical streak; so that studying economics appealed to her. + +"I jumped at the idea. It was a God-send. I have had so little to do. I +don't care for poker and one can't read all the time....But after they left +I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying economies +in the abstract if I didn't have sense and 'go' enough to manage my own +affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn't draw any money from +the bank because I had given you my power of attorney. Aileen has an +allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually comes out about +even at poker in the course of the month, and if she doesn't she pawns +something. I've been with her to pawn shops and it's the greatest fun. I +don't mind telling you, as I know you never betray a confidence. The Judge +would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and water. + +"Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some +stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs over +it. You know how she entertains. + +"I should never dare admit to them--or to the professor if he asked my +opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out--that I was too lazy +and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went down first +thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I simply couldn't +wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me I shall attend to +everything and not bother you, Morty dear." + + + +III + + +Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina +thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into a +saint. + +"I don't like it. I don't like it at all." + +Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate to +express his feelings. + +"I may be old-fashioned--" + +"You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school of +American husbands--" + +"There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world." + +"So there are, poor dears. It's going to be so hard for them--" + +"Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?" + +"Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my +old-fashioned family. I'd be much the same if I'd never taken any interest +in all these wonderful modern movements." + +"It's those chums of yours--Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly +approve of them." + +"Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference." + +"Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me...disobey me?" + +"Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had at +the rehearsal. You haven't noticed, these three years, that I've had my +way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be your way +too. We've been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just playing about, +with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has changed. We must +look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole burden on your +shoulders--" + +"I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs." + +Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn't done any more. No +woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole burden +of life on her husband's shoulders. You have your own daily battle in the +business world. I will do the rest." + +"What damned emancipated talk." + +"What a funny old-fashioned word. We don't even say advanced or new any +more." + +"It's nonsense anyhow. You're nothing but a child." + +"You may just bet your life I'm not a child. Nor have I awakened all of a +sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of modern +science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always discussing +everything that interests the public; I have even read the newspapers for +two years." + +"Much better you didn't. There is no reason whatever for a woman in your +position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from your +charm." + +"Maybe, but we'll find more charm in Life as we grow older." + +His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something that +looked like a bogey. + +"May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got +everything down to a fine point....It seems too bad you should bother...." + +"Bother? I've been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little +good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James and +I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with +him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over +monthly bills and 'slips' and sign cheques." + +She hesitated. "You mustn't think for a minute that I want to make you +feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come,...Of +course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could simply go on +along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, shortly after +the first of the month, and you'll give me half." + + + +IV + + +Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but in +that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this sheltered +creature, with whom her mother had never discussed household economics, and +from whom he had purposely kept all knowledge of his business, took for +granted that he could pay his share of the monthly expenses, merely because +all the men she knew did twice as much, however they might grumble. For the +matter of that she never saw Tom Abbott that he did not curse the ascending +prices, but there was no change whatever in his bountiful fashion of +living. Alexina knew that the times were bad and that her husband was +having something of a struggle, and, as a dutiful wife, was anxious to +help him out for the present, but it was simply beyond her powers of +comprehension to grasp the fact that he was in no position to pay half the +expenses of their small establishment. + +If he told her...tried to make her understand...even if she did, how would +he appear in her eyes? + +Of all people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina...he had +never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at their worst +than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to and precariously +achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she craved luxury and pomp, +but because she would be forced to look up to him with admiration and a +lively gratitude. He had, in this spirit, given her; in the most casual +manner, handsome presents, or brilliant little dinners at fashionable +restaurants, in all of which she took a fervent young pleasure. He +had dipped into his slender capital, but of this she had not even a +suspicion...he had made some airy remark about celebrating a "good +deal"...no wonder...he had her too well bluffed. + +For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But he +did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl that +short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide astonished +eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set his teeth and +vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand would last several +months, even if he made no more than his expenses meanwhile. + +He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a +lingering and malodorous death. + +"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young and +carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is your own +look-out." + +"Thank you, Morty dear." + +She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the +announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen and +Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of economics +with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had been tutoring +in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to him whom Aileen +disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Mrs. +Francis Leslie Bascom and Miss Aileen Livingston Lawton. + +His reasons for coming to Ballinger House--which even he knew was +inaccessible to the common herd--were separate and tabulated. Alexina had +fascinated him against his best class principles; but he not only jumped at +the chance of meeting her again, he was excessively curious to understand a +woman of her class, to watch her in different moods and situations. He was +equally curious to meet other women of the same breed; he had never brushed +their skirts before, but he had often stood and gazed at them hungrily as +they passed in their limousines or driving their smart little electric +cars. + +He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so much +about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different homes. He +was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and he had a good +healthy class-consciousness and class-hatred. But he also had a large +measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to have the +opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner circles, and when +it came he had only hesitated long enough to search his soul and assure +himself that he was in no danger of growing compliant and soft. Moreover he +might possibly make converts, and in any case it was not a bad way, society +being still what it was, of turning an honest penny. + +But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist serene +in his faith could be. + +The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one elbow +on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair of fixed +and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was only vaguely +aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent streams of +concentrated light. They looked like three little sea-monsters, slim, +flexible, malignant, ready to spring. + +He exaggerated in his embarrassment, but he was not so very far wrong. + +"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach 'em, +all right." + +As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice too +loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that you +don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some." + +"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her high +light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing that makes +us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_." + +"And ain't you?" + +"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although he +is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in Europe +had meant middle-class. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no right to +pervert an honest historic old word into something so different and so +obnoxious." + +"To Marx all capitalists were in the same class. I suppose what you mean is +that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when you have less +capital than some of them that can't get in." + +"Sure thing. Take it from me." + +He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather heavy +sarcasm. + +"Even when they use slang." + +"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-class--bourgeois. Too +sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us." + +Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr. +Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little, but +as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the naughtiness of +Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken a cigarette from a +gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and was asking him for a +light. He gave her measure for measure, for he lifted his heavy boot and +struck a match on the sole. + +"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and +leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious +dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices, which, +however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping everything from +these lessons." + +"Do _you_ smoke?" + +"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve of my +friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots, as Miss +Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke. I'll get you a +cigar." + +She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room. + + + +II + + +Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the +evening paper. + +"Give me a cigar, Morty dear." + +"A cigar? What for?" + +"It would be too mean of those girls to smoke unless Mr. Kirkpatrick did +too, and I am sure we couldn't stand his tobacco. Even a whiff of bad +tobacco makes me feel quite ill." + +"I'll be hanged if I give my cigars to that bounder. The kitchen is the +place for him." + +"But not for us. And our minds are quite made up, you know. We are going +to study with him just to find out what these strange animals called +socialists are like. He is queer enough, to begin, with. And the knowledge +may prove useful one of these days....If you won't give me one I'll send +James out--" + +Mortimer handed over one of his choice cigars with ill grace, and Alexina +returned to the library. Aileen was informing Mr. Kirkpatrick how intensely +she disliked Marx's beard, not only as she had seen it in a photograph, but +as she had smelt it in Spargo's too vivid description. + +He rose awkwardly as she entered, but he rose. She handed him the cigar and +struck a match and held it to one end while he drew at the other. Their +faces were close and she gave him a smile of warm and spontaneous +friendliness. + +Thought Mr. Kirkpatrick: "Oh, Lord, she's got me. I'd better make tracks +out of here. If she was a vamp like that Bascom woman she wouldn't get me +one little bit. Plenty of them where I come from. But she's plain goddess +with eyes like headlights on an engine." + +Perturbed as he was, however, he resumed his seat and drew appreciatively +at the finest cigar that had ever come his way. It had the opportune effect +of causing his class-hatred to flame afresh. No fear that he would be made +soft by teaching in the homes of these pampered cats. For the moment he +hated Alexina, seated in a carved high-back Italian chair like a young +queen on a throne. + +"Well," he growled. "Let's get to business. I've brought Spargo. Marx is +too much for me. He's terrible dull and involved. He was so taken up with +his subject, I guess, that he forgot to learn how to write about it so's +people without much time and education could understand without getting a +pain in their beans. Of course I've heard him expounded many times from the +platform, but there must have been about fifty Marxes, for I've heard--or +read--just about that many expounders of him and no two agree so's you'd +notice it. That, to my mind, is the only stumbling block for socialism +--that we have a prophet who's so hard to understand. + +"So, I've settled on Spargo. He has the name of being about the best +student of Marx and of socialism generally--it's split up quite a bit--and +he's easy reading. I fetched him along." + +He produced "Socialism" from his hat and hesitated. "I don't know noth--a +thing about teaching." + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," drawled Sibyl Bascom in her low voluptuous +voice and transfixing him with narrow swimming eyes; then as he refused to +be overcome, she continued more humanly: "We've been to lots of classes, +you know. There are all sorts of methods. Suppose one of us reads the first +chapter aloud and then you expound. That is, we'll ask you questions." + +"That's fine," said Mr. Kirkpatrick with immense relief. "Fire away." + +And Alexina, who always read prefaces and introductions last, began with +"Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit." + + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +Mr. Kirkpatrick realized his ambition to see with his own sharp puncturing +little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a sewing-machine needle +playing staccato) several of the most flagrant examples of capitalistic +extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled away their useless lives +and servitors battened. In other words the extremely comfortable or the +shamelessly luxurious homes built for the most part by still active +business men whose first real period of rest would be in a small stone +residence in a certain silent city Down the Peninsula. + +Several were already occupied by their widows. In a climate where a man can +work three hundred and sixty-five days of the year the temptation to do so +is strong, and not conducive to longevity. + +The Ferdinand Thorntons, Trennahans, Hofers and others who had lost their +city homes on Nob Hill had not rebuilt, but lived the year round in their +country houses at Burlingame, San Mateo, Alta, Menlo Park, Atherton, or +"across the Bay," using the hotels when they came to town for dances, but +motoring home after the theater. + +Fortunately the finest and all of the newest mansions had been built in the +Western Addition and escaped the fire. Sibyl Bascom's father-in-law had +erected, shortly before his death, a large square granite palace more or +less in the Italian style, and as his widow preferred to live in Santa +Barbara, Frank Bascom had taken it over for himself and his bride. + +Olive had carried her millions to France and found her marquis. (As he +was wealthy himself they contributed little to the current gossip of San +Francisco.) + +Janet Maynard lived with her mother, another widow of unrestricted means, +in a large low Spanish house with a patio, built by a famous local +architect with such success that Rex Roberts when he married Polly Luning, +had bought the nearest vacant lot and ordered a romantic mansion as nearly +like that of his wife's intimate friend as possible. He would live in it as +soon as the idiosyncrasies of The Architect and Labor would permit, + +Mrs. Clement Hunter had another pale gray stone palace, supported in front +by noble pillars and commanding a superb view of the Bay, the Golden Gate, +and Mount Tamalpais. + +Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade of +stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted +geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other +nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and +innocent youth. + +Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square bow-windowed +mansard-roofed double house, built in eighteen-seventy-eight, and +unreclaimed. With it went a moderate income, and Alice lived on under the +ugly old roof chaperoned by an aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal +assortment of relatives because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so +terrified of draughts that her absence when convenient could always be +counted on. + + + +II + + +All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined the +class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits among +them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be expected of +"parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress, poker, and some +absorbing creature of the other sex. + +Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen, Mrs. +Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently adopted by +California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of curiosity, having read a +certain amount of socialism, but never met a socialist. + +She confided to Mrs. Thornton that she was not acutely anxious to meet +another, and Mrs. Thornton replied tartly: + +"What do you want to belong to such a class for? It's rank hyprocrisy to +pretend interest in a question we all hate the very name of, and to give +the creature money that he no doubt turns over to the 'cause' with his +tongue in his cheek. I'd never give one of them the satisfaction of knowing +that I recognized his existence." + +Said Maria Abbott firmly: "Exactly. We should ignore them, just as we +ignore envious and spiteful and ill-bred outsiders of any sort." + +"But we may not be able to ignore them," said Mrs. Hunter. "Their +organization is the best of any party even if their numbers are not +overwhelming. If they are content to advance slowly and by purely political +methods there is no knowing who will own this or any government fifty years +hence. For my part I'd rather they all turn raging anarchists; then we +could turn machine guns on them and clean 'em out. I hate them, for I was +too long getting where I am now, and I want to stay. But I don't make the +mistake of ignoring them, and I rather like having a squint at them at +close quarters. Kirkpatrick has taken us to several socialist meetings...we +borrow the servants' coats and mutilate our oldest hats....Socialism seems +to me rather more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick +is about the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict +themselves and one another, wander from the point and never get +anywhere....That would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor +California is a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the +riff-raff and derelicts....My other hope is that even they--that is to say +the least unbalanced of them--will come in time to realize that socialism +is economically unsound--" + +"Do you mean to say," cried Mrs. Abbott, "that Alexina has gone to +socialist meetings?" + +"Rather. She's very keen--" + +"Believes in it?" + +"Rather not. But she is naturally thorough--has a really extraordinary +tendency, for a San Franciscan of her sex and status, to finish anything +she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick she sticks +out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it is. She has him +pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the rest of us alive she +can smooth him down like a regular lion tamer." + +"Well, you're nothing but a lot of parlor socialists," said Mrs. Thornton +disgustedly. "And just as ridiculous as any other hybrids. But I'm relieved +that it hasn't spoiled your taste for the simpler pleasures of life. Maria, +as you don't play poker we'll have a game of bridge, Ladie, ring for +cocktails, will you--or would you rather have a gin fizz? Don't look so +horrified, Maria. We're better than socialists, anyhow; if they did win +out you'd have farther to fall than we, for you're a moss-backed old +conservative who hates change of any sort, while we not only love change of +all sorts but are regular anarchists: do as we please and snap our fingers +at the world. Here we are." + +The three were in Mrs. Thornton's Moorish palace half way between San Mateo +and Burlingame, a situation that symbolized the connecting bridge between +the old and new order for Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Thornton was a lineal +descendant of the Rincon Hill of the sixties and had made her début with +Maria Groome in the eighties. But she had married an immoderately rich man +and had a barbaric taste for splendor that formed the proper setting for +her own somewhat barbaric beauty, and imperious temper. Her dark and +splendid beauty was waning, for in the matter of giving aid to nature with +secrecy or with art she was faithful to the old tradition. But she was +always an imposing figure and as close to being the first power in San +Francisco society as that happy-go-lucky independent class would ever +tolerate. + + + +III + + +Kirkpatrick liked Mrs. Hunter, regarding her as "an honest plain-spoken +dame without any frills." This estimate applied not only to her temperament +but to her costumes. He admired her severe tailored suits (although he +sensed their cost) and her smart, plain, hard, little hats. + +The "frills and furbelows" of the younger "spenders" irritated the group of +nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond endurance; but +he managed to stand it by reminding himself that irritation of all such was +a healthy sign and vastly preferable to insidious tolerance. + +Mrs. Hunter was also as regular in her attendance as Mrs. Dwight, Miss +Lawton and Mrs. Price Ruyler, and asked fairly intelligent questions. The +others floated in and out, and one by one dropped from the class, until +toward the middle of the second winter none remained but Alexina, Aileen, +Mrs. Hunter and Hélène Ruyler, who, like Aileen, found in the "frantic +interest" of the materialistic creed which antagonized every instinct in +them, a distraction from the excessive gambling which had threatened to +wreck their nerves, purses, and peace of mind. They confided this artlessly +to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who replied dryly that they were the best argument he +had in stock. + +But if the major part of his fashionable class deserted him in due course +he had meanwhile seen the inside of their homes; and in each case, Alexina, +who divined his interest, arranged to have him shown over the house from +the kitchens and pantries straight up to the servants' quarters. + +These he found unexpectedly comfortable and complete. In fact, they were so +much more modern and adorned than the little cottage in the Mission where +he lived with his mother that he longed for the immediate installation of a +system that would teach these workers what real work was. What enraged him +further was their "airs." They too obviously looked upon him as an alien +intruder, whereas their mistresses, until socialism bored them, were, for +the most part, as charmingly courteous as his one reliable friend, Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight. + + + +IV + + +During the first winter and spring while his pupils were still fairly +regular in their attendance, he was both incensed and grimly amused by +their various idiosyncrasies. He soon became accustomed to their vanity +boxes and their public application of powder and lip stick, the frank +crossing of their knees that exhibited more diaphanous silk than he had +ever seen in his life before, the polite excitement that any new article +of attire worn by one seemed to induce in all, the wicked but on the whole +good-natured baiting of Aileen Lawton and Polly Roberts, the alternate +insolence and Circean glances of Mrs. Bascom, who amused herself +"practicing on him," and the constant smoking of most of them. + +But what he could neither understand nor accept was their attitude toward +one another. They would all rush at the hostess of the day as they entered, +or at late comers, with the excited enthusiasm of loved and loving +intimates who had not met for months; and Kirkpatrick, who missed nothing, +knew that they met once a day if not oftener. + +In spite of their intimacy their warm enraptured greetings carried a patent +measure of admiration and even respect. It was always at least fifteen +minutes before they would settle down for "work" and meanwhile they +chattered about their common interests, but always with the air of relating +long-delayed information and a frank desire to give of their best. He could +have understood "gush," and sentimentalism, but this attitude of which he +had neither heard nor read bothered him until one day he had a sudden, +flash of enlightenment. + + + +V + + +"Is it class-consciousness?" + +He asked the question of Gora, who dropped in upon a class at Alexina's or +Aileen's sometimes on a free afternoon, and with whom he was walking down +to the trolley car. + +"Something like that. Caste they would call it if they thought about it at +all, which to do them justice they don't....It used to be the fashion +in San Francisco for everybody to 'knock' everybody else. Then came a +revulsion and everybody began to praise and boost. You see it in all +circles, but the way it has taken that crowd is to show their intense +loyalty to one another by a constant reminder of it in manner, and in +refraining from criticism of one another, no matter how much they may +gossip about others outside of their particular set. Once, just to try my +sister-in-law, I told her that in my nursing I had stumbled across evidence +of an illicit love affair going on between one of her friends and a married +man, the husband of my patient. My sister became so remote that I had the +impression for a few moments that she really wasn't there. Once it would +have infuriated me, but I have improved my sense of humor and developed my +philosophy, so I merely turned the conversation, as she wouldn't speak at +all. She had quite withdrawn--still further into the sacred preserves, I +suppose.... + +"They are not only loyal but really seem to have the most exalted +admiration for one another because they are all of the same heaven-born +stock....That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that they get +so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not cultivate as many +kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as their wits are equal to. +When they can, they vary the monotony of life with summers in Europe and +winters in New York--or Santa Barbara, where they meet many interesting +people from the East or England; but some of them won't leave their busy +husbands or the husbands won't be left; or parents are not amenable; so +they try to create an atmosphere of high spirits and sheer delight in youth +and one another, and the result is almost a work of art. I rather respect +them, but I envy them a good deal less than before I knew them so well." + +"Oh, you envied them? They should envy you." + +"Well, they don't! Yes, I envied them because it is my natural right to be +one of them and fate slammed the door before I was born. It embittered my +first youth, and it might have become an obsession after my brother married +into society if I had not found the right kind of work. That and the boring +Sundays I've spent at Rincona, and the experiences I have had with that +young set, who are always at Mrs. Dwight's more or less; besides a profound +satisfaction in accomplishing literary work that not one of them could do +to save their lives--all this has routed a good deal of my old bitterness +of spirit. I am not sorry that I had it and indulged it, however. +Discontent and resentment put spurs on the soul. Anything is better than +smugness," + +"It's made you different enough from these others, all right. Even +from Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself....I'd rather you'd stayed +discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've suffered +from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're jabbering away +about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention to you as they do to +me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as they say. There isn't, +one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't give my eye teeth to see +hanging out the wash or running a machine in a factory."' + +Gora turned to him with a smile. At this time she was as nearly happy as +was possible for that insurgent too aspiring spirit. + +"Nevertheless, they've made you over in a way--Oh, don't flame! I don't +mean your principles...other ways that won't hurt you in the least. You +cut your hair differently. You wear better shoes. You have your clothes +pressed--the suit you wear up here anyhow. You've reformed your speech +somewhat, and you know a good deal more about many things than you did +a few months ago. I am expecting any day to see you wearing a 'boiled' +shirt." + +"Oh, no, not that! It'd never do. It's true enough I got to feeling +self-conscious about my rough clothes and boots, especially after I met +that dude brother of yours one day in the hall and he gave me a once-over +that made me feel like a tramp." + +"Oh!...But he was snubbed himself not so very long ago, and I suppose +it gives him a certain pleasure to snub some one else, I am ashamed of +him....But tell me, don't you like them rather better than you expected? +Find them rather a better sort? You must see that there is practically no +leisure class as far as the men are concerned--" + +"They have time enough to go chicken chasing--" + +"Well, aside from that? At least they do work. And the younger women? You +knew before that they were frivolous because they had too much money and +too few responsibilities. Many of the older women have a serious and useful +side, even if they do waste an unholy amount of time at cards." + +"Well, if you ask me, their manners, when they remember to use 'em, are +better than I expected. Only that Miss Thorndyke is cold and haughty, but +perhaps that's because she's poor (for her), or is covering up something, +or is just plain stupid....Mrs. Dwight's manners are always perfect. She's +my idea of a lady--just! And in the new system there'll be a long sight +more ladies than is possible now, only no aristocrats....Yes, they're +decent enough considering they're rotten poisoned by money and thinkin' +themselves better'n the mass; and I like their affection for one another. +But they could be all that in the socialist state and more too. They'd have +to cut out drink and gambling, and a few other diversions some of 'em'll +drift into, if one or two of 'em haven't already--just through being bored +to death." + +"Do you honestly think socialism means universal virtue?" + +"No, I don't. I'm no such greenhorn; though there's some that does, or +pretends to....But I mean there'd be no _drifting_ into vice like there +is now, no indulgence of any old weakness because temptation was always +following them about or just round the corner. That's the trouble +now....But in the most perfect state some would be watching out for their +chance, just because the old Adam was too strong in spite of the fact that +all the old reminders had disappeared." + +"More likely they'd all murder one another because they were some ten +thousand times more bored than that poor little group whose brains you are +addling." + +"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Miss Gora. You ought to give +that pen of yours to socialism. There would be all the revenge you could +want--and it's what you're entitled to. Then I could call you Comrade +Gora." + +"Call me Comarade by all means if it hurts you to say Miss to a fellow +worker....You admit then that envy of a society you were not born into and +which refuses to acknowledge you as an equal, is the secret of your desire +to pull it down?" + +"Partly that." he admitted cooly. "Not that I'd change places with any of +those fat millionaires I see shuffling down the steps of the Pacific-Union +Club--although I'll admit to you what I wouldn't to these young devils in +my class, that I know some socialists who would. I hate the sight of 'em. +But I want to do away with class-rights and class-distinctions, not only +because I just naturally have no use for them but because I want to put an +end to the misery of the world." + +"You mean the material misery. What would you do with the other seven +hundred different varieties?" + +"Well....I guess each case would have to take care of itself. Perhaps we'd +get round to it after a while. Get power and class-envy out of the world, +and some genius, like as not, would invent a post-graduate course of +colleges for human nature. All things are possible." + +"You are an optimist! Here's our car. Come home with me and share the +supper that I pay for with the tainted money of a plutocrat. Only we +haven't any real plutocrats in San Francisco. Only modest millionaires. +Will you?" + +"Yes." said Mr. Kirkpatrick. "And thank you kindly." He even smiled, for he +was developing a latent heavily overlain seed of humor; inherited from the +full bay tree that had flourished in his grandfather, born in County Clare, +where men sometimes indulged in rebellion but did not take themselves too +seriously withal. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +That winter and the following seasons for the next few years passed very +rapidly for Alexina. Besides her classes and the constant companionship of +her friends (to say nothing of the excitement of helping one or two of them +out of not infrequent scrapes), she had for a time the absorbing interest +of refurnishing the best part of her house. + +The square lower hall which had been scantily furnished with the +grandfather's clock, a hat-rack, and a settee, and whose walls were covered +with "marble paper," was painted, walls and wood, a deep ivory white, and +refurnished with light wicker furniture, palms, and growing plants. The +hat-rack was abolished, and the small library on the left of the entrance +turned into a men's dressing-room. The folding doors were removed from the +great double parlors, the "body brussels" replaced by hardwood floors, the +walls tinted a pale gray as a background for the really valuable pictures +(including the proud and gracious and beautiful Alexina Ballinger, dust +long since in Lone Mountain), and the splendid pieces of Italian furniture +which had always seemed to sulk and bulge against the dull brown walls. +The rep and walnut sets were sent to the auction room and replaced by +comfortable chairs and sofas whose colors varied, but harmonized not only +with one another but with the rugs that Alexina under Gora's direction had +bought at auction. In fact she bought many of her new pieces at auction and +with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over the advertisements and +then go down to the crowded rooms and bid. + +The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her +mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with bookcases to +the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken tables against an +expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a wedding gift from +Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art) that had despoiled a +desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise. + +The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had been +removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den for long +rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer when she +remained in the city. + +The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and gold +wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the sideboards +were built into the wails end could be replaced only at great cost; +they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties, and no doubt +exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs which had been +merely recovered. + +As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced by +electricity. + +All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her +brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to +achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable people +would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative. Moreover, +entertaining at home would be far cheaper for him than at the restaurants. + +He was doing fairly well at this time, for he had learned what commodities +the retail men were likely to buy of a firm as small as his, and he had got +into touch with one or two foreign markets not monopolized by the older +houses. Moreover, he had been speculating a little in the new Nevada mines, +and successfully. He presented Alexina with a Victrola which included the +music for all the new dances, and a long coat of baby lamb lined with her +favorite periwinkle blue. To his sister he returned a thousand dollars of +her money. + +Alexina knew nothing of these speculations and felt that her original faith +in him was justified. He did not offer even yet to pay all the monthly +expenses of the house, explaining casually that the greater part of his +profits went back into the business; but he handed over his share promptly, +and such fleeting doubts and anxieties as may once have visited his still +inexperienced wife faded and finally disappeared. + + + +II + + +They began to entertain a little during the second winter, Mrs. Groome +having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large drawing-room +had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a habit, when there was +"nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and announcing they were coming up +to take a whirl. This led to more telephoning, and some twenty couples +would dance in the long-silent old house at least once and often three +times a week. + +The new order delighted James, who felt young again, and his hastily +improvised suppers were models of unpretentious succulence. There were +always sherry and whiskey in the handsome old decanters on the sideboards; +and, at the equally perfect little dinners, for a time, two bottles of +Alexander Groome's favorite brand of champagne (which he had remembered +with satisfaction on his deathbed that he had not outlived) were brought up +from the cellar by the beaming James. + +When, almost with tears, he informed his mistress' husband that the last +bottle had been served Mortimer could do no less than order up a case. He +had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent native claret +where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to appear a "piker" +in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler. + +He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business." Nearly +all the young men, married or otherwise, that came to his house (Alexina +subtly encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or less importance +or standing in the world of business and finance (two were lawyers in their +first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne), and the more prosperous he +appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the extent of Alexina's income) the +more apt would business be to flow his way, the less likely they would be +to suspect him of playing the stock market. At all events it enhanced his +standing and gave him intense pleasure. + +Moreover, as time passed it became evident to his sensitive ego that he +was no longer looked upon as an outsider. He was accepted as a matter +of course. He was one of them. Neither men nor women (not even Aileen) +continued to ask themselves whether they liked him or not. He was there and +to stay and that was the end of it. They had always liked his manners; he +made a charming host, and, as ever, he danced like "a god with wings on his +heels." + +Quite naturally in due course some one offered to put him up at the most +exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to which +every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance belonged as a +matter of course. Old men whose names had once been potent in the great +banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed with sad and rheumy eyes +down upon the new city in which there was barely a familiar landmark to +remind them of their youth or the years of their power and their pride. +They sat there all day long, day after day; and tourists went away with the +impression that the imposing brown stone mansion on the sacred crest of Nob +Mill was a sumptuously endowed retreat for the incurably aged. + +But the majority of its members were very much alive and still well-padded; +and, far from being on a pale diet, were deeply appreciative of the famous +culinary resources of the chef, and showed it. + +When the offer was made to Mortimer he accepted with a bright: "Oh, thanks, +old chap. I'd like it immensely," But when, on the first day of his +membership, he stood in one of the front windows and gazed out at the ruins +opposite--the Pacific Union Club and the Fairmont Hotel were still two +oases in the rubbled waste of Nob Hill--he felt so exultant and so happy +that he dared not open his lips lest he betray himself. He could mount no +higher socially. All that he had to strive for now was his million--or +millions. When he had half a million he would build a house at Burlingame +that could be enlarged from time to time. + +Only with the "Rincona crowd" he had made no headway. Maria did not +hesitate to comment on the extravagance of doing the house over, the +membership at the club with all it entailed, Alexina's little electric +car, and above all the constant entertaining. A moderate amount was due +Alexina's position; but open house--nothing made money fly so quickly. +Prices were getting higher every day (there came a time, in the wake of the +great war, when she looked back with sad amazement at the morning of her +discontent) and rich people were getting richer while poor people like +themselves (she meant what Alexina still called the A. A.) were growing +poorer. + +Tom Abbott had not put Mortimer up at the club. He happened to know that +although his brother-in-law was doing fairly well he was not making a +fortune, and suspected that he dabbled in stocks. But he said nothing of +this to his wife, and as he knew that Alexina had long since revoked her +power of attorney (she had given him to understand that this was done at +Mortimer's suggestion) he believed that her money at least was safe. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Alexina, although she would have found it impossible, even if she had +so desired, to relapse into the incognitance of the years preceding her +mother's death, had nevertheless locked and sealed and cellared her ivory +tower, those depths of her nature where, she suspected, her true ego dwelt. +It was an ego she had forfeited the right to indulge, nor had she at this +time any desire to know more of herself than she did. Life after all was +very pleasant; she managed to fill it with many little and even a +few absorbing interests; and once she spent a month at Santa Barbara +chaperoning Janet Maynard, where her duties sat lightly upon her and she +would have responded naturally if addressed as Miss Groome, so completely +did Mortimer fade into the background. In the summer of nineteen-thirteen +Judge Lawton and Aileen overcame all protests and took her with them to +Europe, where, after a month in Paris, she visited Olive de Morsigny in her +renaissance château on the Loire. The memory of Gathbroke revisited her +and she half-wished the Judge would go to England, but the climate did not +agree with him, and after a few more enchanted weeks, in Italy and Spain, +she returned to Mortimer, who was distinctly duller than ever. + +But she had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her +life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in the +face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as ever +attempted to stand between a girl and her fate. + +Nevertheless, immediately after her return from Santa Barbara in the late +autumn of nineteen-eleven, and wholly without, analysis or pondering, she +made a significant change in the order of her life. Mortimer, who had, +during her absence, occupied a large room at the back of the house visited +by the afternoon sun, found himself invited to retain it....They must avoid +the least possibility of a family until they were better off....She had +been hearing the subject discussed...the most economical baby cost fifty +dollars a month. With a permanent trained nurse, and of course they would +have one, the cost would easily be doubled...thousands were required for +the proper education of a child...even if she had girls she should wish +them to go to college; she was not half educated herself...and boys, with +their extravagances, their debts, they cost a mint; it was better for +children to be born outright in the humbler classes than to be born into a +rich set without riches themselves...it all put her in a panic every time +she thought of it....Morty was so sensible and had such a high sense of +responsibility, of course he understood...children, even when small, would +hamper him fearfully, especially as he had not even begun to make his +million....As for herself she would be more economical than ever and help +him like the good pal she was. + +Mortimer had the sensation of being trussed up with invisible but +inflexible silken thongs. His thoughts need not be recorded. + + + +II + + +Alexina refurnished her bedroom in her favorite periwinkle blue; a low +graceful day-bed with a screen before the stationary washstand helped to +create the atmosphere of a boudoir. It had an intensely personal atmosphere +in which man, more particularly a lawful husband, had no place. + +When Alexina stood on the threshold and surveyed this room, chaste, cool, +proud, and exquisitely lovely, she lifted her hand and blew off a kiss, out +of the window, wafting away the memory of the room as it had been. She +had remarkable powers of obliteration, a sort of River of Lethe among the +backwaters of her mind, where she held below the surface all she wished to +forget until it ceased to struggle. She never again gave a thought to +her early relationship with her husband; not even to the indifference +or distaste which had followed so quickly upon her curiosity and her +determination to feel romantic at all costs. + + + +III + + +Subtly she felt she was happier than she had ever been even in those first +weeks, when she had barred the gates of her fool's paradise behind her; she +felt as free and happy as the birds skimming over the beds of periwinkle +below her window, and (miraculously finding her second youth quite as +productive as her first) took no pains to conceive of anything better. She +looked neither forward nor back, and all was well. + +She even flirted a little, that being the fashion, and, having had enough +of business men, encouraged the devotions of Bascom Luning and Jimmie +Thorne. She saw them when they chose to call in the daytime, and regaled +the glowering Mortimer at the dinner table with scraps of their sapience. + +Mortimer had resigned himself long since to the sacrifice of several of his +bourgeois ambitions, among them to be master in his own house; but not an +iota of his convictions. Although it would not have occurred to him to +distrust his wife if she had chosen to sit up all night with a man, he made +frozen comments upon the impropriety of a woman having men in the house +when her husband was not there, sitting out dances with men, taking long +tramps through Marin County with three men and no one for chaperon but +Alice Thorndyke and Janet Maynard--shocking flirts--whole Sundays--with +lunch heaven knew where, and himself, who hated tramping, not included. + +But these grim remonstrances were met in so gay a spirit of badinage that +he felt ridiculous, particularly as no powers of badinage or of repartee +had been included in his own mental equipment; and he usually relapsed into +a polite and bored silence. + +He never had had much to say at the dinner table when they were alone, and, +as time went on, his comments on the day were exhausted before the soup had +given place to the entrée, and Alexina fell into the habit of bringing her +Italian text-book to the table--the study of Italian just then being the +rage in her set--and whatever interesting book she had on hand. Mortimer +made no protest. His brain was fagged at night. It was a relief not to +be expected to talk when they dined alone; those long silences had been +oppresive even to him; he rather welcomed the books. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +This complete new freedom, and personal privacy, entailed in time a result +which Alexina would have been the last to anticipate even if she had +disposed of her husband by death or divorce. + +Owing to the thoroughness of her mental methods she was psychologically +free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been transposed +by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will when it is +strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, thought; but it +has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and in that mysterious +region are the subtle inheritances of mind and character, the springs and +the direction, of all functional life; a fate with a thousand threads on +her wheel, filaments from the souls and the bodies, the minds and the +acts, of every ancestor straight back to that vast impersonal ocean where, +unthinkable millions of years ago proemial life awaited the call of the +worlds. + +This aged untiring fate at the wheel battles unceasingly with the conscious +mind above, for age is prone to live by law and rote. These fates, the +oldest daughters of the Earth-Mother, Nature, know nothing of morals or +manners, assume that men and women are as naïve in their normality as the +denizens of forest and field. And so they are while children. + + + +II + + +The eternal pull between civilizing Mind (Oh, centuries yet from being +civilized!) and the memoried but obstinate old lady at the wheel (who +laughs when a man of powerful will and too active mind "wills" sleep; +forcing him finally to choose between the horrors of insomnia, the +insidious tyranny of drugs, and the doubtful and wearisome alternative of +psychotherapeutics)--this pull, automatic in people of low estate, becomes +bitter and often appalling where the mind is highly developed and attuned +besides to the codes and customs of the best that civilization has so far +accomplished. + +The most vital of all these functions, for without it Mother Earth would be +like an ant hill without ants, and all these ancient norms of daughters +as homeless as the rest of the fates, is what man in a spirit of social +compromise has labeled an instinct--the sex-instinct. It is no more +an instinct than recurring sleep, lymphatic action, hunger, thirst, +alimentation. It is a primal function for which Mind, wisely foreseeing the +consequences of too much Nature, long since created laws both civil and +social to curb. There are many impulses, Inherited, from ten thousand +ancestors and constantly jogged by Earth's busy agent, human nature, that +may logically be called instincts (their roots lying in the ancient social +groups and their struggle to exist) but not a function that governs the +law of reproduction, as appetite governs the law of renewing the vital +necessities of the body. + + + +III + + +In the Latin races the conscious war between the brain above and the +sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere +excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect body, +is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence, their +practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to life, +psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple question of +hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of that modern, +development, called romance, which has given birth to a peculiar form of +personal imagination, too often without foundation or logic--all these +preclude that most active of all mental aids to the matter of fact needs of +the body--glamour. + +But it is far otherwise with the English-speaking races--loosely called +Anglo-Saxon, They are powerfully sexed; their feelings and sentiments go +deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but fatal +clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is perhaps the +most precious of their achievements, and they have established a code which +not only demands rectitude of act but suppression of thought and desire +where there is no lawful outlet. + +Nothing, possibly, has more infuriated the old lady at the methodically +performing wheel than this. She takes her revenge and squirts poison into +the physical structure of the brain, obscures the soul with dark and +brooding clouds, and subtly reduces the blood system to such a state that +any germ is welcome. + + + +IV + + +Once more Mind uses its highest faculties and outwits her, having no +intention that civilization shall drop below the plane to which it has been +raised through long laborious centuries of time. Life becomes more diverse, +more complex. The middle classes work harder to live; they have little +leisure for thoughts, for introspection. Punishment is dire....Those that +have leisure and yet not enough to command the more brilliant and special +forms of distraction are supplied with public libraries, gymnasiums, free +medical advice regarding the laws of hygiene in places where they cannot +fail to see it, new forms of cheap amusement; they are subtly encouraged to +take up useful work or study; or there are increasing pressures which may +force even this semi-leisure class to work for luxuries if not for bread. +Tens of thousands of women are led into the passionate diversions of club +life. For them, too, politics with its fierce championships and hatreds +and frictions; the necessity of concentration of thought on the impersonal +plane if only in the matter of getting the best of rivals within the fold; +and if hair flies souls are saved. + +Over the Oldest Profession Mind still scratches its head in vain. It is +ever hopeful, and hamstrings a sovereign patron, like alcohol, now and +again; but the lady at the wheel smiles, for here, in addition to the +unquenchable maternal instinct, the ignorance of the poor, and the glamour +that the men of certain races have learned to give to love, she has her +clearest field. + +Aside from the women of commerce there are, of course, many secret +rebels--now and then only does one make her exit from society through the +courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or capital, +suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies--which are +vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding genius +is more than commonly out of patience--and rise to serene heights or grow +morbid and irritable according to the strength or the meagerness of their +equipment; or the nature of their resources. A cultivated resource is a +persistent fiction that life is as it ought to be, not as it is, and it +is no plan of theirs to read books or witness plays that might carve and +populate a new groove in their brains. + +Let no one imagine that this class will become more "enlightened," +"broader," as time goes on. Not for a century at least. Mind has made too +great a success of this product; she has practically achieved a complete +triumph over the lady at the wheel. It is this class that has made +civilization progress, the solid thing it is to date. The excrescences, the +deserters from the normal, scintillating or subtle, may be tolerated for +the spice they give to life but they will never rule, + +Possibly they do not mind. Life Is made up of compromises and +compensations. + + + +V + + +American women in youth, of the visibly reputable world, may be freely +divided into two classes, the oversexed and those that seem cold to +themselves and others until they are well into the period of their second +youth--between twenty-four and thirty; and a not inconsiderable number are +so and permanently. In the first case they either precipitate themselves +into matrimony or have one or more intrigues until they find the man they +wish to marry, when they settle down and make excellent wives. The others, +if they are imaginative and high-minded, fall in love romantically and +marry far too soon; or they capitalize their youth or beauty and marry to +the best advantage; or they elect to live a life of serene spinsterhood +like Alexina's Aunt Clara, and bring up the family children. A not +inconsiderable number take their fling late. + +When the American girl of the super-refined class, and whose baleful norm +in the crypt was asleep at the wheel in her first blind youth, finds +herself disappointed in the most intimate partnership that exists, the +complaisance, voluntary at the beginning, drifts into habit, more and more +grimly endured. Some have the moral courage to put an end to it as they +would to any false situation, but if individuals were not rare in this +world we should have chaos, not a civilization of sorts which is a pleasant +place to plant the feet, however high into the clouds the head may poke its +investigating nose. + +It is natural that with such women during the period of endurance all love +should seem distasteful, and the mind dwell upon any other subject. But +remove the cause of sex-inertia and there is likely to be the stir and +awakening of spring after a long monotonous winter of hard frost and +blanketing snow. Or a homelier simile: remove the cause of chronic +indigestion and the appetite becomes fresh and normal. + +Thus Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +San Francisco, commencing in September, has three or four months of perfect +weather. The cold fogs and winds cease to pay their daily visits, the rainy +season awaits the new year. The skies are a deep and cloudless blue, the +air is warm and soft and alluring, never too hot, although the overcoats of +summer are discarded. + +The city lies bathed in golden sunlight or the sharp jeweled light of +stars, when the moon is not blazing like a crystal bonfire. Then Mount +Tamalpais and other mountains across the Bay and behind the city take on +a chiseled outline that, particularly at night, makes them look curiously +new, as if but yesterday heaved from the deep, and Nature too busy to +provide them with a background and the soft blurs of time for centuries to +come. This primeval look of bare California mountains on clear nights has +something sinister and menacing in its aspect as if at any moment they +might once more brood alone over the earth. + + + +II + + +Alexina returned from abroad early in November and stood one morning +outside her eucalyptus grove, revolving slowly on one heel, schoolgirl +fashion, as she gazed up at the steep densely populated hill that rose from +the street below her own private little hill, and cut off her view of the +hills of Berkeley and the mountains beyond; at the broad crowded valleys +on the south; the range of hills that hid the Pacific Ocean, and included +Mount Calvary with its cross and the symmetrical mass of Twin Peaks; the +bare brown mountains of the north piling above the green sparkling bay with +its wooded and military islands. + +Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she had +seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it to +art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she had +returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving off the +disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her to admit it. + +San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that compact +mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with sudden +palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the impression +that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike Genoa. But it +seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had just paid her +first brief visit to the old world, an interval, moreover, that had been +without a responsibility, cut her off so completely from her general life +that when variously addressed "Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Señorita," she +ceased almost at once to feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not +forbidden herself to dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with +a future to sketch with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her +pleasure. + +But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in Europe. +She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would +not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters, +with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it +would also deprive him of his surest social prop. People had accepted him +and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good +old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to +anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her +invitations to all important and many small dinners, not avowedly bridge +or poker parties, were as inevitable as crab in season; but there were too +many young men whom girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony +of crab à la poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as +little to say as poor Morty. She had known dèbutantes who flatly refused to +dance with married men or even to be introduced to them. + +California was her fate. No doubt of that. She might never see Europe +again, for while it was all very well to be a guest once it would be quite +impossible another time. She certainly could not afford it herself and keep +Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as she might if her +home were in New York. + +Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not. +Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him so +depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven. His eyes were as +lifeless as slate, his voice was flat, although for that matter he was +almost dumb. When at home he sat brooding heavily by the open western +windows of the drawing-room, or moved restlessly about. To all her +questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse than +ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As she had not +been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself, and had paid few +week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about and the men talked +of nothing but the business depression....Alexina had shrugged her +shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle reproach for leaving +him to the dull cares of business while she enjoyed herself in Europe. + +She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly +comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money which +with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the household +expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club by the ocean, +and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of his idolatry on +Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was and it was now two +years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a luxurious bachelor at the +back of the house with an always amiable companion at breakfast and dinner. + + + +III + + +Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and +watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty had +consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying him. She +hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be happy in +his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his divagations from the +world--and she could trust him to do that! Now that she had ceased to be +the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves and torpid imagination she +would be the last to condemn him. Human Nature was an ever opening book to +her these days, and she wondered what would happen to herself if any of +several men she liked were capable of making her love him, whipping up a +personal storm in those emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly +intruded themselves upon her consciousness. + +She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the old +world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are or not, +and where life looks to the American the quintessence of romance....She +had concluded that the most satisfactory experience that could come to her +would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a man who possessed all the +requirements to induce it, but who would either be the unsuspecting object, +or, reciprocating, would continue to love her with the world between them. + +For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did +not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might for +a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she recalled +the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were put to meet +their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole drama of man and +woman. + +Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and +society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often +laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when circumstances +have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness even the blind urge +of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go on sullenly feeding the +fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for the astrological moment. + + + +IV + + +Alexina shrugged her shoulders impatiently and went into the house. She +would go down to the bank and clip her coupons. She cultivated assiduously +the practical side of life, making the most of it, delighted when repairs +were needed on her flats, regretting that the greater part of her income +came from ground rents, collected, as ever, by Tom Abbott, and bonds, from +which she still experienced a childish pleasure in cutting the coupons. Her +flats, which were in a humbler part of the western division of the city, +she had never visited, but she received a call every month from the agent, +who brought her the rents and complaints. + +She had made a heroic effort to turn herself into a business woman but +the material had been too slender; and she sometimes wished for a large +independent fortune that would tax her powers to the utmost. But she never +even had any surplus to invest. Her wardrobe was no inconsiderable item; +living prices rose steadily; there were repairs both on her own house and +the flats to be anticipated every year, to say nothing of the fiendish sum +that must be set aside for taxes. But she managed to save the necessary +amount; and if they lived somewhat extravagantly, at least she had never +disturbed her capital. + +On the whole she knew they had managed very well for young people who lived +so much in the world, and she had no intention of economizing further. They +had no children. Her husband was young and energetic and healthy. Her own +little fortune was secure. She purposed to enjoy life as best she could; +and as she could not have done this quite selfishly and been happy, she +included among her yearly expenditures a certain admirable charity presided +over by her equally admirable sister, and even visited it occasionally with +her friends when a serious mood descended abruptly upon them....She was now +on the threshold of her second beautiful youth, and found herself and life +far more interesting than when, a silly girl of eighteen, she had believed +that all life and romance must be crowded into that callow period. She had +no idea of sacrificing this new era vibrating with unknown possibilities +(it was on the cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory +tomb; lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it +difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a +sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the same +time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott (when +Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a----fool, but she was +not a----fool. + + + +V + + +She dressed herself in a black velvet suit made by her New York tailors. +She had spent, a fortnight with her brother Ballinger on her way home, +and he had given her a set of silver fox: a large muff and two of those +priceless animals head to head to keep a small section of her anatomy at +blood heat in a climate never cold enough for furs. + +The day was hot. It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side of +the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and fortunate +woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women everywhere with +a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn is the time to +display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San Francisco woman of +fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in the glorious spring +weather of November if she perished in her furs. + +The coat, bound with silk braid, was lined with periwinkle blue, and there +was a touch of the same color in her large black velvet hat. Nothing could +make the great irises of her black-gray eyes look blue, but they shone out, +dazzling, under the drooping brim; and if she was, perchance, too warm +above, her scant skirt, her thin silk stockings and low patent leather +shoes struck the balance like a brilliant paradox. + +Alexina nodded approvingly at her image in the pier glass, found the key of +her safe deposit box in the cabinet where she had left it, and went down to +the smart little electric car which the gardener had brought to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Alexina stood alone in the strong room of the bank leaning heavily against +the wall with its endless rows of compartments from one of which she had +taken the dispatch box in which she had kept her bonds. + +The box had fallen to the floor. If there had been any one in the room with +her he would have started and turned as the box clanged with a hollow echo +on the steel surface. + +The box was empty. + +It was a large box. It had contained forty thousand dollars' worth of +bonds, nearly a third of her fortune. The securities were among the +soundest the country afforded, for Alexander Groome, wild as he may have +been when relieving the monotony of life with too many diversions, not +the least of which was speculation, never made a mistake in his permanent +investments; and others had been bought with equal prudence by Judge Lawton +or Tom Abbott. + +But the bonds had been negotiable. She recalled Tom Abbott's warning to +keep them always in her safe deposit box and the key hidden. They might be +traced if stolen, but State's Prison for the thief would be cold comfort if +the bonds had been cashed and the money spent. + +She had always had one of the lighter Italian pieces in her bedroom, a +beautiful cabinet of carved and gilded oak nearly black with age. Like all +such it had a secret drawer and here she had kept her keys, and her jewels +during the winter. + +Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain little +gilded face on the panel?...All her friends, of course: Aileen, Sibyl, +Alice, Olive, Janet, Hélène....Unthinkable to have a secret drawer in an +old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some Borgia or other, and not +exhibit it to one's chosen friends. + +She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had +kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was +applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They +had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had +remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and +jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe under +the stairs. + +It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable stones, +reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine pieces +she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of the family +out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished but more +opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother slept. Her pearl +necklace had been the present of her more intimate group of friends. + +Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although she +seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went abroad, +in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified glance in the +coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat. + +But her attention riveted itself once more on the empty box at her feet. A +third of her fortune, and gone beyond redemption. Her stunned mind grasped +that fact at once. No one stole bonds to keep them. But who was the thief? + +Not any of her old friends. They might gamble, or drink, or deceive their +legal guardians, but they drew the line at stealing. Certain sins lie +within the social code and others do not. Women of her class, unless +kleptomaniac, did not steal. It wasn't done. With reason or unreason they +classed thieves of any sort with harlots, burglars, firebugs, embezzlers, +forgers, murderers, and common people who overdressed and drank too much in +public; and withdrew their skirts. + +Moreover, Aileen had been with her in Europe. Olive lived there. Janet and +Sibyl had more money than they could spend. The Ruylers were ranching, and +Hélène was in Adler's Sanatorium with a new baby. Alice had gone to Santa +Barbara before she left and had not returned. + +It was insulting even to pass them in review, but the mind works in erratic +curves under shock. + +Gora had taken the thousand dollars Mortimer had returned to her and gone +first to Lake Tahoe and then to Honolulu to write a novel. She would return +on the morrow. + +Mortimer. + +It was incredible. Monstrous. She was outrageous even to link his name with +such a deed. He was the soul of honor. He might not be a genius but no man +had a cleaner reputation. She had lived with him now for over six years and +she had never...never...never... + +And she knew, unconsentingly, infallibly, that Mortimer had stolen the +bonds. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +I + + +Alexina drew the jewel coffer from the depths of the compartment and opened +it with fingers that felt swollen and numb. But the jewels were there, and +she experienced a feeling of fleeting satisfaction. They were no part of +her fortune, for she believed that only want would ever induce her to sell +them, but at least they were her own personal treasure and a part of the +beauty of life. + +She returned the fallen box to its place and locked the little cupboard, +then took herself in hand. Neither the keeper outside the door of the vault +nor those she met above must suspect that anything was wrong with her. What +she should do she had no idea at the moment, but at all events she must +have time to think. + +She left the bank with her usual light step and her head high, and then she +motored down the Peninsula. As she passed the shipyards she saw crowds of +men standing about; some of them turned and scowled after her. They were on +strike and took her no doubt for the wife or daughter of a millionaire; and +in truth there was never any difference superficially in her appearance +from that of her wealthier friends. She had one ear instead of several hut +it was perfect of its kind. Her wardrobe was by no means as extensive as +Sibyl's or Janet's or a hundred others, but what she had came from the best +houses, that use only the costliest materials. Her face was composed and +proud. There was not a signal out, even from her brilliant expressive eyes, +of the storm within. + +Her mind was no longer stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury. How +dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and separate....She +felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if her jewel coffer +instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was the instinct of +possession that had been outraged. What was hers was hers as much as the +hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind...an instinct that harked back +to the oldest of the buried civilizations...she wondered if any socialist +really had cultivated the power to feel differently. She was quite certain +that if Kirkpatrick should see a thief fleeing with his purse he would +chase him, collar him, and either chastise him then and there or drag him +to the nearest police station. + +And the thief was her husband, the man of her choice. Alexina felt that +possibly if a brother had stolen her money she would have been less bitter +because less humiliated; one did not select one's brothers....And if she +had still loved Mortimer it would have been bad enough, although no doubt +with the blindness of youthful passion she would immediately have begun to +make excuses for him, reeling a blow as it would have been. But the one +compensation she had found in her matrimonial wilderness was her pride in +the essential honor of her chosen partner, and her complete trust. If there +had been any necessity for giving a power of attorney when she went +to Europe she would have drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so +completely had she forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution....If +she had, no doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless. + +Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate himself +from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had lost it; that +was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his powers of bluff +failed him matters were serious indeed. + +He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the +last was unpardonable. + +And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his parents' +had they been alive, because however they might lash him with their +contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in society +unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had had forty +thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it would have been +safe no matter what his predicament. He would have accepted the alternative +of bankruptcy without hesitation. + +But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered +something that Gora had once said to the same effect....Yes, she could have +forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be spared this +sickening suffocating sensation of contempt. It was demoralizing. She hated +herself as much as she hated him. Moreover there would have been some +compensation in sending an outsider to San Quentin. + +And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand +dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she was +visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid half the +household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to pay any. +They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay taxes, +subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay the doctor +and the dentist...a hundred and one other incidentals...out of four +thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They would have to +change their mode of living. + +However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a plain +talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even had she +wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have things out +and over with. But it would be horrible...horribly intimate. She had always +deliberately lived on the surface with her family and friends, respected +their privacies as she held hers inviolate. As her mind flashed back over +her life she realized that this would be the first really serious personal +talk she would ever have held with any one. Or, if her family, and +occasionally, Mortimer, had insisted upon being serious she had maintained +her own attitude of airy humor or delicate insolence. + +She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the soul. +Some day...perhaps...but never yet. + + + +II + + +She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries would +run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this time +having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy. She +knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of Mr. James +Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other thoughtful men, +that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty equally divided; +greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and class hatred and the itch +for power on the part of labor leaders; and a stupidity in the mass that +was more pardonable than the short-sighted stupidities of capital....But +what would you? A few centuries hence the world might be civilized, but not +in her time. Nothing gave her mind less exercise. One thing at least was +certain and that was that when strikes lasted too long the laborers and +their families went hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the +question for her and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet +the fashion to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless +between these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.) + +But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her +own....The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life, had +been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she was +bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not noticed it in +time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in its wake....She had +had enough left, more than many women who had made the same blind plunge +into the barbed wire maze of matrimony....And now she had nothing. She +would have liked to drive right out on to a liner about to sail through the +Golden Gate...but she would no doubt have to live on...and on...in changed, +possibly humble, conditions...despising the man she must meet sometime +every day....Yes, she did wish she never had been born. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +She concluded, while she dressed for dinner, that she must be a coward. + +Alexina was far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have +liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power in +the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the national +gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction--racial rather than +individual...qualities that have made the United States lag far behind the +greater European nations in all but material development and a certain +inventiveness; both of which in some cases are outclassed in the older +world. + +A California woman of her mother's generation had become a great and +renowned archæologist and lived romantically in a castle in the City of +Mexico. She bad often wished, since her serious mental life had begun, that +this gift had descended upon her--the donee had also been a member of +the A. A., and this striking endowment might just as well have tarried a +generation and a half longer. + +She was by no means avid of publicity--people seldom are until they have +tasted of it--but she would have enjoyed a rapid and brilliant development +of her mental faculties with productiveness of some sort either as a sequel +or an interim. It was impossible to advance much farther in her present +circumstances. + +No, she was far from perfect, and willing to admit it; but she had always +assumed that courage, moral as well as physical, was an accompaniment of +race, like breeding and certain automatic impulses. But her hands were +trembling and her cheeks drained of every drop of color because she must +have a plain and serious talk with a guilty wretch. She had nothing to +fear, but she could not have felt worse if she had been the culprit +herself. What was human nature but a bundle of paradoxes? + +At least she had the respite of the dinner hour. Only a fiend would spoil +a man's dinner--and cigar--no matter what he had done. That would make the +full time of her own respite about an hour and twenty minutes. + +In a moment of panic she contemplated telephoning to Aileen and begging +her to come over to dinner. She also no doubt could get Bascom Luning and +Jimmie Thorne. Then it would not be possible to speak to Mortimer before +to-morrow as he always fell asleep at ten o'clock when there was no +dancing....To-morrow it would be easier, and wiser. One should never speak +in anger.... + +But she was quite aware that her anger had burnt itself out. Her mind felt +as cold as her hands. Better have it over. She put on a severe black frock, +not only suitable to the occasion but as a protection from disarming +compliments. Mortimer, who dressed so well himself that it would have been +as impossible for him to overdress as to be rude to a woman, disliked dark +severity in woman's attire. He never criticized his wife's clothes, but +when they displeased him he ignored them with delicate ostentation. + + + +II + + +Alexina had begun to feel that she should scream in the complete silence of +the dining-room when Mortimer unexpectedly made a remark. + +"Gora arrives to-morrow. Will you meet her? I shall not have time." + +"Of course. I shall be delighted to see her again. It would have been an +ideal arrangement if I could have left her here with you when I went to +Europe." + +"Yes. She was here for a week. I missed her when she left." + +"W-h-at? When was she here? You never told me." + +"I forgot. It was soon after you left. The ship was disabled--fire, I +think,--and put back. I asked her to stay here until the next sailing." + +"How jolly." + +Again there was a complete silence. But Alexina did not notice it. Her +brain was whirling. After all, she might be mistaken! Mortimer! He might be +innocent....To think of Gora as a thief was fantastic...was it?...Was she +not Mortimer's sister?...Why he rather than she?...And what after all +did she know of Gora?...She inspired some people with distrust, even +fear....That might be the cause of Mortimer's depression....He knew it.... + +At all events it was a straw and she grasped it as if it had been a plank +in mid-ocean. With even a bare chance that Mortimer was innocent it would +be unpardonable to insult and wound him....Nor was it quite possible to ask +him if his sister were a thief. She must wait, of course. + +And if Gora had taken the bonds they might be recovered. It would be like a +woman to secrete them in a reaction of terror after having nerved herself +up to the deed. + +She wished that Gora had gone to Hong Kong. Bolted. Then she could be +certain. But at least she had a respite, and she felt so ebullient that she +almost forgot her loss, and swept Morty over to the Lawtons after dinner; +and the Judge took them all to the movies. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +Alexina would listen to no remonstrance. Gora might send her trunks to +Geary Street if she liked, but she must come home to Ballinger House and +spend at least one night with her brother and sister, who had missed her +quite dreadfully. Gora wondered how Alexina could have missed her so +touchingly in Europe, but accepted the invitation, as a note from the +surgeon to whom she had written by the previous steamer asked her to hold +herself in readiness for an operation a week hence. + +Gora was looking remarkably well, and Alexina assumed it was not only the +six months of mountain life and the three months in the tropics. She had an +air of assured power, rarely absent in a woman who has found herself and +achieved a definite place in life. Besides being one of the best nurses in +San Francisco, in constant demand by the leading doctors and surgeons, +her short stories had attracted considerable attention in the magazines, +although no publisher would risk bringing them out in book form. But they +were invariably mentioned in any summary of the year's best stories, one +had been included in a volume of selected short stories by modern authors, +and one in a recent text-book compiled for the benefit of aspirants in +the same difficult art. The remuneration had been insignificant, for her +stories were not of the popular order, and she had not yet the name that +alone commands the high reward; but she had advanced farther than many +another as severely handicapped, and she knew through her admiring +sister-in-law and Aileen Lawton that her stories were mentioned +occasionally at a San Francisco dinner table and even discussed! She was +"arriving." No doubt of that. + + + +II + + +"When will the novel come out? I can't wait." + +"Not until the spring." + +They were sitting in Alexina's room and Gora had been placed directly in +front of the cabinet, which she did not appear even to see. She had taken +off her hat and coat and was holding the heavy masses of hair away from her +head. + +"Do you mind? I feel as if I had a twenty-pound weight...." + +"What a question! Do what you want." + +Gora took out the pins and let down her hair. It was not as fine as +Alexina's, but it was brown and warm and an unusual head of hair for these +days. It fell down both sides of her face, and her long cold unrevealing +eyes looked paler than ever between her sun-burned cheeks and her low heavy +brows. + +Alexina knew that she had an antagonist far worthier of any weapons she +might find in her armory than poor Morty, but she believed she could trap +her if she were guilty....And she must be...she must.... + +"Didn't you find it too hot in the tropics for writing?" + +"I only copied and revised. The book was finished before I left Lake +Tahoe-an ideal place for work. Some day I shall have a log cabin up there. +May I smoke?" + +"Of course." + +"It is almost a shame to desecrate a flower....I used to come in here +sometimes and look round...the week I spent here....The room is a +poem...like you....Or rather the binding of the prose poem that is +Alexina." + +"I'd love it if you made me the heroine of one of your novels." + +"You'll have much more fun living it yourself." + +"Fine chance. I don't suppose I'll ever get out of California again....I am +afraid that Morty is doing quite badly." + +Gora shrugged her strong square shoulders. "I never expected anything else. +I asked him for another thousand dollars of my money when I was here and he +looked as if he had forgotten he owed me any. Just like a man and Morty in +particular. Then he said he expected to make an immense profit on something +or other he had ordered from the Orient and would pay me off when I +returned. Has he condescended to tell you anything about his affairs?" + +"Not a word. Did you need the money badly? If I had been here I could have +lent it to you." + +"Thanks. I am sure you would. But I dislike the idea of borrowing. It must +be so depressing to pay back....I was in no particular need of it, for of +course I've saved quite a bit. I merely have a natural desire for my own +and thought it was a good opportunity to strike Morty....I suppose he's +been speculating. Fortunes have been made in Tonopah, but he would be sure +to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong mine....Has he ever asked you for +money?" + +"Never. He knows, too, that I have quite a sum in bonds that I could +convert into cash at once." + +"Well, take my advice and hold on to them--to every cent you have. Where do +you keep them?" + +"In the bank...in a safe-deposit vault--Oh, how careless of me! I've left +the key out on the table! I usually keep it...you remember...in the secret +drawer of the cabinet." + +"How I wish I had the courage to write a story about a secret drawer of +an old Italian cabinet!...I wouldn't leave it lying about; although, of +course, no one could use it without a pass also." + +"A what?" + +"They use every precaution. I know, because when I nursed old Mrs. +Beresford for eight months, I was sent down to the vault twice." + +Alexina's head was whirling. The blood burned and beat in her face. + +"Even with her signature I couldn't get by the keeper the first time +because he didn't know me. I had to be identified by her lawyer." + +"I like to feel so well taken care of. What shall you do if your novel is a +great success? Of course it will be. You would never go on being a nurse." + +"I am not so sure it will be a success. Neither is my publisher. He wrote +me a half-whimsical half-complimentary letter saying that I must remember +the average reader was utterly commonplace, with no education in the higher +sense, no imagination, had an extremely limited vocabulary and thought +and talked in ready-made phrases, composed for the most part of the +colloquialisms of the moment. Style, distinction of mind, erected an almost +visible wall between the ambitious writer and this predominant class. If +they found this sort of book interesting-which as a rule they did not--they +felt a sullen sense of inferiority; and if there were too many unfamiliar +words they pitched it across the room with the ultimate adjective of +their disapproval--'highbrow.' But it is more the general atmosphere they +resent--would resent if the book were purposely written with the most +limited vocabulary possible." + +"Our national self-sufficiency, I suppose. Also the fetish of equality that +still persists. We are the greatest nation on earth, of course, but it +isn't democratic for any one of us to be greater than the other." + +"Exactly. I don't say I wouldn't write for the mob if I could. Nice stories +about nice people. Intimate life histories of commonplace 'real Americans,' +touched with a bit of romance, or tragedy-somewhere about the middle--or +adventure, with a bad man or woman for good measure and to prove to the +highbrows that the author is advanced and knows the world as well as the +next, even if he or she prefers to treat of the more 'admirable aspects of +our American life.' Unluckily I cannot read such books nor write them. I +was born with a passion for English and the subtler psychology. I should be +hopeless from any editor's or publisher's standpoint if I didn't happen to +have been fitted out with a strong sense of drama. If I could only set my +stage with commonplace, people no doubt I'd make a roaring hit. But I +can't and I won't. Who has such a chance as an author to get away from +commonplace people? Fancy deliberately concocting new ones!" + +"Not you! But you'll have some sort of success, all the same." + +"Yes, there are publics. Perhaps I'll, hypnotize one of them. As for the +financial end what I hope is that the book will give me a position that +will raise my prices in the magazines." + +"You could live abroad very cheaply." Alexina raised her eyes a trifle and +looked as guileless as her words. + +"Oh, be sure I'll go to Europe and stay there for years as soon as I see my +way ahead. I should find color in the very stones or the village streets." + +"I am told that you can find most comfortable quarters in some of those +English village inns, and for next to nothing. By the way, do you still +correspond with that Englishman who was here during the fire?" + +"Gathbroke? Off and on. T send him my stories and he writes a humorous sort +of criticism of each; says that as I have no humor lie feels a sort of urge +to apply a little somewhere." + +"How interesting. He didn't strike me as humorous." + +"I fancy he wasn't more than about one-fifth developed when he was here. +Men like that, with his advantages, go ahead very rapidly when they get +into their stride. He has already developed from business into politics--he +is in Parliament--and that is the second long stride he has taken in the +past seven years." + +"How interesting it will be for you two to meet, again." Alexina spoke with +languid politeness. + +Gora shrugged her shoulders, "If we do." She might not be able to show the +under-white of her eyes arid look like a seraph, but she had her voice, her +features, under perfect control, and she had never been quick to blush. She +did not suspect that Alexina was angling, but the very sound of Gathbroke's +name was enough to put up her guard. + +"You must have had several proposals, Gora dear. Your profession is almost +as good as a matrimonial bureau. And you look too fetching for words in +that uniform and cap." + +"I've had just two proposals. One was from an old rancher who liked the way +I turned him over in bed and rubbed his back. The other was--well, a nice +fellow, and quite well off. But I'm not keen on marrying any one." + +"Still, if it gave you that much more independence and leisure...travel...a +wider life...." + +"I'd only consider marrying for two reasons: If I met a man who had the +power to make me quite mad about him, or one who could give me a great +position in the world and was not wholly obnoxious. Otherwise, I prefer to +trot alone. Why not? At least I escape monotony; I have what after all +is the most precious thing in life, complete personal freedom; and if I +succeed with my writing I can see the world and attain to position without +the aid of any man. If I don't, I don't, and that is the end of it. I'm a +bit of a fatalist, I think, although to be sure when I want a thing badly +enough I forget all about that and fight like the devil." + +Alexina looked at the square face of her strange sister-in-law, so unlike +her brother; at the high cheek bones, the heavy low brows over the cold +light eyes, the powerful jaw, the wide firm but mobile mouth. + +"Have you any Eussian blood?"' she asked. "'Way back?" + +"Not that I know of. But after all I know little about my family, outside +of the one ancestor that anchors us in the Revolutionary era. He or his son +or his son's son may have married a Russian or a Mongolian for all I know. +Perhaps some one of my old aunts may have worked out a family tree in +cross-stitch, but if so I never heard of it. Well, I'm off to clean up for +dinner." + +Alexina for the first time in their acquaintance flung her arms round +Gora's neck and kissed her warmly. Truth to tell her conscience was +smarting, although she was able to assure herself that not for a moment had +she really believed her sister-in-law to be guilty; she had merely grasped +at a straw. Gora returned the embrace gratefully and without suspicion. As +ever, she was a little sorry for Alexina. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina felt only an intolerable ennui. Gora had gone in the morning; +she sat alone in her room. Of course she must have that explanation with +Mortimer, but any time before the first of the month would do. She was far +less concerned with that now than with the problem: what to do with her +life. How was she to continue to live in the same house with him? Perhaps +in far smaller quarters than these? For she could not leave him. She had +no visible excuse, and no desire to admit to the world that she had made +woman's superlative mistake. + +She scowled at the lovely room in which she had expected to find +compensation in dreams, the setting for an unreal and enchanted world. + +Dreams had died out of her. For the first time in her sheltered existence +she appreciated the grim reality of life. She was no longer sheltered, +secluded, one of the "fortunate class." Ways and means would occupy most of +her time henceforth. And it was not the privations she shrank from but +the contacts with the ugly facts of life; a side she had found extremely +picturesque in novels, but knew from, occasional glimpses to be merely +repulsive and demoralizing. + +And of whom could she ask advice! She must make changes and make them +quickly. Four thousand dollars a year!...and taxes--besides the new income +tax--to be paid on the downtown property, the fiats, the land on which her +home stood, Ballinger House itself and all its contents. + +She knew vaguely that many girls these days were given special training of +some sort even where their parents were well off; but more particularly +where the father was what is known as a high-salaried man; or even a +moderately successful professional or business man--all of whose expenses +arid incomes balanced too nicely for investments. + +Not in her set! Joan, bored after her third season with dancing in winter +and "sitting round Alta" in summer, had asked permission to become a +trained nurse like Gora, or go into the decorating business, "any old +thing"; and Maria Abbott had simply stared at her in horror; even her +father had asked her angrily if she wished to disgrace him, advertise him +as unable to provide for his family. No self-respecting American, etc. + +But something must be done. She wished to live on in Ballinger House if +possible, not only because she loved it, or to avoid the commiserations +of the world; she had no desire to live in narrow quarters with her +husband....And she knew nothing, was fit for nothing, belonged to a silly +class that still looked upon women workers as de-classed, although to be +sure two or three whose husbands had left them penniless had gone into +business and were loyally tolerated, if deeply deplored. + +The day after her return from Europe Alice Thorndyke had come into this +room and thrown herself down on the couch, her long, languorous body +looking as if set on steel springs, her angelic blonde beauty distorted +with fury and disgust, and poured out her hatred of men and all their ways, +her loathing for society and gambling and all the stupid vicious round of +the life both public and secret she had elected to lead....She had had +enough of it....After all, she had some brains and she wanted to use them. +She wanted to go into the decorating business. There was an opening. She +had a natural flair for that sort of thing. See what she had managed to do +with that old ark she had inherited, and on five cents a year....When she +had asked her sister to advance the money Sibyl had flown into one of her +worst rages and thrown a gold hair brush through a Venetian mirror. Didn't +she give her clothes by the dozen that she hadn't worn a month? Did any +girl have a better time in society? Was any girl luckier at poker? Was any +girl more popular with men--too bad it was generally the married ones that +lost their heads....Better if she stopped fooling and married. By and by it +would be too late. + +But she didn't want to marry. She was sick of men. She wanted to get out of +her old life altogether and cultivate a side of her mind and character +that had stagnated so far...also to enjoy the independent life of +a money-earner...life in an entirely different world...something +new...new...new. + +Alexina had offered to lend her the capital, for Alice had a hard cool +head. But she had refused, saying she could mortgage her old barrack if +it came to that...but she didn't know...it would he a break....Sib might +never speak to her again...people were such snobs...and she mightn't like +it...she wished she had been born of poor but honest parents and put to +work in a canning factory or married the plumber. + +She had done nothing, and Alexina wondered if she would have the courage to +go into some sort of business with herself...they could give out they +were bored, seeking a new distraction...save the precious pride of their +families. + +She leaned forward and took her head in her hands. If she only had some one +to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in any +one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, even in a +roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet and the other +girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. But her head would +burst if she didn't consult some one. She was too horribly alone. And +after all she was still very young. She had talked largely of her +responsibilities, but as a matter of fact until now she had never had one +worth the name. + +Suddenly she thought of James Kirkpatrick. + + + +II + + +The lessons in socialism had died a natural death long since. But Alexina +and Aileen and Janet had never quite let him go. Whenever there was a great +strike on, either in California or in any part of the nation, they invited +him to take tea with them at least once a week while it lasted and tell +them all the "ins." This he was nothing loath to do, and waived the +question of remuneration aside with a gesture. He was now a foreman, and +vice-president of his union, and it gave him a distinct satisfaction to +confer a favor upon these "lofty dames," whom, however, he liked better as +time went on. Alexina he had always worshiped and the only time he ceased +to be a socialist was when he ground his teeth and cursed fate for not +making him a gentleman and giving him a chance before she was corralled by +that sawdust dude. + +He had also remained on friendly terms with Gora, who had cold-bloodedly +studied him and made him the hero of a grim strike story. But as he never +read polite literature their friendship was unimpaired. + + + +II + + +He came to tea that afternoon in response to a telephone call from Alexina. +She had put on a tea gown of periwinkle blue chiffon and a silver fillet +about her head, and looked to Mr. Kirkpatrick's despairing gaze as she +intended to look--beautiful, of course, but less woman than goddess. +Exquisite but not tempting. She was quite aware of the young workman's +hopeless passion and she managed him as skillfully as she did the more +assured, sophisticated, and sometimes "illuminated" Jimmie Thorne and +Bascom Luning. + +She received him in the great drawing-room behind the tea-table, laden with +the massive silver of dead and gone Ballingers. + +"I've only been home a week," she said gayly. "See what a good friend I am. +I've scarcely seen any one. Did you get my post cards?" + +"I did and I've framed them, if you don't mind my saying so." + +"I hoped you would. I picked out the prettiest I could find. They do have +such beauties in Europe. Just think, it was my first visit. I was wildly +excited. Wouldn't you like to go?" + +"Naw. America's good enough for me. 'Fris--oh, Lord! San Francisco--for +that matter. I'd like to go to the next International Socialist Congress +all right--next year. Maybe I will. I guess that would give me enough of +Europe to last me the rest of my natural life." + +"I met a good many Frenchmen, and I have a friend married to a very clever +one. He says they expect a war with Germany in a year two--" + +"There'll never be another war. Not in Europe or anywhere else. The +socialists won't permit it." + +"There are a good many socialists--and syndicalists--in France, and it's +quite true they're doing all they can to prevent any money being voted +for the army or expended if it is voted; but I happen to know that the +Government has asked the president of the Red Cross to train as many nurses +as she can induce to volunteer, and as quickly as possible. My friend +Madame Morsigny was to begin her training a few days after I left." + +"Hm. So. I hadn't heard a word of it." + +"We get so much European news out here! America first! Especially in the +matter of murders and hold-ups. Who cares for a possible war in Europe when +the headlines are as black as the local crimes they announce?" + +"Sure thing. Great little old papers. But don't let any talk of war from +anywhere at all worry you. And I'll tell you why. At the last International +Congress all the socialists of all the nations were ready to agree that all +labor should lay down its tools--quit work--go on a colossal strike--the +moment those blood-sucking capitalists at the top, those sawdust kings and +kaisers and tsars--or any president for that matter--declared war for any +cause whatsoever. All, that is, but the German delegates. They couldn't see +the light. Now they have. When we meet next August the resolution will +be unanimous. Take it from me. You've read of your last war in some old +history book. Peace from now on, and thank the socialists." + +"I should. But suppose Germany should declare war before next August?" + +"She won't. She ain't ready. She'd have done it after that there 'Agadir +Incident' if she'd dared. That is to say been good and ready. Now she's got +to wait for another good excuse and there ain't one in sight." + +"But you believe she'd like to precipitate a war in Europe for her own +purposes?" + +"She'd like it all right." And he quoted freely from Treitschke and +Bernhardi, while Alexina as ever looked at him in wonder. He seemed to be +more deeply read every time she met him, and he remained exactly the same +James Kirkpatrick. "What an adventitious thing breeding was! Mortimer had +it!" + +"Well, I am glad I spoke of it. You have relieved my mind, for you speak +as one with authority....There is something else I want to talk to you +about....A friend of mine is in a dilemma and I don't quite know how to +advise her....We're all such a silly set of moths--" + +"No moth about you!" interrupted Mr. Kirkpatrick firmly. "Some of +them--those others, if you like. The only redeeming virtue I can see in +most of them is that they are what they are and don't give a damn. But +you--you've got more brains and common sense than the whole bunch of women +in this town put together." + +"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to cultivate +them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my common sense." She +spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle, and curve of lip, that +neither then nor later did he suspect that she was the heroine of her own +tale. + +"Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you +anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me." + +"Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you +smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad for my +curtains....This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had a terrible +experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part of her little +fortune whose income enabled them to do something more than keep alive. You +see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he had always been the most +honest creature in the world; and that's as much of a blow as the loss of +the money." + +"What'd he do it for?" + +"Oh, I know so little about business...he wanted to get rich too quickly I +suppose...speculated or something...perhaps got into a hole. This has been +a bad year." + +"Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively. + +"You're not commiserating _him_?" + +"Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper, hasn't +he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and temptations of +the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he wanted to, you can +bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim of a vicious system. +A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in the middle!. Not capital +enough. Hard times and the little man goes under, no matter if he's a darn +sight better fellow than the bloated beast on top--" + +"You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go +under?" + +"I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--" + +"Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and has +always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he were he +wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good start, far +better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country had in their +youth." + +"Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever in +chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's our +job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in which +the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to work will +have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have to work anyhow +or starve....One of the thousand things the matter with the present system +is that the square man is so often in the round hole. In the socialized +state every man will he guided to the place which exactly fits his +abilities. No weaker to the wall there," + +"You think you can defy Nature to that extent!" + +"You bet." + +"Well. I'm too much distracted by my friend's predicament to discuss +socialism....I rather like the idea though of the strong man having the +opportunity to prove himself stronger than Life...find out what, he was put +on earth and endowed with certain characteristics for...rather a pity all +that should atrophy....However--what shall my friend do? Continue to live +with a man she despises?" + +"She's no right to despise him or anybody. It's the system, I tell you. And +no doubt she's just as weak in some way herself. Every man jack of us is so +chuck full of faults and potential crime it's a wonder we don't break out +every day in the week, and if women are going to desert us when the +old Adam runs head on into some one of the devilish traps the present +civilization has set out all over the place, instead of being able to +sidestep it once more, well--she'd best divorce herself from the idea +of matrimony before she goes in for the thing itself. Would I desert my +brother if he got into trouble? Would you?" + +"N--o, I suppose you are right, and I doubt if she would leave him anyway. +However...there's the other aspect. What can a woman in her position do to +help matters out? You have met a good many of her kind here. Fancy Miss +Lawton or Mrs. Bascom or Miss Maynard forced to work--" + +"I can't. If I had imagination enough for that I'd be writin' novels like +Miss Dwight." + +"I believe they'd do better than you think. Well, this friend isn't quite +so much absorbed in society and poker and dress. She's more like--well, +there's Mrs. Ruyler, for instance. She was very much like the rest of us, +and now we never see her. She's as devoted to ranching as her husband." + +"There was sound bourgeois French blood there," he said shrewdly. "And she +wasn't brought up like the rest of you. Don't you forget that." + +"Then you think we're hopeless?" + +"No, I don't. Three or four women of your crowd--a little older, that's +all--are doin' first-rate in business, and they were light-headed enough +in their time, I'll warrant. And you, for instance--if you came up against +it--" + +"Yes? What could I do?" cried Alexina gayly. "But alas! you admit you have +no imagination." + +"Don't need any. You'd be good for several things. You could go into +the insurance business like Mrs. Lake, or into real estate like Mrs. +Cole--people like to have a pretty and stylish young lady showin' 'em +round flats. Or you could buy an orchard like the Ruylers--that'd require +capital. If we had the socialistic state you'd be put on one of the +thinking boards, so to speak. That's the point. You've got no training, but +you've got a thinker. You'd soon learn. But I'm not so sure of your +friend. Somehow, you've given me the impression she's just one of these +lady-birds." + +"I'm afraid she is," said Alexina with a sigh. "But you're so good to take +an interest....Suppose you had the socialistic state now--to-morrow, what +would you do with all these--lady-birds?" + +"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up, and +then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal physical +condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one of 'em." + +"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?" + +"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of the +great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in their +beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers and +civilians were armed to the teeth. + +"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No wonder +some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course they're fools, +just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but you can't blame +'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If Marx had been a +good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day. Things didn't turn out +according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat ain't proletariat any longer, +instead of overrunning the earth; and in place of a handful of great +capitalists to fight we've a few hundred thousand little capitalists, or +good wage earners with white collars on, that have about as much use for +socialism as they have for man-eating tigers. I'm thinking about this +country principally. Too much chance for the individual. Trouble is, the +individual, like as not, don't know what's good for him and goes under, +like the man you've been telling me about." + +"There's only one thing I apprehend in your socialistic state," said +Alexina, who always became frivolous when Kirkpatrick waxed serious, "and +that is universal dissolution from sheer ennui. Either that or we'll go on +eternally rowing about something else. Earth has never been free from war +since the beginning of history, and there is trouble of some sort going on +somewhere all the time--" + +"All due to capitalism." + +"Capitalism hasn't always existed." + +"Human greed has, and the dominance of the strong over the weak." + +"Exactly, and socialism if she ever gets her chance will dominate all she +knows how. Remember what you said just now about forcing the pampered women +to work when they were the underdog. But the point is that Nature made +Earthians a fighting breed. She must have had a good laugh when we named +another planet Mars." + +"Well, we'll fight about worthier things." + +"Don't be too sure. We fight about other things now. All the trouble in the +world isn't caused by money or the want of it. And what about the religious +wars--" + + + +III + + +It was at this inopportune moment that they met Mortimer. If Alexina had +remembered that this was his homing hour she would have parted from her +visitor at the drawing-room door; but in truth she had dismissed Mortimer +from her mind. + +He halted some paces off and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume to +the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue sloped +abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to keep from +grinding his teeth. + +Alexina went forward and placed her hand within his arm, giving it a +warning pressure. + +"Now, at last, you and Mr. Kirkpatrick will meet. You've always so snubbed +our little attempts to understand some of the things that men know all +about, that you've never met any of our teachers. But no one has taught, me +as much as Mr. Kirkpatrick, so shake hands at once and be friends." + +Mortimer extended a straight and wooden hand. Kirkpatrick touched, and +dropped it as if lie feared contamination, Mortimer ascended a few steps +and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated disapproval and +contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the speedy demise of +capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle skirts and fled up the +avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out his pugnacious jaw, his hard +little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. Mortimer, to do him justice, was +entirely without physical cowardice, and continued to look like a stage +lord dismissing a varlet. + +Kirkpatrick caught Alexina's imploring eyes and turned abruptly on his +heel, "So long," he said. "Guess I'd better be getting on." + + + +IV + + +"I won't have that fellow in the house," said Mortimer, in a low tone of +white fury. "To think that my wife--my wife--" + +"If you don't mind we won't talk about it." + +Alexina was on the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the air. +She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop and when +she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to elongate like +the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever happened to have +incurred her wrath. + +Mortimer glowered at her. He had many grievances. For the moment he forgot +that she might have any against him. + +"And out here in broad daylight, almost on the street, in that tea gown--" + +"I have often been quite on the street in similar ones. Going over to +Aileen's. You forget that the Western Addition is like a great park set +with the homes of people more or less intimate." + +Mortimer made no further remarks. He had never pretended to be a match +for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him +temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for +although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more relish. +As he settled himself to his cigar in a comfortable wicker chair on the +terrace and she was about to return to the house he spoke abruptly in a +faint firm voice. + +"Will you stay here? I've got something to say to you." + +"Oh?" + +She wheeled about. His face was a sickly greenish white in the heavy shade +of the trees. + +"It's--it's--something I've been wanting to say--tell you...as well now as +any time." + +"Oh, very well. I must write just one letter." + +She ran into the house and up the stairs and shut herself in the library, +breathless, panic-stricken. He was going to confess! How awful! How awful! +How could she ever go through with it? Why, why, hadn't she spoken at once +and got it over? + +She sat quite still until she had ceased trembling and her heart no longer +pounded and affected her breathing. Then she set her teeth and went +downstairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Mortimer was walking up and down the hall. + +"Come in here," he said. He entered the drawing-room, and Alexina followed +like a culprit led to the bar. Nevertheless, it crossed her mind that he +wanted the moral support of a mantelpiece. + +She almost stumbled into a chair. Mortimer did not avail himself of the +chimneypiece toward which he had unconsciously gravitated, but walked back +and forth. Two electric lights hidden under lamp shades were burning, but +the large room was rather somber. + +Alexina composed herself once more with a violent effort and asked in a +crisp tone: "Well? What is this mystery? Are you in love with some one +else? Been, making love--" + +"Alexina!" + +He confronted her with stricken eyes. "You know that I am literally +incapable of such a thing. But of course you were jesting." + +"Of course. But something is so manifestly wrong with you, and...well...of +course you would be justified." + +"Not in my own eyes. Besides, I shall never give up the hope of winning +you back again. I live for that...although now!...that is the whole +trouble....How am I going to say it?" + +"Well, let me help you out. You took the bonds." + +"You've been to the bank! I wanted to tell you first...the day you came +back....I couldn't...." + +"There is only one thing I am really curious about. How did you get in? Of +course you knew where I kept the key, but--" + +"I--" His voice was so lifeless that if dead men could speak it must be in +the same flat faint tones. "I had the old power of attorney." + +"But I revoked it." + +"I mean the instrument--the paper. You did not ask for it. I did not think +of it either....I trusted to the keeper taking it on its face value, not +looking it up. He didn't. You see--" He gave a dreadful sort of laugh. "I +am well known and have a good reputation." + +"Why didn't you cable and ask me to lend you the money?" + +"There wasn't time. Besides, you might have refused. I was desperate--" + +"I don't want to hear the particulars. I am not in the least curious. What +I must talk to you about--" + +"I must tell you the whole thing. I can't go about with it any longer. +Then, perhaps, you will understand." + +His voice was still flat and as he continued to walk he seemed to draw +half-paralyzed legs after him. Alexina set her lips and stared at the +floor. He meant to talk. No getting out of it. + +"I--I--have only done well occasionally since the very first. It didn't +matter so long as your mother was alive, and for a little while after. But +when you took things into your own hands...after that it was capital I +turned over to you nearly every month--hardly ever profits." + +"What? Why didn't you tell me?" + +"I hadn't the courage. I was too anxious to stand well with you. And I +always hoped, believed, I would do better as times improved. I had great +hopes of myself and I had a pretty good start. But as time went on I grew +to understand that my abilities were third-rate. I should have done all +right with a large capital--say a hundred and fifty thousand dollars--but +only a man far cleverer than I am could have got anywhere in that business +with a paltry sixteen thousand to begin on. I got one or two connections +and did pretty well, off and on, for a time; but if I hadn't made one +or two lucky strikes in stocks my capital would simply have run away in +household expenses long ago." + +"Then why did you join that expensive club?" + +"It was good business," he said evasively. "I meet the right sort of men +there. That's where I got my stock pointers." + +"Did you take the bonds to gamble with?" + +"No. I'd never have done that. I gambled in another way, though. I thought +I saw a chance to sell a certain commodity at that particular time and +I plunged and sent for a large quantity of it. It looked sure. I have a +friend over there and got it on credit. I banked on an immediate sale and +a big profit. But something delayed the shipping in Hong Kong. When it +arrived the market was swamped. Some one else had had the same idea. I had +to pay for the goods, as well as other big outstanding bills, or go into +bankruptcy. So I took the bonds. It wasn't easy. But there was nothing else +to do....There were about ten thousand dollars left and I tried another +coup. That failed too." + +"How is it possible to go on with the business?" + +"It isn't. I have closed out. But I have escaped bankruptcy. People on +the street think that I wanted to get into the real estate business--with +Andrew Weston, a young man who has recently come here from Los Angeles. +He's doing fairly well and has a good office. He wanted a hustler and a +partner who had good connections. But it is slow work. There are the old +firms, again, to compete with. I wouldn't have looked at it if I'd had any +choice, but it was a case of a port in a storm." + +"Well? Is that all? There is another matter to discuss. Our future mode of +living." + +"No, it isn't all. I wish you would tell Gora something. I can never go +through this again. While she was away--in Honolulu--that lawyer of my aunt +sent out ten thousand dollars' worth more of stock, that had been looked +upon as so much waste paper, but suddenly appreciated--some little railroad +that was abandoned half finished, but has since been completed. This had +been left to Gora alone. We had some correspondence and he sent it to me as +Gora was traveling. It came at the wrong time for me...on top of everything +else....I plunged in a new mine Bob Cheever and Baseom Luning were +interested in. It turned out to be no good. We lost every cent." + + + +II + + +Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it had +turned to stone. + +He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together. + +"If you knew...if you knew...what I have been through....At first it was +only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over...when +there was nothing left to speculate with...then I realized what I had +done...I...a thief...a thief....I had been so proud of my honor, my +honesty. I never had believed that I could even be tempted. And I went to +pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its first storm. There's nothing, +it seems, in being well brought up, when circumstances are too strong for +you." + +Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad," she +said, rather at a loss. + +"No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken long +chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in too deep. +But if I could have repaid it all I'd feel nearly as demoralized. That I +should have stolen...and from women...." + +Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on. + +"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn't seem to me that I had +the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest sense of +right and wrong...It does not seem possible even now." + +Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she should +be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him that she +quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She wished that +she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of the physical +demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared to defend him if +need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that she would willingly +die rather than touch him....She wondered if souls in dissolution subtly +wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too close.... + +"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I'll tell Gora and engage +that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now let us +discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to contribute +anything to the household expenses?" + +"I'm afraid not. It takes time to work up a business." + +"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I +suppose I had better look for a job." + +"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her +incredulously. "You?" + +"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the +decorating business." + +"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I +could fool them then!" + +"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have stuck +to the old business if it had paid." + +"It isn't the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go out +to earn money--why, I'd be a laughing stock." + +"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this +lot--" + +"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to your +old home...and after fixing it up...." + +"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can't go on." + +"My brain seems to have stopped. I can't do much thinking. But...well...you +might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my business begins +to pay." + +"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if you +can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--" + +"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that when +you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why couldn't +Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know anything about +Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your family have let me stay +where I was? I should have been head clerk with a good salary by this time, +and we would have arranged our expenses accordingly when your mother +died. Why can't men give a young fellow a better chance when he goes into +business for himself? Every man trying to cut every other man's throat. +"What chance has a young fellow with a small capital?" + +"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However...perhaps +you are right....Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I feel more +inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all the ancestral +inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are made and our +characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at least resign from +the club?" + +He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of character +his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the first +Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in two ways: +they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in the same way +the men who can give me a leg up in business." + +"Are you sure those are the only reasons?" + +To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you +shall go on speculating?" + +"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can help +me in business." + +"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However...At least I'll +send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom no one +will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over. To-morrow I shall +do something. I don't know what it will be, yet." + +He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, "that +you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell this +house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had recovered his +usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes were as stern as his +lips. + +Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that +apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to understand. +She nodded amiably. + +"No doubt I'll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner +time. Don't expect me at breakfast. Good-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the +following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park and +signaling to her to stop. + +"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one +ill?" + +"Not so's you'd notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak +after me quietly and don't say a word." + +Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece +by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she had +fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with the +"fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the small +group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly disapproved +of, who entertained in some form or other every day and every night, played +poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of the new dances, made up +brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent stimulants. Two of Joan's +former schoolmates belonged to this active set, but she was only permitted +to meet them at formal dinners and large parties. She had rebelled at +first, but her mother's firm hand was too much for her still undeveloped +will, and later she had concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the +whole tiresome society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she +was socially as conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and +although full of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no +prince having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound +Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and she +had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She worked +off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be indulged in +California for eight months of the year, rode horseback every day, used +all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the society of such +uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided her time. Sooner +or later she was determined to "get out and hustle,"--"shake a leg." That +would be the only complete change from her present life, not matrimony and +running with fast sets. She wanted more money, she wanted to live alone, +and, while devoted to her family, she wanted interests they could not +furnish, "no, not in a thousand years." + + + +II + + +Joan's slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached the +rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy fashion, +feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah did not extend +as far as the music room, which had been built a generation later, and the +windows were some eight feet from the ground. A ladder, however, abridged +the distance, and Alexina, obeying a gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily +as her narrow skirt would permit and peered through the outside shutters, +which had been carefully closed. + +The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and +shone down upon an amazing sight. + +Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the +floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was +evidently talking rapidly. Alexina's mouth opened as widely as her eyes. +She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that took place +at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition been brought to +chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter or Mrs. Thornton, or +any of those fortunate Californians who visited the headquarters of fashion +and sin once a year? They would do a good deal to vary the monotony of +life. But that they should have corrupted Maria...the impeccable, the +superior, the unreorientable Maria! Maria, with whom contentment +and conservatism were the first articles of the domestic and the +socio-religious creed! + +For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face was +a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid floor, +were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, another old +friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom's sister, Susan Delling, austere in her +virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a fine mahogany +complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel not so much a harlot +as a social inferior. + +What on earth...what on earth.... + +The thin loquacious stranger clapped her hands. Up went six pairs of legs. +Two remained in mid-air, Mrs. Geary's and Mrs. Brannan's having met an +immovable obstacle shortly above the hip-joints. Three bent backward slowly +but surely until they approached the region of the neck. Maria's flew +unerringly, effortlessly, up, back, until they tapped the floor behind her +head. Alexina almost shouted "Bravo." Maria was a real sport. + +Six times they repeated this fascinating rite, and then, obeying another +peremptory command, they rolled over abruptly and balanced on all fours. +Alexina could stand no more. She dropped down the ladder and ran after +Joan, who was disappearing round the corner of the house. + + + +III + + +"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Maria! Your mo--" + +"She gained three pounds, for the first time in her life, and you know her +figure is her only vanity. This woman came along and the whole Peninsula is +crazy about her. She's taken the fat off every woman in New York, and came +out with letters to a lot of women. Mother fell for her hard. I nearly +passed away when I peeked through that shutter the first time. Mother! +She's the best of the bunch, though. But they're all having a perfectly +grand time. New interest for middle-age--what?" + +"Don't be cruel. Heavens, how hot they all looked! I could hear them gasp. +Hope their arteries are all right. Are they going to stay to lunch?" + +"No. There's a big one on in Burlingame. Mother's not going, though. It's +at that Mrs. Cutts', new Burlingame stormer, that Anne Montgomery coaches +and caters for and who gives wonderful entertainments. Mother and Aunt +Susan won't go, but nearly all the others do." + +"Anne Montgomery. I haven't seen her since mother died." + +"You look as if an idea had struck you. She's useful no end, they say; is +now a social secretary to a lot of new people, and sells the 'real lace' +and other superfluous luxuries of some of our old families for the cold +coin that buys comforts." + +"Fine idea. But I'm glad your mother will be alone. I've come down to have +a talk with her." + +"Thanks. I'll take the hint." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +Alexina went up to Joan's room to remain until the gong sounded for +luncheon, when she drifted down innocently and kissed the somewhat +furtive-looking Maria, who was in chaste duck and fresh from a bath. + +"So glad to see you, darling," she murmured almost effusively. "I hope you +haven't waited long. A number of my friends have a lesson every Thursday +morning, and meet at one house or another." + +"Irregular French verbs, I suppose. So fascinating, and one does forget so. +I thought I'd never brush up my French." + +Not for anything would she have forced Maria into the most innocent +equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people are +expected to do after their first visit to Europe. + +No time could have been more propitious for this necessary understanding +with Maria, who was feeling amiable, apologetic, as limber as Joan, and +almost as warm. She had also lost two-thirds of a pound. + + + +II + + +Alexina began as soon as Joan left them alone on the shady side of the wide +piazza. + +"I have a lot of things to tell you," she said nervously. "I have to make +certain economies and I want the benefit of your advice." + +Mrs. Abbott looked up from her embroidery. "Of course, darling. I was +afraid you were going a little too fast for young people." + +"That is not it. I always managed well enough....You know we've never gone +the limit: polo at Burlingame and Monterey, gambling, big parties and +all the rest of it. I've never run into debt or spent any of my capital. +But..." + +Maria began to feel anxious and took off the large round shell-rimmed +spectacles that enlarged stitches and print. "Yes?" + +"You know I had bonds--about forty thousand dollars' worth--those that +mother left: I spent those that Ballinger and Geary gave me on the house +and one thing and another." + +"Yes?" Mrs. Abbott was now alarmed. She had a very keen sense of the value +of money, like most persons that have inherited it, and was extremely +conservative in its use. + +"Well, you see, I thought I saw a chance to treble it--we never really had +enough--and I speculated and lost it." + +Alexina was a passionate lover of the truth, but she could always lie like +a gentleman. + +Maria Abbott readjusted her spectacles and took a stitch or two in her +linen. She was aghast and did not care to speak for a moment. She was no +fool and Tom had told her that Mortimer had changed his business and might +bluff the street, but could never bluff him. She knew quite as well as if +Alexina had confessed it that Mortimer had lost the money, either in his +business or in stocks; although of course she was far from suspecting the +whole truth. + + + +III + + +"That is dreadful," she said finally. "I wish you had consulted Tom. He +understands stocks as he does everything else." + +"I thought I had the best tips. However--the thing is done, and the point +is that I must make great changes. Mortimer is not making as much as he +was, either; he came to the conclusion that he couldn't get anywhere in +that business on so small a capital, and has gone into real estate. It will +be some time before he makes enough to keep things going in the old way. +I made all my plans last night and came down to ask you if you could take +James. He has been with us so long; I can't let him go to strangers. Then I +shall turn out all those high-priced servants and get a woman to do general +housework. Alice says her aunt always gets green ones from an agency and +breaks them in. They are quite cheap. I shall help her, of course, and if +she doesn't know much about cooking I know a little and can learn more. I +shall shut up the big drawing-room, put everything into moth balls, and +give out that the doctor has ordered me to rest this winter, to go to bed +every night at eight. That will stop people coming up three or four times a +week to dance. And I can sell the new clothes I brought from Paris and New +York to Polly Roberts. She's just my height and weight. Of course I must +tell the girls the truth--that I'm economizing; but wild horses wouldn't +drag it out of them. I don't care tuppence, but Morty says it would hurt +his business. I rather like the idea of working. I'm tired of the old +round, and would like to get a job if Morty wasn't so opposed--says it +would ruin him." + +"I should think so. At least let us wash our dirty linen at home....I have +been thinking while you talked. I've only spent two whole winters in town +since I married, end I've always thought I'd love to live in the old house. +I've rather envied you, Alexina, dear...it is so full of happy memories for +me. I did have such a good time as a girl...such a good, simple time....I'm +wondering if Tom wouldn't rent it for the winter and spring. He's been +doing splendidly these last two or three years, and he owned some of the +property west of Twin Peaks that is building up so fast. I know he sold it +for quite a lot....And I sometimes wonder if he doesn't get as tired of +living in the same place year after year as I do. He could play golf at +the Ingleside....I am sure he will....It would be the very best thing +all round. Then we could run the house, and you and Mortimer would pay +something--never mind what....People would think it was the other way, if +they thought anything about it. Families often double up in that fashion." + +"Maria! I can't believe it. It would be too perfect a solution, provided of +course that we pay all we cost. I should insist upon keeping the slips as +usual. You are an angel." + +"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The +Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our +parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and I +know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day as be +used to be of the train." + +"It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect +sincerity. She had not faltered before the prospect of work, but that of +Mortimer's society unrelieved for an indefinite time had filled her with +something like panic. It had been the one test of her powers of endurance +of which she had not felt assured. + +"That will give us time, too, to get on our feet again. Morty is very +hopeful of this new business. I shall go out very little, and as Joan will +be the natural center of attraction it will be understood that her friends, +not mine, have the run of the house." + +Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She worries +me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for the winter +and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If you want to be +housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like better than a rest +from ordering dinner, after all these years." + +"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure I +wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and I'd +like to drink your health." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the +immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria Abbott; +there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic wife's +presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs. Moreover he feared +Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered word and he might as well +have told the whole story. Well, he never talked much anyhow; he would +merely talk less. + +When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was forced +to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of resignation. +When she told him what her original plan had been he was so appalled, so +humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a servant's apron (to say +nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he almost warmed to the Abbotts. + + + +II + + +Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of +spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of +something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, received +a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand dollars and +asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where she kept her +savings. + +"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper so +heavily freighted. + +"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus whose +husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy and Anne +advises her." + +"What did you sell? Your jewels?" + +"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste to +wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard to buy +now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people always think +it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest and clumsiest of +the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told her that they were +as good as a passport." + +Mortimer sprang to the only, the naïve, the eternal masculine conclusion. + +"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the sudden +rejuvenation of his heavy body. "I never really believed you had ceased to +care....you were capricious like all women...a little spoilt. I knew that +if I had patience...Only a loving wife would do such a thing." + +Alexina made a wry face at the banality of his climax, although the fatuous +outburst had barely amused her. + +"No, I don't love you in the least, Mortimer, and never shall. Make up your +mind to that. Love some one else if you like....I did this for two reasons: +I did not have the courage to tell Gora the truth--and that I was too +unjust and penurious to restore the money you had taken; and as your wife +it would have hurt my pride unbearably." + +"And you are not afraid to trust me with this money?" he asked, his voice +toneless. + +"Not in the least. There's no other way to manage it and I fancy you know +what would happen if you didn't hand it over. There is such a thing as the +last straw." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +I + + +It was a week later. Alexina was changing her dress. Maria had asked a +number of her girlhood friends in for luncheon, and they were to exchange +reminiscences in the old house over a table laden as of yore with the +massive Ballinger silver, English cutglass, and French china. Alexina was +about to take refuge with Janet Maynard. + +Her door opened unceremoniously and Gora entered. + +Alexina caught her breath as she saw her sister-in-law's eyes. They looked +like polar seas in a tropical storm. + +"Why, Gora, dear," she said lightly. "I thought you were on an important +case." + +"Man died last night. I have just been to see Mortimer. When I got his +note--just three lines--saying that he had received a cheque from Utica +and deposited it to my account I knew at once--as soon as I had time to +think--there was something wrong. The natural thing would have been to call +me up--couldn't tell me the good news too soon....And there was a hollow +ring about that note....Well, as soon as I woke up to-day I went straight +down to his office. I had to wait an hour. When he came in and saw me he +turned green. I marched him into a back room and corkscrewed the truth out +of him--the whole truth. Then I blasted him. He knows exactly what one +person in this world thinks of him, what everybody else would think of +him if he were found out. I gathered that you had let him down easy. Your +toploftical pride, I suppose. Well, I must have a good plebeian streak in +me somewhere and for the first time I was glad of it. When I left him he +looked shrunken to half his natural size. His eyes looked like a dead +fish's and all the muscles of his face had given Way. He looked as if he +were going to die and I wish he would. Faugh! A thief in the family. That +at least we never had before." + +"Don't be too sure. Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and +everybody'll go on thinking he's honest. Half our friends may be thieves +for all we know, and as for our ancestors--what are you doing?" + + + +II + + +Gora had taken a roll of yellow bills from her purse. She counted them on +the table; ten bills denominating a thousand dollars each. + +"I won't take them." said Alexina stiffy. "I think you are horrid, simply +horrid," + +"And do you imagine I would keep it? I What do you take me for?" + +"I am in a way responsible for Mortimer's debts--his partner." + +"That cuts no ice with me--nor with you. That is not the reason you sold +your jewels and laces and those superb--Oh, you poor child! If I'm furious, +it's more for you than on any other account. You don't deserve such a +fate--" + +"I don't deserve to have you treat me so ungratefully. I can't get my +things back. I wanted you to have the money more than I eared for those +things, anyhow. I have no use for the money. I don't owe anything and the +rent Tom pays me for six months will help me to run the house for the rest +of the year and pay taxes besides. So, you just keep it, Gora. It's yours +and that's the end of it." + +"This is the end of it as far as I'm concerned." She opened the secret +drawer of the cabinet and stuffed in the bills. "They're safe from any sort +of burglars there. But not from fire. Bank them to-morrow." + +"I'll not touch them." + +"Nor I either." + + + +III + + +Gora threw her hat on the floor and sitting down before the table thrust +her hands into her hair and tugged at the roots. "I always do this when +I'm excited--which is oftener than you think. What dreams I had that first +night--I got his note late and was too tired to reason, to suspect....I +just dreamed until I fell asleep. I'd start for England a week later--for +England!" + +Goose flesh made Alexina's delicate body feel like a cold nutmeg grater. +"England?" + +"Yes!...ah...you see, it's the only place where literary recognition counts +for anything." + +"Oh? I rather thought the British authors looked upon Uncle Sam in the +light of a fairy godfather. Our recognition counts for a good deal, I +should say. I never thought you were snobbish." + +"I'm not really. Only London is a sort of Mecca for writers just as Paris +is for women of fashion....Just fancy being feted in London after you had +written a successful novel." + +"I'd far rather receive recognition in my own country," said Alexina, +elevating her classic American profile. She was not feeling in the least +patriotic, however. "You'd see your friend Gathbroke, though. That would be +jolly. Do take the money, Gora, and don't be a goose." + +"That subject's closed. Don't let me keep you. James told me that Maria is +having a luncheon, and I suppose that means you are going out. I'll rest +here for awhile if you don't mind." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +I + + +Mortimer went off that night and got drunk. It was the first time in his +life and possibly his last, but he made a thorough job of it. He took the +precaution to telephone to the house that he was going out of town, but +when he returned two days later he experienced a distinct pleasure in +telling Alexina what he had done. Alexina, who still hoped that she would +always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather sympathized with +him, and assured him that he would have nothing to apprehend from Gora in +the future: she had no more fervent wish than to keep out of his way. + + + +II + + +He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most kind, +Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as well as +she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at home he +undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly grateful; +it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully preserved that the +Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and that all expenses were +equally shared. In time he came to believe it, and his hours of deep +depression, when he had pondered over his inexplicable roguery, grew rarer +and finally ceased. After all he had had nothing to lose as far as Alexina +was concerned; one's sister hardly mattered (Did women matter much, +anyhow?); and his sense of security, which he hugged at this time as the +most precious thing he had ever possessed, at last made him a little +arrogant. He had done what he should not, of course, but it was over and +done with, ancient history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison +for less, he had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew +that he would never do it again and that his position in life was as +assured as it ever had been. + + + +III + + +He spent a good many evenings at the club, and Maria found him a willing +cavalier when Tom "drew the line" at dancing parties. Alexina, who had sold +her car to Janet and her new gowns to Polly, had announced that she was +bored with dancing and should devote the winter to study. She spent the +evenings either in her library upstairs or with her friends. Mortimer saw +her only at the table. + +He wondered if Tom Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant +feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. He +made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to hand +anything over when the first of the month came round--a date that had +haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend it on +himself, and he felt an. increasing pleasure in doing so. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +I + + +Gray naked trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after mile. +Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden fruit. Tall +accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms shivering against a +gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with forest trees, their crests +filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains lifting their bleak ridges above +bare brown hills thirsting for rain. + +The heavy rains were due. It was late in January. Alexina and several of +her friends were motoring back to the city through the Santa Clara Valley, +after luncheon with the Price Ruylers at their home on the mountain above +Los Gatos. As it was Sunday there was an even number of men in the party, +and Alexina, maneuvered into Jimmie Thorne's roadster, was enduring with +none of the sweet womanly graciousness which was hers to summon at will, +one of those passionate declarations of love which no beautiful young woman +out of love with her husband may hope to escape; and not always when in. +Alexina had grown skillful in eluding the reckless verbalisms of love, +but when one is packed into a small motor car with a determined man, +desperately in love, one might as well try to wave aside the whirlwind. + +Jimmie Thorne was a fine specimen of the college-bred young American of +good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this biography +save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's being, and he +fell at Château-Thierry. + + + +II + + +Alexina lifted her delicate profile and gave it as sulky an expression as +she could assume. She really liked him, but was annoyed at being trapped. + +"I don't in the least wish to marry you." + +"Everybody knows you don't care a straw for Dwight. You could easily get a +divorce--" + +"On what grounds! Besides, I don't want to. I'd have to be really off my +head about a man even to think of such a thing. Our family has kept out of +the divorce courts. And I don't care two twigs for you, Jimmie dear." + +"I don't believe it. That is, I know I could make you care. You don't know +what love is--" + +"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and that +if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man hasn't come +along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth. I suppose men +will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what is the limit +these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't" + +"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts. God! +I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of studying law +at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won you!" + +"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances +favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even if +I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in love +with you." + +"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all." + +Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming, magnetic, +companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She could feel the +warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats, and her own +trembled a little....It suddenly came to her that she no longer owed +Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved by his own act. +If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something beyond the agreeable +response of the mating-season (any season is the mating season in +California)...that was the trouble. He was not individual enough to hold +her. Life had been too kind to him. Save for this unsatisfied passion he +was perfectly content with life. Such men do not "live." They may have +charm, but not fascination....Perhaps it was as well after all that she +had married Mortimer. Another man might not have been so easily disposed +of. + +"Jimmie dear, if it were a question of a few months, and I made a cult of +men as some women do, it would be all right. But marry another man that I +am not sure--that I know I don't want to spend my life with. Oh, no." + +He looked somewhat scandalized. Like many American men he was even more +conventional than most women are; he was, moreover, a man's man, spending +most of his leisure in their society, either at the club or in out-of-door +sports, and he divided women rigidly into two classes. Alexina was his +first love and his last; and as he went over the top and crumpled up he +thought of her. + +"I wouldn't have a rotten affair with you. You're not made for that sort of +thing--" + +"Well, you're not going to have one, so don't bother to buckle on your +armor." She relented as she looked into his miserable eyes, and took his +hand impulsively. "I'm sorry...sorry....I wish...you are worth it...but +it's not on the map." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +I + + +Gora's novel was published in February. Aileen Lawton, Sibyl Bascom, Alice +Thorndyke, Polly Roberts, and Janet Maynard organized a campaign to make it +the fashion. They went about with copies under their arms, on the street, +in the shops, at luncheons, even at the matinée, and "could talk of nothing +else." Sibyl and Janet bought a dozen copies each and sent them to friends +and acquaintances with the advice to read it at once unless they wished to +be hopelessly out of date: it was "all the rage in New York." + +As a matter of fact, with the exception of Aileen and possibly Janet, the +book almost terrified them with its pounding vigor and grim relentless +logic, even its romantic realism, which made its tragedy more poignant and +sinister by contrast; and, again with the exception of Aileen, they were +little interested in Gora. But they were loyally devoted to Alexina and +obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to help her make the book a +success. They worked with the sterner determination as Alexina in her own +efforts was obliged to be extremely subtle. + +Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but +almost to have her in the family as it were. Their industrious sowing bore +an abundant harvest and Gora's novel became the fashion. Whether people +hated it or not, and most of them did, they discussed it continually, and +when a book meets with that happy fate personal opinions matter little. + + + +II + + +Maria thought the book was "awful" and forbade Joan to read it. Joan +thought (to Alexina) that it was simply the most terribly fascinating book +she had ever read and made her despise society more than ever and more +determined to light out and see life for herself first chance she got. Tom +Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have written; a man +might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice. Mortimer declined to +read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover, although his social position +was now planetary, it annoyed him excessively to hear his sister alluded to +continually as an author. Even the men at the club were reading the damned +book. + + + +III + + +Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned that +Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as she had +been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred that, like many +another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough to acquire material. +When they learned the truth, and particularly after her inescapable +novel appeared, they were indignant that she had not sought her muse at +Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of mutual admiration; affiliated +herself; announced herself, at the very least. There was a very sincere +feeling among them that any attempt on the part of a rank outsider to +achieve literary distinction was impertinent as well as unjustifiable....It +was impossible that he or she could be the real thing. + +When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with fashionable +society, nurse though she might be, and that those frivolous and negligible +beings were not only buying her book by the ton but giving her luncheons +and dinners and teas, their disgust knew no bounds and they tacitly agreed +that she should be tabû in the only circles where recognition counted. + + + +IV + + +But Gora, who barely knew of their existence, little recked that she had +been weighed, judged, and condemned. Her old dream had come true. Society, +the society which should have been her birthright and was not, had thrown +open its doors to her at last and everybody was outdoing everybody else in +flattering and entertaining her. + +Not that she was deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success with +the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the social +heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for the +original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco and +its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her youthful +bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued from +obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph rang hollow, and that she +really cared very little about it; but the strength and tenacity of her +nature alone would have forced her to quaff every drop of the cup so long +withheld. Even if she had been desperately bored she would have accepted +these invitations to houses so long indifferent to her existence, and as a +matter of fact she welcomed the sudden lapse into frivolity after her years +of hard and almost unremitting work. She had played little in her life; and +a year later when she was working eighteen hours a day without rest, in +conditions that seemed to have leapt into life from the blackest pages of +history, she looked back upon her one brief interval of irresponsibility, +gratified vanity, and bodily indolence, as at a bright star low on the +horizon of a dark and terrible night. + + + +V + + +There was one small group of women, Gora soon discovered, that stood for +something besides amusement, sharply as some of them were identified with +all that was brilliant in the social life of the city. They read all that +was best in serious literature and fiction as soon after it came out as +their treadmill would permit, and they gave somewhat more time to it than +to poker. It was this small group, led by Mrs. Hunter, that in common with +several wealthy and clever Jewish women, with intellectual members of old +families that had long since dropped out of a society that gave them too +little to be worth the drain on their limited means, and with one or two +presidents of women's clubs, made up the small attendance at the lectures +on literary and political subjects, delivered either by some local light, +or European specialist in the art of charming the higher intelligence of +American women without subjecting it to undue fatigue. + +This small but distinguished band discussed Gora separately and +collectively and placed the seal of approval upon her. With them her +arrival was genuine and permanent. + +It was hardly a step from their favor to the many women's clubs of the +city, and she was invited to be the luncheon or afternoon guest at one +after another until all had entertained the rising star and she had learned +to make the little speeches expected of her without turning to ice. + + + +VI + + +The local intelligenzia, those that assured one another how great were each +and all, and whose poems or stories found an occasional hospitality in the +eastern magazines, who toiled over "precious" paragraphs of criticism or +whose single achievement had been a play for the mid-summer jinks of the +Bohemian Club; these and their associates, the artists and sculptors, still +held aloof, more and more annoyed that Gora Dwight should have had the bad +taste to be discovered by the Philistines, and should be flying across the +high heavens in spite of their tabû. + +Gora had gradually become aware of their existence, and their attitude, +which both amused and piqued her. She knew now that if she had been one of +them they would have beaten the big drum and proclaimed to the world (of +California) that she was "great," "a genius," the legitimate successor of +Ambrose Bierce, whom she remotely resembled, and Bret Harte, whom she +did not resemble at all. This they would have done if only to prove that +California no longer "knocked" as in the mordant nineties, nor waited for +the anile East to set the seal of its dry approval before discovering that +a new volcano was sending forth its fiery swords in their midst. + +But it was extremely doubtful if society and upper club circles would have +taken any notice of her. Both had acquired the habit, however unjustly, of +regarding their local intelligenzia (with the exception of the few who kept +themselves wholly apart from all groups) as worshipers of small gods, +and preferred to take their cues from London or New York. They plumed +themselves upon having discovered Gora Dwight and sometimes wondered how it +had happened. + +But Bohemia is hardly a trades union; it is indeed anarchistic and knows +no boss. Gora might not be invited to Carmel this many a day, nor yet to +Berkeley, nor to sundry other parnassi, but there was one club in San +Francisco whose curiosity got the better of it, and she was invited to +be the guest of the evening at the home of the Seven Arts Club on the +twentieth of April in the fateful year of nineteen-fourteen. + + + +VII + + +The Seven Arts Club had been organized by a group of painters, architects, +authors, sculptors, musicians, actors and poets, most of whom had long +since found various degrees of fame and moved to New York, Europe, or the +romantic wilderness. + +It still had seventy times seven votaries of the seven arts on its list and +few had found fame as yet outside their hospitable state--where log-rolling +is as amiable as the climate--but all save the elders were expecting it and +many made a fair living. They met once a week, and a part of the evening +pleasure of the literary wing was to "place" authors. They were willing to +swallow the British authors whole (they did in fact "discover" one or +two of them, as the musical critics had discovered such a rara avis as +Tetrazzini, or the dramatic critics many a now famous player); but they +were excessively critical of all who owed their origin to the United States +of America, and particularly of those who had loved and lost the sovereign +state of California. + +Naturally all were more or less radical (except the cynical and now +somewhat anæmic elders who gave up hope for a world that had ceased to +hold out hope to them). The artists were disturbed by futurism and cubism, +although as neither paid they were forced to devote the greater part of +their inspiration to the marketable California scenery. + +But the writers: potential or locally arrived novelists, playwrights, +poets, essayists, were the real intelligenzia! They went about with the +radical weeklies of the East (or Berkeley) under their arms and discoursed +under their breath (when foregathered in small and ardent groups) upon The +Revolution, the day of Judgment for all but honest Labor, and hissed +their hatred of Capital. And if they had much in common with those +"intellectuals" to be found in every land who caress the chin of radicalism +with one hand and plunge the other into the pocket of capital as far as +permitted, who shall blame them? One must live and one must have something +to excite one's intellect when sex, the stand-by, takes its well-earned +rest. + +Several of these ardent ladies and gentlemen, with the sanction of the +Club's President, a business man whose contributions were the financial +mainstay of the Seven Arts, and who sincerely envied the gifted members, +denying them nothing, invited James Kirkpatrick to be the guest of an +evening and deliver an address on Socialism and the Proletariat. He replied +that he would come and spit on them if they liked but that he had as much +use for parlor socialists as he had for damned fools and posers of any +sort. Life was too short. As for Labor it knew how to take care of itself +and had about as crying a need of their "support" as a healthy human body +had of lice and other parasites. + +They were not discouraged however, merely pronouncing him a "creature," +and were not at all flattered or surprised when Gora Dwight accepted their +invitation and asked permission to bring her friends, Mrs. Mortimer Dwight +and Miss Aileen Lawton. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +I + + +The wildflowers were on the green hills: the flame-colored velvet skinned +poppy, the purple and yellow lupins, the pale blue "babyeyes," buttercups, +dandelions and sweetbrier, fields of yellow mustard. The gardens about +the Bay and down the Peninsula were almost licentious in their vehement +indulgence in color. Every flower that grows north, south, east, west, on +the western hemisphere and the eastern, was to be found in some one of +these gardens of Central California; the poinsettia cheek by jowl with +periwinkle and the hedges of marguerite; heavy-laden trees of magnolia +above beds of Russian violets. Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, +bridal wreath and camellia, begonia, fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, +chrysanthemums, roses, roses, roses....Little orchards of almond trees, +their blossoms a pink mist against a clear blue sky....The mariposa lily +was awake in the forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet +for the feet of the deer and the puma....In the old Spanish towns of the +south, the Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and +poignant as when Rezánov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of +eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on the +hearts of men in Monterey....From end to end of the great Santa Clara +Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres and more of +pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took Alexina over it +one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from above it looked like a +scented sea that was all foam. + +But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the season +for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the compass at +once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets of the city, +abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking warmth; abruptly +deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights, always searching, +searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San Francisco, for something +lost and never found. + + + +II + + +"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said Aileen, +as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, down to +the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending to prove in +public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast to Bohemia, that +I'm nearly frozen." + +"Keep your wrap on," said Alexina. "Who cares? I have always been wild to +get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead the +most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all, anyhow. +That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and powerful--" + +"Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to meet +to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--" + +"What do you know about them?" + +"I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know more or +less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York I was taken +several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich Village. I could +only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This must be a sort of +chromo of it....Gora, are you as wildly excited as Alex is? I know she is +because her spine is rigid; and she is probably colder than I am." + +"Well, anyhow," said Alexina defiantly, "it will be something I never saw +before." + +"It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you anticipate?" + +Gora laughed. "I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The +circumstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my +imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of +taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this, one +way or another." + + + +III + + +The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the city. +The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor, apparently +very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to be crowded, +were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under the eaves. + +"Looks like the loft of a barn," grumbled Aileen. There was no attendant to +hear. "Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several reasons--only one +of which is that if this room is a sample my ill-covered bones will rattle +together downstairs." + +She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band of +green in her fashionably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft white +satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim and round, +the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her hair was done in +a classic knot and held with a comb--a present from Aileen--designed from +periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling dew-drops. + +Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black satin, +very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort. To-night she +wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out the warm browns +of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and shoulders and bust, and the +skin of her body was a delicate honey color that melted imperceptibly into +the deeper tones of her throat and face. + +"Alexina," she said, "let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your arms +and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born again. +Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid...." + +She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the +discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the +keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered room +they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a new +standard. + +"Oh, don't let that worry you," Aileen began. + +A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came +forward almost panting. "I just ran up those stairs," she cried. "But I was +bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down on Bush +Street--dear Minnie Morrison!" + +She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed button, +eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side. + +"But my mother never went to school in San Francisco," said Gora stiffly, +and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual world with +profound disfavor. + +"Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that dear +Minnie's daughter--" + +"Her name was not Minnie Morrison--" + +'Oh, yes, it was--" + +"Don't mind her so much, Gora dear." Aileen did not trouble to lower her +voice. "She's drunk. Let's go down." + +Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a +stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a +withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the +Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs. + +"I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up here," +she said apologetically. "She is not always herself, poor thing. Once +she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but...well, you +know...all people do not have the good fortune to have their genius +universally recognized, and the results are sometimes disastrous. We are +so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, and--and--your charming +friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared to think no further +explanation necessary. + +"Oh, yes," murmured the bewildered Gora. "It was you who wrote to me." + +"Exactly. I am chairman of the reception committee." She looked expectant, +then piqued, and added hastily: "Will you come downstairs? What lovely +gowns. I should like to paint you all." + +She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen +wickedly), and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from the +same bolt as the gown. + +"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't know--I +thought..." + +"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming, +what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody +criticizes anybody else." + +"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. "You will admit we never found +anything like that before." + +"Just you watch and catch them criticizing us....Rather effective--what?" + +They were descending a staircase that led directly into the crowded room +below, and they looked down upon a mass of upturned expectant faces, Gora +was ahead with Miss Halsey, and as she reached the floor the faces +changed their angle; it was apparent that they were not interested in her +satellites. + +"Let's stop here for a moment and watch," said Alexina. "It's too +interesting. They look as if they'd eat her alive." + +The whole company seemed to be seething about Gora, and as they were +rapidly presented by Miss Halsey and passed on they produced the effect, +in the inner circles, of a maelstrom. On the outer edge the women frankly +stood on chairs to get a better look at the new lion, or pushed forward +with frenzied determination to the fixed center of the whirlpool, whose +gracious smile was becoming strained. + +"Poor Gora!" said Aileen. "We do it better. A few picked souls at a time; +or, even when it's a tea, just casual introductions at decent intervals, +and not too many references to the immortal work." + +"It's simply great for Gora, anyhow; for, big or little, they're her own +sort. And they're not snobs, They don't care tuppence for us." + +"You're right there. I went to a big reception of all the arts in Paris +once and the only people any one kowtowed to were two disgustingly rich +New York women who had never done anything. But no one can be blamed for +national characteristics. Heavens! What an olla podrida!" + +Some of the men were in evening dress, but the greater number were not. +They were of all ages, shaves, neckties and haircuts. The women wore every +variety of hat, from an immense sailor perched above an immense fat face, +above an immense shirtwaist bust, to minute turbans and waving plumes. They +wore tailored suits, high "one piece" frocks of any material from chiffon +to serge, symphonic confections like Miss Halsey's, and flowing robes +presumably artistic. None wore full evening dress except the guests of +honor. All, however, did not wear hats, and they arranged their hair as +individually as Alexina. + + + +IV + + +"This may be our chance to see the art exhibit," said Aileen. "They'll +remember us in time, or Gora will...." + +They descended into the room but had waited too long. Miss Halsey, turning +the guest of honor over to the second in command, a woman of portentous +seriousness, made her way hastily to the mere butterflies; who endeavored +vainly to slink away under cover of the rotating crowd. + +"You won't think me rude, I hope," she cried, "but I had to start things +going, and it is awkward for all to introduce three people at a time." + +"You were most considerate," said Alexina amiably. "But we only came to +witness Gora's triumph, and we enjoy looking on, anyhow....We were about to +look at the pictures...." + +"You must meet some of our more brilliant members," said Miss Halsey +firmly. "They would never forgive me, and have been almost as excited at +meeting two such distinguished members of society as at meeting Miss Dwight +herself. Now, if you...if you...that is..." + +"Our names are Jane Boughton and Mamie Featherhurst," supplied Aileen, +transfixing the lady with her wicked green eyes. + +"Oh, yes, to be sure...there has been so much to think of...but your names +are so often in the society columns...it seems to me I recall that one of +you is the daughter of a famous judge--" + +"Boughton. He's under indictment, you know, for graft, bribery, and +corruption." + +"Oh...ah...how unfortunate," Miss Halsey's jaw fell. Even she had +heard--vaguely in her studio--of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she +wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his +family to the club. + +"You see," said Aileen coolly. "I am not fit to associate with your +members, and as Miss Featherhurst is still my loyal friend, we'll just go +over and sit in a corner--" + +"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind. You are our guests, and--please +for this evening forget everything else." + +"You nasty little beast," hissed Alexina into Aileen's discomforted ear. +"She's worth two of you." + +"So she is," said Aileen contritely, "I'll behave better." + +Miss Halsey, who had been signaling several members and rounding up others, +returned, Alexina blazed her eyes at Aileen, who murmured hastily to the +hostess: "I was just joking. I am Judge Lawton's daughter, and this is Mrs. +Mortimer Dwight, Gora's sister-in-law. I'd never have told such a whopper +but I'm so nervous and shy. I didn't think I could go through the ordeal." + +"Oh, you poor child. Well, you'll find we're not terrible in the least. +Now, don't try to remember names. They'll remember yours--better than I +did!" + +Another small eddying circle formed about the luminaries from a lower +sphere. This proved to be much like similar performances in any stratum of +society. All murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be original +or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves and were +making their way toward the pictures that turned the four walls into a +harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering up. He had bright, +eyes and a pleasant face. + +"Which is Mrs. Dwight?" he asked eagerly. Alexina bent her lofty head and +smiled down upon him. + +"Of course. Little Alexina. I remember you when you were a dear little girl +and I used to see you playing about the house when I went up to have a +good powwow with that clever grandfather of yours, Alex Groome--one of the +ablest politicians this town ever had; and straight, damn straight." + +"Alexander Groome was my father." + +"Oh, no, he wasn't. He was your grandfather. You are the daughter...let me +see...there were two or three young ladies....I remember when they came out +in the eighties...and a boy or two...." + +"I am sorry to be rude, but Alexander Groome was my father. I came along +rather late." + +"Impossible!...Well, I suppose you know best..." and he drifted off. + +"This seems to be a home for incurables," said Aileen. "I am sure I don't +know how I shall get through the evening. Gora has a slight sense of humor, +you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively fiendish....Oh, Lord!" + +Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of +another woman. + +"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up to +look like Carmen." + +The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been +considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had evidently +expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of Nature. Her +unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck with immense +pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade rings dangled in +tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of colored beads covered +the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, beaded gown. She had a +haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, but something, an emanation +perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was still young. + +"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with +whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week but +was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of the +east to our new daughter of the west." + +Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted forward +and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how wonderful I +think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been watching you!" +She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a child, which, oddly, +made her look like a very old woman. + +"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave. + +"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You look +like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh, I do +think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid artists +here will want to paint you." + +Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and unbridled +admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if rather queer. +But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and rushed on. + +"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over +her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style are +unique and she suggests tragedy--with those marvelous pale eyes in that +dark face--those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have +suggested that Folkes--your greatest portrait painter, you know,--paint +her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be of +her!" + +"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in +America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?" + +"I? I am not an artist--with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey +Smith." + +"Oh!..." Aileen's voice trailed off vaguely, "What do you write? Plays? +Essays?..." + +"I--why, I'm one of the best--my stories appear constantly in the best +magazines." Miss Smith, who had been deserted some time since by Miss +Halsey, looked abject, helpless, and infuriated. + +"Oh! We only read the worst. It must be wonderful to be famous. Come, Alex, +we must see the pictures. They're going to have music and supper later." + + + +V + + +"Nevertheless," said Alexina, "they are real as far as they go, and they +really do things, good or bad. They work, they aspire; they dream, and +perhaps with reason, of a glorious future, when they will be as famous and +successful as the founders of the club. Even if they fail they will have +had the wonderful dream. Nothing can take that from them. I envy them--envy +them!" + +They were standing in a far corner of the room, after having examined three +or four admirable and many passable paintings. Aileen looked at her in +surprise. They had both been remarking upon the comic aspects of the +intellectual life, and Alexina's outburst was unexpected. Aileen had +seldom seen her vehement since they had outgrown their youthful habit of +wrangling. She was still more astonished when she turned from a view of the +Latin-seeming roofs of San Francisco from Twin Peaks, to Alexina's face. It +looked drawn and desperate. + +"Well, most of them will fail," she said lightly. "Look at these pictures! +That is what is the matter with California--too much talent. You must be as +individual as a talking monkey to get your head above the crowd. All these +poor devils are doomed to the local reputation." + +"Even so they have something to live for, mean something, do something. +What do I mean to myself or anyone? What have I accomplished? The man I +married is a dummy-husband; means nothing to me nor I to him. I have no +children. Even my housekeeping for Maria is a farce; James really does it +all. I mean nothing to society now that I can no longer entertain it. I +haven't even a decent vice. I don't smoke and gamble like you, nor have +lovers like some of the others. I'm simply a nonentity--nothing!" + +"You have personality...beauty...." Aileen was completely at a loss. "I +hate being banal like that Smith idiot...but you are the perfection of a +type. That is something. And you cultivate your mind--" + +"My mind! What does it amount to? Anybody can pack a brain. I'd like one of +those that gives out something, however little. But I can't help that. The +point is I don't live. I don't care a hang about personality that doesn't +get anywhere, and I care still less about being a finished type--that's the +work of dead and gone ancestors, anyhow, not mine....I wish I could fall in +love with James Kirkpatrick. I'd feel more justified in my own eyes if I +were living with him over in the Mission--" + +"His old mother would chase you out with a broom and use Biblical language. +Of course I know you must be bored, Alex dear. Can't you manage to go +abroad and live for a time?" + +"No, I can't, and I don't see what difference that would make. But I'll +tell you what I shall do. If Tom and Maria want to rent the house next year +they can have it but I'll not live there. I'll not be 'held up' any longer. +I'll stand on my own feet--in other words get a job. No--I've some loose +money, I'll start in business." + +"Good for you. Perhaps dad'll let me go in with you. Don't imagine I don't +get sick of my racketing life; and when I have a spasm of reform I nearly +take seriously to drink, I'm so bored. Would you have me for partner?" + +"Wouldn't I? That is if you would be serious about it. I am, let me tell +you. The whole family can perform suttee for all I care. I'm going to do +something that will give me a place in the main stream of life." + +"Trust me. I have been considering Bob's fifteenth proposal--Mr. Cheever +has promised him a full partnership the day he marries, and it wouldn't +be so bad. Bobby is a good sport, and we'd live the out-door life at +Burlingame instead of the in--sports...tournaments...polo...cut out +dissipation. We've both really had enough of it. But I believe business +would be more interesting. After all that's what you marry for unless you +want children--which I don't--to be interested. What'll we be? Decorators?" + +"I suppose so. But all this has only just come to a head, although I know +now that it has been slowly gathering force in my deepest deeps. If we do +I'll take Alice on. She's sick of the game too and she has simply ripping +ideas." + +"Perfect. 'Dwight, Thorn--', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm too +excited--convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and get out. +It will be our real, our first adventure." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +I + + +But two weeks later Aileen told Alexina that although she had cannily +waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her +father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She +stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a cent +nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had supported +woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed the franchise +and no fair-minded man would withhold it; and if for no other reason he +would forbid his daughter to go out and compete with women who must work +whether they wanted to or not. + +But that was only one point. + +What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher plane +to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died for? It was +their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go up not down. + +Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing +their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and undermined +society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his way not a woman +in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service, should work. He'd +tax every male in the land, according to his income or wage, to say nothing +of the rich women, and keep every last one of the unportioned in idleness +rather than risk the downfall of male supremacy in the world. + +He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had his +way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the public +press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be handed on, +not lowered....Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps, but no further +exposure to the vulgar gaze...he was glad she had never gone in for the +last. + +Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top that +proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the refinements +of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of leisure, of +pleasure--quite as much an art as writing books or painting pictures. + +If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able to +prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and protected +were second to none on this planet, at least. + +If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the +world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization....He was +not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a disgrace for a +lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane and compete with +men for laurels....But when it came to stripping off the delicate badges +that only the higher civilization could confer, and struggling tooth and +nail with the mob for no reason whatever--it was disloyal, ungrateful and +monstrous. + +He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different, yes.) +But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his father +before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his convictions. + +That was all. + + + +II + + +"In short, he's modern but not too modern. My twentieth-century arguments +were brushed aside as mere fads. And yet there's probably not an important +case tried in any court in either hemisphere that he doesn't read--learn +something from if he can. He takes in the leading newspapers and reviews of +America and Europe and even reads the best modern novels as carefully as he +ever read Thackeray and Dickens--says they are the real social chronicles. +He's a profound student of history, and the history of the present +interests him just as much--he has those Balkans under a microscope; and +collects all the data on every important strike here and elsewhere. And yet +where women are concerned he is a fossil. An American fossil--worst sort. +Some of the young ones are just as bad...I'll have to give in. I can't +break his heart. I suppose I'll marry Bobby." + + + +III + + +Alice Thorndyke also shook her head. "I'd like to, Alex, but frankly I +haven't the courage. Your friends all stick to you like perfect dears when +you step down and out and set up shop, and are so kind you feel like a +street walker in a house of refuge. But secretly they hate it and they +don't feel toward you in the same way at all. They may not know enough +to express it, but what they really feel is that you have threatened the +solidity of the order and lowered yourself as well as them. One day they +may have more sense but not in our time, I am afraid." + +Nevertheless, Alexina persisted in her determination. One could succeed +alone. She would not be the first. She was by no means sure, however, what +she wanted to do, and made up her mind to take no step before the following +winter. When the Abbotts returned to Rincona in May they took James with +them. Alexina closed Ballinger House, although Mortimer slept there and a +Filipino came in every morning to make his breakfast and bed; and took a +cottage in Ross with Janet Maynard whose mother had gone south to visit old +lady Bascom, and who craved the wild peace of Marin County after too much +San Francisco and Burlingame. + +Marin, with its magnificent redwood forests on the coast, fed by the fogs +of the Pacific, its ancient sunlit woods of oak and madroño and manzanita, +its mountains and rocky hills and peaceful fertile valleys, is perhaps the +most beautiful county in California, and its towns and villages are still +almost primitive in spite of the many fashionable residents whose homes are +close to or in them. The ocean pounds its western base, Mount Tamalpais is +its proudest possession, it has a haunted looking lake; and a part of it +embraces one of the many ramifications of the Bay of San Francisco, and +commands a superb view of city and island and mountain. But it has a heavy +brooding peace that seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is +intermittent, and its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco +deeply refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a +stark little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San +Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh are +Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries. + + + +IV + + +Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the +sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in the +late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or Belvedere, +perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet was now +twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as seriously to +consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She had great +wealth, she was blasée as a result of doing everything she chose to do, in +public or in private, and she was nearly two generations younger than Judge +Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no allurement in the business world, +and the only alternative seemed marriage. Not in California, however. No +surprises there. She might take her fortune to London and become a peeress +of the realm. When change became imperative better go up than down. + +Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not afflicted +with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and brooding and +intimate personal contacts. She wanted the deep refreshment of the summer +before girding up for the winter--before making her plunge into the world +of business and toil. + +But she was soon to discover that she had girded up her loins, or at all +events brightened up her corpuscles and reposed her brain cells, for a far +different purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +I + + +It is possible that only two people in California, barring German spies, +leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a European +War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and knew his +modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because she recalled +conversations she had had in France the summer before with people close to +the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions in the letters of +Olive de Morsigny; who may have thought it wise not to trust all she knew +to the post, or may have been too busy with her intensive nursing course to +enter into particulars. + +Janet shrugged her large statuesque shoulders when Alexina communicated her +fears. What was war to her? England at least would have sense enough to +keep out of it. Aileen came over after a convincing talk with her father +looking as worried as if some nation or other were training their guns on +the Golden Gate. + +"Dad says it's the world war...that we'll be dragged in...that Germany +has had it up her sleeve for years...believes that bomb was made in +Berlin...nothing under heaven could have averted this impending war but a +huge standing army in Great Britain...hasn't Lord Roberts been crying out +for it?....Dad and I dined at his house one night in London and the only +picture in the dining-room was an oil painting of the Kaiser in a red +uniform, done expressly for Lord Roberts...funny world...and now Britain's +got a civil war on her hands and mutinous officers who won't go over +and shoot men of their own class in Ulster....Russia hasn't built her +strategic railways--all the money used up in graft....Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! +who'd have thought it?...Twentieth century and all the rest of it." + +"Twentieth century...war...how utterly absurd....I don't wish to be +rude...but really..." + +This from every one to whom Alexina and Aileen, or even Judge Lawton, +communicated their fears. + + + +II + + +One day Alexina and Aileen met in San Francisco by appointment and +telephoned to James Kirkpatrick, asking him to lunch with them at the +California Market. He accepted with alacrity, and laughed genially at their +apprehensions. War? War? Not on your life. There'll never be another war. +Socialists won't permit it. The kaiser? To hell with the kaiser. (Excuse +me.) He, James Kirkpatrick, was in frequent correspondence with +certain German socialists. They would declare themselves in the coming +International Congress for the general strike if any sovereign--or +President--dared to try to put over a war on the millions of determined +socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, and communists in Great +Britain and Europe; he'd get the surprise of his life. Socialism was +determined there should never be another war--the burden and life-toll of +which was always borne by the poor man. He didn't believe any of those fool +sovereigns, not even the crazy kaiser, would attempt it, knowing what they +did; but if they turned out to be deaf and blind, well, just watch out for +the Great Strike. That would be the most portentous, the most awe-inspiring +event in history, + +And then he dismissed a prospective European war as unworthy of further +attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the Great +Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the miserable +make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a horror in the +very heart of a great and prosperous nation. But with the new system...the +new system...there would not be even these abominable little civil +wars...for that was what we had right here in our own country...no need to +use up your gray matter bothering about European states.... + +He was so convincing that Alexina and Aileen thanked him warmly and went to +their respective destinations lulled and comforted. + +Nevertheless, the war made its grand début on August first, and Mr. +Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New York +for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously over the +side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug. + + + +III + + +Two letters came from Olive to Alexina and one to each of her other old +friends, imploring them to come over and help. They could nurse. They could +run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her friends, her +countrywomen, could do. + +But the war would be over in three months....Only Judge Lawton believed +it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a war at +all....Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that wondrous +smiling land could think upon war anywhere?)...It would be too funny if +it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian refugees....Poor +things....Maria and other good women immediately began knitting +for them...sat for hours on the verandahs, all in white, knitting, +knitting...but talking of anything of war....It simply was a horrid +dream and soon would be over....Their husbands all said so...three +months....German army irresistible...modern implements of war must +annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the Germans had the most and +the best....Rotten shame (said Burlingame) and the Germans not even good +sportsmen. + +James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with the +thought that at least Britain would be licked...she'd get what was coming +to her, all right, and Ireland would be free....Anyhow it would soon be +over....When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the socialist party +for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an American first, wasn't +I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag...oh, hell! (Excuse me.)" + + + +IV + + +In December, nineteen-fourteen, Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who grasped +the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went to France. +Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a passionate good-by +to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever. Jimmie Thorne went to +France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning to join the Lafayette +Escadrille. Gora sailed six months later to offer her services to England. +In the case of a nurse there was much red tape to unravel. + +A fair proportion of the women left behind continued to knit. As time went +on branches of certain French war-relief organizations were formed, and +run by such capable women as Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Hunter, who had many +friends among the American women living in France; now toiling day and +night at their oeuvres. + +Alexina and Olive de Morsigny, after a year of nursing, when what little +flesh they had left could stand no more, founded an oeuvre of their own, +and Sibyl Bascom and Aileen Cheever did fairly well with a branch in San +Francisco, Alexina's relatives quite wonderfully in New York and Boston; +although they were already interested in many others. + + + +V + + +Certain interests in California, notably the orchards and canneries, were +violently anti-British during the first years of the war, as the blockade +shut off their immense exports to Germany, and those that failed, or closed +temporarily, realized the incredible: that a war in Europe could affect +California, even as the Civil War affected the textile factories of +England. To them it was a matter of indifference, until nineteen-seventeen, +who won the war so long as one side smashed the other and was quick about +it. + +Owners and directors of copper mines--but let us draw a veil over the +sincere robust instincts of human nature. + +The Club of Seven Arts was proudly and vociferously pro-German. Not that +they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far more +original attitude than all this sobbing over France...and then there was +Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl. And the +atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president resigned, +but no one else paid any attention to them. + +In nineteen-seventeen a few declared themselves pacifists and conscientious +objectors, and, little recking what they were in for, marched off +triumphantly to a military prison, feeling like Christ and longing for a +public cross. + +The others, those that were young enough, shouldered a gun and went to the +front with high hearts and hardened muscles. Democracy über alles. The +women enlisted in the Red Cross and the Y.W.C.A., and worked with grim +enthusiasm, either at home or in France. + + + +VI + + +By this time California, almost on another planet as she was, with her +abundance unchecked, and her skies smiling for at least three-fourths of +the year, admitted there was a real war in the world, as bad (or worse) as +any you could read about in history. The war films in the motion picture +houses were quite wonderful, but too terrible. + +They also discussed it, especially on those days when the streets echoed +with the march of departing regiments in khaki, or one's own son, or one's +friend's son enlisted or was drafted, or it was their day at Red Cross +headquarters. + +All the older women were at work now, and all but the most irreclaimably +frivolous of the young ones. Even Tom and Maria Abbott made no protest +against Joan's joining the Woman's Motor Corps; and, dressed in a smart, +gray, boyish uniform, she drove her car at all hours of the day and night. +She was not only sincerely anxious to serve, but she knew, and sheltered +girls all over the land knew,--to say nothing of the younger married +women--that this was the beginning of their real independence, the knell of +the old order. They were freed. Even the reënforced concrete minds of the +last generation imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly modernized +in the rebuilding. + +A good many of the women, old and young, continued to gamble furiously out +of their hours of work; but the majority of the girls did not. Those with +naturally serious minds were absorbed, uplifted, keen, calculating. They +did not even dance. They realized that they had wonderful futures in a +changing world. It was "up to them." + + + +VII + + +Mortimer was beyond the draft age, but, possibly owing to his gallant +fearless appearance, it was rather expected that he would enlist. He did +not, however, nor did he join the Red Cross or the Y.M.C.A., nor volunteer +for some Government work, as so many of the men of his age and class were +doing as a matter of course. + +War news bored him excessively. He was making two or three hundred dollars +a month; he lived at the Club when Maria Abbott occupied Ballinger +House--Tom went to Washington--and he was extremely comfortable. In the +Club he always felt like a blood, forgot for the time being that he was not +a rich man, like the majority of its members, and there was always a group +of nice quiet contented fellows, glad to play bridge with him in the +evening. On the whole, he congratulated himself, he had not done so badly, +although he had resigned all hope of being a millionaire--unless he made a +lucky strike....But it did not make so much difference in California...and +when Alexina had had enough of horrors they would settle down again +very comfortably to the old life....There was very good dancing at the +restaurants (upstairs) where one met nice girls of sorts who didn't care +a hang about this infernal war...one of them...but he was extremely +careful...he would never be divorced; that was positive...as for society he +did not miss it particularly...the dancing at the restaurants was better +and he didn't have to talk...whether people stopped asking him or not, now +that his wife was away, or whether they entertained or not, didn't so much +matter. He had the Club. That was the all important pivot of his life, his +altar, his fetish...a lot he cared what went so long as he had that. + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +I + + +The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the +upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal +tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate +the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost +impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate +the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor +after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in +North and South America, and was able to entertain his sovereign out of his +private purse. He had made up his mind to give the first brilliant function +following the sudden end of La Grande Guerre and one that it would be +difficult for even Paris to eclipse. + +All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after +nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and her +eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of her room, +blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the Marquis and +Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long receiving line +where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside the resplendent +ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to a group of +acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling munificence that +seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance. + +They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of +the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her +insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the greatest +function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the long +monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four years, and +the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last year when avions +dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha struck terror to +each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene recalled one's most +extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and Alexina felt like a very +young girl. Even the almost constant sensation of fatigue, mental and +bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had worked from nine until +six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking the miles to and from her +hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains; the distasteful food; the +tremors that had shaken even her tempered soul when the flashing of the +German guns, drawing ever nearer, could be seen at night on the horizon. + +And Paris had been so dark! + +She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast, quite +unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date. For that +matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this year's fashion. +Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the Armistice was +declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion to its ideal +of duty, but that the American officers should have the opportunity to +discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden, the women had not +yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only gowns in the room +less than four years old were worn by the newly arrived Americans of the +Peace Commission and the ladies of the Embassy. The most striking figures +were the French Generals in their horizon blue uniforms and rows of orders +on their hardy chests. + +Of jewels there were few. When the German drive in March seemed +irresistible, jewels had been sent to distant estates, or to banks in +Marseilles and Lyons, and there had been no time to retrieve them after the +ambassador sent out his sudden invitations. Alexina smiled as she recalled +Olive de Morsigny's lament over the absence of her tiara. European women of +society take their jewels very seriously, and there was not a Frenchwoman +present who did not possess a tiara, however old-fashioned. + +But the cold luminosity of jewels would have been extinguished to-night +under this really terrific down-pour of light. The tall candelabra against +the tapestried or the white and gold walls were relieved of duty; Paris had +had enough of candlelight; the four immense chandeliers of this reception +room, either of which would have illuminated a restaurant, had been rewired +and blazed like suns. Suspended from the ceiling, festooned between the +candelabra and the chandeliers, were clusters and loops of glass tupils and +roses, each concealing an electric bulb. Alexina reflected that the soft +haze of candles might be more artistic and becoming, but was grateful +nevertheless for this rather tasteless fury of light, symptomatic as it +was; and understood the ambassador's revolt against the enforced economies +of a long war, his desire to do honor to his unassuming little sovereign. + + + +II + + +The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three +massive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly. Every +embassy was represented, all the grande noblesse of Paris and even a stray +Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more distinguished +American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out of date if as +inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked as hard. But +Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that two American +officers, standing still closer to the window, were talking. One of them +had parted the curtains and was looking out. + +"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows +opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one of +them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist." + +"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the +room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls...feel it a sort of +duty to increase the rapport and all that...but although the married women +and the other sort of girls are a long sight more fascinating than ours, +the upper--" + +"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness +makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King +came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was +leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some +one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that he looked about rather +apprehensively when he arrived, at the station yesterday? No wonder, poor +devil." + + + +III + + +Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to halt +near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door at the +fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond, when, +without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went out. + +Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar cry +of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people in real +life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to relieve her +lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!" + +She waited to hear screams from the women, wild ejaculations from the men. +But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and exalted the +strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor Alexina heard +nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and that was abysmal; +she could not see the white of her gown. + +All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a groan +as the King fell with a knife in his back. + +Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the crowd; +she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later she knew that +a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed him up the room to +place him in front of the central pillar, but at the moment she believed +that they were either carrying out his body, or that a group of anarchists +was escaping. + + + +IV + + +Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving +excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, then +another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and these burned +with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and lit them. All +over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, Alexina saw face +after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were invisible. The faces +hung, pallid disks, in the dark. + +Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady flame +of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an officer recently +discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic and unperturbed and his +eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively curiosity. An Englishman, +probably; nothing there of the severity of the American military +countenance; although, to be sure, that had relaxed somewhat these last +weeks under the blandishments of Paris. Nevertheless...quite apart from +the military, there was the curious unanalyzable difference between the +extremely well-bred American face and the extremely well-bred English +face. It might be that the older civilization did not take itself quite so +seriously.... + + + +V + + +Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the sudden +reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, she took a +match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it and held it below +her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly, opened a little wider, +then narrowed. + +She looked at him steadily...interested...something...somewhere...stirring. +The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished. At the same time +she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond the pillars and that +people were moving on, some retreating toward the hall. She was carried +forward and a little later turned her head, forgetting for a moment the +humorous face that still had seemed to beckon above the white disks that +inspired her with no interest whatever. + +Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him two +officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a great +candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches had been +lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless face of the +King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old cathedral window. + +The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left the +room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his ambassador, whose +face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase. + + + +VI + + +A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of the +dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had been no +attempt at assassination. A lead fuse had melted; the ambassador, who had +taxed his imagination to honor his King, had forgotten to give the order +that electricians remain on guard to avert just such a calamity as this. + +As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter +rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria. But +although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the mild +exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get away. Many +still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the assassins were +lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel. + +Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white and +shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of strong +nerves as well as of untiring effort. + +"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap. "If +he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought André would faint. His last +wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who knows?...In +Paris!..." + +Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent friends in +the porte cochère the certainty grew that some one was watching her. That +officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the crowd about her, then into +the densely packed hall behind. But she encountered no pair of eyes even +remotely humorous, no face in any degree familiar....Later she whirled +about again....There was a pillar...easy to dodge behind it....At this +moment André took her elbow and gently piloted her into the car. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I + + +Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her pension +in Passy. + +Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left her +free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the great +hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a canteen +in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the Armistice in a +comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de Morsigny, and found +much solace together. But their hotel had been commandeered for one of the +Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with her sister-in-law, and Alexina, +Janet, and Alice had found with no little difficulty vacant rooms in a +second-rate pension in Passy. The food was even worse than at the hotel, +the rooms were barely heated, and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless +and jammed, and taxicabs in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with +drivers of an unsurpassable effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles +a day in all weathers. It is true that she could have rented a limousine +for a thousand francs a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of +her class to economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre +of their devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply +camions of the Y.M.C.A. + + + +II + + +Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door +and inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many +cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard day's +work and the next. She was in no mood for talking. + +Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had +probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of the +long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly in flood +after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and many long +banners of light from the almost festive banks. + +It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved about +her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to discomforts and +thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco, which is seldom +warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts nevertheless. During the +war she had sustained herself with the thought of the men in the trenches, +but now that their lot was ameliorated she felt that she had a right to +what comforts she could find. The difficulty was to find them. With Paris +overflowing. Generals sleeping in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, +even officers, picking up women on the streets if only to have a bed for +the night, and hotel after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace +Commissions and their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow +worse. Olive de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she +preferred her independence. + +To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months. +Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of +hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now that +the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil stove. + +Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her restless. +The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a shock to-night +and not from the imagined assassination of a king. + +She went suddenly to her mirror and looked at herself intently...shook her +head with a frown. She had always been slim; she was now very thin. The +roundness and color had left her cheeks. They were pale--almost hollow. +Janet and Alice had rejoiced in the lack of fats and sweets, both having +a tendency to plumpness had achieved without effort the most fashionable +slenderness that anxious woman could wish. But she had not had a pound to +lose. It seemed to her that she was almost plain. Her eyes retained their +dazzling brilliancy, a trick of nature that old age alone no doubt could +conquer, but there were dark stains beneath the lower lashes. + +She let down her hair. It was the same soft dusky mass as ever. Her teeth +were as even and bright; her lips had not lost their curves, but they were +pink, not red. She was anæmic, no doubt. Why, in heaven's name, shouldn't +she be? Even Olive, whose major domo, driving a Ford, had paid daily visits +to the farms and brought back what eggs, chickens and other succulences the +peasants would part with for coin, had lost her brilliant color and the +full lines of her beautiful figure. She had rouged to-night and looked as +lovely as when Morsigny had captured her, but her magnificent gown had been +too hastily taken in by an elderly inefficient maid--her young one having +patriotically deserted her for munitions long since, and sagged on her +bones as she expressed it. Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered +to lend her one of the new ones she had had the forethought to buy in New +York before sailing, and was only a year old, but Olive had feared the +critical eyes of French women who had not replenished their evening +wardrobe since nineteen-fourteen. + +Alexina did not feel particularly consoled because others had looked no +better than she. Until to-night she had given little thought to her looks, +but she now felt a renewed interest in herself, and the frown was as much +for this revival as for her wilted beauty. + +Her evening wrap was very warm and she sat down in the hard arm-chair and +huddled into its folds, covering the lower part of her body with a hideous +brown quilt. No doubt the sheets were damp, and she knew that she could not +sleep. Why shiver in bed? + + + +III + + +Was it Gathbroke? It was long since she had thought of him. She had not +even seen his photograph for four or five years. If it were, he had changed +even more since that photograph had been taken than after she had dismissed +him at Rincona. + +She was by no means sore that it was he. The light of a briquet was not +precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than +one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in +Paris....It was something in the eyes...she could have vowed they were +hazel...their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat ironic +man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the piercing +alertness of a man of action...but after...was it perhaps an emanation of +the personality that had so impressed her angry young soul and refused to +be obliterated? + +But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers and +soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not already +supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they may have been +before....Life seemed shorter every time they went back to the front. + +And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her for a +moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite youth. That +was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty, to-day, was but +the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks in the California +sunshine and nourished by the California abundance would restore her looks, +no doubt of that. But she would look no better as long as she remained in +Paris....Nor did she wish to return to California...and beyond all question +he must have forgotten, lost all interest in her long since. + +Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes...was it +recognition?...merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match and a +briquet?...No doubt she would never see him again. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +I + + +Did she want to? + +She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years of +close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as precisely +different from the first twenty-six years of her life as peace from war. + +During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in hospitals +close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage of her nature +which she had inherited from a long line of men who had fought in the Civil +War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars before that, and the tribal +wars that came after, and all that she had inherited from those foremothers +whose courage, as severely tested, had never failed either their men or +their country; in short, the inheritance of the best American tradition; +had risen automatically to sustain her during that period of incessant +danger and horror. She had been firm and smiling for the consolation of +wounded men when under direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity +for the mutilated patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every +selfish impulse fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many +helpless bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of +the eternal motherhood of the world. She had once thrown herself over the +bed of a politely protesting poilu, covering his helpless body with her +own, as a shell from a taube came through the roof. + +That had been a wonderful, a noble and exalted (not to say exhilarating) +period; a period that made her almost grateful for a war that revealed to +her such undreamed of possibilities in her soul. She might smile at it in +satiric wonder in the retrospect, but at least it was ineradicable in her +memory. + +If it could but have lasted! But it had not. Insensibly she accepted +suffering, sacrifice, pity, as a matter of course, even as danger and +death. It had been the romance of war she had experienced in spite of its +horrors, and no romance lives after novelty has fled. For months nothing +seemed to affect her bodily resistance to fatigue, and as exaltation +dropped, as the monotony of nursing, even of danger, left her mind more and +more free, as war grew more and more to seem, the normal condition of life, +more and more she became conscious of herself. + + + +II + + +Life at the front is very primitive. Social relations as the world knows +them cease to exist. The habits of the past are almost forgotten. It is +death and blood; shells shrieking, screaming, whining, jangling; the boom +of great guns as if Nature herself were in a constant electrical orgasm; +hideous stench; torn bodies, groans, cries, still more terrible silences of +brave men in torment; incessant unintermittent danger. Above all, blood, +blood, blood. She believed she should smell it as long as she lived. She +knew it in every stage from the fresh dripping blood of men rushed from the +field to the evacuation hospitals, to the black caked and stinking blood +of men rescued from No Man's Land endless days and nights after they had +fallen. + +All that was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, +full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the +surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate +passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? +What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything else could ever +have mattered. + +Civilization--by which men meant the varied and pleasant times of +peace--seemed incredibly insipid and out of date. It had no more relation +to this war-zone than her youth to this swift and terrible maturity. + +She was in many hospitals--rushed where an indomitable and tireless +auxiliary nurse was most in demand--some under the direction of the +noblesse division of the Red Cross, others under the bourgeois; and in more +than one were English and American girls, long resident in France, or, in +the latter case, come from America like herself to serve the country +for which they had a romantic passion. The majority, of course, were +Frenchwomen, young (in their first freedom), middle-aged, elderly. + +Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently noble, +selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every thought and +deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land. + +But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off +after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day, +accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might +turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly +readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is +the quintessential carnality. Renan once wrote a story of the French +Revolution, "The Abbess Juarre," in which his thesis was that if warning +were given that the world would end in three days the entire population of +the globe would give itself over to an orgy of sex; sex being life itself. +It is the obsession of the doomed consumptive, the doomed spinster, the +last thought of a man with the rope round his neck. + +How much more under the terrific stimulation of war, the constant heedless +annihilation of life in its flower and its maturity? Man's inveterate +enemy, death, shrieking its derision in the very shells of man's one +inviolable right, the right to drift into eternity through the peaceful +corridors of old age. War is a monstrous anachronism and a monstrous +miscarriage of justice. The ignorant feel it less. It is the enlightened, +the intelligent, accustomed to the higher delights of civilization, to the +perfecting of such endowments, however modest, as their ancestors have +transmitted and peace has encouraged, with ambitions and hopes and dreams, +that resent however sub-consciously the constant snarling of death at their +heels. All the forces of mind and body and spirit become formidable in a +reckless hatred of the gross injustice of a fate that individually not one +of them has deserved. + +But the moment remains. They compress into it the desires of a lifetime. +After years of proud individualism they have learned that they are atoms, +cogs, helpless, the sport of iron and steel and powder and the ambitions +and stupidities of men whose lives are never risked. Very well, turn the +ego loose to find what it can. If all they have learned from civilization +is as useless in this shrieking hell, as impotent as the dumb resentment of +the clod, they can at least be animals. + +To talk of the ennobling influences of war is one of the lies of the +conventionalized mind anxious to avoid the truths of life and to extract +good from all evil--worthy but unintelligent. How can men in the trenches, +foul with dirt and vermin, stench forever in their nostrils, callous to +death and suffering, wallowing like pigs in a trough, compulsorily obscene, +be ennobled? Courage is the commonest attribute of man, a universal gift of +Nature that he may exist in a world bristling with dangers to frail human +life; never to be commended, only to be remarked when absent. If men lose +it in the city, the sedentary life, they recover it quickly in the camp. +The exceptions, the congenital cowards, slink out of war on any pretext, +but if drafted are likely to acquit themselves decently unless neurotic. +The cases of cowardice in active warfare are extremely rare; a mechanical +chattering of teeth, or shaking of limbs, but practically never a refusal +to obey the command to advance. But it is this very courage which breeds +callousness, and, combined with bestial conditions, inevitably brutalizes. + +When good people (far, oh far, from the zones of danger) can no longer in +the face of accumulating evidence, cling to their sentimental theory that +war ennobles, they take refuge in the vague but plausible substitute that +at least it makes the good better and the bad worse. Possibly, but it is to +be remembered that there is bad in the best even where there is no good in +the worst. + +Indubitably it leaves its indelible mark in a collection of hideous +memories, on the just and the unjust, alike; as it is more difficult +(Nature having made human nature in an ironical mood) to recall the +pleasant moments of life than the poignantly unpleasant, so is it far more +difficult to recall the moments of exaltation, of that intense spiritual +desire which visits the high and low alike, to give their all for the +safety of their country and the honor of their flag. Moreover, the sublime +indifference in the face of certain death often has its origin in a still +deeper necessity to relieve the insufferable strain on scarified nerves, +and forever. As for the much vaunted recrudescence of the religious spirit +which is one of the recurring phenomena of war, it is merely an instinct +of the subtle mind, in its subtlest depths called soul, to indulge in the +cowardice of dependence since the body must know no fear. + +If men who have been temperate and moral all their lives, or at the worst +indulging in moderation, spend their leaves of absence from the front like +swine, it is not a reaction from the monotony of trench life, or from +the nerve-racking din of war, but merely an extension of the fearful +stimulation of a purely carnal existence, even where the directing mind is +ever on the alert. + +The aggressors of war should be pilloried in life and in history. Men must +defend their country if attacked; to do less would be to sink lower than +the beasts that defend their lairs; and for that reason all pacifists, and +conscientious objectors, are abject, mean, and shabby. In times of national +danger no man has a right to indulge his own conscience; it merges, if he +be a normal courageous man, into the national conscience. But that very +fact lowers the deliberate seekers of war so far below the high plane of +civilization as we know it, that they should be blotted out of existence. + + + +III + + +As regards women Alexina was not likely to remain shocked for long at any +erratic manifestations of temperament. Pride and fastidiousness and the +steel armor fused by circumstances had protected her heretofore from any +divagations of her own; nor had crystallized temptation ever approached +her. + +But her education had been liberal. Several of her intimate friends and +more that she associated with daily made what she euphemistically termed a +cult of men. The naïve deliberate immorality of young things not only in +the best society but in all walks of life is far more prevalent than the +good people of this world will ever believe. Those with much to lose +seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection envelops them as a mantle; +although in small towns, where concealments are less simple, the majority +of scandals are not about married women as in a less sophisticated era, but +about girls. + +Alexina had possessed numerous confidences, helped more than once to throw +dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she was +philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact stood out +that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, remained always her favorite +friend. + +An individualist, she felt it no part of her philosophy to criticize the +acts of women with different desires, weaknesses, temptations, equipment +from her own; all other things being equal. That was the point. These girls +who made use of their most secret and personal possession as they saw fit +were as well-bred as herself, honorable in all their dealings with one +another and with society at large, generous, tolerant, exquisite in their +habits, often highly intelligent and studious. Sex was an incident. + +With the peccadillos of married women who were wives she had little +tolerance as they were a breach of faith, a deliberate violation of +contract, and indecent to boot. She was quite aware that Sibyl for all her +posturings, and avidness for sex admiration, and "acting oriental" as the +phrase went, was entirely devoted to Frank. Such of her married friends as +had severed all but the nominal and public bond with their legal husbands, +she placed in the same category as girls as far as her personal attitude +toward them went. + + + +IV + + +Therefore not only did she understand these young women driven by the +horrid stimulus of war; women (or girls) heretofore sheltered, virtuous, +romantic, sentimental, now merely filled with the lust of life. They were, +like herself, devoted and meticulous nurses, brave, high-minded, tender; +practically all, if not from the upper, at least from the educated ranks of +life. But they lived under the daily shadow of death. Even when safe from +the shells of the big guns, the murderous aircraft paid them daily visits, +singling out hospitals with diabolical precision. They were in daily +contact with young torn human bodies from which had gone forever the +purpose for which one generation precedes another. Life was horror. Blood +and death and shattered bodies were their daily portion. No matter how +brave, they heard death scream in every shell. The world beyond existed as +a mirage. No wonder they became primeval. + +Alexina had met Alice Thorndyke in one of these hospitals and observed her +with some curiosity. But Alice was, to use her own vernacular, the best +little bourgeoise of them all. She had had her fling. Men repelled her. She +never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was over she should +live the completely independent life. Nobody would care what economic +liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had liberalized the most +conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was ever inflicted with. + + + +V + + +As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which she +was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle in +itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that savage +lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and powerful +passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect after she +dismissed her husband. + +What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance than +most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud instinct +of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control. + +She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still lurking +desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the complete mating +which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly not in the mere zone +of death. + +She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they had +but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious +mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened and +cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle raging +behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that vulgar +blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the death throe as +incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius. + +This internal silent warfare between her long reed-like body as little +sensible to fatigue as if made of flexible steel and her extremely cold +proud chaste-looking head had grown to be of such absorbing interest that +the knowledge of its cessation was almost a shock. It was after a prolonged +experience in a hospital where they were short of nurses and rest was +almost unknown and the inroads upon her vitality so severe and menacing +that she was finally ordered to Paris to rest, and there found a complete +change of habit in an oeuvre founded by the equally exhausted but always +valiant Olive de Morsigny, that she suddenly realized that somewhere +sometime the battle had finished and mind and body were acting in complete +harmony. + + + +VI + + +To-night she wondered if her imagination, turned loose, stimulated, had +not missed the whole point. There had been no man who had made the direct +irresistible appeal. No concrete temptation....She had after all been a +degree too civilized...or...romantic idealism? + +There had been little to stimulate and excite since she had settled down to +office work in the summer of nineteen-sixteen. Her nerves, always strong, +had become too case-hardened to be affected by avions or the immense +uncertainties of Big Bertha; although the light on the horizon at night +during the last German Drive and the bellow of the guns had shaken her with +a sort of reminiscent excitement. + +But for the most part she had felt frozen, torpid, a cog in the vast +military machine of France, dedicating herself like hundreds of other +women to the succor of men she never saw. That extraordinary abominable +experience at the front was overlaid, almost forgotten. And such news as +one had in Paris was quite enough to exercise the mind....There had been +the downfall of the Russian dynasty...the still more sinister downfall of +the true revolutionists...the Bolshevik monster projecting its murderous +shadow over all Europe, exposing the instability of the entire social +structure.... + + + +VII + + +Was it? Could such an experience ever be forgotten? The grass might grow +over the dead on the battlefields, but the corruption fed the wheat, and +the peogle of France ate the bread. This uninvited thought had intruded +itself the first time she had driven by the Marne battlefields and seen the +numberless crosses in the rich abundant fields. + +She smiled, a small, secret, ruthless smile....That was her residue: +ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone the +savage elementary lust for living at any cost, but she had ineradicably +learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still more tragic +brevity of youth; she had a store of hideous memories which could only be +submerged first in the performance of duty if duty were imperative; then, +duty discharged and finished, in the one thing that during its brief time +gave life any meaning, made this earthly sojourn bearable. If she met the +man she wanted she would have him if she had to fight for him tooth and +nail. + +It was four o 'clock. She went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +I + + +The next day Alexina found herself suddenly free of office duty, A very +handsome and wealthy American woman who had not been able to visit her +beloved Paris since the beginning of the World's War, and finding the +State Department obdurate to the whims of pretty women, had induced Mrs. +Ballinger Groome, on one of whose committees she had worked faithfully, to +ask her sister-in-law to inform the Department of State that her services +at the oeuvre in Paris were indispensable. + +Alexina had passed the letter on to the President, Madame de Morsigny, and +forgotten the incident. Olive wrote the necessary letter promptly. Not only +did she believe that the time had come for Alexina to rest, but she longed +for a fresh access of energy in the office that would in a measure relieve +herself. Moreover, Mrs. Wallack was wealthy and had many wealthy friends. +That meant more money for the oeuvre, always in need of money. Olive had +given large sums herself, but the president of a charity is yet to be found +who will not permit its constant demands to be relieved by the generous +public. Mrs. Wallack had not only promised a substantial donation at once, +but a monthly contribution. This had not been named, but Madame de Morsigny +meant that it should be something more than nominal. She could do so much +for Mrs. Wallack socially, now that it was possible to entertain again, +that she felt reasonably confident of rousing the enthusiasm of any +ambitious New Yorker. Moreover, Olive had a very insinuating way with her. + + + +II + + +Mrs. Wallack presented herself at the imposing headquarters of the oeuvre, +radiant, fresh, energetic, beautifully dressed. The war had interested her +and commanded her sympathies to some purpose, but nothing short of personal +affliction could subdue that inexhaustible vitality, and she seemed to +bring into the dark and solemn rooms something of the atmospheric gayety +and sunshine of a land that had done much but suffered little. + +By no one was she received with more warmth of welcome than by Alexina. The +sudden release made her realize sharply her lowered vitality. Moreover, the +semi-yearly income which had just arrived from California was her own now +and she could replenish her wardrobe and feel feminine and irresponsible +once more. The reaction was so violent that after inducting Mrs. Wallack +into the mysteries of her desk she remained in bed, prostrate, for two +days. Then, feeling several years younger, she sallied forth in search of +many things. + + + +III + + +There is no such antidote to the migraines of the woman soul as clothes. +Their only rival is travel and there are cases where they know none. +Sometimes women remember to pity men, that have no such happy playground. + +Alexina for all her ramifications, some of them too deep, had a light and +feminine side. During the following fortnight she gave it full rein; she +was absorbed, almost happy. She spent quite recklessly and after the years +of economy and self-denial this alone gave her an intense satisfaction. In +addition to her income forwarded by Judge Lawton, who had charge of her +affairs, her brother Ballinger, who was as fond of her as of his own +children, and very proud of her--she had received two decorations--sent her +a large check with the mandate to spend it on herself. + + + +IV + + +Even so, she was not always in the shops and the dressmakers' ateliers. She +found much amusement in strolling up and down the arcades of the Rue de +Rivoli, watching the odd throngs at which Paris herself seemed, to bend her +head and stare. + +Some poet had called Paris the mistress of Europe. She looked like an old +trollop. She was dirty and dreary, unpainted and unwashed. The rain +was almost incessant and the shop windows were soon denuded of the few +attractive novelties scrambled together to meet the sudden demand after the +long drought. + +But under the long arcades the curious sauntering throngs were sheltered +from the rain and found all things in Paris novel. Men in the American +khaki, from generals to striplings, were there by the hundred; endless +streams of young women in the uniform of the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., the +Salvation Army; British and American nurses; members of the fashionable +oeuvres artlessly watching this novel phase of Paris; the beautiful violet +uniform of Le Bien-Être du Blessé; girls with worn faces and relaxed bodies +fresh from the front, hundreds of them, arriving daily in camions and cars, +thanking heaven for the sudden cessation of work, sleeping heaven knew +where. The American women of the Commission, and others who, like Mrs. +Wallack, had invented a plausible excuse to get to Paris and looked almost +anachronistic in their smart gowns, their fresh faces, their bright, +curious, glancing eyes. + +There were also officers in the uniform of Britain, and Alexina regarded +them frankly, with no effort to deceive herself. The spirit of adventure +was awake in her, now that the dark mood had passed, or slept. She hoped to +meet the man of the embassy again, whether he were Gathbroke or another. +She had liked his eyes. + +She had met many charming and interesting men during the last two and +a half years at Olive de Morsigny's table, especially when André, +convalescent, was at home. But their eyes had said nothing to her whatever, +if not for the want of trying. Alexina's imagination, torpid for many +months, ran riot. This man might disappoint her, might have nothing in him +for her, but she refused for more than a moment to contemplate anything so +flat. Something must come of that adventure, that vital intensely personal +moment when their eyes had met above flames so tiny the wonder was they +could see anything but a white blur on the dark. She was as sure of meeting +him again as that she trod on air after she had ordered a new gown or +brought an inordinately becoming hat. She had forgotten Mortimer's +existence. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +I + + +One day at the Hotel Crillon she thought she had found him. + +She had passed the portals of that fortress with some delay, for the +American Commission protected itself as if it dwelt under the shadow of +imminent assassination and theft; whereas it was merely exclusive. The +sentries at the door demanded her permit, and passed her in with intense +suspicion to the inner guard. This was composed of three polite but very +young lieutenants in smart new uniforms with no blight of war on them, and +flagrantly of the American aristocracy. + +With these she had less trouble, for they recognized her social status and +accepted her explanation that she had been invited for tea with one of the +ladies of the Commission. Nevertheless, they knew their duty and Alexina +was followed up to the door of her hostess' suite by another young guardian +who watched her entrance through the sacred door as carefully as if he +suspected her of carrying a bomb in her muff. + + + +II + + +The party numbered about thirty, and Alexina, after chatting with the few +she knew, was standing apart by a small table drinking a cup of tea +with three lumps of sugar in it and consuming cakes like a greedy +boarding-school girl home for the holidays, when she caught sight of a +man in the British khaki, a major by his insignia, a tall man, thin and +straight, standing with his back to her at the opposite end of the room. He +was talking to the host and a small group of men. She glimpsed something +like half of his profile when he turned from the host for a moment. Like +all men in khaki, when not pronounced brunettes, his complexion and hair +looked the same color as his uniform. + +Nevertheless...if she could only see his eyes...he turned his full +profile...she had never glanced at Gathbroke's profile; he had given her no +opportunity!...Certainly she had not the faintest idea whether the man of +the embassy had had a snub nose or the thin straight feature of this man +who would have attracted her attention in any ease if only because he did +not carry his shoulders with the disillusioning obliquity of the British +Army...why did he not turn round? Alexina felt an impulse to throw her cup +straight across the room at the back of that well-shaped head. + +Suddenly he shook hands with his host, nodded to the others and left the +room. + + + +III + + +Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt her +hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid questions, and +walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a primitive instinct +in woman to chase the male; but civilization having initiated her into the +art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was merely bent upon giving +this man his chance if the interest had been mutual and existed beyond the +moment. + +One lift was descending as she reached the outer corridor and the other +was closed. She ran down the wide staircase as rapidly as a woman in +fashionable skirts may. There was no British uniform in the hall below. + + + +IV + + +She stood for a quarter of an hour under the arcade before the Crillon +waiting for a taxi, staring out into the dreary mist of rain, at the round +soft blurs of light in the Place de la Concorde, but in no wise depressed. +What did it matter if she had not met him to-day? The conviction that she +should meet him before long was as strong as if she were ever hopeful +sixteen....That was the real secret of her elation. She felt very young and +entirely carefree. She reflected that if she had met Gathbroke, or whoever +he might be, during the last three years of the war she would have felt +neither joy nor elation, however interested she might have been. To love +and dream and enjoy when men were falling every minute, writhing in agony, +gasping out their life, would have seemed to her grossly unæsthetic if +nothing worse. It was not in the picture. The primal impulses she had +experienced at the front to that harsh music of Death's orchestra were +natural enough; but safe (comparatively!) in Paris, certainly quiet, the +romance of love would have been as incongruous and heartless as to go out +to the great hospital at Neuilly and tango through a ward of dying men. + +But now! She had done her part. She could do no more. Men still must die, +but in every comfort, with every consolation. And there would be no more +recruits. + +She was free. She was young, young, young again. + +And at this moment her heart emptied itself of song and sank like lead +in her breast. She pressed her muff against her face to hide the sudden +grimace she was sure contorted it; there had been few moments in her life +when she had not been mistress of her features, but this was one of them. + +Gora Dwight was walking rapidly toward her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +I + + +Gora did not see her sister-in-law for a moment and Alexina had time to +recover her poise and make sharp swift observations. She had not seen Gora +for four years, nor exchanged a line with her. She had almost forgotten +her. The changes were more striking than in herself, who had been always +slight. Gora's superb bust had disappeared; her face was gaunt, throwing +into prominence its width and the high cheek bones. Her eyes were enormous +in her thin brown face; to Alexina's excited imagination they looked like +polar seas under a gray sky brooding above innumerable dead. There were +lines about her handsome mouth, closer and firmer than ever. How she must +have worked, poor thing! What sights, what suffering, what despair...four +long years of it. But she had evidently had her discharge. She wore an +extremely well-cut brown tailored suit, good furs, and a small turban with +a red wing. + +What was she in Paris for?...What...what... + + + +II + + +Gora saw her and almost ran forward, that brilliant inner light that had +always been her chief attraction breaking through her cold face...sunlight +sparkling on polar seas...oh, yes, Gora had her charm! + +"Alexina! It isn't possible! I was going to ask at the American Embassy for +your address. I only arrived last night." + +Alexina had lowered her muff and her face expressed only the warmest +surprise and welcome. "Gora! It's too wonderful! But I suppose you couldn't +go home without seeing Paris?" + +"Rather not! It's the first chance I've had, too. Where can we have a +talk?" + +"It's too late for tea. Come out to my pension and spend the night. Janet +and Alice have gone to Nice for a few days' rest. You'll be hideously +uncomfortable--" + +"Not any more than where I am--sharing a room with three others. Where can +I telephone? In here?" + +"Good heavens, no. Take a liberty with a duke, but with the American +aristocracy, never. Come down to the Meurice. Perhaps we can find a cab +there. This seems to be hopeless. Everybody comes to the Crillon in a +private car or a military automobile. Taxis appear to avoid it." + + + +III + + +It only took half an hour to get the telephone connection and another to +seize by force a taxi, which, however, deposited them at the Étoile. The +driver explained unamiably that he wanted his dinner; and a bribe, unless +unthinkable, would have been useless. In these days taxi drivers made fifty +francs a day in tips, and, as a Frenchman knows exactly what he wants and +calculates to a nicety when he has enough, valuing rest and nutriment above +even the delights of gouging foolish Americans, Alexina knew that it would +be useless to argue and did not even waste energy in announcing her opinion +of him for taking a fare under false pretenses. There was no other cab +in sight and they walked the rest of the way. But both were inured to +hardships and took their mishap good-naturedly, trudging the long distance +under their umbrellas. + + + +IV + + +After a very bad dinner in an airless room as frugally lighted they made +themselves comfortable in Alexina's room over the oil stove she had bought, +and supplied through Olive's influence with the higher powers. She took +off her street clothes and put on a thick dressing gown, giving her +sister-in-law a quilted red wrapper of Janet's, which threw some warmth +into Gora's pale cheeks. She looked comfortable, almost happy, as she +smoked her cigarette in the arm-chair. + +Alexina curled up on the bed. + +"Now, Gora," she said brightly, "give an account of yourself." + +Gora did not reply for a moment and Alexina examining her again came to the +conclusion that she had been spared some of the horrors of the front. As a +head nurse her responsibilities had been too heavy for philanderings, and +having the literary imagination rather than the personal she had no doubt +consigned it to a water-tight compartment and converted herself into a +machine. + +"I don't know that I can talk about it," she said. "I feel much like the +men. It is too close. I am thankful that I Had the experience: not only to +have been of actual service, indispensable, as every good nurse was, but to +have been a part of that colossal drama. But I am even more thankful that +it is over and if I can possibly avoid it I'll never nurse again." + +"I suppose you have had no time to write?" + +"I should think not! During the brief leaves of absence I spent most of the +time in bed. But I have an immense amount of material. I have no idea how +much fiction has been written about the war; there might have been none, so +far as I have had time to discover. I've barely read a newspaper." + +"The only reason I want to go back to America is to hear the news. I see a +New York newspaper once in a while, and it is plain they have it all. We +have next to none in Europe, in France at all events. Shall you write your +stories here or go back to California? That would give you the necessary +perspective, I should think." + +Alexina's eyes were fixed upon an execrable print many inches above the +footboard, and Gora, glancing at her, reflected that she was as beautiful +as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one would be with eyes +that were like stars when they looked at you and a Murillo madonna's when +she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute as she was she had never +penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor suspected the use she made of +those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an abundance of surface it occurred to +few people that she might be both subtle and deep. + +"I...don't know....I rather fear losing the atmosphere...the immediate +stimulation. Shall you go home, now that you are free?" + +"I wonder. Could I stand it? I have longed for a rest--ached would be a +better word....This last year has been full of both nervous strain and +desperate monotony. Nineteen-seventeen was bad enough in another way: the +internal defeatist campaign, the constant menace of mutiny, soviets in the +army, strikes in the munition towns,--all the rest of it....But could one +stand California after such an experience? I know they have done splendid +work since we entered the war, but I know also that they will immediately +subside into exactly what they were before, settle down with a long sigh +of relief to enjoy life and forget that war ever was. It could not be +otherwise in that climate. With that abundance. That remoteness....There +seems no place out there for me. A decorator after this! What funny little +resources we thought out in those days....I do not see myself fitting in +anywhere. Tom wants to buy Ballinger House for Maria and I fancy I'll let +him have it. I can't keep it up unaided and I might as well sell as rent +it. He and Judge Lawton would invest the money and I should have quite a +decent income. As for Mortimer I never want to see him again. He has not +done one thing for this war--he is utterly contemptible-- + +"I've long since given up criticizing Mortimer. My father once sized him +up. He hasn't an ounce of brain. He'd like to be quite different, but you +can stretch Nature's equipment so far and no farther. He stretched his +until it suddenly snapped back and found itself shrunken to less than half +its natural size. Vale Mortimer. Let him rest. Why don't you divorce him? +No doubt he has found some one else-- + +"I couldn't divorce him on that count, for I told him repeatedly to console +himself. It wouldn't be playing the game. Of course there are other +grounds. It would be easy enough. But our family has a strong aversion to +divorce. And a unique record....Not that that would stop me if I found any +one I really wanted to marry. Nothing would stop me, in fact." + +Gora glanced at her quickly, arrested by something in her voice. She had +already noticed that Alexina's limpid musical tones had deepened. Just now +they rang with something of the menace of a deep-toned bell. + +"Have you found him?" she asked smiling. "If there are obstacles, so much +the more interesting. I don't fancy that romantic streak in your nature +which permitted you to idealize Mortimer has quite dried up. Once romantic +always romantic--I deduce from human nature as I have studied it," + +"Well...I am rather afraid of romance. Certainly I'd never be blinded +again. A man might be nine parts demi-god and if I knew--and I should +know--that there was no companionship in him for me I wouldn't marry him." + +"That I believe." Alexina was once more regarding the print. Gora wondered +if sex would influence her at all. + +"But have you met him? You were always an interesting child and you've +roused my curiosity." + +"No...yes...I don't know...later perhaps I'll tell you something. But I'm +far more interested in you. Have you been in France all this time?" + +"Oh, no. I was in Rouen for a year. Then I was in hospitals in England +until the German Drive began in. March when I was sent over again. Oh, God! +what sights! what sounds! what smells!" She huddled into her chair and +stared at the dull flame behind the little door of the stove. + +"Oh, I know them all. Think of something else. Surely you met--but +literally--hundreds of officers, and some must have interested you. The +British officer at best is a superb creature--if he would only stand up +straight. I saw one at the Crillon to-day whose good American shoulders +made me stare at him quite rudely." + +"Who was he?" + +"Haven't the faintest idea. I only saw his back, anyway. Surely you must +have been more than passing interested in one or two." + +"I am not susceptible. And nursing is not conducive to romance." + +"But you never were romantic, Gora dear. And you are good-looking in your +odd way. And that was your great, chance." + +"Well, I'm afraid I was too busy or too tired to take it. +Now...perhaps...but I'm afraid I don't inspire men with either romance +or passion. They like me and are grateful--that is, as grateful as an +Englishman can be; they take most things for granted." + +"The French are so grateful, poor dears. I loved them all. After +all...Frenchmen...." Her voice grew dreamy. + +Again Gora threw her an amused glance. "You must have met many of them at +your friend, Madame de Morsigny's, and under far more attractive conditions +than any man can hope for in a sick bed....I can't imagine any more +appropriate destiny for you...you should be Madame la duchesse at the very +least." + +"Not money enough, and besides they've all grown so religious, or think +they have, they wouldn't stand for divorce. Anyhow it would be so hard on +'The Family'!...Still....But why, Gora dear, do you depreciate yourself? +It seems to me that you are just the type that a certain sort of man would +appreciate--fall in love with. I've heard even American men who play about +in society comment on your looks, different as you are from sport and fluff +and come-hitherness; and you only need a few months' rest to look like your +old self. I should think that a highly intelligent Englishman would find +you irresistible, especially if you had shown your womanly side when he had +holes in him. I've always had an idea that Englishmen weren't nearly as +afraid of intellectual women as American men are." + +"That's true enough. But I doubt if there are any men more susceptible to +beauty, or quite as lustful after it, no matter how romantic they may think +they are feeling. I've talked to a good many of them in the past four +years, and for six months I was in charge of a convalescent hospital in +Kent. I think I've pretty thoroughly plumbed the Englishman. They found me +sympathetic all right, forgot their racial shyness and inadvertently gave +me much valuable material. But I saw no indication that I made any sex +appeal to them whatever." + +"Not one? Not ever?" + +Gora gave a slight withdrawing movement as if something sacred had been +touched. But she answered: "Oh...some day I may have something to tell +you....You said much the same thing to me a little while ago. Tell me +now." + +Alexina turned over on her elbow to beat up her pillows. Then she answered +lightly but firmly: "Not unless you promise to do likewise. Mine is such a +little thing anyhow. I know by the expression of your face--just now--that, +yours is the real thing. Is he in Paris?" + +"I'm...not sure....Yes, there is something...the conditions are very +peculiar...not at all what you think...there is so much more to it....No, I +don't think I can tell you." + +A fortnight ago Alexina could have lifted her eyes and uttered Gathbroke's +name as if groping through a jungle of memories. But she could no more +force his name through her lips now than she could have laid bare all that +was in her tumultuous soul. It was, in fact, all she could do to keep from +screaming. For a moment her excitement was so intense that she jumped from +the bed and ran over and opened the window. + +"This room gets intolerably stuffy. That is the worst of it--freeze or +stifle." + +"Oh, I have been cold so long! Please don't leave it open. That's a +darling." + + + +V + + +Alexina closed it with an amiable smile. "What would you do, Gora, if you +were really mad about a man? Have him at any cost? Annihilate anything that +stood in your way? Anybody, I mean." + +An appalling light came into Gora's pale eyes as she turned them, at first +in some surprise, on her sister-in-law: "Yes, if I thought he cared...could +be made to care if I had the chance...if another woman tried to get him +away...yes, I don't fancy I'd stop at anything....Even if I finally were +forced to believe that he never could care for me in that way, the only way +that counts with men--at first, anyway...well, I believe I'd fight to the +death just the same. When you've waited for thirty-four years...well, you +know what you want! Better die fighting than live on interminably for +nothing...less than nothing....I can't tell you any more. Please don't ask +me." + +"Of course not. I'll tell you my little story." And she gave a rapid vivid +account of the remarkable scene at the Embassy. She concluded abruptly: "Do +you think one could tell that a man's eyes were hazel--the golden-brown +hazel--across a pitch dark room above the flame of a briquet?" + +"Hazel?" Alexina was standing behind Gora. She saw her body stiffen. + +"I could have vowed they were hazel. And that he was English. He also +reminded me of some one I must have met somewhere or other...one meets so +many...possibly it was only a fancy." + +"You didn't see him after the lights went on again?" + +"They didn't. Only candles. We were all too anxious to get away, anyhow. I +fancy the King was in a hurry to get the ambassador upstairs and tell him +what he thought of him--" + +"Don't be flippant. You always did have a maddening habit of being flippant +at the wrong time. Haven't you seen him again anywhere?" + +"I've walked the Rue de Rivoli and lunched at the Ritz looking for him; +but I've never had even a glimpse--unless that was his back I saw at the +Crillon to-day. If I saw his eyes I'd know in a minute." + +"Why should you think it was his back?" + +"Some men have expression in the back of their head. And I just had +an idea--fantastic, no doubt--that my particular Englishman stands up +straight." + +"Yours?" + +"Yes, I'm feeling quite too fearfully romantic. I'm sure he's looking for +me as hard as I am for him. And if I find him I'll keep him." + +She saw Gora's long brown hands slowly clench until they looked like steel. +She glanced at her own slim white hands. They were quite as strong if more +ornamental. She yawned politely. + +"I'm not so romantic as sleepy. I know that you must be dead after your +journey. They say it's more trouble to travel to Paris from London than +from New York. The girls won't be back for a week. You must get your +things to-morrow and come out here. I won't hear of your living in Paris +discomfort with three two empty rooms." + +"That is good of you. Yes, I'll come. And perhaps your landlady, or +whatever they call them here, could put me up later. Now that I have come +to Paris I intend to see it. I believe some of the great galleries and +museums are to be reopened." + +"André will arrange it if they're not. How you will enjoy it with your +sensitiveness to all the arts. Take this candle in ease the bulb is burnt +out. It usually is." + + + +VI + + +Gora had risen. Her face wore an expression both puzzled and grim; but she +and Alexina as they said good-night looked full into each other's eyes +without faltering. And Alexina had never looked more ingenuous. + +Perhaps that dim idea...that she had thrown down a challenge...had come +out in the open for a moment...insolently?...honestly?...She _must_ be +completely fagged out after that abominable trip to have such absurd +fancies. She took her candle; and disposed herself in Janet's bed, between +four walls that gave her an unexpected and heavenly privacy, with a deep +sigh of gratitude, dismissing fantasies. + + + +VII + + +During the next ten days Alexina kept as close to Gora as was possible in +the circumstances. She had made many engagements and not all of them were +social; there were still gowns to be fitted, committee meetings to attend. +Twice Gora appeared to have risen with the dawn, and she vanished for the +day. Nevertheless, it grew increasingly evident to Alexina's alert and +penetrating vision that Gora was neither peaceful nor happy; therefore it +was safe to assume that she had not found Gathbroke. For some reason she +had not inquired at the British Embassy. Or a letter to its care had failed +to reach him. Possibly he was enjoying himself without formalities. + +She took Gora twice to the Ritz to luncheon and on several afternoons to +tea. But it was a mob of Americans and members of the various Commissions. +A brilliant sight, but not in the least satisfactory. It was quite patent +from Gora's ever traveling eyes that she sought and never found. + +Therefore when Olive asked Alexina to go to one of the towns where the +oeuvre had a branch and attend to an important matter that Mrs. Wallack +was far too much of a novice to be entrusted with, she agreed at once. She +experienced a growing desire to get away by herself--away from Paris--away +from Gora. She wanted to think. What if Gora did meet him first? She +would be but the more certain to meet him herself. Moreover...give Gora a +sporting chance. + +Janet and Alice had written from Nice that they might be detained for some +time. Gora unpacked her trunk and settled down in the pension with that air +of indestrucible patience that had always made her formidable. She was not +one of Life's favorites, but she had wrung prizes from that unamiable deity +more than once. + +Alexina speculated. Gora had all the brains that Mortimer lacked and +commanding traits of character. She was so striking in appearance even now +that people often turned and stared at her. But unless she possessed the +potent spell of woman for man all her gifts would avail her nothing in this +tragic crisis of her life. Did she possess it I No woman could answer. +Certainly Alexina had never seen evidence of it even in Gora's youth; +although to be sure her opportunities had been few. Still...when a woman +possesses the most subtle and powerful of all the fascinations men are +drawn to it, no matter how dark the sky or high the barriers. Nothing is +keener than the animal essence. Still...she had heard that some women +developed it later than others. Alexina feared nothing else. + +She fancied that Gora took leave of her with a little indrawn sigh of +relief. It was with difficulty that she repressed her own. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +I + + +"Can this be Lieutenant James Kirkpatrick?" + +Kirkpatrick wheeled about and snatched off his cap. + +"Mrs. Dwight, by all that's holy! I never expected any such luck as this!" + +They shook hands warmly in the deserted square which had been a shambles +during the first battle of the Marne, and in the days of Cæsar and Attila, +of Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little. To-day it was as gray and +peaceful, its houses as aloof and haughty as if war had never been. It was +a false impression, however, for it was the paralysis of war it expressed, +not even the normal peace of a dull provincial town. + +"I've often wondered about you," said Alexina. "But I've been working with +the French Army and had no way of finding out. You don't look as if you had +been wounded." + +"Nary scratch, and in the thick of it. My, but it's good to sec you again." +He stared at her, his face flushed and his breath short. Then he asked +abruptly: "When do you think we're goin' home?" + +Alexina laughed merrily. "That is the first question every officer or +private I have met since the Armistice has asked me. I should feel greatly +flattered, but I fancy the question, being always on the top of your minds, +simply babbles off." + +"You bet. But--Jimminy! I'm glad to see you. You're lookin' thin, though. +Been workin', too, I'll bet." + +"Oh, yes--and all your old class has worked; most of them over here. Mrs. +Cheever couldn't come, as her husband is in the army. But she's worked hard +in California." + +"I believe you. The women have come up to the scratch, no doubt of that. +Although some of them! Good Lord! This isn't my usual language when +speaking of them. But if some came over to do just about as they damn +please, the others strike the balance, and on the whole I think more of +women than I did." + +"That's good news. But you mustn't blame them too severely. I mean those +that really came over with a single purpose and were not proof against the +forcing house of war. As for the others...well, a good many followed their +men over, others came after excitement, others, as you say, to do as +they pleased, with no questions asked--possibly! I shouldn't take enough +interest in them to criticize them if they hadn't used the war-relief +organizations, from the Red Cross down to the smallest oeuvre, as a pretext +to get over, and then calmly throw us down--the oeuvres, I mean. Mine was +'done' several times. But let us be good healthy optimists such as +our country loves and remind ourselves that the worthy outnumber the +unworthy--and that the really bad would have gone the same way sooner or +later." + +"It goes. Optimism for me for ever more once I get out of France." + + + +II + + +They had crossed the square and were walking down a narrow crooked street +as gray as if the dust of ages were in its old walls. Alexina looked at +him curiously. He had never had what might be called a soft and tender +countenance, but now it looked like cast-iron covered with red rust, and +his eyes were more like bits of the same metal, blackened and polished, +than ever. His youth had gone. There were deep vertical lines in his face. +His mouth was cynical. His bullet head, shaved until only a cap of black +stiff hair remained on top, and presumably safe from assault, by no means +added to the general attractiveness of his style. He was straighter, more +compact, than before, however, and his uniform at least did not have the +truly abominable cut of the private. + +"What do you think of war as war?" she asked. + +"Sherman for me. Not that I didn't enjoy sticking Germans with the best of +'em when my blood was up. But the rest of it--God Almighty!" + +They stopped before a solid double door in a high wall. "Will you come and +take tea with me this afternoon? I am staying here for a few days. I'm +afraid I can't offer you sugar, or cakes--" + +"I'll bring the sugar along. I'm in barracks just outside and solid with, +the commissary." + +"Heavens, what a windfall! You'll be sure to come?" + +"Won't I, just? Expect me at four-thirty." He lifted his cap from his +comical head, then sainted, swung on his heel and marched off, swinging +both arms from the shoulders and looking a fine martial figure of a man. + +"But still the same old Kirkpatrick," thought Alexina. "I wonder if he will +go Bolshevik?" + + + +III + + +Her ring was answered by the old woman who toot care of the house and +Alexina entered the wild garden. There was an acre of it, but it had been +so long uncared for that it looked like a jungle caught between four high +gray walls. It was the property of one of the French members of the oeuvre +and was used as a storehouse for hospital supplies and as headquarters for +Alexina when business brought her to this part of the Marne valley. She had +been here several times during the siege of Verdun in nineteen-sixteen when +her bed had quivered all night, and once a big gun had been trained on the +city and a shell had fallen near the headquarters of the staff. Last night +she had lain awake wondering if she did not miss the sound of the distant +guns, as she had in Passy where there was no noisy traffic to take their +place. There is a certain amount of morbidity in all highly strung +imaginative minds, and although she had developed no love for Big Bertha +nor for the sound of high firing guns attacking avions in the middle of the +night, there had been something in that steady boom of cannon whose glare +stained the horizon that had thrilled and excited her. + + + +IV + + +On the right of the main hall of the house was the room she used as an +office; the dining-room was opposite; the salon ran the whole length at the +back. This was quite a beautiful room furnished in the style of the last +Bourbons, and its long windows opened upon a stone terrace leading down +into what was still a picturesque garden in spite of its neglect. There +were three fine oaks, and the chestnut trees along the wall shut off the +town from even the upper windows. + +The oeuvre always managed to keep a load of wood in the cave and to-day the +concierge had raised the temperature of the salon to sixty-five degrees +Fahrenheit Alexina cleared a table and told the woman to set it for tea, +then went upstairs to change her dress. As she had made her trip in one +of the automobiles belonging to the oeuvre she had been able to bring her +little stove, and her bedroom was also warm. + +She had also brought one of her new gowns, knowing that she should receive +visits from several French officers, and she concluded to put it on for +Kirkpatrick. He was worth the delicate compliment; moreover it almost +obliterated the ravages of war, for it was of periwinkle blue velvet edged +with fur about the high square of the neck and at the wrists of the long +sleeves: in these days it was wise to revert to the fashions of the +centuries when palaces and houses alike were cold and gowns were made for +comfort as well as fashion. To complete the proportions it had a train and +the sleeves were slightly puffed. Alexina was quite aware that she "looked +like a picture" in it. + +She still wore her hair brushed softly back and coiled low at the base of +her beautiful curved head. Her pearls were the only jewels she had brought +to France and she always wore them. She sighed as she looked at the vision +in the mirror. For Kirkpatrick! But she was used to the irony of life. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +I + + +He arrived promptly at half-past four and in his capacious hands were three +packages which arrested her eyes at once. He presented them one by one. + +"Sugar. Loaf of white bread. Candy--I'm also solid with one of the +doctors." + +"I feel like pinching myself. White bread!--I've only tasted it twice in +two years-both times at the Crillon. And candy--not a sight of it for more +than that. I don't like the heavy French chocolates, which were all one +could get when one could get anything. I shall eat at least half and take +the other half back to Gora." + +"Miss Dwight? She's done good work, I'll bet. Just in her line. Somehow, I +don't see you--What did you do?" + +He watched her hungrily as she made the tea, sitting in a gilt and brocaded +chair, whose high tarnished back seemed to frame her dark head. + +"Oh, Lord!" he sighed. + +"What is it?" + +"Don't ask me. What've you been doing? Yes, I'll drink tea to please you." + +"I nursed at first--as an auxiliary, of course--what is the matter?" + +"Can't bear to think of it. I hope you've not been doin' that for four +years!" + +"Oh, no. I've been at work with a war-relief organization in Paris most of +the time. That was too monotonous to talk about, and, thank heaven, this +will probably end my connection with it. I am much more interested to know +how the war has affected you. Are you still a socialist?" + +"Ain't I!" + +"Not going Bolshevik, I hope." + +"Not so's you'd notice it. I want changes all right and more'n ever, +but I've had enough of blood and fury and mix-ups without copying them +murdering skally-wags. That's all they are. Just out for loot and revenge +and not sense enough to know that to-morrow there'll be no loot, and +revenge'll come from the opposite direction. I may have been in hell but my +head's screwed on in the same place," + +"I wondered...I've heard so many stories about the grievances of the +soldiers." + +"Every last one of 'em got a grievance. Hate their officers, and often +reason enough. Hate the discipline. Hate the food. Hate the neglect in +hospital when the flu is raging. Hate gettin' no letters, and as like as +not no pay and no tobacco. Hate bein' gouged by the French like they were +by the good Americans when they were in camp on the other side. Hate every +last thing a man just naturally would hate when he is livin' in a +filthy trench, or even camp, and homesick in the bargain....But as for +mass-dissatisfaction--not a bit of it. Loyal as they make 'em. Laugh at +Bolshevik propaganda just like they laughed at Hun propaganda. They just +naturally seem to hate every other race, allied or enemy, and that makes +them so all-fired American they're fit to bust. Of course there's plenty +of skallywags--caught in the draft--and just waitin' to get home and turn +loose on the community. But in the good old style: burglars, highwaymen, +yeggs. Not a new frill. Europe hasn't a thing on the good old American +criminal brand. They fought well, too. Any man does who's a man at all. But +Lord! they'll cut loose when they get back. Every wild bad trait they was +born with multiplied by one hundred and fifty...before I go any further I +want to warn you that I'm liable to break out into bad language any minute. +It gets to be a kind of habit in the army to swear every other word like." + +"Don't mind me," said Alexina dryly. "After I was put out of my hotel I +managed to get a room in one of the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli for two +nights before I found my pension in Passy. The walls were thin. The room +next to mine was occupied by two American officers and the one beyond by +two more. They talked back and forth with apparently no thought of +the possibility of being overheard. Such language! And not only swear +words--although one of these to two of any. Such adventures as they +related! Such frankness! Such plain undiluted Anglo-Saxon! Fancy a girl +with all her illusions fresh, and worshiping some heroic figure in khaki, +listening to such a revelation of the nether side of man's life!" + +"Men are hogs, all right. I don't like the idea of your having heard such +things." Kirkpatrick scowled heavily. + +"Nor did I. But I had no cotton to put in my ears. I couldn't sleep in the +street. Nor could I ask them to keep quiet and admit I had heard them." + +"Well, I guess you can forget anything you have a mind to. You couldn't +look like you do--a kind of princess out of a fairy tale and an angel +mixed, if you couldn't." + +"A black-haired angel! And all the princesses of legend had golden hair." + +"Well, that's just another way you're different." He changed the subject +abruptly. "What you goin' to do now!" + +"I wish I knew." + +"Goin' back to California?" + +"If I knew I would tell you. But I don't. You see....Well, I shall not live +with Mr. Dwight again. We had been really separated a long while before I +left--and then he has done nothing for the war. That is only one reason. +What should I do there? I had thought of going into business before I left. +But I shall have a good income, and what right have I to go into business +and use my large connection to get customers away from those that need the +money for their actual bread?" + +"Not the ghost of an excuse. Farce, I call it. As long as the present +system lasts women of your class better be ornamental and satisfied with +that than take the bread out of mouths that need it." + +"I could not settle down to the old life. It isn't that I'm in love with +work. For that matter I'm only too grateful to be able to rest. But I must +fill in, some way. Possibly I could do that better in France or England, +where vita! subjects are always being discussed--and happening!--where I +would not only be interested but possibly useful in many ways. I should +feel rather a brute, knowing the conditions of Europe as I do, to go back +and settle down on the smiling abundance of California. And bored to +death." + +"Then you think you'll stay?...You'd be wasted there--at present--sure +enough." + +"Sometimes I think I'll buy this house. I could for a song. Heavens! _How_ +I have longed for solitude in the last four years! I could have it here +with my books, and go to Paris as often as I wished. It would be an ideal +life. I could afford a car, and to make this house very livable. And that +garden...between those gray high walls...in there...that would...." + +She had forgotten Kirkpatrick and was staring through the long windows at +the dripping trees and the riot of green. "There is something about the old +world...in its byways like this...not in its hateful capitals...." + +"Do you mean there's something you want to forget? That this place would be +consolin' like?" + +She met Kirkpatrick's sharp dilated eyes with smiling composure. "This war, +and much that has happened--incidental to it; yes." + +"You could forget it easier in California." + +"I should forget too much." + +"It's awful to think of you not comin' back, though I understand well +enough. Europe suits you all right. But...but...." + +He rose abruptly almost overturning his fragile chair. + +"Good-by, and as I guess it _is_ good-by I'll tell you something I wouldn't +if there was any chance of my seein' you like I used to. It's this: If I'm +more of a socialist than ever it's because of _you_! If my class hatred's +blacker than ever _you're_ the cause! _You'd_ have made me a socialist if +I wasn't one before. _Jesus Christ_! When I think what I might have had if +we'd all been born alike! Had the same chances! If you hadn't been born at +the top and I down at the bottom...common...not even educated except by +myself after I was too old to get what a boy gets that goes to school long +enough. I wouldn't mind bein' born ugly. There's plenty of men at the top +that's ugly enough, God knows. But just one generation with money irons out +the commonness. That's it! I'm common! Common! Common. _Democracy_! Oh, +God!" + +He caught up his cap and rushed out of the room, + +Alexina ran after him and caught him at the garden door. Like all beautiful +women who have listened to many declarations of love (or avoided them) she +was inclined to be cruel to men that roused no response in her. But she +felt only pity for Kirkpatrick. + +She had intended merely to insist upon shaking hands with him, but when she +saw his contorted face she slipped her arm round his neck and kissed him +warmly on the cheek. + +Then she pushed him gently through the door and locked it. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +I + + +Alexina had finished giving tea to two officers, a surgeon and a médecin +major, and, enchanted almost as much by the sugar and the white bread as +by their hostess, refreshingly beautiful and elegant in her velvet gown of +pervenche blue, they had lingered until nearly six. As the concierge had +gone out on an errand of her own Alexina had opened the garden door for +them, and after they disappeared she stood looking at the street, which +always fascinated her. + +It was very narrow and crooked and gray. Her house was the only one with a +garden in front; the others rose perpendicularly from the narrow pavement, +tall and close and rather imposing. Each was heavily shuttered, the +shutters as gray as the walls. The town had been evacuated during the +first Battle of the Marne and only the poor had returned. The well-to-do +provincials in this street had had homes elsewhere, perhaps a flat in +Paris; or they had established themselves in the south. + +The street had an intensely secretive air, brooding, waiting. Soon all +these houses would be reopened, the dull calm life of a provincial town +would flow again, the only difference being that the women who went in and +out of those narrow doors and down this long and twisted street would +wear black; but for the most part they would sit in their gardens behind, +secluded from every eye, as indifferent to their neighbors as of old, with +that ingrained unchangeable bourgeois suspicion and exclusiveness; and the +façades, the street itself, would look little less secretive than now. + + + +II + + +Nowhere could she find such seclusion if she wished for it. This house was +the only one in the street that belonged to a member of the noblesse, and +the bourgeoisie had as little "use" for the noblesse as the noblesse for +the bourgeoisie. + +For the moment Alexina felt that the house was hers, and the street itself. +She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up and down +its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt for many days. +There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she never wanted to feel +again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had done much good in the past +four years; she had been, for the most part, high-minded, self-sacrificing, +indifferent to the petty things of life, even to discomfort, and it had +given her a sense of elevation--when she had had time to think about it. It +was only certain extraordinary circumstances that brought other qualities +as inherent as life itself surging to the top. It was demoralizing even to +fight them, for that involved recognition. Better that she protect herself +from their assaults. True, she was young, but she had had her fill of +drama. All her old cravings, never satisfied in the old days of peace +without and insurgence within, had been surfeited by this close personal +contact with the greatest drama in history. + +Why return to Paris at all? Why not settle down here at once, live a life +of thought and study, and give abundant help where help was needed? There +were villages within a few miles where the inhabitants were living in the +ruins. (The Germans in their first retreat had been too hard pressed to +linger long enough to set fire to this large town and they had not been +able to reach it during their second drive.) + +That had been a last flicker of romance at the embassy...a last resurgence +of the evil the war had done her, as she sat in her cold room...a last +blaze of sheer femininity when she discovered that Gora had come to Paris +in search of Gathbroke.... + +She felt as if she had escaped from a bottomless pit....Assuredly she had +the will and the character to make herself now into whatever she chose to +be...let Gora have him if she could find him and keep him....Better that +than hating herself for the rest of her life...love, far from being +ennobling, seemed to her the most demoralizing of the passions...there had +been something ennobling, expanding, soul-stirring in hating the brutal +mediæval race that had devastated France...but in the reaction from her +fierce registered vow to snatch a man from a forlorn unhappy woman no +matter what her claims and have him for her own, she had shrunk from this +new revelation of her depths in horror....One could not live with that.... + + + +III + + +A man in khaki was walking quickly down the long crooked street. As he +approached she saw the red on his collar. He was a British officer. In +another moment she was shaking hands with Gathbroke, + +She was far more composed than he, although she felt as if the world had +turned over, and there was a roar in her ears like the sound of distant +guns. She had a vague impression that the war had begun again. + +"You are the last person I should have expected to meet here. There is no +British--" + +"I came here to see you. I got your address from Madaine de Morsigny. I saw +her last night at a reception and recognized her. She was at that ball in +San Francisco. I introduced myself at once and asked her if you were in +Paris. I was sure it was you...that night...." + +"Will you come in!" + +He followed her into the salon, softly lit by candles. She felt that +fate for once had been kind. It was difficult to imagine surroundings or +conditions in which she would look lovelier, be seen to greater advantage. +But her hands were cold. + +"It is too late for tea but perhaps you will share my frugal supper." + +"If it won't inconvenience you too much. Thanks." + +She sat down in the wide brocaded chair with its tarnished back. He stood +looking at her for a moment, then took a turn up and down the long room. + +Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and +freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown and +thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle light. His +nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more especially life +in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature with him. His eyes +were still the same bright golden hazel, but their expression was keen +and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could look as hard as those +features more susceptible to modeling. + + + +IV + + +"Smoke if you like." + +"Thanks. I don't want to smoke." + +Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to speak. + +"I feel rather an ass. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer +twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and made +up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety. Somehow I +don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you like a brute +because I wanted you more than anything on earth.... + +"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten you +for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have simply +projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has ever been. +You were there! + +"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits of +your soul to mine--I hate to say what sounds like sentimental rotting, +but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other plane of +consciousness. It takes war to shift a man over the border if only for a +moment. It kept me--lately--from...never mind that now. When I saw your +eyes above that tiny yellow flame...it wasn't only that your eyes are not +to be matched anywhere...it seemed to me that I saw myself in them, They +came as dose as that! Laugh if you like." + +He stood defiantly in front of her. + +"God! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have one. +But you had once, if only for a moment!" + +"I have never had one since--for any one, that is. I hear the concierge. +I'll tell her to set a place for you." + + + +V + + +She left the room and he stared after her. Her words had been full of +meaning but her voice had been even and cold. + +She returned and asked: "Are you in any way committed to Gora Dwight?" + +"No...yes...that is...why do you ask me that?" + +"Are you engaged to her?" + +"I am not. But I came very close--that is, of course if she would have had +me. She nursed me after I was wounded and gassed. She was a wonderful nurse +and there was something almost romantic in meeting her again...as if she +had come straight out of the past. We had an extraordinary experience as +you know. I was not in the least drawn to her at that time. You filled, +possessed me." + +He hesitated. But it was a barrier he had not anticipated and it must go +down. Moreover, it was evident that she wouldn't talk, and he was too +excited for silence on his own part. + +"She was there...when a man is weakest...when he values tenderness above +all things...when he does little thinking on either the past or the future. + +"She has a queer odd kind of fascination too, and any man must admire a +woman so clever and capable and altogether fine. Several times I almost +proposed to her. But there is no privacy in wards. I was sent back to +England and went to my brother's house in Hertfordshire. It was then that +you began to haunt me. She had rejuvenated that California period in my +mind--resuscitated it...but both express what I am trying to say. We had +often talked about California and the fire. She alluded to you, casually, +of course, more than once; but as I looked back I gathered that your +marriage had been a mistake and that you had known it for a long time. + +"She did not come to England until four months later, and then she was +in charge of a hospital. I took her out occasionally--she was very much +confined. I liked her as much as ever. But _I didn't want her_. It seemed +tragic. There was one chance in a million that I should ever meet you +again. Once I deliberately drew her on to talk of you and asked why you +did not divorce your husband. She commented satirically upon the intense +conservatism of your family and of your own inflexible pride. She added +that you were the only beautiful woman she had ever known who seemed to be +quite indifferent to men--sexless, she meant! But no woman knows anything +about other women. I knew better! + +"As I said it was rather tragic. To be haunted by a chimera! I liked her so +much. Admired her. Who wouldn't? If she had been able to take me home, to +remain with me, there is no doubt in the world that I should have married +her if she would have had me....I prefer now to believe that she wouldn't. +Why should she, with a great career in front of her? + +"No doubt I should have loved her--with what little love I had to give. But +those months had taught me that I could do without her, although I enjoyed +her letters. Even so... + +"It was after she came to London that I felt I had to talk to some one and +I went down, to the country to see Lady Vick-Elton Gwynne's mother. She had +founded a hospital and run it, and was resting, worn out. She is a hard +nut, empty, withered, arid. Nothing left in her but noblesse oblige. But +there is little she doesn't know. She was smoking a black cigar that would +have knocked me down and looked like an old sibyl. I told her the whole +story--all of it, that is that was not too sacred. She puffed such, a cloud +of smoke that I could see nothing but her hard, bright, wise, old eyes. 'Go +after her,' she said. 'Find her. Divorce her. Marry her. That's where you +men have the advantage. You can stalk straight out into the open and demand +what you want point blank. No scheming, plotting, deceit, being one thing +and pretending another, in other words ice when you are fire. Beastly rôle, +woman's--' I interrupted to remind her that it was twelve years since I +had seen you; that you had thrown me down as hard as a man ever got it and +married another man. There was no more reason to believe that I could win +you now. Then she asked me what I had come to see her and bore her to death +for when she was trying to rest. 'If you want a thing go for it and get it, +or if you can't get it at least find out that you can't. Also see her again +and find out whether you want her or not, instead of mooning like a silly +ass.' + +"The upshot was I made tip my mind to go to California as soon as I could +obtain my discharge. It never occurred to me that you were in Paris. Then +I was sent to Paris with the Commission. I have certain expert +knowledge....For some reason I didn't tell Miss Dwight....I wrote her a +hurried note saying that I was obliged to go to Paris for a few weeks. + +"The night after I arrived I saw you at the Embassy. That finished it. If I +hadn't been sent back to England for some papers--twice--I'd have found you +before this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +I + + +The concierge announced supper. Alexina had brought food with her and the +little meal was good if not abundant. The dining-room was very dreary, +although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, paneled to +the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little more to define +their lineaments to each other than the flames of briquet and match. + +The concierge served and they talked of the Peace Conference and of +the general pessimism that prevailed. Same old diplomacy. Same old +diplomatists. Same old ambitions. Same old European policies. An idealist +had about as much chance with those astute conventionalized brains dyed in +the diplomatic wiles and methods of the centuries as an unarmed man on +foot with a pack of wolves....At the moment all the other Commissions were +cursing Italy....She might be the stumbling block to ultimate peace....As +for the League of Nations, as well ask for the millenium at once. Human, +nature probably inspired the creed: "As it was in the beginning, is now, +and ever shall be," etc. "What we want" (this, Gathbroke), "is an alliance +between Great Britain, and the United States. They could rule the world. +Let the rest of everlastingly snarling Europe go hang." Elton Gwynne would +work for that. He had already obtained his discharge and returned to +America. He, Gathbroke, 'd work for it too. So would anybody else in the +two countries that had any sense and no personal fish to fry. + + + +II + + +When they returned to the salon he smoked. Alexina was thankful that it was +cigarettes. Mortimer had made her hate cigars. If, like most Englishmen, he +loved his pipe, he had the tact to keep it in his pocket. + +It was she who reopened the subject that filled him. + +"I feel sorry for Gora. Her life has been a tragedy in a way. Of course she +has had her successes, her compensations. But it isn't quite everything +to be the best of nurses, and I don't know that even writing could fill +a woman's life. Not unless she'd had the other thing first. I am afraid +she'll never be very popular anyhow. There are only small groups here and +there in America than can stand intellect in fiction....It seems to me that +she would make a great wife. I mean that. It is a great rôle and she could +fill it greatly. I don't know, of course, whether she cares for you or not. +I am not in her confidence. She is staying at my pension in Passy and I saw +her constantly for ten days before I came here, but she did not mention +your name....If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one else +and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give up, but +she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest tragedy of all.... + +"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe +that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of her. +I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps forced myself +not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless....Besides I knew +even then the danger of letting myself go...of the unbridled imagination. +Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French marriages would seem to +prove it. But we--your race and mine--have fallen into a sublime sort of +error, and we'll no more reason ourselves out of it than out of the sex +tyranny itself....I don't see how I could be happy with the eternal +knowledge that Gora was miserable--that she would be happy if I had +remained in California...." + +"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as I +was free." + + + +III + + +The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he +remained smoking in his chair and continued: + +"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different beings. +In illness sex is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman or he +doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if she hasn't +the sex pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent demand upon his +passion, there is nothing to build on. I haven't come out alive from that +shrieking hell to be satisfied with second-class emotions. I lay one night +under three dead bodies, not one over twenty-five. I knew them all. Each +was deeply in love with a woman....Well, I knew the value of life that +night if I never did before. And life was given to us, when we can hold on +to it, for the highest happiness of which we are individually capable, no +matter what else we are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest +pitch, not makeshifts....The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our +own characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy +her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief. I'll +have the highest or nothing." + +"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it lasting. +Gora would make a great companion." + +"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you will +understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at all. If you +had not brought her name into it I never should have done so. But now I +feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any cost." + +He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and +snatched her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even more +than she was. + +"I'll have you...have you...." + +She nodded. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +Gora entered her room at the pension, mechanically lit the oil stove that +Alexina had procured for her, threw her hat on the bed, sat down in the low +chair and thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair piled as always on +top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror +and wondered absurdly why she should have kept all her hair and lost so +much of her face. She looked more top-heavy than ever. Her face was a small +oblong, her eyes out of all proportion. She thought herself hideous. + +She had heard two hours before that Gathbroke was in Paris attached to +the British Commission. She had met an old acquaintance, a San Francisco +newspaper man, who had taken her to lunch and spoken of him casually. +Gathbroke had good-naturedly given him an Interview when other members of +the Commission had been inaccessible. + +Gathbroke had told her nothing of a definite object when he wrote her that +he was off for Paris. Nor had he mentioned it in the note he had written +her after his arrival. This had been merely to tell her that he was feeling +as well as he ever had felt in his life and was enjoying himself. Polite +admonition not to tire herself out. He was always hers gratefully and her +devoted friend. + +He had written the note at the Rite Hotel, but when, assuming this was +his address, she had called him up on her arrival, she had received the +information that he was not stopping there, nor had been. + +Gora was very proud. But she was also very much in love; and she had been +in love with Gathbroke for twelve years. For the greater part of that time +she had believed it to be hopeless, but it had always been with her, a sad +but not too painful undertone in her busy life. It had kept her from even +a passing interest in another man. She had even felt a Somewhat ironic +gratitude to him and his indifference, for all the forces of her nature, +deprived of their natural outlet, went into her literary work, informing it +with an arresting and a magnetic vitality. She had believed herself to be +without hope, but in the remote feminine fastnesses of her nature she had +hoped, even dreamed--when she had the time. That was not often. Her life, +except when at her desk with her literary faculty turned loose, had been +practical to excess. + +She would have offered her services in any case to one of the warring +allies, no doubt of that; the tremendous adventure would have appealed to +her quite aside from the natural desire to place her high accomplishment as +a nurse at the disposal of tortured men. Nevertheless she was quite aware +that she went to the British Army with the distinct hope of meeting +Gathbroke again; quite as, under the cloak of travel, she would have gone +to England long since had she not been swindled by Mortimer. + +Until she found him insensible, apparently at the point of death, after the +terrible disaster of March, nineteen-eighteen, she had only heard of him +once: when she read in the _Times_ he had been awarded the D.S.O. + +She knew then where he was and maneuvered to get back to France. She found +him sooner than she had dared to hope. And she believed that she had saved +his life. Not only by her accomplished nursing. Her powerful will had +thrown out its grappling irons about his escaping ego and dragged it back +and held it in its exhausted tenement. + +He had believed that also. He had an engaging spontaneity of nature and +he had felt and shown her a lively gratitude. He was restless and frankly +unhappy when she was out of his sight. He had a charming way of Baying +charming things to a woman and he said them to her. But he was also as full +of ironic humor as in his letters and "ragged" her. And he talked to her +eagerly when he was better and she had gone with him to a hospital far back +of the lines. There were intervals when they could talk, and the other men +would listen...and had taken things for granted. + +So had she. He had not made love to her. There was no privacy. Moreover, +she guessed that his keen sense of the ridiculous would not permit him to +make love to any woman when helpless under her hands. + +But how could there be other than one finale to such a story as theirs? +What was fiction but the reflection of life? if she had written a story +with these obvious materials there could have been but one logical +ending--unless, in a sudden spasm of reaction against romance, she had +killed him off. + +But he would live; and not be strong enough to return to the front for +mouths...the war _must_ be over by then....As for romance, well, she was in +the romantic mood. It was a right of youth that she had missed, but a woman +may be quite as romantic at thirty-four as at eighteen, if she has sealed +her fountain instead of splashing it dry when she was too young to know +its preciousness. Once before she had surrendered to romance, fleetingly: +during the week that followed the night she had sat on Calvary with +Gathbroke and watched a sea of flames. + +The mood descended upon her, possessed her. She had other patients. There +were the same old horrors, the same heart-rending duties; but the mood +stayed with her. And after he left, for England. She knew there could, be +but one ending. Her imagination had surrendered to tradition. + +Moreover, she was tired of hard work. She wanted to settle down in a home. +She wanted children. She must always write, of course. Writing was as +natural to her as breathing. And she had already proved that a woman could +do two things equally well. + + + +II + + +She never thought of trying to follow him back to England, to shirk the +increasing terrible duties behind the reorganized but harassed armies. The +wounded seemed to drop through the hospital roof like flies. + +Nevertheless when she was abruptly transferred to London she went without +protest! It was then that she began to have misgivings. She was given +charge of a large hospital just outside of London and her duties were +constant and confining. But she managed to go out to lunch with him twice +and once to dine; after which they drove back to the hospital in a slow and +battered old hansom. + +She returned a few weeks before the Armistice. She had not seen him for +four months. He was well and expecting to be sent back to the front any +day. At present they were making use of him in London. + +If anything he appeared to admire her more than ever, to be more solicitous +for her health. He lamented personally her exacting duties. But it was the +almost exuberant friendliness of one man for another, for a comrade, a good +fellow; although he often paid her quick little diagnostic compliments. If +she hadn't loved him she would have enjoyed his companionship. He had read +and thought and lived. Before the war he had been in active public life. He +had far greater plans for the future. + +He had been almost entirely impersonal. It had maddened her. Even the night +they had driven through the dark streets of London out to her hospital, +although he had talked more or less about himself, even encouraged her to +talk about herself, there had not been one instant of correlation. + +But she had made excuses as women do, in self-defense. He assumed that +he might easily go back to the front just in time to get himself killed, +although the end of the war was in sight....Her utter lack of experience +with men in any sex relation had made her stiff, even in her letters; +afraid of "giving herself away." She had no coquetry. If she had, +pride would have forbidden her to use it. Her ideals were intensely +old-fashioned. She wanted to be pursued, won. The man must do it all. Her +writings had never been in the least romantic. Well, she was, if romance +meant having certain fixed ideals. + +One thing puzzled her. When she wrote she manipulated her men and women in +their mutual relations with a master-hand. But she had not the least idea +how to manage her own affair. What was genius? A rotten spot in the brain, +a displacement of particles that operated independently of personality, of +the inherited ego? Possession? Ancestors come to life for an hour in the +subliminal depths? But what did she care for genius anyhow! + +One thing she would have been willing to do as her part, aside from meeting +him mentally at all points and showing a brisk frank pleasure in his +society: give him every chance to woo and win her, to find her more and +more indispensable to his happiness. But she was no woman of leisure. She +could not receive him in charming toilettes in an equally seductive room. +She had nothing for evening wear but an old black satin gown. After her +arrival in London she had found time to buy a smart enough tailored coat +and skirt, and a hat, but nothing more. + +And after the Armistice was declared she only saw him once. + +Then came his abrupt departure for Paris. His noncommittal note. Even then +she refused to despair. It would be an utterly impossible end to such a +story...after twelve years...not for a moment would she accept that. + + + +III + + +She applied for her discharge. During her long stay in the British service +she had made influential friends. She had also made a high record not only +for ability but for an untiring fidelity. Her vacations had been few and +brief. She obtained her discharge and went to Paris. Her pride would permit +her to telephone. What more natural? Nothing would have surprised him more +than if she had not. She had little doubt of his falling into the habit of +daily companionship. He knew Paris and she did not. He would have seen her +daily in London if she had been free. + +Something, no doubt of that, held him back. He was discouraged...or not +sure of himself....She had assumed as a matter of course that he was at the +Ritz. When she found that he was not, had not been, she realized that he +had omitted to give her an address. + +That might have been mere carelessness....But to find him in Paris! She had +not visualized such swarms of people. She might almost have passed him on +the street and not seen him. But not for a moment did she waver from her +purpose. She held passionately to the belief that were they together day +after day, hours on end.... + +Unbelievable. + + + +IV + + +She had telephoned an hour ago to the hotel where he was staying with other +members of the British Commission and been told that he was out of town, +but might return any moment. + +There was nothing to do but write him a note and wait. She was not equal +to the humiliation of telephoning a third time. She wrote it at the hotel +where her English friends were staying and sent it by messenger, having +heard of the idiosyncracies of the Paris post. + +Hastings, her newspaper friend, had been altogether a bird of ill omen. He +had told her that the American market was glutted with "war stuff." The +public was sick of it. Some of the magazines were advertising that +they would read no more of it. She had told him that her material was +magnificent and he had replied: "Can it. Maybe a year or two from +now--five, more likely. I'm told over here that the war fiction we've had +wished on us by the ton resembles the real thing just about as much as +maneuvers look like the first Battle of the Marne, say, when the Germans +didn't know where they were at; went out quail hunting and struck a jungle +full of tigers....Why not? When most of 'em were written by men of middle +age snug beside a library fire with mattresses on the roof--in America not +even a Zeppelin to warm up their blood. But that doesn't matter. The public +took it all as gospel. Ate it up. Now it is fed up and wants something +else." + +What irony! + +And what a future if he--but that she would not face. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +I + + +She heard Janet Maynard, who had returned alone the day before from +Nice, enter the next, room. She kept very still; she had no desire for +conversation. But Janet tapped on her door in a moment and entered looking +very important. + +"I've something to tell you," she announced. "You'd never guess in a +thousand years. Don't get up. 111 sit on the bed-used to any old place. +Only too thankful it isn't a box, or to sit down at all. Try one of mine? +Don't you feel well?" + +"I've a rotten headache." + +"Oh...mind my smoking?" + +"Not a bit. What did you have to tell me?" + +"Well, 'way back in ancient times, B.W., nineteen hundred and six, a young +Englishman named Gathbroke came to California after his sister, who was +ill." She was blowing rings and did not see Gora's face. When she leveled +her eyes Gora was unbuttoning her gaiters. "It seems she died some time +during the fire and he had a perfectly horrid experience getting the body +out to the cemetery. But that has nothing to do with the story. He met +Olive and the rest of us--_and Alexina_--the night of the Hofer ball. I had +forgotten the whole thing until Olive reminded me that we had joked Alex +afterward about the way she had bowled him over. His eyes simply followed +her, but Mortimer gave him no chance. + +"Then. I remembered something else. Isabel Gwynne once told me that her +husband was sure Gathbroke had proposed to Alex one day when he took him +down to Eincona. He was in a simply awful state of nerves afterward. John +thought he was going out of his mind. Now, here's the point. Night before +last Olive was at a, ball and who should come up to her and introduce +himself but Gathbroke. He's changed a lot but she recognized him. Well, he +hardly waited to finish the usual amenities before he asked her plump out +if Alex was in Paris, said he was positive he had seen her at that embassy +ball where all the lights went out and they expected a riot. He turned +white when he did it, but he was as direct as chain lightning. He wanted +her address. Of course he got it. Olive was thrilled. It's safe to assume +that he's with Alex at the present moment. At any rate Olive called him up +this morning intending to ask him to dinner, and was told he was out of +town. Now, isn't that romance for you?" + +"Rather." + +"Twelve years! Fancy a man being faithful all that time. Hadn't got what he +wanted, that's probably why. Have you ever heard Alex speak of him? Think +she'll divorce Mortimer?" + +"I asked her the other night why she didn't. She said it was against the +traditions of the family. But--I recall--she said--it seemed to me there +was a curious sort of meaning in her voice--that if she wanted to marry a +man nothing would stop her." + +"And it wouldn't. Nothing would stop Alexina if anything started her. The +trouble always was to start her. She's indolent and unsusceptible and +fastidious. But deep and intense--Lord! Mark my words, she saw him at the +Embassy. If she did and the thing's mutual she'll give poor old Maria such +a shock that the war will look like ten cents." + +"Possibly." + +"You look really ill, Gora. No wonder you have headaches with that hair. +It's magnificent--but! Go to bed and I'll send up your dinner. Got any +aspirin?" + +"Yes, thanks." + +"Au 'voir." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +I + + +The day was fine and Alexina took advantage of the brief interval of grace +and went for a walk. Gathbroke was in Paris but might come out any moment. +She wore a coat and skirt of heavy white English tweed with a silk blouse +of periwinkle blue. The same soft shade lined her black velvet hat. + +She had a number of notes changed at the bank and struck out for one of the +ruined villages. She was in a mood to distribute happiness, and only silver +coin could carry a ray of light into the dark stupefied recesses of those +miserable wretches living in the ruins of homes haunted by memories of +their dead. + +She felt a very torch of happiness herself. Her body and her brain glowed +with it. The currents of her blood seemed to have changed their pace and +their essence. The elixir of life was in them. She felt less woman than +goddess. + +She knew now why she had been born, why she had waited. As long as this +terrible war had to be she was thankful for her intimate contact with the +very martyrdom of suffering; never else could she have known to the full +the value of life and youth and health and the power to be triumphantly +happy in love. She would have liked to wave a wand and make all the world +happy, but as this was as little possible as to remake human nature itself +she soared into an ether of her own to revel in her astounding good +fortune. + + + +II + + +The village she approached was picturesque in its ruin for it climbed the +side of a hill, and although the Germans had set fire deliberately to every +house the shells for the most part remained. Along the low ridge was a row +of brick walls in various stages of gaunt and jagged transfiguration. They +looked less the victims of fire than of earthquake. + +The narrow ascending street was filled with rubble. She picked her way and +peered into the ruins. At first she saw no one; the place seemed to be +deserted. Then some one moved in a dark cellar, and as she stood at the top +of the short flight of steps a very old woman came forward into the light. +There were two children at her heels. + +Alexina suddenly felt very awkward. She had always thought the mere handing +out of money the most detestable part of charity. But there was nothing +here to buy. That was obvious. + +The old woman however relieved her embarrassment. She extended a skinny +hand. The poor of France are not loquacious, but like all their compatriots +they know what they want, and no doubt feel that life is simplified when +they are in a position to ask for it. + +Alexina gratefully handed her a coin and hurried on. Her next experience +was as simple but more delicate. A younger woman had fitted up a corner of +her ruin with a petticoat for roof and a plank supported by two piles of +brick for counter and had laid in a supply of the post cards that pictured +with terrible fidelity the ruins of her village. Alexina bought the entire +stock, "to scatter broadcast in the United States," and promised to send +her friends for more; assuring the woman that when the tourists came to +France once more these ruined villages would be magnets for gold. + +She managed to get rid of her coins without much difficulty, although +comparatively few of the village's inhabitants had returned, and these by +stealth. Many of them had trekked far! Others were still detained at the +hostels in Paris and other cities where they could be looked after without +too much trouble. + +Several had set up housekeeping in the cellars in a fashion not unlike that +of their cave dwelling ancestors, and a few had found a piece of roof above +ground to huddle under when it rained. Some talked to her pleasantly, some +were surly, others unutterably sad. None refused her largesse, and she was +amused to look back and see a little procession making for the town, no +doubt with intent to purchase. + +In one side street less choked with rubbish small boys were playing at war. +But for the most part the children looked very sober. They had been spared +the horrors of occupation but they had suffered privations and been +surrounded by grief and despair. + + + +III + + +When she had exhausted her supplies she took refuge in the church. It was +at the end of the long street on the ridge and after she had rested she +could leave the village by its farther end, and by making a long détour +avoid the painful necessity of refusing alms. + +There was no roof on the church; otherwise it would have been the general +refuge. Part of it including the steeple was some distance away and looked +as if it had been blown off. The rest had gone down with one of the walls. +It was a charred unlovely ruin. Saints and virgins sometimes defied the +worst that war could do, but all had succumbed here. The paneless windows +in the walls that still remained precariously erect framed pictures of a +quiet and lovely landscape. The stone walls were intact about the farms in +which moved a few old men and women in faded cotton frocks that looked like +soft pastels. The oaks were majestic and serene. The hills were lavender in +the distance. But the farm houses were in ruins and so was a château on +a hill. Alexina could see its black gaping walls through the grove of +chestnut trees withered by the fire. + +She wandered about looking for a seat however humble but could find nothing +more inviting than piles of brick and twisted iron. She noticed an open +place in the floor and went over to it and peered down. There was a flight +of steps ending in cimmerian darkness. Doubtless the vaults of the great +families of the neighborhood were down there. She wondered if the spite of +the Huns had driven them to demolish the very bones of the race they were +unable to conquer. + + + +IV + + +Suddenly she stiffened. A chill ran up her spine. She had an overwhelming +sense of impending danger and stepped swiftly away from the edge of the +aperture; then turned about, and faced Gora Dwight. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +I + + +"Oh," she said calmly, although her nerves still shuddered. "You must walk +like a fairy. I didn't hear you." + +"One must pick one's way through rubbish." + +"Ghastly ruin, isn't it?" + +"Life is ghastly." + +Alexina made no reply lest she deny this assertion out of the wonder of her +own experience. She guessed what Gora had come for and that she was feeling +as elemental as she looked. She herself had recovered from that sudden +access of horror but she moved still further from, that black and waiting +hole. + +"Are you going to marry Gathbroke?" + +The gauntlet was down and Alexina felt a sharp sense of relief. She was in +no mood for the subtle evasion and she had not the least inclination to +turn up her eyes. She made up her mind however to save Gora's pride as far +as possible. + +"Yes," she said. + +"You dare say that to me?" + +Alexina raised her low curved eyebrows. She seldom raised them but when she +did she looked like all her grandmothers. + +"Dare? Did you expect me to lie? Is that what you wish?" + +Gora clutched her muff hard against her throat. (Alexina wondered if she +had a pistol in it.) Her eyes looked over it pale and terrible. Alexina had +the advantage of her in apparent calm, but there was no sign of confusion +in those wide baleful irises with their infinitesimal pupils. + +"You knew that I loved him. That I had loved him for twelve years." + +"I _knew_ nothing of the sort. You had his picture on your mantel and you +corresponded with him off and on but you never gave me a hint that you +loved him. Twelve years! Good heaven! A friendship extending over such a +period was conceivable; natural enough. But a romance! When such an idea +did cross my mind I dismissed it as fantastic. You always seemed to me the +embodiment of common sense." + +"There is no such thing. It is true--that I hardly believed it +then--admitted it. But I knew we should meet again. He never had married. +It looked like destiny when I did meet him. I nursed him--" + +She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed no +understanding and she went on, still watching. + +"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A woman +_knows_ certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have been +alone he would have found out--asked me to marry him. We should be married +to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would have been +the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to him to come to +Paris." + +"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. I had forgotten his +existence until I saw him, for a few seconds, at a reception. Don't forget +that he came to Paris under orders from his Government." + +"But you recognized him that night. You came down here to meet him, to get +away from me." + +"Far from coming here to meet him I had given up all hope of ever seeing +him again. He found out my address and followed me. You also seem to forget +that you never mentioned his name to me in Paris. How was I to know that +you were still interested in him?" + +"That first night...you guessed it...you threw down a sort of challenge. +Deny that if you can!" + +"No! I'll not deny it. I wanted him as badly as you did if with less +reason. Nevertheless...believe it or not as you like...I came down here +as much to leave the field clear to you as for my own peace of mind. I +think...I fancy...I decided to leave the matter on the knees of the gods." + +"Do you mean to tell me that if I had met him while we were together in +Paris, and you knew the truth, that you would not have tried to win him +away from me?" + +"I wonder! I have asked myself that question several times. I like to +think that I should have been noble, and withdrawn. But I am not at all +sure....Yes, I do believe I should, not from noble unselfishness, oh, not +by a long sight, but from pride--if I saw that he was really in love with +you. I'd never descend to scheming and plotting and pitting my fascinations +against another woman--" + +"Oh, damn your aristocratic highfalutin pride. I suppose you mean that +I have no such pride, having no inherited right to it. Perhaps not or I +wouldn't be here to-day. At least I wouldn't be talking to you," she added, +her voice hoarse with significance. + +Once more Alexina eyed the muff. "Did you come here to kill me?" + +"Yes, I did. No, I haven't a pistol. I couldn't get one. I trusted to +opportunity. When I saw you standing at the edge of that hole I thought I +had it." + +Alexina found it impossible to repress a shiver but in spite of those +dreadful eyes she felt no recurrence of fear. + +"What good would that have done you? Murderesses get short shrift in +France. There is none of that sickening sentimentalism here that we are +cursed with in our country." + +"Murders are not always found out. If you were at the bottom of that hole +it would be long before you were found and there is no reason why I should +be suspected. I didn't come through the village. I didn't even inquire at +your house. I saw you leave it and followed at a distance. If I'd pushed +you down there I'd have followed and killed you if you were not dead +already." + +Alexina wondered if she intended to rush her. But she was sure of her +own strength. If one of them went down that hole it would not be she. +Nevertheless she was beginning to feel sorry for Gora. She had never +sensed, not during the most poignant of her contacts with the war, +such stark naked misery in any woman's soul. Its futile diabolism but +accentuated its appeal. + +"Well, you missed your chance," she said coldly. Gora was in no mood to +receive sympathy! "And if you hadn't and escaped detection I don't fancy +you would have enjoyed carrying round with you for the next thirty or forty +years the memory of a cowardly murder. Too bad we aren't men so that we +could have it out in a fair fight. My ancestors were all duellists. No +doubt yours were too," she added politely. + +"Perhaps you are right." For the first time there was a slight hesitation +in Gora's raucous tones. But she added in a swift access of anger: "I +suppose you mean that your code is higher than mine. That you are incapable +of killing from behind." + +"Good heavens! I hope so!...Still...I will confess I have had my +black moods. It is possible that I might have let loose my own devil +if--if--things had turned out differently." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't! Not when it came to the point. You would have +elevated your aristocratic nose and walked off." She uttered this dictum +with a certain air of personal pride although her face was convulsed with +hate. + +"Gora, you are really making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more +time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such +melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of +murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for some +sort of revenge but I should have expected something more original--" + +"Murder's natural enough when you've seen nothing else as long as I have. +And as for human life--how much value do you suppose I place on it after +four years of war? I had almost reached the point where death seemed more +natural than life." + +"Oh, yes...but later....There are tremendous reactions after war. Settled +down once more in our smiling land my ghost would be an extremely +unpleasant companion. You see, Gora, you are just now in that abnormal +state of mind known as inhibition. But, unfortunately, perhaps, in spite +of the fact that you have proved yourself to be possessed of a violence of +disposition--that I rather admire--you were not cut out to be the permanent +villain. You have great qualities. And for thirty-four years of your life +you have been a sane and reasonable member of society. For four of those +years you have been an angel of mercy....Oh, no. If you had killed me you +would have killed yourself later. You couldn't live with Gathbroke for you +couldn't live with yourself. Silly old tradition perhaps, but we are made +up of traditions....That was one reason I left Paris, gave up trying to +find him....I knew that I could have him. But I also knew that you had had +some sort of recent experience with him, that you had come to Paris to +find him, that possibly if left with a clear field you could win him. I +knew--Oh, yes, I knew!--that he would know instantly he was mine if we +met. But...well, I too have to live with myself. It might be that he was +committed to you, that if he married you, you would both be happy enough. +"When he did come nothing would have tempted me to accept him if I had +still believed--" + +"Did he tell you? Tell you how close he came? Tell you that I was in love +with him?" + +"My dear Gora, I fancy that if he were capable of that you would not be +capable of loving him. I certainly should not." There was a slight movement +in her throat as if she were swallowing the rest of the truth whole. She +had adhered to it where she could but Gora's face must be saved. "Your name +was not mentioned. I asked him no questions about his past. I am not the +heroine of a novel, old style. He told me that he loved me, that he had +never loved any other woman, never asked any other woman to marry him. +That was enough for me. I had no place in my mind for you or any one else. +Perhaps you don't know--how could you--that years ago, when he was in +California, he asked me to marry him." + +"Calf love! If you had not been here now--" + +"He would have gone to California as soon as he could get away. He had made +up his mind to that before he came to Paris." + +"What!" + +Gora's arms dropped to her sides and she stared at the floor. Then +she laughed, "O God, what irony! I talked of you more or Jess as was +natural...and he remembered...we had recalled the past vividly enough.... +Why couldn't one of those instincts in which we are supposed to be prolific +have warned me?....Much fiction is like life!...Any heroine I could have +created would have had it...had more sense....I have botched the thing from +beginning to end." + +She raised her head and stared at Alexina with somber eyes; the insane +light had died out of them. They took in every detail of that enhanced +beauty, of that inner flame, white hot, that made Alexina glow like a +transparent lamp. + +She also recalled that she had watched her pack her bags...that pervenche +velvet gown...Alexina had described the quaint old salon....Her +imagination, flashed out that first interview with Gathbroke with a +tormenting conjuring of detail.... + +"Yon are one of the favorites of life," she admitted in her bitter despair. +"You have been given everything--" + +"I drew Mortimer," Alexina reminded her. + +"True. But you dusted him out of your life with an ease and a thoroughness +that has never been surpassed. Think what you might have drawn. No, you +are lucky, lucky! The prixes of life are for your sort. I am one of the +overlooked or the deliberately neglected. Not a fairy stood at my cradle. +All things have come to you unsought. Beauty. Birth. Position. Sufficient +wealth. Power over men and women. An enchanting personality. All the social +graces. You have had ups and downs merely because after all you are +a mortal; and as a matter of contrast--to heighten your powers of +appreciation. No doubt the worst is over for you. I have had to take life +by the throat and wring out of her what little I have. That is what makes +life so hopeless, so terrible. No genius for social reform will ever +eliminate the inequality of personality, of the inner inheritance. Nature +meant for her own sport that a few should live and the rest should die +while still alive." + +"Gora, I don't want to sound like the well-meaning friends who tell a +mother when she loses her child that it is better off, but I can't help +reminding you that a very large and able-bodied fairy presided at your +cradle. You have a great gift that I'd give my two eyes for; and you know +perfectly well--or you will soon--that you will get over this and forget +that Gathbroke ever existed, while you are creating men to suit yourself." +Her incisive mind drove straight to the truth. "You will write better than +ever. Possibly the reason that you have not reached the great public is +because your work lacks humanity, sympathy. You never lived before. You +were all intellect. Now you have had a terrific upheaval and you seem to +have experienced about everything, including the impulse to murder. Most +writers would appear to live uneventful lives judging from their extremely +dull biographies. But they must have had the most tremendous inner +adventures and soul-racking experiences--the big ones--or they couldn't +have written as they did....This must be the more true in regard to women." + +Gora continued to stare at her. The words sank in. Her clear intellect +appreciated the truth of them but they afforded her no consolation. All +emotion had died out of her. She felt beaten, helpless. + +She was obliged to look up as she watched Alexina's subtly transfigured +face, fascinated. It made her feel even her physical insignificance; the +more as she had lost the flesh that had given her short stature a certain +majesty. + +"Oh, life is unjust, unjust." She no longer spoke with bitterness, merely +as one forced to state an inescapable fact. "Injustice! The root of all +misfortune." + +"Life is a hard school but where she has strong characters to work on she +turns out masterpieces. You will be one of them, Gora. And I fancy that +women born with great gifts were meant to stand alone and to be trained in +that hard school. It is only when women of your sort have a passing attack +of the love germ that they imagine they could go through life as a half +instead of a whole. When you are in the full tide of your powers with +the public for a lover I fancy you will look back upon this episode with +gratitude, if you remember it at all." + +"Perhaps. But that, is a long way off! I have just been told that the order +of fiction with which my mind is packed at present is not wanted. It has +been contemptuously rejected by the American public as 'war stuff.'" + +"Good heaven! That _is_ a misfortune!" + +For a moment Alexina was aghast. Here was the real tragedy. She almost +prayed for inspiration, for it lay with her to readjust Gora to life. To no +one else would Gora ever give her confidence. + +"I don't believe for a moment," she said, "that the intelligent public +will ever reject a great novel or story dealing with the war. The masterly +treatment of any subject, the new point of view, the swift compelling +breathless drama that is your peculiar gift, must triumph over any mood of +the moment. Moreover, when you are back in California you will see these +last four years in a tremendous perspective. And no contrast under heaven +could be so great. You probably won't hear the war mentioned once a +month. No doubt much that crowds your mind now will cease to interest the +productive tract of your brain and you will write a book with the war as +a mere background for your new and infinitely more complete knowledge of +human psychology. No novel of any consequence for years to come will be +written without some relationship to the war. Stories long enough to be +printed in book form perhaps, but not the novel: which is a memoir of +contemporary life in the form of fiction. No writer with as great a gift as +yours could have anything but a great destiny. Go back to California and +bang your typewriter and find it out for yourself." + +For the first time something like a smile flitted over Gora's drawn face. +"Perhaps. I hope you are right. I don't think I could ever really lose +faith in that star." She was thinking: Oh, yes! I'll go back to California +as quickly as I can get there--as a wounded animal crawls back to its lair. + +She would have encircled the globe three times to get to it. _Her state_. +To her it was what family and friends and home and children were to +another. It was literally the only friend she had in the world. She would +have flown to it if she could, sure of its beneficence. + +"I shall go as soon as I can get passage," she said. "And you?" + +"I must go too unless I can get a divorce here. I shall know that in a few +days." + +"Well, we travel on different steamers if you do go! I shall stop off at +Truckee and go to Lake Tahoe. It will be a long while before I go to any +place that reminds me of you. I no longer want to kill you but I want to +forget you. Good-by." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +When she reached the foot of the hill she turned and looked back. Alexina +was standing in one of the jagged window casements of the church. The +bright warm sun was overhead in a cloudless sky. Its liquid careless rays +flooded the ruin. Alexina's tall white figure, the soft blue of her hat +forming a halo about her face, was bathed in its light; a radiant vision in +that shattered town whose very stones cried out against the injustice of +life. + +Alexina, who was feeling like anything but a madonna in a stained glass +window, waved a questing hand. + +"The fortunate of earth!" thought Gora. + +She set her lips grimly and walked across the valley with a steady stride. +At least she could be one of the strong. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters-In-Law, +by Gertrude Atherton + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS-IN-LAW *** + +This file should be named 8sist10.txt or 8sist10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8sist11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8sist10a.txt + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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