CHAPTER XII
Bert was not in the apartment when she reached it; she knew her disappointment was irrational, for she had told herself he would not be there. However, he might telephone. She curled up in the big chair by the window, the book in her lap, and read with a continual consciousness of waiting. She felt that his coming or the sound of his voice would rescue her from something within herself.
At six o'clock she told herself that he would telephone within an hour. Experience had taught her that this way of measuring time helped it to pass more quickly. With determined effort she concentrated her attention upon her book, shutting out voices that clamored heart-shaking things to her. At seven o'clock she was walking up and down the living-room, despising herself, telling herself that nothing had happened, that he did these things only to show her his hold on her, that at any moment now his message would come.
For another hour she thought of many things she might have done differently. She might have walked past the office of Clark & Hayward, meeting him as if by accident when he came out. But that might have annoyed him. She might have gone to some of the cafés for tea on the chance of meeting him there. But there were so many cafés! He must be dining in one of them now, and she could not know which one. She could not know who might be dining with him.
"Helen Davies Kennedy, stop it! Stop it!" she said aloud. She was a little quieter then, walking to the window, and standing there, gazing down at the street. Her heart beat suffocatingly at the sight of each machine that passed; she thought, until it went by, that he might be in it.
It was the old agony again, and weariness and contempt for herself were mingled with her pain. So many times she had waited, as she was waiting now, and always he had come back to her, laughing at her hysteria. Why could she not learn to bear it more easily? She might have to wait until midnight, until later than midnight. She set her teeth.
The sudden peal of the telephone-bell in the dark room startled a smothered cry from her. She ran, stumbling against the table, and the receiver shook at her ear; but her voice was steady and pleasant.
"Yes?"
"Helen? Bert. I'm going south to-night on the Lark. Pack my suitcases and ship 'em express to Bakersfield, will you?"
"What? Yes, yes. Right away. Are you—will you—be gone long?"
His voice was going on, jubilant:
"Trust your Uncle Dudley to put it over! D'you know what I got from the tightest firm in town? Unlimited letter of credit! Get that 'unlimited'?
"Oh Bert!"
"It's the biggest land proposition ever put out in the West! Ripley Farmland Acres I'm going to put them on the map in letters a mile high! Believe me, I'm going to wake things up! There's half a million in it for me if it's handled right, and, believe me, I'm some little handler!"
"I know you are! O Bert, how splendid!"
"All right. Get the suitcases off early—here's my train. Bye-bye."
"Wait a minute—when're you coming back? Can't I come, too?"
"Not yet. I'll let you know. Oh, d'you want some money?"
"Well—I haven't got much—but that isn't—"
"Send you a check. From now on I'm made of money—so long—"
"Bert dear—" she cried, against the click of a closed receiver. Then with a long, relaxing sigh she slowly put down the telephone. After a moment she went into the bedroom, switched on the lights, and began to pack shirts and collars into his bags. She was smiling, because happiness and hope had come back to her; but her hands shook, for she was exhausted.
It was thirty-two days before she heard from him again. A post-dated check for a hundred dollars, crushed into an envelope and mailed on the train, had come back to her, and that was all. But she assured herself that he was too busy to write. The month went by slowly, but it was not unbearably dreary, for she was able to keep uneasy doubts in check, and to live over in her memory many happy hours with him. She planned, too, the details of the house they would have if this time he really did make a great deal of money. He would give her a house, she knew, whenever he could do it easily and carelessly.
When the telephone awakened her one night at midnight her first thought was that he had come back. She was struggling into a negligée and snatching a fresh lace cap from a drawer when it rang again and undeceived her.
Long distance from Coalinga had a call for her and wished her to reverse charges. She repeated the name uncertainly, and the voice repeated: "Call from Mr. Kennedy in Coalinga—"
"Oh, yes, yes! Yes. I'll pay for it. Yes, it's O.K." She waited nervously in the darkness until his voice came faintly to her.
"Hello, Helen! Bert. Listen. Have you got any money?"
"About thirty dollars."
"Well, listen, Helen. Wire me twenty, will you? I've got to have it right away."
"Of course. Very first thing in the morning. Are you all right?"
"Am I all right? Good God, Helen! do you think anybody's all right when he hasn't got any money? We've just got into this rotten burg; been driving all day long and half the night across a desert hotter than the hinges of the main gate, and not a drink for a hundred and forty—" His voice blurred into a buzzing on the wire, and she caught disconnected words: "Skinflints—over on me—they've got another guess—piker stunt—"
She reiterated loudly that she would send the money, and heard central relaying the words Nothing more came over the wire, though she rattled the receiver. At last she went back to bed, to lie awake till dawn came.
She was waiting at the telegraph-office when the money-order department opened. After she had sent the twenty dollars she tried to drink a cup of coffee, and walked quickly back to the apartment. She felt that she should be able to think of something to do, some action she could take which would help Bert, and many wild schemes rushed through her feverish brain. But she knew that she could do nothing but wait.
The telephone-bell was ringing when she reached her door. It seemed an eternity before she could reach it. Again she assured central that she would pay the charges, and heard his voice. He wanted to know why she had not sent the money, then when she had sent it, then why it had not arrived. He talked a great deal, impatiently, and she saw that his high-strung temperament had been excited to a frenzy by disasters which in her ignorance of business she could not know. Her heart ached with a passion of sympathy and love; she was torn by her inability to help him.
Half an hour later he called again, and demanded the same explanations. Then suddenly he interrupted her, and told her to come to Coalinga. It was a rotten hole, he repeated, and he wanted her.
That he should want her was almost too much happiness, but she tried to be cool and reasonable about it. She pointed out that she had just paid a month's rent, that she had only ten dollars, that it might be wiser, she might be less a burden to him, if she stayed in San Francisco. She would make the ten dollars last a month, and that would give him time—He interrupted her savagely. He wanted her. Was she coming or was she throwing him down? Thought he couldn't support her, did she? He always had done it, hadn't he? Where she'd get this sudden notion he was no good? He could tell her Gilbert Kennedy wasn't done for yet, not by a damned sight. Was she coming or—
"Oh, yes! yes! yes! I'll come right away!" she cried.
While she was packing, she wished that she had something to pawn She would have braved a pawnbroker's shop herself. But the diamond ring had gone when the Guatemala rubber plantation failed; her other jewels were paste or semi-precious stones; her furs were too old to bring anything. She could take Bert nothing but her courage and her faith.
She found that her ticket cost nine dollars and ninety cents. When she reached Coalinga, after a long restless night on the train and a two-hours' careful toilet in the swaying dressing-room, she gave the porter the remaining dime. It was a gesture of confidence in Bert and in the future. She was going to him with a high spirit, matching his reckless daring with her own.
He was not on the platform. When the train had gone she still waited a few minutes, looking at a row of one-story ramshackle buildings which paralleled the single track. Obviously they were all saloons. A few loungers stared at her from the sagging board sidewalk. She turned her head, to see on either side the far level stretches of a desert broken only by dirty splashes of sage-brush. The whole scene seemed curiously small under a high gray sky quivering with blinding heat.
She picked up her bags and walked across the street in a white glare of sunlight. A heavy, sickening smell rose in hot waves from the oiled road. She felt ill. But she knew that it would be a simple matter to find Bert in a town so small. He would be at the best hotel.
She found it easily, a two-story building of cream plaster which rose conspicuously on the one main street. There was coolness and shade in the wide clean lobby, and the clerk told her at once that Bert was there. He told her where to find the room on the second floor.
Her heart fluttered when she tapped on the panels and heard Bert call, "Come in!" She dropped her bags and rushed into a dimness thick with the smoke of cigars. The room seemed full of men, but when the first flurry of greetings and introductions were over and she was sitting on the edge of the bed beside Bert, she saw that there were only five.
They were all young and appeared at the moment very gloomy. Depression was in the air as thickly as the cigar smoke. She gathered from their bitter talk that they were land salesmen, that a campaign in Bakersfield had ended in some sudden disaster,—"blown up," they said,—and that they found a miserable pleasure in repeating that Coalinga was a "rotten territory."
Bert, lounging against the heaped-up pillows on the bed, with a cigar in his hand and whisky and ice-water at his elbow, let them talk until it seemed that despondency could not be more blacker, then suddenly sitting up, he poured upon them a flood of tingling words. His eyes glowed, his face was vividly keen and alive, and his magnetic charm played upon them like a tangible force. Helen, sitting silent, listening to phrases which meant nothing to her, thrilled with pride while she watched him handle these men, awakening sparks in the dead ashes of their enthusiasm, firing them, giving them something of his own irresistible confidence in himself.
"I tell you fellows this thing's going to go. It's going to go big. There's thousands of dollars in it, and every man that sticks is going to be rolling in velvet. Get out if you want to; if you're pikers, beat it. I don't need you. I'm going to bring into this territory the livest bunch of salesmen that ever came home with the bacon. But I don't want any pikers in my game. If you're going to lay down on me, do it now, and get out."
They assured him that they were with him. The most reluctant wanted to know something about details, there was some talk of percentage and agreements. Bert slashed at him with cutting words, and the others bore him down with their aroused enthusiasm. Then Bert offered to buy drinks, and they all went out together in a jovial crowd.
Helen was left alone, to realize afresh her husband's power, and to reflect on her own smallness and stupidity. She stifled a nagging little worry about Bert's drinking. She always wished he would not do it, but she knew it was a masculine habit which she did not understand because she was a woman. After all, men accomplished the big things, and they must be allowed to do them in their own way.
She opened the windows, but letting out the smoke let in a stifling heat and the sickening smell of crude oil. She closed them again and reduced the confusion of the room to orderliness, smoothing the bed, gathering up armfuls of scattered papers and unpacking her bags. When Bert came back a few hours later she was reading with interest a pile of literature about Ripley Farmland Acres.
He came in exuberantly, and as she ran toward him he tossed into the air a handful of clinking gold coins. They fell around her and scattered rolling on the floor. "Trust your Uncle Dudley to put one over!" he cried. "Pick 'em up! They're yours!"
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she gasped, between laughter and the tears that now she could no longer control. Her arms were around his neck, and she did not mind his laughing at her, though she controlled herself quickly before his amusement could change to annoyance. "I knew you'd do it!" she said.
It was a long time before she remembered the money. Then, gathering it up, she was astonished to find nearly a hundred dollars. He laughed at her again when she asked him how he had got it. It was all right. He'd got it, hadn't he? But he told her not to pay for her meals in the dining-room, to sign the checks instead, and from this she deduced that his business difficulties were not yet entirely overcome. She put the money in her purse, resolving to save it.
She discovered that he now owned a large green automobile. Apparently he had bought it in Bakersfield, for it had been some months since he had sold the gray one. In the afternoon they drove out to the oil leases, and she sat in the machine while the salesmen scattered to look for land-buyers.
The novelty of the scene was sufficient occupation for her. Low hills of yellow sand, shimmering in glassy heat-waves, were covered with innumerable derricks, which in the distance looked like a weird forest without leaf or shade and near at hand suggested to her grotesque creatures animated by unnatural life, their long necks moving up and down with a chugging sound. There were huddles of little houses, patchworks of boards and canvas, and now and then she saw faded women in calico dresses, or a child sitting half naked and gasping in the hot shadows. She felt that she was in a foreign land, and the far level desert stretching into a haze of blue on the eastern sky-line seemed like a sea between her and all that she had known.
The salesmen were morose when they returned to the machine, and Bert's enthusiasm was forced. "There's millions of dollars a year pouring out of these wells," he declared. "We're going to get ours, boys, believe me!" But they did not respond, and Helen felt an increasing tension while they drove back to town through a blue twilight. She thought with relief of the gold pieces in her purse.
After supper Bert sent her to their room, and she lay in her nightgown on sheets that were hot to the touch, and panted while she read of Ripley Farmland Acres. The literature was reassuring; it seemed to her that any one would buy land so good on such astonishingly low terms. But her uneasiness increased like an intolerable tightening of the nerves, and her enforced inaction in this crisis that she did not understand tortured her. It occurred to her that she was still able to telegraph, and until she dismissed the thought as unfair to Bert she was tantalized by a wild idea of once more having some control of her fate.
It was nearly midnight when he came in, and she saw that any questions would drive him into a fury of irritated nerves. In the morning, she thought, he would be in a more approachable mood. But when she awakened in the dawn he was gone.
She did not see him until nearly noon. After sitting for some time in the lobby and exploring as much of the sleepy town as she could without losing sight of the hotel entrance to which he might come, she had returned to the row of chairs beside it and was sitting there when he appeared in the green automobile.
She ran to the curb. He was flushed, his eyes were very bright, and while he introduced her to a man and woman in the tonneau, she heard in his voice the note she had learned to meet with instant alertness. He told her smoothly that Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were interested in Ripley Farmland Acres; he was driving them over to look at the proposition. She leaned across a pile of luggage to shake hands with them and talked engagingly to the woman, but she did not miss Bert's slightest movement or change of expression.
When he asked her to get his driving gloves she knew that he would follow her, and on the stairs she gripped the banister with a hand whose quivering she could not stop. She was not afraid of Bert in this mood, but she knew that it threatened an explosion of nervous temper as sufficient atmospheric tension threatens lightening. He was at the door of their room before she had closed it.
"Where's that money?"
"Right here." She hesitated, opening her purse. "Bert—it's all we have, isn't it?"
"What difference does that make? It isn't all I'm going to have."
"Listen just a minute. Did that woman tell you she was going to buy land?"
"Good Lord, do I have to stand here and talk? They're waiting. Give me that money."
"But Bert. She's taking another hat with her. She's got it in a bag, and she's got two suitcases, and she—the way she looks—I believe she's just going somewhere and getting you to take her in the machine. And—please let me finish—if it's all the money we have don't you think—"
She knew that his outburst of anger was her own fault. He was nervous and over-wrought; she should have soothed him, agreed with him in anything, in everything. But there had been no time. Shaken as she was by his words, she clung to her opinion, even tried to express it again. She felt that their last hold on security was the money in her purse, and she saw him losing it in a hopeless effort. Against his experience and authority she could offer only an impression, and the absurdity of talking about a hatsack in a woman's hand. The futility of such weapons increased her desperation. His scorn ended in rage. "Are you going to give me that money?"
Tears she would not shed blinded her. Her fingers fumbled with the fastening of the purse. The coins slid out and scattered on the floor. He picked them up, and the slamming of the door told her he was gone.
She no longer tried to hold her self-control. When it came back to her it came slowly, as skies clear after a storm. Her body was exhausted with sobs and her face was swollen and sodden, but she felt a great relief. The glare of sunlight on the drawn shades and the stifling heat told her that it was late in the afternoon. She undressed wearily, bathed her face with cool water and, lying down again, was engulfed in the pleasant darkness of sleep.
The next day and the next passed with a slowness that was like a deliberate refinement of cruelty. She felt that time itself was malicious, prolonging her suspense. The young salesmen shared it with her. They had telegraphed friends and families and were awaiting money with which to get out of town. One by one they were released and departed joyfully. Five days passed. Six. Seven.
She would have telegraphed to Clark & Hayward, but she had no money for the telegram. She would have found work if there had been any that she could do. The manager of the small telegraph-office was the only operator. In the little town there were a few stores, already supplied with clerks, a couple of boarding-houses on Whiskey Row, and scores of pretty little houses in which obviously no servants were employed. The local paper carried half a dozen "help wanted" advertisements for stenographers and cooks on the oil-leases. She did not know stenography, and she did not have the ability to cook for twenty or forty hungry men.
A bill in her box at the end of the week told her that her room was costing three dollars a day, and she dared not precipitate inquiry by asking for a cheaper one. She was appalled by the prices of the bill-of-fare, and ate sparingly, signing the checks, however, with a careless scrawl and a confident smile at the waitress.
She was coming from the dining-room on the evening of the seventh day when the manager of the hotel, somewhat embarrassed, asked her not to sign any more checks for meals. It was a new rule of the house, he said. She smiled at him, too, and agreed easily. "Why, certainly!" Altering her intention of going up-stairs, she walked into the lobby and sat relaxed in a chair, glancing with an appearance of interest at a newspaper.
So it happened that she saw the item in the middle of the column, which at last gave her news of Bert.
BERT KENNEDY SOUGHT ON BAD CHECK CHARGECharging Gilbert H. Kennedy, well-known along the city's joy zones, with cashing a bogus check for a hundred dollars on the Metropolitan National Bank, Judge C. K. Washburne yesterday issued a warrant for the arrest of the young man on a felony charge. The police search for Kennedy and his young wife, a former candy-store girl, has so far proved fruitless. Interviewed at his residence in Los Angeles last night, former Judge G. H. Kennedy, father of the missing man, controller of the Central Trust Company until his indictment some years ago for mishandling its funds, denied knowledge of his son's whereabouts, saying that he had not been on good terms with his son for several years.
BERT KENNEDY SOUGHT ON BAD CHECK CHARGE
Charging Gilbert H. Kennedy, well-known along the city's joy zones, with cashing a bogus check for a hundred dollars on the Metropolitan National Bank, Judge C. K. Washburne yesterday issued a warrant for the arrest of the young man on a felony charge. The police search for Kennedy and his young wife, a former candy-store girl, has so far proved fruitless. Interviewed at his residence in Los Angeles last night, former Judge G. H. Kennedy, father of the missing man, controller of the Central Trust Company until his indictment some years ago for mishandling its funds, denied knowledge of his son's whereabouts, saying that he had not been on good terms with his son for several years.
After some time she was able to rise and walk quite steadily across the lobby. Her hand on the banister kept her from stumbling very much while she went up-stairs. There was darkness in her room, and it covered her like a shield. She stood straight and still, one hand pressing against the wall.
It was Saturday night, and in the happy custom of the oil fields a block of the oiled street had been roped off for dancing. Already the musicians were tuning their instruments. Impatient drillers and tool-dressers, with their best girls, were cheering their efforts with bantering applause. The ropes were giving way before the pressure of the holiday crowd in a tumult of shouts and laughter.
Suddenly, with a rollicking swing, the band began to play. The tune rose gaily through the hot, still night, and beneath it ran a rustling undertone, the shuffling of many dancing feet. Below her window the pavement was a swirl of movement and color. Her body relaxed slowly, letting her down into a crumpled heap, and she lay against the window-sill with her face hidden in the circle of her arms.