CHAPTER IIFEMININE LOGIC
Social life in San Francisco at this period had a distinction, a half-foreign, bizarre picturesqueness, which it soon after lost and has never regained. Separated from the rest of the country by a sweep of unconquered desert, ringed on its farther side by a girdle of sea, the pioneer city developed, undisturbed by outside influences, along its own lines.
The adventures of forty-nine had infused into it some of the breadth and breeziness of their wild spirit. The bonanza period of the Comstock lode had not yet arisen to place huge fortunes in the hands of the coarsely ambitious and frankly illiterate, and to infect the populace with a lust of money that has never been conquered. There were few millionaires, and the passionate desire to become one had not yet been planted in the bosom of every simple male, who, under ordinary conditions, would have been content to wield a pick or sweep down the office stairs. The volcano of silver that was to belch forth precious streams over the far West, and from thence over the world, was beginning to stir and mutter, but its muttering was still too low to be caught by any but the sharpest ears.
The society which welcomed June and Rosamundwas probably the best the city ever had to offer. After the manner of all flourishing communities it aspired to renew itself by the infusion of new blood, and the young girls were graciously greeted. Carriages rolled up to the high iron gates, and ladies whose names were of weight trailed their silk skirts over the flagged walk. Coming in late in the wintry dusk it was very exciting always to find cards on the hall table.
There were often men’s cards among them. A good many moths had begun to flutter round the flames of youth and beauty and wealth that burnt in the Colonel’s house on Folsom Street. In his constant visits he had formed a habit of looking over these cards as he stood in the hall taking off his overcoat. The frequency with which the card of Mr. Jerome Barclay lay freshly and conspicuously on top of the pile struck him unpleasantly and caused him to remark upon the fact to June.
“Yes, Mr. Barclay comes quite often,” she said, “but so does Mr. Davenport and Mr. Brooks and Mr. Pierce, and several others.”
She had changed color and looked embarrassed at the mention of his name, and the Colonel had spoken to Rosamund about it. The Colonel had begun to rely upon Rosamund, as everybody did, and, like everybody, he had come to regard her as much the elder of the two sisters, the one to be consulted and to seek advice of. Rosamund admitted that Mr. Barclay did come rather often, but not indeed, as June had said, oftener than several others.
“Does he come to see June, or you, or both ofyou?” the Colonel had asked bluntly, looking at the last slip of pasteboard left by the young man.
“Oh, June, of course,” said Rosamund, with a little quickness of impatience. “They nearly all come to see June.”
“I don’t see what the devil business he has doing that,” said the Colonel, throwing down the card with angry contempt. “What’s he come round here for, anyway?”
“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Rosamund, surprised at his sudden annoyance.
“Well, he shouldn’t,” said the Colonel shortly. “That’s one sure thing. He shouldn’t.”
And so that conversation ended, but the memory of it lingered uneasily in Rosamund’s mind, and she found herself counting Jerry Barclay’s calls and watching June while he was there and after he had gone.
The visits of the young man were not indeed sufficiently frequent to warrant uneasiness on sentimental scores. He sometimes dropped in on Sunday afternoon, and now and then on week-day evenings. What neither Rosamund nor the Colonel knew was that he had formed a habit of meeting June on walks she took along the fine new promenade of Van Ness Avenue, and on several occasions had spent a friendly hour with her, sitting on one of the benches in the little plaza on Turk Street.
The first and second times this had happened June had mentioned the fact to her sister, and that a gentleman should accidentally meet a lady in an afternoon stroll had seemed a matter of so little importancethat Rosamund had quickly forgotten it. The subsequent meetings, also apparently accidental, June, for some reason known to herself, had not mentioned to any one. Now it was hard for her to persuade herself that she met Jerry Barclay by anything but prearranged design; and June did not like to think that she met him, or any other man, by prearrangement. So she let him elicit from her by skilful questioning, her itinerary for her afternoon walks when she had no engagements, and took some trouble to make herself believe that the meetings still had at least an air of the accidental.
But why did she not tell her sister of these walks? Why, in fact, had she once or twice lately almost misled Rosamund in her efforts to evade her queries as to how she had passed the afternoon?
If June happened to be looking in the mirror when she asked herself these questions she noticed that she reddened and looked guilty. There was nothing wrong in meeting Mr. Barclay and walking with him or sitting on one of the benches in the quiet little plaza. Their conversation had never contained a word with which the strictest duenna could have found fault. Why, then, did June not tell? She hardly knew herself. Some delicate fiber of feminine instinct told her that what was becoming a secretly tremulous pleasure would be questioned, interfered with, probably stopped. She knew she was not one who could fight and defy. They would overwhelm her, and she would submit, baffled and miserable.
If Jerry Barclay liked to talk to her that way inthe open air, or on the park bench better than in the gloomy grandeur of the parlor in Folsom Street, why should he not? And yet she felt that if she had said this to Rosamund with all the defiant confidence with which she said it to herself, Rosamund would in some unexpected way sweep aside her argument, show it worthless, and make her feel that if Jerry did not want to see her in her own house he ought not to see her at all. So June used the weapons of the weak, one of the most valuable of which is the maintaining of silence on matters of dispute.
It was in February that their father suggested that they should return the numerous hospitalities offered them by giving a dance. It would not be a ball. They were still too inexperienced in the art of entertainment, and their mourning was yet too deep to permit of their venturing on so ambitious a beginning. “Just a house-warming,” Allen said when he saw that they were rather alarmed by the magnitude of the undertaking. There was much talking and consulting of the Colonel. Every night after dinner the girls sat long over the coffee and fruit, discussing such vital points as to whether there should be two salads at the supper and would they have four musicians or five. Allen called them “little misers,” and told them they “never would be tracked through life by the quarters they dropped.” It was interesting to the Colonel to notice that Rosamund’s habits of economy clung to her, while June had assimilated the tastes and extravagances of the women about her with a sudden, transforming completeness.
It was at one of these after-dinner consultationsthat he was presented with the list of guests written out neatly in Rosamund’s clear hand. Was it all right, or did Uncle Jim think they had left out anybody?
As he ran his eye over it Allen said suddenly:
“They’ve got Mrs. Newbury down there. What do you think about her?”
The Colonel, who was reading through his glasses, looked up with a sharp glance of surprise and again down at the list, where his eyes stopped at the questioned name.
“Oh, strike her off,” he said. “What do you want her for?”
“She’s been here to see us,” Rosamund demurred, “and she asked us once to her house to hear somebody sing.”
“Why shouldn’t she come?” said June. “What is there about her you don’t like?”
“I didn’t say there was anything,” he answered in a tone of irritated impatience. “But she’s a good deal older than you, and—and—well, I guess it wouldn’t amuse her. She doesn’t dance. You don’t want to waste any invitations on people who may not come.”
Apparently this piece of masculine logic was to him conclusive, for he took his pencil and made a mark through the name.
The evening of the dance arrived, and long before midnight its success was assured. It was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant affairs of the winter. It seemed the last touch on the ascending fortunes of June and Rosamund. They had never looked so well. In her dress of shimmering white, which showed her polished shoulders, Rosamund was beautiful, andJune, similarly garbed, looked, as some of the women guests remarked, “actually pretty.” As a hostess she danced little. Three times, however, Rosamund noticed her floating about the room encircled by the arm of Jerry Barclay. Other people noticed it too. But June, carried away by the excitement of the evening, was indifferent to the comment she might create. So was Barclay. He had drunk much champagne and felt defiant of the world. She felt defiant too, because she was so confidently happy.
By three the last guests had gone. Allen, hardly waiting for the door to slam on them, stumbled sleepily to bed, and June followed, a wearied sprite, bits of torn gauze trailing from her skirt, the wreath of jasmine blossoms she wore faded and broken, the starry flowers caught in her curls.
“Rosie, I’m too tired to stay up a minute longer,” she called from the stairs, catching a glimpse of the dismantled parlor with Rosamund, followed by a yawning Chinaman, turning out lights and locking windows.
“Go up, dear,” answered Rosamund in her most maternal tone. “I’ll be up in a minute. Sing’s so sleepy I know he’ll go to bed and leave everything open if I don’t stay till he’s done.”
The sisters occupied two large rooms, broad-windowed and spacious, in the front of the house. The door of connection was never shut. They talked together as they dressed, walking from room to room. The tie between them, that had never been broken by a week’s separation, was unusually close even forsisters so near of an age, so united by mutual cares and past sorrows.
June’s room shone bright in the lights from the two ground-glass globes which protruded on gilded supports from either side of the bureau mirror. It was furnished in the heavily gorgeous manner of the period and place. Long curtains of coarse lace fell over the windows, which above were garnished with pale blue satin lambrequins elaborately draped. The deeply tufted and upholstered furniture was covered with a blue-and-white cretonne festooned with woolen tassels and fringes. Over the foot of the huge bed lay a satin eiderdown quilt of the same shade as the lambrequins.
June, completely exhausted, was soon in bed, and lying peacefully curled on her side waited for her sister’s footsteps. As she heard the creak of Rosamund’s opening door she called softly:
“Come in here. I want to talk. I’ve millions of things to say to you.”
Rosamund swept rustling into the room and sat down on the side of the bed. Her dress was neither crushed nor torn and the bloom of her countenance was unimpaired by fatigue.
“Dear Rosie, you look so lovely,” said June, curling her little body under the clothes comfortably round her sister. “There was nobody here to-night half as good-looking as you were.”
She lightly touched. Rosamund’s arm with the tips of her fingers, murmuring to herself,
“Lovely, marbly arms like a statue!”
Her sister, indifferent to these compliments, which she did not appear to hear, sat looking at the toe of her slipper.
“I think it was a great success,” she said. “Everybody seemed to enjoy it.”
“Of course they did. I know I did. I never had such a beautiful, galumptious time in my life.”
Rosamund gave her a gravely inspecting side-glance.
“You tore your dress round the bottom, I saw. There was quite a large piece trailing on the floor.”
“Yes, it was dreadful,” said June, nestling closer about the sitting figure and smiling in dreamy delight. “Somebody trod on it while I was dancing, and then they danced away with it round them, and it tore off me in yards, as if I was a top and it was my string.”
“Were you dancing with Jerry Barclay?” asked Rosamund.
“I don’t think so.” She turned her head in profile on the pillow and looked at her sister out of the corner of her eye. Meeting Rosamund’s sober glance she broke into suppressed laughter.
“What’s the matter with you, Rosie?” she said, giving her a little kick through the bed-clothes; “you look as solemn as an undertaker.”
“I don’t think you ought to have danced so often with Jerry Barclay. It—it—doesn’t look well. It—” she stopped.
“‘It’—well, go on. Tell me all about it. A child could play with me to-night. You couldn’t make me angry if you tried.”
“June,” said Rosamund, turning toward her with annoyed seriousness, “I don’t think you ought to be friends with Jerry Barclay.”
“What do you say that for?”
Despite her previous remark as to the difficulty of making her angry, there was a distinct, cold edge on June’s voice as she spoke.
“I found out to-night. Ever since we heard those men talk that evening at Mrs. Davenport’s I had a feeling that something wasn’t right. And then Uncle Jim being so positive about not asking Mrs. Newbury here this evening.”
“What’s Mrs. Newbury got to do with it?”
“Everything. It’s all Mrs. Newbury. To-night in the dressing-room some girls were talking about her and Mr. Barclay; I asked them what they meant, and I heard it all. It’s a horrid story. I don’t like to tell it to you.”
“What is it?” said June. She had turned her head on the pillow and stared full face at her sister. She was tensely, frowningly grave.
“Well, they say—every one says—they’re lovers.”
“Lovers!” exclaimed June. “What do you mean by that? She’s married.”
“That’s just the dreadful part of it. They’re that kind of lovers—the wrong kind. They’ve been for years, and she loves him desperately and won’t let him have anything to do with anybody else. And Mr. Newbury loves her, and doesn’t know, and thinks Jerry Barclay is his friend.”
There was a silence in the room. Rosamund had found it difficult to tell this base and ignoble pieceof scandal to her sister. Now she did not look at June because she loved her too much to witness the shame and pain that she knew would be hers.
“It’s too horrible,” she continued, June uttering no sound. “I wouldn’t have told you, but—well, we don’t want him coming here if he’s that sort of man. And Mrs. Newbury—” she made a gesture of angry disgust—“what right hadsheto come here and call on us?”
June still said nothing. Her hand was lying on the counterpane and Rosamund, placing hers on it, felt that it trembled and was cold. This, with the continued silence, alarmed her and she said, trying to palliate the blow,
“It seems so hard to believe it. He was so kind and natural and jolly up at Foleys, as if he was our brother.”
“Believeit!” exclaimed June loudly. “You don’t supposeI believeit?”
Her tone was high, almost violent. She jerked away her hand and drew herself up in the bed in a sitting posture.
“You don’t suppose I’d believe a shameful, wicked story like that, Rosamund Allen?”
“But they all said so,” stammered Rosamund, taken aback, almost converted by the conviction opposing her.
“Well, then, they say what’s not true, that’s all! They’re liars. Don’t lots of people tell lies? Haven’t you found out that down here in the city most of the things you hear aren’t true? They just like to spread stories like that so that people will listen to them.Everybody wants to talk here and nobody wants to listen. It’s a lie—just a mean, cowardly lie.”
Her face was burning and bore an expression of quivering intensity. Rosamund, astonished by her vehemence, stared at her disquieted.
“But—but—everybody thinks so,” was all she could repeat.
“Then they think what’s not so. Doyouthink so?” with eager challenge.
The other looked down, her brows drawn together in worried indecision.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “When he comes up in my mind, especially as he was at Foleys, it seems as if I couldn’t believe it either.”
“There!” exclaimed June triumphantly. “Of course you can’t. Nobody who has any sense could. It’s just degraded, low-minded people who have nothing better to do than spread scandals that could believe such a story about such a man.”
“But Mrs. Newbury,” demurred her sister. “Why did Uncle Jim not want us to ask her to-night?”
“What’s Mrs. Newbury got to do with it? I don’t know. I don’t care anything about her. I don’t like her. She looks like a large white seal, walking on the tip of its tail. I think she’s common and fat and ugly. But what does she matter? If Mr. Newbury loves her he’s got very bad taste, that’s all I’ve got to say. And as to Jerry Barclay loving her? Why, Rosamund—” she suddenly dropped to her most persuasive softness of tone and expression—“you know he couldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosamund. “I don’t feel asif I knew anything about men, or what they like, or what they don’t like. You might think Mrs. Newbury ugly and they might think her beautiful. You never can tell. And then those men on the steps that night at Mrs. Davenport’s”—she shot an uneasy glance at her sister—“that was what they meant.”
“Rosie,” said June, leaning toward her and speaking with pleading emphasis, “you don’t believe it?”
“I don’t want to, that’s certain.”
“Well, then, say you don’t.”
“I can’t say that positively. I wish I could.”
She rose from her seat and moved away, absently drawing the hair-pins from her coiled hair. June fell back on the pillow.
“Well, I can,” she said. “I never felt more positive about anything in my life.”
Her sister turned back to the bedside and stood there looking frowningly down.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I’d hate to think any man like that had ever come here to see us or been a friend of yours.”
“So would I,” said June promptly. “So would any girl.”
“Well, good night. You’re tired to death. I’ll put the gas out.”
June saw the tall white figure move to the bureau and then darkness fell, and she heard its rustling withdrawal.
She lay still for a time staring at the square of light that fell from her sister’s room through the open door. Presently this disappeared and she moved her eyes to the faint luminous line which showed the separationof the window curtains. She was still staring at it wide-eyed and motionless when it grew paler, whiter and then warmer with the new day.
She had spoken the truth when she said she did not believe the ugly story. There are many women who have the faculty of quietly shutting a door on obvious facts and refusing them admittance into the prim sanctuary of their acceptance. How much more might a young girl, loving, inexperienced and tender, refuse to believe a blasting rumor that had touched a figure already shrined in her heart!
But the shock she suffered was severe. That such a story should be coupled with his name was revolting to her. And far down in the inner places of her being, where nature has placed in women a chord that thrills to danger, a creeping sense of dread and fear stirred. But she smothered its warning vibration and, with her eyes fixed on the crack of light, repeated over and over:
“Lies! lies! Miserable, cowardly lies!”