V
BUTTE long since had made up its mind as to the social future of Mrs. Gregory Compton. That Ida’s mother had been a laundress and her father a miner concerned the ladies of Butte as little as many similar outcroppings of family history peculiar not only to Montana but to all regions of recent exploitation and rapid growth.
In the hearty welcome extended to the newcomer, with either the money or the personality to command its attention, Butte more nearly resembles London than any other city in the world. To pasts she is indifferent, provided they are not resurrected as models for a present: she asks no questions of a pretty, amiable, amusing woman who pays her the compliment of sojourning in her midst, so long as the lady exercises an equal reticence—assuming reticence to be her virtue—and plays the social game withsavoir faire. Distractions on that high perch are few, social life ebbs oftener than it flows, many of the large houses are closed for the greater part of the year, and only the very young, who care not where they are so long as they may dance, find life in an overgrown mining camp as satisfactory as their elders find New York.
But the hospitality of Butte is genuine and founded largely upon common sense. Most of the women composing its society have enjoyed wealth for many years: they have travelled extensively; and if they continue to make their homes in Butte it is solely on account of their own business interests or those of their men. They argue that to deprive themselves of even the casual diversion, assuming the exclusive airs of large and resourceful communities, would merely put them on a level with thousands of other small towns slowly stagnating, be unworthy of their worldly experience, and of the large free spirit of the Northwest which has pervaded that isolated camp since they came with their husbands or fathers to take a hand in its history.
As for Mrs. Gregory Compton all they knew of her in her present stage of development was favourable, although several had a lively remembrance of the rosy black-haired Ida Hook delivering her excellent mother’s laundry work at their back door, and receiving more or less of her “cheek.” But they had heard, at the time, of her lessons with Professor Whalen, and of Ora Blake’s coincident interest. Of her social advantages and triumphs in Europe the press had kept them informed; she returned to Butte, in fact, as one new-born. Moreover, she now owned one of the finest houses in the city for entertaining, they knew that she had elected to shine in Butte rather than in London (that Mecca of so many quick-rich women without position in their own country); and above all she was the wife of Gregory Compton, the man in whom Montana was beginning to feel assured it could take an unequivocal pride, not only for his diabolical cleverness, but because he was as “straight” as the Twentieth Century in the United States of America would permit. Butte felt devoutly grateful to Ida for being and returning, and, with that utter lack of affectation that characterised it, began calling two days after her arrival.
Ida would have been glad to have had Ora’s support and advice during this ordeal—which caused her far more apprehension than ducal week-ends. But she summoned all her acquired knowledge and tact, fortified it with her native and supreme confidence in herself, and made no mistakes. Butte was charmed with the severe rich gowns that set off her haughty head and warmly colored face and the long, flowing, yet stately lines of her beautiful figure; charmed also with a manner that was both simple and dignified. She showed no enthusiasm at being taken up so promptly, neither did she quite accept it as a matter of course. If her talk ranged freely over common acquaintance in London, the Paris dressmakers of the season, the new opera, the plays of the moment in New York, it was without glibness, and she took a firm hold on the older and more important women of the community by confiding to them that she should not make her first venture in the difficult art of entertaining until her friend Mrs. Blake returned to help her through the novitiate. Many of the younger women were the wives of Amalgamated officials and attorneys, or of men in a relationship to thatmighty power but one degree further removed; but the men individually were too broad-minded to cherish a personal grudge against Compton, and they were, moreover, quite as eager as their mates to meet his handsome wife.
During the ensuing fortnight Ida dined out every night, went to a bridge party every afternoon, as well as to several luncheons, teas, and dances. She wore a different costume every time she appeared in public; but although there was at the moment nothing in Butte to compare with her gowns she never produced the effect of outshining the other women by anything but her beauty and individual style. In short her success was so immediate and so final that, although she liked these ladies of her native town even better than she had anticipated, her rapid conquest soon lost its novelty, and she wished that Ora would return; not only because she missed her increasingly, but because to entertain in her great house would give her a new and really poignant excitement, and lift her definitely from the ranks of the merely received.
Gregory telephoned every few days, and never twice at the same hour. When she found herself restlessly awaiting the ring of the instrument, she dashed out of the house angrily and took a walk. If she found upon her return that he had called her up, she felt that he had given her the excuse to telephone to him, and she soon learned at what hours she could find him either in his cabin or down in the mine, where he had a booth. She was furious at what she called her raging female vanity, and if she could have found another man to assuage it she would not have hesitated to press him into service at whatever cost to himself. But, as happens more often than not, there was not an unmarried man in Butte old enough to be worthy of a fastidious woman’s notice. She would have yawned in the face of “Brownies”, and, although more than one roving husband would have placed himself at her disposal, she was the last woman to court scandal or even gossip. She longed for the advent of Lord John Mowbray, whose gayety would distract her mind, and whose devotion make her forget that she was a neglected wife. She could throw dust into the eyes of Butte by pretending to be his matrimonial sponsor.
But for the first time she wished that she had children. The great house seemed to demand the patter of smallfeet, the slamming of doors, a row of naughty faces peering over the banister of the second floor. It was terribly silent. And yet she had felt settled down in that house at once, so long had one of its kind been the object of her unswerving desire; its atmosphere already seemed to hang listless with ennui. She subscribed to both the state and city suffrage fund, for she felt a new sympathy for women who were trying to fill their lives, and sincerely hoped they would invent some game that would make them independent of men.
Seventeen days after her return she was sitting in the library, trying to forget her solitary luncheon in a novel when she heard the front doorbell ring. Her servants were amiable but not too competent, and she waited impatiently and in vain for one of them to answer the summons. She restrained the impulse to open the door herself. This was now an obsolete custom among her new acquaintance; although having the front door shut in one’s face while the colored maid took one’s card to the lady of the stately mansion was hardly an improvement, and this had been her experience a day or two ago. She rang the bell in the library. Still there was no sign of life from the high-priced young women who doubtless were gossipping over the back fence. Ida’s curiosity overcame her. The hour was too early for callers. It might be a cable. She stole to the front door and peered through its curtain of Honiton lace. Then she gave a war whoop which would have horrified her servants—who, careless as they were, stood in awe of her—flung the door open, caught Ora in her arms and almost carried her into the library.
“Good Lord, but I’m glad to see you!” she cried. “I’m just about dead of lonesomeness. Why didn’t you telegraph? I’d have met you if your train didn’t get in till two in the morning.”
Ora laughed and disentangled herself, although she kissed Ida warmly. “I just got in—came here on the way from the station and sent my bags to the house—but I always did hate to be met. How beautiful your house is.”
“It’s all right. But it’s about as cheerful to live alone in as one of those palaces in the Via Garibaldi! My, but I’m glad you’re here. You’re the only person I ever missed, and being a real lady for weeks on end is telling onmy plebeian health. I didn’t have any relief even in New York. How’s Mark?”
“Quite well, except for his broken leg.”
“Is he here?”
“Oh, no—I left him in Santa Barbara—that is to say at the Club House at Montecito, the fashionable suburb. He has a jolly circle of friends there, and has no desire to travel any further until he can walk.”
Ida put her hands on Ora’s shoulders and turned her round to the light. “What’s up?” she demanded. “You look fine, as pretty as a picture—but—different, somehow.”
“I’ve left Mark.”
Ida glanced into the hall. The opening of back doors indicated that one of the maids had condescended to remember she was a wage earner. “Let’s go upstairs,” said Ida; and as they crossed the hall she said to the girl who was hastening to the front door with a propitiating smile, “You’re just about ten minutes too late, as usual, and the next time it happens you lose your job. I’m not the sort that sits down and wails over the servant question. This house will be run properly if I have to send East for help. Now put on your hat and run down to Mrs. Blake’s house and bring up her bags, and tell them to send her trunks here.
“Yes, you’re going to stay with me for the present,” she said, as Ora protested. “Don’t say another word about it.”
Ora shrugged her shoulders, and when they were in Ida’s bedroom she took off her hat and coat and wandered about aimlessly for a few moments. Ida was almost breathless with impatience and a curious sense of apprehension that vaguely recalled the strange terror Ora had inspired on the day of their meeting. Ora wore a blue frock, and Ida noticed that the yellow room did not dim her fair radiance. If possible she was holding her head higher than usual, her skin “gleamed” more than ever, there was a curious light in her always brilliant eyes, half defiant, half exultant.
“Do sit down!” said Ida sharply, cutting short Ora’s voluble approval of the room. “There, that’s right,” as Ora flung herself into a chair. “Now, fire away. You’re brimming over with something. Do you mean that you’ve left Mark for good and all?”
“Yes.”
“Told him so?”
Ora nodded.
“Did you tell him about Valdobia, or what? For heaven’s sake open up.”
“No, I—I thought I wouldn’t tell him everything at once. I told him that I meant to spend the rest of my life in Europe, and that it was only fair to himself to divorce me—he can do it easily on the ground of desertion—and marry someone who would make a real home for him—make him happy.”
“Ah! Mark’s the sort women marry but don’t fall in love with. And what did he say when you handed him that?”
“He was rather broken up.”
“Really! And you? I always had an idea that when it came to the point you wouldn’t do it. You have high-falutin’ notions about honor, noblesse oblige, and all the rest of it, to say nothing of being really soft, as I once told you. There’s only one thing that would make you hard—to everyone else—and that’s being in love——”
“That is it!” exclaimed Ora eagerly. “I’ve made up my mind to marry Valdobia. I wasn’t so sure when I left Europe, but you know what separation often does——”
“Yes,” said Ida dryly, “I do. Well, Mark will have to take his medicine, I guess. I’ve never doubted, since Valdobia joined us in Genoa, that he was the man for you. It’s fate, I guess. But tell me what Mark said, after all. Did he consent?”
“There was nothing else to do. He knew I meant it. I broke it to him by degrees. Besides, he knew how it was long before I left for Europe. He had practically given me up. Of course he was fond of me—I had become a habit and made him comfortable, besides being useful to him—but—well, I gave him six years—my youth!” she burst out passionately. “What wouldn’t I give to wipe out those years, be twenty again and free! I tried to make him understand that I was no longer in the least like the bewildered undeveloped girl he had married; and that I bore as little resemblance to the intellectual automaton I made of myself later. I told him that I was awake once for all, and that rather than live again with a man Icouldn’t care for I’d be boiled in oil. Then he understood.”
“I should think he might! Of course he asked if there was another man?”
“Yes, but I told him that was neither here nor there; that in any case I should leave him and live in Europe.”
“Poor Mark! Tied by the leg, and lost in the shuffle!”
“You know as well as I do that I have nothing in me for Mark and that if I cared as little for Valdobia it would only be fair to give him a second throw for happiness. When I left him he was quite resigned, and we have agreed to remain the best of friends. I shall leave him my power of attorney as before, and he will continue to manage my affairs.”
“How much more sensible we are in our Twentieth Century! No doubt he will visit you in the Palazzo Valdobia when he takes a whirl at Europe.”
“Why not? But tell me you think I did right, Ida?” Ora’s voice was very sweet and plaintive.
“You did what you were bound to do, I guess, when you met a man that could throw a lariat round the neck of that romantic imagination of yours. Right? I don’t know. I guess I’ve got the same old streak of Puritan Americanism in me, although if other people want to haveliaisonsand divorces it’s none of my affair. Women will do more and more as they damn please, I guess, men having set them such a good example for a few centuries. But I simply hate the idea of losing you. I want you right here in Butte. Lord, I’ve almost forgotten may slang!”
Ora laughed with something like her old merriment. “Oh, you’ll have me for an escape valve for a while yet. Valdobia’s mother is dying of some lingering horrible disease. It wouldn’t be decent for me to go to Rome, and I should be lonely anywhere else. So, I’ve made up my mind to stay here during the summer at least, and realise a dream I used to indulge in before I ever knew I could fall in love.” Once more she looked straight at Ida, this time with the slow expectant smile of a child. “I’m going to reopen my mine and run it myself—of course I shall have a manager. Mark has written, or telegraphed, to Mr. Compton to find one for me—but I shall live out there and go down every day, and make believe I am doing something, too—at all events realise that itismy mine.Mining has always—that is, always did fascinate me more than anything else on earth. I shall be devoted to Valdobia when I am married to him, but I simply must have that adventure first——”
“For heaven’s sake don’t go dotty like Gregory over a hole in the ground. If you get that bee buzzing round in your skull I pity poor Valdobia. If it were not for his mother I’d cable to him to come out——”
Ora’s face set with a hardness that arrested Ida’s observant eye. “Don’t you do anything of the sort. Mark said once about my father, ‘It was characteristic of him that when he quit he quit for good.’ I am always discovering more and more of my father in me. I’ll live that old dream and it will finish when Valdobia and I both are free. Then I shall wipe it off the slate—consign it to limbo.” She sprang to her feet and stretched out her arms. “I am going to do exactly as I please as long as I am free. Of course I am mad about Valdobia—you know that I wouldn’t marry him if I were not—but I am mad too about liberty and my mine. This is my only chance. And I am a Montanan, born in the Rocky Mountains. I want something of the life that has made my state famous before I become a European. I’ve never had anything of her but Butte. I want the wild mountains—I want, above all, the mine that has given me my freedom. I’m going to wear overalls and go down into the mine every day.”
“A sweet sight you’ll be!” said Ida disgustedly. “And the miners—Oh, they’ll just love the idea of having a woman at their heels! What on earth has got hold of you? It’s the only time I’ve ever known you to get off your base. Why, there’s nothing a woman can do at a mine unless she’s a graduated mining engineer, and nothing then that a man couldn’t do better. You’ll be in the way and you’ll soon be bored to death yourself. If you’re so crazy about Montana why don’t you do some of those great things for her that your father suggested? And how do you reconcile your marriage to an Italian with your devotion to your father’s memory?”
Ora turned away her head. “My father gave me too much of himself to expect me to play the rôle of ministering angel to anything. I intend to invest in Montana the greater part of all that I take out of my mine. If it gives me one of the great fortunes I shall endow my state insome way—as Mark may suggest. But I cannot live here. That is for ever settled. When I go to Europe I shall never return—not even to America. I shall forget my life here, everything connected with it—everything! One side of me is already European. I shall become wholly so.”
“Somehow,” said Ida slowly, and with the sensation of being so close to something that she couldn’t see it, “I don’t get the idea that you’re so mad about Valdobia. Long since I figured that when you did love a man you’d be a sort of white pillar of flame about him. I firmly believe that Valdobia is the man for you, but, well—he fell too quickly. He didn’t make you suffer, never kept you guessing for a minute. The women that turn men’s heads are a good deal like men themselves; they’ve got to be hurt hard and kept on tenterhooks before they are in a condition to accommodate the virus. You are fond of Valdobia, and well you may be, but mad isn’t the right word——”
“Oh, yes it is! It is!” Ora was walking up and down the room. “You must believe that I love him as I never dreamed I could love anybody——”
“Hi!” cried Ida. “Your letter-man! That’s what! You were more nearly in love with him than you are with Valdobia, and because, for some reason or other, you couldn’t get him. Where is he?”
Ora’s eyes looked large and blank. “That! I had quite forgotten it. It was the last of a long line of mental love affairs. Those always evaporate even from the memory when the real man comes along.” She sighed heavily and sat down once more. “I know that I shall be happy with Valdobia, only I am not happy now. That is so far off! And of course I feel badly about poor Mark. But I couldn’t help it. Not to do it would have been worse. And I should go off my head meanwhile if I didn’t have this mine. Do you think I could remain here in Butte and go to dinners and bridge parties? I should scream in their faces. I must have work. Be sure I can find something to do at the mine—I suppose there are a laboratory and assay office. And there will always be the excitement of hoping to find free milling gold—at present what could be more exciting than to drift for that lost vein?”
“It wouldn’t keep me awake nights. But have yourown way. I don’t want you down with nerves, and that will happen if you don’t look out.”
“If I don’t get my own way.”
“Exactly. But I wish your way marched with mine. I’ve missed you like fury—Say!—here’s an idea: I’ll go back to Europe with you now if you like, and stay until you marry. There are lots of places we planned to go to and didn’t——”
“Ida, you are a dear! And you longed so for Butte. Why it would be like tearing an author from his unfinished magnum opus. Besides—well—you have a husband——”
“Oh, Lord! Gregory is running the Universe at present. Women don’t exist for him. Shall we go?”
Ora shook her head. Her face had turned from white to pale. “No. I must spend these last months of my freedom here in my state. And that lost vein—it pulls me. Imusthave that life for a few months—for the first and last time. You—you—might spend your week-ends with me.”
Ida scowled and turned away her head. She had no intention of admitting even to Ora that Gregory deliberately avoided her. “Not I. I hate the sight of the De Smet ranch. Go, if you like, but I feel sure you will come in often. And before you go I wish you would do me a favour.”
“Of course I will.”
“Let me give you a dinner. I want to begin that sort of thing and you’ll furnish the excuse besides helping me out.”
“Very well. Have it soon. I want to go to the mine as quickly as possible. I shall begin to send out the furniture for my bungalow tomorrow.”
“A week’s notice will be enough. I’ll write the invitations today. There’s another reason I want to give this dinner. Gregory hasn’t been seen anywhere with me—hates going out. But I shall make him understand that he must come to my first dinner—or people will be talking—and I hate people prying into my affairs. Besides, it will be his duty to you as the wife of his best friend. (He needn’t know you’ve left Mark yet awhile.) I’m not hankering for the rôle of the neglected wife; and I’m sick of making excuses. For all Butte knew I might not have laid eyes on my husband since my return.”
And although she spoke bravely Ora knew that she had not. “We’ll have the dinner,” she said warmly. “And it will be great fun to get it up——”
“Now, come this minute and go to bed. You are to stay with me as long as you are in this camp, and I’m going to tone you up, and make you rest as we used to in Europe every afternoon—hard work in this altitude but it can be done. I’ve got to go to a bridge party now, and you are to sleep. If you feel rested when I get back, I’ll call up two or three of your old friends and ask them to come informally to dinner. So long.”
She closed the door of her best spare room on Ora and walked slowly back to her own, her brows drawn; once more quick with a sensation of profound uneasiness, of being close to something that she could not see. But it was not her habit to ponder for long over the elusive and obscure. “Guess I’m worried about Ora’s health,” she thought impatiently, and rang for her maid.