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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 insight."
"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 commiseratinghim?"
"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."
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 onlycouldmove 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—"
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."
"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.
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."
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 leastI'll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldomno 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."
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."
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.
"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."