He was also curious to see several of th_The Sisters-In-Law: A Novel of Our Time

much about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different

homes. He was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and

he had a good healthy class-consciousness and class-hatred. But he also

had a large measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to

have the opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner

circles, and when it came he had only hesitated long enough to search

his soul and assure himself that he was in no danger of growing

compliant and soft. Moreover he might possibly make converts, and in

any case it was not a bad way, society being still what it was, of

turning an honest penny.

But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist

serene in his faith could be.

The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one

elbow on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair

of fixed and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was

only vaguely aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent

streams of concentrated light. They looked like three little

sea-monsters, slim, flexible, malignant, ready to spring.

He exaggerated in his embarrassment, but he was not so very far wrong.

"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach

'em, all right."

As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice

too loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that

you don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some."

"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her

high light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing

that makes us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_."

"And ain't you?"

"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although

he is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in

Europe had meant middle-class. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no

right to pervert an honest historic old word into something so

different and so obnoxious."

"To Marx all capitalists were in the same class. I suppose what you

mean is that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when

you have less capital than some of them that can't get in."

"Sure thing. Take it from me."

He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather

heavy sarcasm.

"Even when they use slang."

"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-class--bourgeois.

Too sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us."

Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr.

Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little,

but as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the

naughtiness of Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken

a cigarette from a gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and

was asking him for a light. He gave her measure for measure, for he

lifted his heavy boot and struck a match on the sole.

"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and

leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious

dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices,

which, however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping

everything from these lessons."

"Do _you_ smoke?"

"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve

of my friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots,

as Miss Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke.

I'll get you a cigar."

She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room.

Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the

evening paper.

"Give me a cigar, Morty dear."

"A cigar? What for?"

"It would be too mean of those girls to smoke unless Mr. Kirkpatrick

did too, and I am sure we couldn't stand his tobacco. Even a whiff of

bad tobacco makes me feel quite ill."

"I'll be hanged if I give my cigars to that bounder. The kitchen is the

place for him."

"But not for us. And our minds are quite made up, you know. We are

going to study with him just to find out what these strange animals

called socialists are like. He is queer enough, to begin, with. And the

knowledge may prove useful one of these days.... If you won't give me

one I'll send James out--"

Mortimer handed over one of his choice cigars with ill grace, and

Alexina returned to the library. Aileen was informing Mr. Kirkpatrick

how intensely she disliked Marx's beard, not only as she had seen it in

a photograph, but as she had smelt it in Spargo's too vivid description.

He rose awkwardly as she entered, but he rose. She handed him the cigar

and struck a match and held it to one end while he drew at the other.

Their faces were close and she gave him a smile of warm and spontaneous

friendliness.

Thought Mr. Kirkpatrick: "Oh, Lord, she's got me. I'd better make

tracks out of here. If she was a vamp like that Bascom woman she

wouldn't get me one little bit. Plenty of them where I come from. But

she's plain goddess with eyes like headlights on an engine."

Perturbed as he was, however, he resumed his seat and drew

appreciatively at the finest cigar that had ever come his way. It had

the opportune effect of causing his class-hatred to flame afresh. No

fear that he would be made soft by teaching in the homes of these

pampered cats. For the moment he hated Alexina, seated in a carved

high-back Italian chair like a young queen on a throne.

"Well," he growled. "Let's get to business. I've brought Spargo. Marx

is too much for me. He's terrible dull and involved. He was so taken up

with his subject, I guess, that he forgot to learn how to write about

it so's people without much time and education could understand without

getting a pain in their beans. Of course I've heard him expounded many

times from the platform, but there must have been about fifty Marxes,

for I've heard--or read--just about that many expounders of him and no

two agree so's you'd notice it. That, to my mind, is the only stumbling

block for socialism--that we have a prophet who's so hard to understand.

"So, I've settled on Spargo. He has the name of being about the best

student of Marx and of socialism generally--it's split up quite a

bit--and he's easy reading. I fetched him along."

He produced "Socialism" from his hat and hesitated. "I don't know

noth--a thing about teaching."

"Oh, don't let that worry you," drawled Sibyl Bascom in her low

voluptuous voice and transfixing him with narrow swimming eyes; then as

he refused to be overcome, she continued more humanly: "We've been to

lots of classes, you know. There are all sorts of methods. Suppose one

of us reads the first chapter aloud and then you expound. That is,

we'll ask you questions."

"That's fine," said Mr. Kirkpatrick with immense relief. "Fire away."

And Alexina, who always read prefaces and introductions last, began

with "Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit."

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

Mr. Kirkpatrick realized his ambition to see with his own sharp

puncturing little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a

sewing-machine needle playing staccato) several of the most flagrant

examples of capitalistic extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled

away their useless lives and servitors battened. In other words the

extremely comfortable or the shamelessly luxurious homes built for the

most part by still active business men whose first real period of rest

would be in a small stone residence in a certain silent city Down the

Peninsula.

Several were already occupied by their widows. In a climate where a man

can work three hundred and sixty-five days of the year the temptation

to do so is strong, and not conducive to longevity.

The Ferdinand Thorntons, Trennahans, Hofers and others who had lost

their city homes on Nob Hill had not rebuilt, but lived the year round

in their country houses at Burlingame, San Mateo, Alta, Menlo Park,

Atherton, or "across the Bay," using the hotels when they came to town

for dances, but motoring home after the theater.

Fortunately the finest and all of the newest mansions had been built in

the Western Addition and escaped the fire. Sibyl Bascom's father-in-law

had erected, shortly before his death, a large square granite palace

more or less in the Italian style, and as his widow preferred to live

in Santa Barbara, Frank Bascom had taken it over for himself and his

bride.

Olive had carried her millions to France and found her marquis. (As he

was wealthy himself they contributed little to the current gossip of

San Francisco.)

Janet Maynard lived with her mother, another widow of unrestricted

means, in a large low Spanish house with a patio, built by a famous

local architect with such success that Rex Roberts when he married

Polly Luning, had bought the nearest vacant lot and ordered a romantic

mansion as nearly like that of his wife's intimate friend as possible.

He would live in it as soon as the idiosyncrasies of The Architect and

Labor would permit.

Mrs. Clement Hunter had another pale gray stone palace, supported in

front by noble pillars and commanding a superb view of the Bay, the

Golden Gate, and Mount Tamalpais.

Aileen and her father lived in an old wooden house with a modern facade

of stucco, and surrounded by a garden filled with somewhat blighted

geraniums, fuchsias, sweet alicias, heliotrope, mignonette, and other

nineteenth-century posies beloved of Mrs. Lawton in her romantic and

innocent youth.

Sibyl and Alice Thorndyke's father had left his girls a square

bow-windowed mansard-roofed double house, built in

eighteen-seventy-eight, and unreclaimed. With it went a moderate

income, and Alice lived on under the ugly old roof chaperoned by an

aunt, who had been chosen from a liberal assortment of relatives

because she was almost deaf, quite myopic, and so terrified of draughts

that her absence when convenient could always be counted on.

All of these young women belonged to Alexina's personal set, and joined

the class in socialism, as they joined anything the stronger spirits

among them suggested; and they attended as regularly as could be

expected of "parasites" who were mainly interested in society, dress,

poker, and some absorbing creature of the other sex.

Mr. Kirkpatrick hated them all with the exception of Alexina, Aileen,

Mrs. Price Ruyler, the half-French wife of a New Yorker, recently

adopted by California, and Mrs. Hunter, who had joined out of

curiosity, having read a certain amount of socialism, but never met a

socialist.

She confided to Mrs. Thornton that she was not acutely anxious to meet

another, and Mrs. Thornton replied tartly:

"What do you want to belong to such a class for? It's rank hyprocrisy

to pretend interest in a question we all hate the very name of, and to

give the creature money that he no doubt turns over to the 'cause' with

his tongue in his cheek. I'd never give one of them the satisfaction of

knowing that I recognized his existence."

Said Maria Abbott firmly: "Exactly. We should ignore them, just as we

ignore envious and spiteful and ill-bred outsiders of any sort."

"But we may not be able to ignore them," said Mrs. Hunter. "Their

organization is the best of any party even if their numbers are not

overwhelming. If they are content to advance slowly and by purely

political methods there is no knowing who will own this or any

government fifty years hence. For my part I'd rather they all turn

raging anarchists; then we could turn machine guns on them and clean

'em out. I hate them, for I was too long getting where I am now, and I

want to stay. But I don't make the mistake of ignoring them, and I

rather like having a squint at them at close quarters. Kirkpatrick has

taken us to several socialist meetings ... we borrow the servants'

coats and mutilate our oldest hats.... Socialism seems to me rather

more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick is about

the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and

one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere.... That

would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor California is

a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the riff-raff and

derelicts.... My other hope is that even they--that is to say the least

unbalanced of them--will come in time to realize that socialism is

economically unsound--"

"Do you mean to say," cried Mrs. Abbott, "that Alexina has gone to

socialist meetings?"

"Rather. She's very keen--"

"Believes in it?"

"Rather not. But she is naturally thorough--has a really extraordinary

tendency, for a San Franciscan of her sex and status, to finish

anything she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick

she sticks out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it

is. She has him pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the

rest of us alive she can smooth him down like a regular lion tamer."

"Well, you're nothing but a lot of parlor socialists," said Mrs.

Thornton disgustedly. "And just as ridiculous as any other hybrids. But

I'm relieved that it hasn't spoiled your taste for the simpler

pleasures of life. Maria, as you don't play poker we'll have a game of

bridge, Ladie, ring for cocktails, will you--or would you rather have a

gin fizz? Don't look so horrified, Maria. We're better than socialists,

anyhow; if they did win out you'd have farther to fall than we, for

you're a moss-backed old conservative who hates change of any sort,

while we not only love change of all sorts but are regular anarchists:

do as we please and snap our fingers at the world. Here we are."

The three were in Mrs. Thornton's Moorish palace half way between San

Mateo and Burlingame, a situation that symbolized the connecting bridge

between the old and new order for Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Thornton was a

lineal descendant of the Rincon Hill of the sixties and had made her

début with Maria Groome in the eighties. But she had married an

immoderately rich man and had a barbaric taste for splendor that formed

the proper setting for her own somewhat barbaric beauty, and imperious

temper. Her dark and splendid beauty was waning, for in the matter of

giving aid to nature with secrecy or with art she was faithful to the

old tradition. But she was always an imposing figure and as close to

being the first power in San Francisco society as that happy-go-lucky

independent class would ever tolerate.

III

Kirkpatrick liked Mrs. Hunter, regarding her as "an honest plain-spoken

dame without any frills." This estimate applied not only to her

temperament but to her costumes. He admired her severe tailored suits

(although he sensed their cost) and her smart, plain, hard, little hats.

The "frills and furbelows" of the younger "spenders" irritated the

group of nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond

endurance; but he managed to stand it by reminding himself that

irritation of all such was a healthy sign and vastly preferable to

insidious tolerance.

Mrs. Hunter was also as regular in her attendance as Mrs. Dwight, Miss

Lawton and Mrs. Price Ruyler, and asked fairly intelligent questions.

The others floated in and out, and one by one dropped from the class,

until toward the middle of the second winter none remained but Alexina,

Aileen, Mrs. Hunter and Hélène Ruyler, who, like Aileen, found in the

"frantic interest" of the materialistic creed which antagonized every

instinct in them, a distraction from the excessive gambling which had

threatened to wreck their nerves, purses, and peace of mind. They

confided this artlessly to Mr. Kirkpatrick, who replied dryly that they

were the best argument he had in stock.

But if the major part of his fashionable class deserted him in due

course he had meanwhile seen the inside of their homes; and in each

case, Alexina, who divined his interest, arranged to have him shown

over the house from the kitchens and pantries straight up to the

servants' quarters.

These he found unexpectedly comfortable and complete. In fact, they

were so much more modern and adorned than the little cottage in the

Mission where he lived with his mother that he longed for the immediate

installation of a system that would teach these workers what real work

was. What enraged him further was their "airs." They too obviously

looked upon him as an alien intruder, whereas their mistresses, until

socialism bored them, were, for the most part, as charmingly courteous

as his one reliable friend, Mrs. Mortimer Dwight.

During the first winter and spring while his pupils were still fairly

regular in their attendance, he was both incensed and grimly amused by

their various idiosyncrasies. He soon became accustomed to their vanity

boxes and their public application of powder and lip stick, the frank

crossing of their knees that exhibited more diaphanous silk than he had

ever seen in his life before, the polite excitement that any new

article of attire worn by one seemed to induce in all, the wicked but

on the whole good-natured baiting of Aileen Lawton and Polly Roberts,

the alternate insolence and Circean glances of Mrs. Bascom, who amused

herself "practicing on him," and the constant smoking of most of them.

But what he could neither understand nor accept was their attitude

toward one another. They would all rush at the hostess of the day as

they entered, or at late comers, with the excited enthusiasm of loved

and loving intimates who had not met for months; and Kirkpatrick, who

missed nothing, knew that they met once a day if not oftener.

In spite of their intimacy their warm enraptured greetings carried a

patent measure of admiration and even respect. It was always at least

fifteen minutes before they would settle down for "work" and meanwhile

they chattered about their common interests, but always with the air of

relating long-delayed information and a frank desire to give of their

best. He could have understood "gush," and sentimentalism, but this

attitude of which he had neither heard nor read bothered him until one

day he had a sudden, flash of enlightenment.

"Is it class-consciousness?"

He asked the question of Gora, who dropped in upon a class at Alexina's

or Aileen's sometimes on a free afternoon, and with whom he was walking

down to the trolley car.

"Something like that. Caste they would call it if they thought about it

at all, which to do them justice they don't.... It used to be the

fashion in San Francisco for everybody to 'knock' everybody else. Then

came a revulsion and everybody began to praise and boost. You see it in

all circles, but the way it has taken that crowd is to show their

intense loyalty to one another by a constant reminder of it in manner,

and in refraining from criticism of one another, no matter how much

they may gossip about others outside of their particular set. Once,

just to try my sister-in-law, I told her that in my nursing I had

stumbled across evidence of an illicit love affair going on between one

of her friends and a married man, the husband of my patient. My sister

became so remote that I had the impression for a few moments that she

really wasn't there. Once it would have infuriated me, but I have

improved my sense of humor and developed my philosophy, so I merely

turned the conversation, as she wouldn't speak at all. She had quite

withdrawn--still further into the sacred preserves, I suppose....

"They are not only loyal but really seem to have the most exalted

admiration for one another because they are all of the same heaven-born

stock.... That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that

they get so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not

cultivate as many kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as

their wits are equal to. When they can, they vary the monotony of life

with summers in Europe and winters in New York--or Santa Barbara, where

they meet many interesting people from the East or England; but some of

them won't leave their busy husbands or the husbands won't be left; or

parents are not amenable; so they try to create an atmosphere of high

spirits and sheer delight in youth and one another, and the result is

almost a work of art. I rather respect them, but I envy them a good

deal less than before I knew them so well."

"Oh, you envied them? They should envy you."

"Well, they don't! Yes, I envied them because it is my natural right to

be one of them and fate slammed the door before I was born. It

embittered my first youth, and it might have become an obsession after

my brother married into society if I had not found the right kind of

work. That and the boring Sundays I've spent at Rincona, and the

experiences I have had with that young set, who are always at Mrs.

Dwight's more or less; besides a profound satisfaction in accomplishing

literary work that not one of them could do to save their lives--all

this has routed a good deal of my old bitterness of spirit. I am not

sorry that I had it and indulged it, however. Discontent and resentment

put spurs on the soul. Anything is better than smugness."

"It's made you different enough from these others, all right. Even from

Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself.... I'd rather you'd stayed

discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've

suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're

jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention

to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as

they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't

give my eye teeth to see hanging out the wash or running a machine in a

factory."'

Gora turned to him with a smile. At this time she was as nearly happy

as was possible for that insurgent too aspiring spirit.

"Nevertheless, they've made you over in a way--Oh, don't flame! I don't

mean your principles ... other ways that won't hurt you in the least.

You cut your hair differently. You wear better shoes. You have your

clothes pressed--the suit you wear up here anyhow. You've reformed your

speech somewhat, and you know a good deal more about many things than

you did a few months ago. I am expecting any day to see you wearing a

'boiled' shirt."

"Oh, no, not that! It'd never do. It's true enough I got to feeling

self-conscious about my rough clothes and boots, especially after I met

that dude brother of yours one day in the hall and he gave me a

once-over that made me feel like a tramp."

"Oh! ... But he was snubbed himself not so very long ago, and I suppose

it gives him a certain pleasure to snub some one else, I am ashamed of

him.... But tell me, don't you like them rather better than you

expected? Find them rather a better sort? You must see that there is

practically no leisure class as far as the men are concerned--"

"They have time enough to go chicken chasing--"

"Well, aside from that? At least they do work. And the younger women?

You knew before that they were frivolous because they had too much

money and too few responsibilities. Many of the older women have a

serious and useful side, even if they do waste an unholy amount of time

at cards."

"Well, if you ask me, their manners, when they remember to use 'em, are

better than I expected. Only that Miss Thorndyke is cold and haughty,

but perhaps that's because she's poor (for her), or is covering up

something, or is just plain stupid.... Mrs. Dwight's manners are always

perfect. She's my idea of a lady--just! And in the new system there'll

be a long sight more ladies than is possible now, only no

aristocrats.... Yes, they're decent enough considering they're rotten

poisoned by money and thinkin' themselves better'n the mass; and I like

their affection for one another. But they could be all that in the

socialist state and more too. They'd have to cut out drink and

gambling, and a few other diversions some of 'em'll drift into, if one

or two of 'em haven't already--just through being bored to death."

"Do you honestly think socialism means universal virtue?"

"No, I don't. I'm no such greenhorn; though there's some that does, or

pretends to.... But I mean there'd be no _drifting_ into vice like

there is now, no indulgence of any old weakness because temptation was

always following them about or just round the corner. That's the

trouble now.... But in the most perfect state some would be watching

out for their chance, just because the old Adam was too strong in spite

of the fact that all the old reminders had disappeared."

"More likely they'd all murder one another because they were some ten

thousand times more bored than that poor little group whose brains you

are addling."

"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Miss Gora. You ought to give

that pen of yours to socialism. There would be all the revenge you

could want--and it's what you're entitled to. Then I could call you

Comrade Gora."

"Call me Comarade by all means if it hurts you to say Miss to a fellow

worker.... You admit then that envy of a society you were not born into

and which refuses to acknowledge you as an equal, is the secret of your

desire to pull it down?"

"Partly that." he admitted cooly. "Not that I'd change places with any

of those fat millionaires I see shuffling down the steps of the

Pacific-Union Club--although I'll admit to you what I wouldn't to these

young devils in my class, that I know some socialists who would. I hate

the sight of 'em. But I want to do away with class-rights and

class-distinctions, not only because I just naturally have no use for

them but because I want to put an end to the misery of the world."

"You mean the material misery. What would you do with the other seven

hundred different varieties?"

"Well.... I guess each case would have to take care of itself. Perhaps

we'd get round to it after a while. Get power and class-envy out of the

world, and some genius, like as not, would invent a post-graduate

course of colleges for human nature. All things are possible."

"You are an optimist! Here's our car. Come home with me and share the

supper that I pay for with the tainted money of a plutocrat. Only we

haven't any real plutocrats in San Francisco. Only modest millionaires.

Will you?"

"Yes." said Mr. Kirkpatrick. "And thank you kindly." He even smiled,

for he was developing a latent heavily overlain seed of humor;

inherited from the full bay tree that had flourished in his

grandfather, born in County Clare, where men sometimes indulged in

rebellion but did not take themselves too seriously withal.

CHAPTER II

That winter and the following seasons for the next few years passed

very rapidly for Alexina. Besides her classes and the constant

companionship of her friends (to say nothing of the excitement of

helping one or two of them out of not infrequent scrapes), she had for

a time the absorbing interest of refurnishing the best part of her

house.

The square lower hall which had been scantily furnished with the

grandfather's clock, a hat-rack, and a settee, and whose walls were

covered with "marble paper," was painted, walls and wood, a deep ivory

white, and refurnished with light wicker furniture, palms, and growing

plants. The hat-rack was abolished, and the small library on the left

of the entrance turned into a men's dressing-room. The folding doors

were removed from the great double parlors, the "body brussels"

replaced by hardwood floors, the walls tinted a pale gray as a

background for the really valuable pictures (including the proud and

gracious and beautiful Alexina Ballinger, dust long since in Lone

Mountain), and the splendid pieces of Italian furniture which had

always seemed to sulk and bulge against the dull brown walls. The rep

and walnut sets were sent to the auction room and replaced by

comfortable chairs and sofas whose colors varied, but harmonized not

only with one another but with the rugs that Alexina under Gora's

direction had bought at auction. In fact she bought many of her new

pieces at auction and with Aileen found it vastly exciting to pore over

the advertisements and then go down to the crowded rooms and bid.

The billiard room behind the former library she left as it was. Her

mother's large bedroom upstairs she turned into a library with

bookcases to the ceiling on three sides, and one of the carved oaken

tables against an expanse of Pompeiian red relieved by one painting (a

wedding gift from Judge Lawton, who believed in patronizing local art)

that had despoiled a desert of its gorgeous yellow sunrise.

The carpet and curtains were red without pattern. The coal grate had

been removed and a fireplace built for logs. It was to be her own den

for long rainy winter afternoons, or the cold and foggy days of summer

when she remained in the city.

The dining-room was also given a hardwood floor and a Japanese red and

gold wall paper as a compliment to her martial ancestors; but as the

sideboards were built into the wails end could be replaced only at

great cost; they remained as a brooding reminder of the solid sixties,

and no doubt exchanged resentful reminiscences at night with the chairs

which had been merely recovered.

As a matter of course modern bathtubs were installed and gas replaced

by electricity.

All this made a "hole" in Alexina's bonds, the wedding-present of her

brothers, but Mortimer offered no objection, knowing as he did that to

achieve his ambition of being master of a house to which fashionable

people would come as a matter of course the outlay was imperative.

Moreover, entertaining at home would be far cheaper for him than at the

restaurants.

He was doing fairly well at this time, for he had learned what

commodities the retail men were likely to buy of a firm as small as

his, and he had got into touch with one or two foreign markets not

monopolized by the older houses. Moreover, he had been speculating a

little in the new Nevada mines, and successfully. He presented Alexina

with a Victrola which included the music for all the new dances, and a

long coat of baby lamb lined with her favorite periwinkle blue. To his

sister he returned a thousand dollars of her money.

Alexina knew nothing of these speculations and felt that her original

faith in him was justified. He did not offer even yet to pay all the

monthly expenses of the house, explaining casually that the greater

part of his profits went back into the business; but he handed over his

share promptly, and such fleeting doubts and anxieties as may once have

visited his still inexperienced wife faded and finally disappeared.

They began to entertain a little during the second winter, Mrs. Groome

having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large

drawing-room had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a

habit, when there was "nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and

announcing they were coming up to take a whirl. This led to more

telephoning, and some twenty couples would dance in the long-silent old

house at least once and often three times a week.

The new order delighted James, who felt young again, and his hastily

improvised suppers were models of unpretentious succulence. There were

always sherry and whiskey in the handsome old decanters on the

sideboards; and, at the equally perfect little dinners, for a time, two

bottles of Alexander Groome's favorite brand of champagne (which he had

remembered with satisfaction on his deathbed that he had not outlived)

were brought up from the cellar by the beaming James.

When, almost with tears, he informed his mistress' husband that the

last bottle had been served Mortimer could do no less than order up a

case. He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent

native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to

appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler.

He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business."

Nearly all the young men, married or otherwise, that came to his house

(Alexina subtly encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or

less importance or standing in the world of business and finance (two

were lawyers in their first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne),

and the more prosperous he appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the

extent of Alexina's income) the more apt would business be to flow his

way, the less likely they would be to suspect him of playing the stock

market. At all events it enhanced his standing and gave him intense

pleasure.

Moreover, as time passed it became evident to his sensitive ego that he

was no longer looked upon as an outsider. He was accepted as a matter

of course. He was one of them. Neither men nor women (not even Aileen)

continued to ask themselves whether they liked him or not. He was there

and to stay and that was the end of it. They had always liked his

manners; he made a charming host, and, as ever, he danced like "a god

with wings on his heels."

Quite naturally in due course some one offered to put him up at the

most exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to

which every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance

belonged as a matter of course. Old men whose names had once been

potent in the great banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed

with sad and rheumy eyes down upon the new city in which there was

barely a familiar landmark to remind them of their youth or the years

of their power and their pride. They sat there all day long, day after

day; and tourists went away with the impression that the imposing brown

stone mansion on the sacred crest of Nob Mill was a sumptuously endowed

retreat for the incurably aged.

But the majority of its members were very much alive and still

well-padded; and, far from being on a pale diet, were deeply

appreciative of the famous culinary resources of the chef, and showed

it.

When the offer was made to Mortimer he accepted with a bright: "Oh,

thanks, old chap. I'd like it immensely," But when, on the first day of

his membership, he stood in one of the front windows and gazed out at

the ruins opposite--the Pacific Union Club and the Fairmont Hotel were

still two oases in the rubbled waste of Nob Hill--he felt so exultant

and so happy that he dared not open his lips lest he betray himself. He

could mount no higher socially. All that he had to strive for now was

his million--or millions. When he had half a million he would build a

house at Burlingame that could be enlarged from time to time.

Only with the "Rincona crowd" he had made no headway. Maria did not

hesitate to comment on the extravagance of doing the house over, the

membership at the club with all it entailed, Alexina's little electric

car, and above all the constant entertaining. A moderate amount was due

Alexina's position; but open house--nothing made money fly so quickly.

Prices were getting higher every day (there came a time, in the wake of

the great war, when she looked back with sad amazement at the morning

of her discontent) and rich people were getting richer while poor

people like themselves (she meant what Alexina still called the A. A.)

were growing poorer.

Tom Abbott had not put Mortimer up at the club. He happened to know

that although his brother-in-law was doing fairly well he was not

making a fortune, and suspected that he dabbled in stocks. But he said

nothing of this to his wife, and as he knew that Alexina had long since

revoked her power of attorney (she had given him to understand that

this was done at Mortimer's suggestion) he believed that her money at

least was safe.

CHAPTER III

Alexina, although she would have found it impossible, even if she had

so desired, to relapse into the incognitance of the years preceding her

mother's death, had nevertheless locked and sealed and cellared her

ivory tower, those depths of her nature where, she suspected, her true

ego dwelt. It was an ego she had forfeited the right to indulge, nor

had she at this time any desire to know more of herself than she did.

Life after all was very pleasant; she managed to fill it with many

little and even a few absorbing interests; and once she spent a month

at Santa Barbara chaperoning Janet Maynard, where her duties sat

lightly upon her and she would have responded naturally if addressed as

Miss Groome, so completely did Mortimer fade into the background. In

the summer of nineteen-thirteen Judge Lawton and Aileen overcame all

protests and took her with them to Europe, where, after a month in

Paris, she visited Olive de Morsigny in her renaissance château on the

Loire. The memory of Gathbroke revisited her and she half-wished the

Judge would go to England, but the climate did not agree with him, and

after a few more enchanted weeks, in Italy and Spain, she returned to

Mortimer, who was distinctly duller than ever.

But she had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her

life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in

the face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as

ever attempted to stand between a girl and her fate.

Nevertheless, immediately after her return from Santa Barbara in the

late autumn of nineteen-eleven, and wholly without, analysis or

pondering, she made a significant change in the order of her life.

Mortimer, who had, during her absence, occupied a large room at the

back of the house visited by the afternoon sun, found himself invited

to retain it.... They must avoid the least possibility of a family

until they were better off.... She had been hearing the subject

discussed ... the most economical baby cost fifty dollars a month. With

a permanent trained nurse, and of course they would have one, the cost

would easily be doubled ... thousands were required for the proper

education of a child ... even if she had girls she should wish them to

go to college; she was not half educated herself ... and boys, with

their extravagances, their debts, they cost a mint; it was better for

children to be born outright in the humbler classes than to be born

into a rich set without riches themselves ... it all put her in a panic

every time she thought of it.... Morty was so sensible and had such a

high sense of responsibility, of course he understood ... children,

even when small, would hamper him fearfully, especially as he had not

even begun to make his million.... As for herself she would be more

economical than ever and help him like the good pal she was.

Mortimer had the sensation of being trussed up with invisible but

inflexible silken thongs. His thoughts need not be recorded.

Alexina refurnished her bedroom in her favorite periwinkle blue; a low

graceful day-bed with a screen before the stationary washstand helped

to create the atmosphere of a boudoir. It had an intensely personal

atmosphere in which man, more particularly a lawful husband, had no

place.

When Alexina stood on the threshold and surveyed this room, chaste,

cool, proud, and exquisitely lovely, she lifted her hand and blew off a

kiss, out of the window, wafting away the memory of the room as it had

been. She had remarkable powers of obliteration, a sort of River of

Lethe among the backwaters of her mind, where she held below the

surface all she wished to forget until it ceased to struggle. She never

again gave a thought to her early relationship with her husband; not

even to the indifference or distaste which had followed so quickly upon

her curiosity and her determination to feel romantic at all costs.

III

Subtly she felt she was happier than she had ever been even in those

first weeks, when she had barred the gates of her fool's paradise

behind her; she felt as free and happy as the birds skimming over the

beds of periwinkle below her window, and (miraculously finding her

second youth quite as productive as her first) took no pains to

conceive of anything better. She looked neither forward nor back, and

all was well.

She even flirted a little, that being the fashion, and, having had

enough of business men, encouraged the devotions of Bascom Luning and

Jimmie Thorne. She saw them when they chose to call in the daytime, and

regaled the glowering Mortimer at the dinner table with scraps of their

sapience.

Mortimer had resigned himself long since to the sacrifice of several of

his bourgeois ambitions, among them to be master in his own house; but

not an iota of his convictions. Although it would not have occurred to

him to distrust his wife if she had chosen to sit up all night with a

man, he made frozen comments upon the impropriety of a woman having men

in the house when her husband was not there, sitting out dances with

men, taking long tramps through Marin County with three men and no one

for chaperon but Alice Thorndyke and Janet Maynard--shocking

flirts--whole Sundays--with lunch heaven knew where, and himself, who

hated tramping, not included.

But these grim remonstrances were met in so gay a spirit of badinage

that he felt ridiculous, particularly as no powers of badinage or of

repartee had been included in his own mental equipment; and he usually

relapsed into a polite and bored silence.

He never had had much to say at the dinner table when they were alone,

and, as time went on, his comments on the day were exhausted before the

soup had given place to the entrée, and Alexina fell into the habit of

bringing her Italian text-book to the table--the study of Italian just

then being the rage in her set--and whatever interesting book she had

on hand. Mortimer made no protest. His brain was fagged at night. It

was a relief not to be expected to talk when they dined alone; those

long silences had been oppresive even to him; he rather welcomed the

books.

CHAPTER IV

This complete new freedom, and personal privacy, entailed in time a

result which Alexina would have been the last to anticipate even if she

had disposed of her husband by death or divorce.

Owing to the thoroughness of her mental methods she was psychologically

free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been

transposed by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will

when it is strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias,

thought; but it has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and

in that mysterious region are the subtle inheritances of mind and

character, the springs and the direction, of all functional life; a

fate with a thousand threads on her wheel, filaments from the souls and

the bodies, the minds and the acts, of every ancestor straight back to

that vast impersonal ocean where, unthinkable millions of years ago

proemial life awaited the call of the worlds.

This aged untiring fate at the wheel battles unceasingly with the

conscious mind above, for age is prone to live by law and rote. These

fates, the oldest daughters of the Earth-Mother, Nature, know nothing

of morals or manners, assume that men and women are as naïve in their

normality as the denizens of forest and field. And so they are while

children.

The eternal pull between civilizing Mind (Oh, centuries yet from being

civilized!) and the memoried but obstinate old lady at the wheel (who

laughs when a man of powerful will and too active mind "wills" sleep;

forcing him finally to choose between the horrors of insomnia, the

insidious tyranny of drugs, and the doubtful and wearisome alternative

of psychotherapeutics)--this pull, automatic in people of low estate,

becomes bitter and often appalling where the mind is highly developed

and attuned besides to the codes and customs of the best that

civilization has so far accomplished.

The most vital of all these functions, for without it Mother Earth

would be like an ant hill without ants, and all these ancient norms of

daughters as homeless as the rest of the fates, is what man in a spirit

of social compromise has labeled an instinct--the sex-instinct. It is

no more an instinct than recurring sleep, lymphatic action, hunger,

thirst, alimentation. It is a primal function for which Mind, wisely

foreseeing the consequences of too much Nature, long since created laws

both civil and social to curb. There are many impulses, Inherited, from

ten thousand ancestors and constantly jogged by Earth's busy agent,

human nature, that may logically be called instincts (their roots lying

in the ancient social groups and their struggle to exist) but not a

function that governs the law of reproduction, as appetite governs the

law of renewing the vital necessities of the body.

III

In the Latin races the conscious war between the brain above and the

sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere

excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect

body, is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence,

their practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to

life, psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple

question of hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of

that modern, development, called romance, which has given birth to a

peculiar form of personal imagination, too often without foundation or

logic--all these preclude that most active of all mental aids to the

matter of fact needs of the body--glamour.

But it is far otherwise with the English-speaking races--loosely called

Anglo-Saxon, They are powerfully sexed; their feelings and sentiments

go deeper than is possible to those of more ebullient temperament but

fatal clarity of vision; refinement of mind and habit and manner is

perhaps the most precious of their achievements, and they have

established a code which not only demands rectitude of act but

suppression of thought and desire where there is no lawful outlet.

Nothing, possibly, has more infuriated the old lady at the methodically

performing wheel than this. She takes her revenge and squirts poison

into the physical structure of the brain, obscures the soul with dark

and brooding clouds, and subtly reduces the blood system to such a

state that any germ is welcome.

Once more Mind uses its highest faculties and outwits her, having no

intention that civilization shall drop below the plane to which it has

been raised through long laborious centuries of time. Life becomes more

diverse, more complex. The middle classes work harder to live; they

have little leisure for thoughts, for introspection. Punishment is

dire.... Those that have leisure and yet not enough to command the more

brilliant and special forms of distraction are supplied with public

libraries, gymnasiums, free medical advice regarding the laws of

hygiene in places where they cannot fail to see it, new forms of cheap

amusement; they are subtly encouraged to take up useful work or study;

or there are increasing pressures which may force even this

semi-leisure class to work for luxuries if not for bread. Tens of

thousands of women are led into the passionate diversions of club life.

For them, too, politics with its fierce championships and hatreds and

frictions; the necessity of concentration of thought on the impersonal

plane if only in the matter of getting the best of rivals within the

fold; and if hair flies souls are saved.

Over the Oldest Profession Mind still scratches its head in vain. It is

ever hopeful, and hamstrings a sovereign patron, like alcohol, now and

again; but the lady at the wheel smiles, for here, in addition to the

unquenchable maternal instinct, the ignorance of the poor, and the

glamour that the men of certain races have learned to give to love, she

has her clearest field.

Aside from the women of commerce there are, of course, many secret

rebels--now and then only does one make her exit from society through

the courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or

capital, suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies--which

are vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding

genius is more than commonly out of patience--and rise to serene

heights or grow morbid and irritable according to the strength or the

meagerness of their equipment; or the nature of their resources. A

cultivated resource is a persistent fiction that life is as it ought to

be, not as it is, and it is no plan of theirs to read books or witness

plays that might carve and populate a new groove in their brains.

Let no one imagine that this class will become more "enlightened,"

"broader," as time goes on. Not for a century at least. Mind has made

too great a success of this product; she has practically achieved a

complete triumph over the lady at the wheel. It is this class that has

made civilization progress, the solid thing it is to date. The

excrescences, the deserters from the normal, scintillating or subtle,

may be tolerated for the spice they give to life but they will never

rule.

Possibly they do not mind. Life Is made up of compromises and

compensations.

American women in youth, of the visibly reputable world, may be freely

divided into two classes, the oversexed and those that seem cold to

themselves and others until they are well into the period of their

second youth--between twenty-four and thirty; and a not inconsiderable

number are so and permanently. In the first case they either

precipitate themselves into matrimony or have one or more intrigues

until they find the man they wish to marry, when they settle down and

make excellent wives. The others, if they are imaginative and

high-minded, fall in love romantically and marry far too soon; or they

capitalize their youth or beauty and marry to the best advantage; or

they elect to live a life of serene spinsterhood like Alexina's Aunt

Clara, and bring up the family children. A not inconsiderable number

take their fling late.

When the American girl of the super-refined class, and whose baleful

norm in the crypt was asleep at the wheel in her first blind youth,

finds herself disappointed in the most intimate partnership that

exists, the complaisance, voluntary at the beginning, drifts into

habit, more and more grimly endured. Some have the moral courage to put

an end to it as they would to any false situation, but if individuals

were not rare in this world we should have chaos, not a civilization of

sorts which is a pleasant place to plant the feet, however high into

the clouds the head may poke its investigating nose.

It is natural that with such women during the period of endurance all

love should seem distasteful, and the mind dwell upon any other

subject. But remove the cause of sex-inertia and there is likely to be

the stir and awakening of spring after a long monotonous winter of hard

frost and blanketing snow. Or a homelier simile: remove the cause of

chronic indigestion and the appetite becomes fresh and normal.

Thus Alexina.

CHAPTER V

San Francisco, commencing in September, has three or four months of

perfect weather. The cold fogs and winds cease to pay their daily

visits, the rainy season awaits the new year. The skies are a deep and

cloudless blue, the air is warm and soft and alluring, never too hot,

although the overcoats of summer are discarded.

The city lies bathed in golden sunlight or the sharp jeweled light of

stars, when the moon is not blazing like a crystal bonfire. Then Mount

Tamalpais and other mountains across the Bay and behind the city take

on a chiseled outline that, particularly at night, makes them look

curiously new, as if but yesterday heaved from the deep, and Nature too

busy to provide them with a background and the soft blurs of time for

centuries to come. This primeval look of bare California mountains on

clear nights has something sinister and menacing in its aspect as if at

any moment they might once more brood alone over the earth.

Alexina returned from abroad early in November and stood one morning

outside her eucalyptus grove, revolving slowly on one heel, schoolgirl

fashion, as she gazed up at the steep densely populated hill that rose

from the street below her own private little hill, and cut off her view

of the hills of Berkeley and the mountains beyond; at the broad crowded

valleys on the south; the range of hills that hid the Pacific Ocean,

and included Mount Calvary with its cross and the symmetrical mass of

Twin Peaks; the bare brown mountains of the north piling above the

green sparkling bay with its wooded and military islands.

Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she

had seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it

to art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she

had returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving

off the disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her

to admit it.

San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that

compact mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with

sudden palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the

impression that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike

Genoa. But it seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had

just paid her first brief visit to the old world, an interval,

moreover, that had been without a responsibility, cut her off so

completely from her general life that when variously addressed

"Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Señorita," she ceased almost at once to

feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not forbidden herself to

dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with a future to sketch

with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her pleasure.

But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in

Europe. She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert

Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary

bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he

intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social

prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the

totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into

the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife

were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and

many small dinners, not avowedly bridge or poker parties, were as

inevitable as crab in season; but there were too many young men whom

girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony of crab à la

poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as little to say

as poor Morty. She had known dèbutantes who flatly refused to dance

with married men or even to be introduced to them.

California was her fate. No doubt of that. She might never see Europe

again, for while it was all very well to be a guest once it would be

quite impossible another time. She certainly could not afford it

herself and keep Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as

she might if her home were in New York.

Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not.

Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him

so depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven. His eyes

were as lifeless as slate, his voice was flat, although for that matter

he was almost dumb. When at home he sat brooding heavily by the open

western windows of the drawing-room, or moved restlessly about. To all

her questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse

than ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As

she had not been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself,

and had paid few week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about

and the men talked of nothing but the business depression.... Alexina

had shrugged her shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle

reproach for leaving him to the dull cares of business while she

enjoyed herself in Europe.

She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly

comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money

which with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the

household expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club

by the ocean, and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of

his idolatry on Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was

and it was now two years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a

luxurious bachelor at the back of the house with an always amiable

companion at breakfast and dinner.

III

Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and

watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty

had consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying

him. She hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be

happy in his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his

divagations from the world--and she could trust him to do that! Now

that she had ceased to be the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves

and torpid imagination she would be the last to condemn him. Human

Nature was an ever opening book to her these days, and she wondered

what would happen to herself if any of several men she liked were

capable of making her love him, whipping up a personal storm in those

emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly intruded themselves

upon her consciousness.

She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the

old world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are

or not, and where life looks to the American the quintessence of

romance.... She had concluded that the most satisfactory experience

that could come to her would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a

man who possessed all the requirements to induce it, but who would

either be the unsuspecting object, or, reciprocating, would continue to

love her with the world between them.

For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did

not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might

for a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she

recalled the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were

put to meet their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole

drama of man and woman.

Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and

society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often

laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when

circumstances have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness

even the blind urge of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go

on sullenly feeding the fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for

the astrological moment.

Alexina shrugged her shoulders impatiently and went into the house. She

would go down to the bank and clip her coupons. She cultivated

assiduously the practical side of life, making the most of it,

delighted when repairs were needed on her flats, regretting that the

greater part of her income came from ground rents, collected, as ever,

by Tom Abbott, and bonds, from which she still experienced a childish

pleasure in cutting the coupons. Her flats, which were in a humbler

part of the western division of the city, she had never visited, but

she received a call every month from the agent, who brought her the

rents and complaints.

She had made a heroic effort to turn herself into a business woman but

the material had been too slender; and she sometimes wished for a large

independent fortune that would tax her powers to the utmost. But she

never even had any surplus to invest. Her wardrobe was no

inconsiderable item; living prices rose steadily; there were repairs

both on her own house and the flats to be anticipated every year, to

say nothing of the fiendish sum that must be set aside for taxes. But

she managed to save the necessary amount; and if they lived somewhat

extravagantly, at least she had never disturbed her capital.

On the whole she knew they had managed very well for young people who

lived so much in the world, and she had no intention of economizing

further. They had no children. Her husband was young and energetic and

healthy. Her own little fortune was secure. She purposed to enjoy life

as best she could; and as she could not have done this quite selfishly

and been happy, she included among her yearly expenditures a certain

admirable charity presided over by her equally admirable sister, and

even visited it occasionally with her friends when a serious mood

descended abruptly upon them.... She was now on the threshold of her

second beautiful youth, and found herself and life far more interesting

than when, a silly girl of eighteen, she had believed that all life and

romance must be crowded into that callow period. She had no idea of

sacrificing this new era vibrating with unknown possibilities (it was

on the cards that she might resurrect Gathbroke from his ivory tomb;

lie would do admirably for her present needs, and when she found it

difficult to visualize him after so long a period, she could pay Gora a

sisterly visit) to a penurious attempt to increase her capital. At the

same time she had no intention of diminishing it. To quote Tom Abbott

(when Maria was elsewhere): She might be a fool, or even a----fool, but

she was not a----fool.

She dressed herself in a black velvet suit made by her New York

tailors. She had spent, a fortnight with her brother Ballinger on her

way home, and he had given her a set of silver fox: a large muff and

two of those priceless animals head to head to keep a small section of

her anatomy at blood heat in a climate never cold enough for furs.

The day was hot. It was the sort of weather which on the opposite side

of the continent arrives when spring is melting into summer and

fortunate woman arrays herself in thin and dainty fabrics. But women

everywhere with a proper regard for fashion rush the season, and autumn

is the time to display the first smart habiliments of winter. No San

Francisco woman of fashion would be guilty of comfortable garments in

the glorious spring weather of November if she perished in her furs.

The coat, bound with silk braid, was lined with periwinkle blue, and

there was a touch of the same color in her large black velvet hat.

Nothing could make the great irises of her black-gray eyes look blue,

but they shone out, dazzling, under the drooping brim; and if she was,

perchance, too warm above, her scant skirt, her thin silk stockings and

low patent leather shoes struck the balance like a brilliant paradox.

Alexina nodded approvingly at her image in the pier glass, found the

key of her safe deposit box in the cabinet where she had left it, and

went down to the smart little electric car which the gardener had

brought to the door.

CHAPTER VI

Alexina stood alone in the strong room of the bank leaning heavily

against the wall with its endless rows of compartments from one of

which she had taken the dispatch box in which she had kept her bonds.

The box had fallen to the floor. If there had been any one in the room

with her he would have started and turned as the box clanged with a

hollow echo on the steel surface.

The box was empty.

It was a large box. It had contained forty thousand dollars' worth of

bonds, nearly a third of her fortune. The securities were among the

soundest the country afforded, for Alexander Groome, wild as he may

have been when relieving the monotony of life with too many diversions,

not the least of which was speculation, never made a mistake in his

permanent investments; and others had been bought with equal prudence

by Judge Lawton or Tom Abbott.

But the bonds had been negotiable. She recalled Tom Abbott's warning to

keep them always in her safe deposit box and the key hidden. They might

be traced if stolen, but State's Prison for the thief would be cold

comfort if the bonds had been cashed and the money spent.

She had always had one of the lighter Italian pieces in her bedroom, a

beautiful cabinet of carved and gilded oak nearly black with age. Like

all such it had a secret drawer and here she had kept her keys, and her

jewels during the winter.

Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain

little gilded face on the panel? ... All her friends, of course:

Aileen, Sibyl, Alice, Olive, Janet, Hélène.... Unthinkable to have a

secret drawer in an old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some

Borgia or other, and not exhibit it to one's chosen friends.

She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had

kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was

applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They

had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had

remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and

jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe

under the stairs.

It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable

stones, reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine

pieces she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of

the family out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished

but more opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother

slept. Her pearl necklace had been the present of her more intimate

group of friends.

Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although

she seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went

abroad, in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified

glance in the coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat.

But her attention riveted itself once more on the empty box at her

feet. A third of her fortune, and gone beyond redemption. Her stunned

mind grasped that fact at once. No one stole bonds to keep them. But

who was the thief?

Not any of her old friends. They might gamble, or drink, or deceive

their legal guardians, but they drew the line at stealing. Certain sins

lie within the social code and others do not. Women of her class,

unless kleptomaniac, did not steal. It wasn't done. With reason or

unreason they classed thieves of any sort with harlots, burglars,

firebugs, embezzlers, forgers, murderers, and common people who

overdressed and drank too much in public; and withdrew their skirts.

Moreover, Aileen had been with her in Europe. Olive lived there. Janet

and Sibyl had more money than they could spend. The Ruylers were

ranching, and Hélène was in Adler's Sanatorium with a new baby. Alice

had gone to Santa Barbara before she left and had not returned.

It was insulting even to pass them in review, but the mind works in

erratic curves under shock.

Gora had taken the thousand dollars Mortimer had returned to her and

gone first to Lake Tahoe and then to Honolulu to write a novel. She

would return on the morrow.

Mortimer.

It was incredible. Monstrous. She was outrageous even to link his name

with such a deed. He was the soul of honor. He might not be a genius

but no man had a cleaner reputation. She had lived with him now for

over six years and she had never ... never ... never ...

And she knew, unconsentingly, infallibly, that Mortimer had stolen the

bonds.

CHAPTER VII

Alexina drew the jewel coffer from the depths of the compartment and

opened it with fingers that felt swollen and numb. But the jewels were

there, and she experienced a feeling of fleeting satisfaction. They

were no part of her fortune, for she believed that only want would ever

induce her to sell them, but at least they were her own personal

treasure and a part of the beauty of life.

She returned the fallen box to its place and locked the little

cupboard, then took herself in hand. Neither the keeper outside the

door of the vault nor those she met above must suspect that anything

was wrong with her. What she should do she had no idea at the moment,

but at all events she must have time to think.

She left the bank with her usual light step and her head high, and then

she motored down the Peninsula. As she passed the shipyards she saw

crowds of men standing about; some of them turned and scowled after

her. They were on strike and took her no doubt for the wife or daughter

of a millionaire; and in truth there was never any difference

superficially in her appearance from that of her wealthier friends. She

had one ear instead of several hut it was perfect of its kind. Her

wardrobe was by no means as extensive as Sibyl's or Janet's or a

hundred others, but what she had came from the best houses, that use

only the costliest materials. Her face was composed and proud. There

was not a signal out, even from her brilliant expressive eyes, of the

storm within.

Her mind was no longer stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury.

How dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and

separate.... She felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if

her jewel coffer instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was

the instinct of possession that had been outraged. What was hers was

hers as much as the hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind ... an

instinct that harked back to the oldest of the buried civilizations ...

she wondered if any socialist really had cultivated the power to feel

differently. She was quite certain that if Kirkpatrick should see a

thief fleeing with his purse he would chase him, collar him, and either

chastise him then and there or drag him to the nearest police station.

And the thief was her husband, the man of her choice. Alexina felt that

possibly if a brother had stolen her money she would have been less

bitter because less humiliated; one did not select one's brothers....

And if she had still loved Mortimer it would have been bad enough,

although no doubt with the blindness of youthful passion she would

immediately have begun to make excuses for him, reeling a blow as it

would have been. But the one compensation she had found in her

matrimonial wilderness was her pride in the essential honor of her

chosen partner, and her complete trust. If there had been any necessity

for giving a power of attorney when she went to Europe she would have

drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so completely had she

forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution.... If she had, no

doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless.

Whether he had stolen the money to speculate with or to extricate

himself from some business muddle she did not pause to wonder. He had

lost it; that was sufficiently evident from his depression. When his

powers of bluff failed him matters were serious indeed.

He had stolen and lost. The first would have been unforgivable, but the

last was unpardonable.

And he had taken her money as he would have taken Gora's, or his

parents' had they been alive, because however they might lash him with

their contempt, his body was safe from prison, his precious position in

society unshaken. She knew him well enough to be sure that if he had

had forty thousand dollars of some outsider's money under his hand it

would have been safe no matter what his predicament. He would have

accepted the alternative of bankruptcy without hesitation.

But with the women of his family a man was always safe. She remembered

something that Gora had once said to the same effect.... Yes, she could

have forgiven the theft of an outsider, for at least she would be

spared this sickening suffocating sensation of contempt. It was

demoralizing. She hated herself as much as she hated him. Moreover

there would have been some compensation in sending an outsider to San

Quentin.

And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand

dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she

was visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid

half the household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to

pay any. They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay

taxes, subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay

the doctor and the dentist ... a hundred and one other incidentals ...

out of four thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They

would have to change their mode of living.

However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a

plain talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even

had she wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have

things out and over with. But it would be horrible ... horribly

intimate. She had always deliberately lived on the surface with her

family and friends, respected their privacies as she held hers

inviolate. As her mind flashed back over her life she realized that

this would be the first really serious personal talk she would ever

have held with any one. Or, if her family, and occasionally, Mortimer,

had insisted upon being serious she had maintained her own attitude of

airy humor or delicate insolence.

She had no shyness of manner but a deep and intense shyness of the

soul. Some day ... perhaps ... but never yet.

She turned her car after a time, for she feared that her batteries

would run down. The strikers were still lounging and scowling; and this

time having relaxed her mental girths she looked at them with sympathy.

She knew from the liberal education she had received at the hands of

Mr. James Kirkpatrick, and the admissions of Judge Lawton and other

thoughtful men, that the iniquities of employers and labor were pretty

equally divided; greed and lack of tact on the one hand, greed and

class hatred and the itch for power on the part of labor leaders; and a

stupidity in the mass that was more pardonable than the short-sighted

stupidities of capital.... But what would you? A few centuries hence

the world might be civilized, but not in her time. Nothing gave her

mind less exercise. One thing at least was certain and that was that

when strikes lasted too long the laborers and their families went

hungry, and the employers did not. That settled the question for her

and determined the course of her sympathy. (It was not yet the fashion

to recognize the unfortunate "public," squeezed and helpless between

these two louder demonstrators of sheer human nature.)

But her mind did not linger in the shipyards. She had problems of her

own.... The chief of her compensations, having made a mess of her life,

had been taken from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she

was bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not

noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in

its wake.... She had had enough left, more than many women who had made

the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony.... And

now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a

liner about to sail through the Golden Gate ... but she would no doubt

have to live on ... and on ... in changed, possibly humble, conditions

... despising the man she must meet sometime every day.... Yes, she did

wish she never had been born.

CHAPTER VIII

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.

CHAPTER IX

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.

CHAPTER X

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 in

sight."

"But you believe she'd like to precipitate a war in Europe for her own

purposes?"

"She'd like it all right." And he quoted freely from Treitschke and

Bernhardi, while Alexina as ever looked at him in wonder. He seemed to

be more deeply read every time she met him, and he remained exactly the

same James Kirkpatrick. "What an adventitious thing breeding was!

Mortimer had it!"

"Well, I am glad I spoke of it. You have relieved my mind, for you

speak as one with authority.... There is something else I want to talk

to you about.... A friend of mine is in a dilemma and I don't quite

know how to advise her.... We're all such a silly set of moths--"

"No moth about you!" interrupted Mr. Kirkpatrick firmly. "Some of

them--those others, if you like. The only redeeming virtue I can see in

most of them is that they are what they are and don't give a damn. But

you--you've got more brains and common sense than the whole bunch of

women in this town put together."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm afraid I've addled my brains trying to

cultivate them, and what I'm more afraid of is that I've addled my

common sense." She spoke with such gayety, with such a roguish twinkle,

and curve of lip, that neither then nor later did he suspect that she

was the heroine of her own tale.

"Well, fire away. No, thanks, no more. I only drink tea to please you

anyway. Tea is so much hot water to me."

"Well, smoke." She pushed the box of cigarettes toward him. "I know you

smoke a pipe, but I won't let my husband smoke one at home. It's bad

for my curtains.... This is it--One of my friends, poor thing, has had

a terrible experience: discovered that her husband has stolen the part

of her little fortune whose income enabled them to do something more

than keep alive. You see, it's a sad case. She believed in him, and he

had always been the most honest creature in the world; and that's as

much of a blow as the loss of the money."

"What'd he do it for?"

"Oh, I know so little about business ... he wanted to get rich too

quickly I suppose ... speculated or something ... perhaps got into a

hole. This has been a bad year."

"Poor chap!" said Kirkpatriek reflectively.

"You're not commiserating _him_?"

"Ain't I, just? He done it, didn't he? He's got to pay the piper,

hasn't he? Women don't know anything about the awful struggles and

temptations of the rotten business world. He didn't do it because he

wanted to, you can bet your life on that. He's just another poor victim

of a vicious system. A fly in the same old web; same old fat spider in

the middle! Not capital enough. Hard times and the little man goes

under, no matter if he's a darn sight better fellow than the bloated

beast on top--"

"You mean if we were living in the Socialistic Utopia no man could go

under?"

"I mean just that. It's a sin and a shame, A fine young fellow--"

"Remember, you don't know anything about him. He's not a bad sort and

has always been quite honest before; but he's not very clever. If he

were he wouldn't have got himself into a predicament. He had a good

start, far better than nine-tenths of the millionaires in this country

had in their youth."

"Oh, I don't care anything about that. If all men were equally clever

in chasing the almighty dollar there'd be no excuse for socialism. It's

our job to displace the present rotten system of government with one in

which the weak couldn't be crowded out, where all that are willing to

work will have an equal chance--and those that ain't willing will have

to work anyhow or starve.... One of the thousand things the matter with

the present system is that the square man is so often in the round

hole. In the socialized state every man will be guided to the place

which exactly fits his abilities. No weaker to the wall there."

"You think you can defy Nature to that extent!"

"You bet."

"Well. I'm too much distracted by my friend's predicament to discuss

socialism.... I rather like the idea though of the strong man having

the opportunity to prove himself stronger than Life ... find out what,

he was put on earth and endowed with certain characteristics for ...

rather a pity all that should atrophy.... However--what shall my friend

do? Continue to live with a man she despises?"

"She's no right to despise him or anybody. It's the system, I tell you.

And no doubt she's just as weak in some way herself. Every man jack of

us is so chuck full of faults and potential crime it's a wonder we

don't break out every day in the week, and if women are going to desert

us when the old Adam runs head on into some one of the devilish traps

the present civilization has set out all over the place, instead of

being able to sidestep it once more, well--she'd best divorce herself

from the idea of matrimony before she goes in for the thing itself.

Would I desert my brother if he got into trouble? Would you?"

"N--o, I suppose you are right, and I doubt if she would leave him

anyway. However ... there's the other aspect. What can a woman in her

position do to help matters out? You have met a good many of her kind

here. Fancy Miss Lawton or Mrs. Bascom or Miss Maynard forced to work--"

"I can't. If I had imagination enough for that I'd be writin' novels

like Miss Dwight."

"I believe they'd do better than you think. Well, this friend isn't

quite so much absorbed in society and poker and dress. She's more

like--well, there's Mrs. Ruyler, for instance. She was very much like

the rest of us, and now we never see her. She's as devoted to ranching

as her husband."

"There was sound bourgeois French blood there," he said shrewdly. "And

she wasn't brought up like the rest of you. Don't you forget that."

"Then you think we're hopeless?"

"No, I don't. Three or four women of your crowd--a little older, that's

all--are doin' first-rate in business, and they were light-headed

enough in their time, I'll warrant. And you, for instance--if you came

up against it--"

"Yes? What could I do?" cried Alexina gayly. "But alas! you admit you

have no imagination."

"Don't need any. You'd be good for several things. You could go into

the insurance business like Mrs. Lake, or into real estate like Mrs.

Cole--people like to have a pretty and stylish young lady showin' 'em

round flats. Or you could buy an orchard like the Ruylers--that'd

require capital. If we had the socialistic state you'd be put on one of

the thinking boards, so to speak. That's the point. You've got no

training, but you've got a thinker. You'd soon learn. But I'm not so

sure of your friend. Somehow, you've given me the impression she's just

one of these lady-birds."

"I'm afraid she is," said Alexina with a sigh. "But you're so good to

take an interest.... Suppose you had the socialistic state

now--to-morrow, what would you do with all these--lady-birds?"

"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up,

and then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal

physical condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one

of 'em."

"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?"

"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn."

CHAPTER XI

She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of

the great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in

their beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers

and civilians were armed to the teeth.

"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No

wonder some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course

they're fools, just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but

you can't blame 'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If

Marx had been a good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day.

Things didn't turn out according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat

ain't proletariat any longer, instead of overrunning the earth; and in

place of a handful of great capitalists to fight we've a few hundred

thousand little capitalists, or good wage earners with white collars

on, that have about as much use for socialism as they have for

man-eating tigers. I'm thinking about this country principally. Too

much chance for the individual. Trouble is, the individual, like as

not, don't know what's good for him and goes under, like the man you've

been telling me about."

"There's only one thing I apprehend in your socialistic state," said

Alexina, who always became frivolous when Kirkpatrick waxed serious,

"and that is universal dissolution from sheer ennui. Either that or

we'll go on eternally rowing about something else. Earth has never been

free from war since the beginning of history, and there is trouble of

some sort going on somewhere all the time--"

"All due to capitalism."

"Capitalism hasn't always existed."

"Human greed has, and the dominance of the strong over the weak."

"Exactly, and socialism if she ever gets her chance will dominate all

she knows how. Remember what you said just now about forcing the

pampered women to work when they were the underdog. But the point is

that Nature made Earthians a fighting breed. She must have had a good

laugh when we named another planet Mars."

"Well, we'll fight about worthier things."

"Don't be too sure. We fight about other things now. All the trouble in

the world isn't caused by money or the want of it. And what about the

religious wars--"

III

It was at this inopportune moment that they met Mortimer. If Alexina

had remembered that this was his homing hour she would have parted from

her visitor at the drawing-room door; but in truth she had dismissed

Mortimer from her mind.

He halted some paces off and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume

to the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue

sloped abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to

keep from grinding his teeth.

Alexina went forward and placed her hand within his arm, giving it a

warning pressure.

"Now, at last, you and Mr. Kirkpatrick will meet. You've always so

snubbed our little attempts to understand some of the things that men

know all about, that you've never met any of our teachers. But no one

has taught, me as much as Mr. Kirkpatrick, so shake hands at once and

be friends."

Mortimer extended a straight and wooden hand. Kirkpatrick touched, and

dropped it as if lie feared contamination, Mortimer ascended a few

steps and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated

disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the

speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle

skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out

his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals.

Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice,

and continued to look like a stage lord dismissing a varlet.

Kirkpatrick caught Alexina's imploring eyes and turned abruptly on his

heel, "So long," he said. "Guess I'd better be getting on."

"I won't have that fellow in the house," said Mortimer, in a low tone

of white fury. "To think that my wife--my wife--"

"If you don't mind we won't talk about it."

Alexina was on the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the

air. She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop

and when she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to

elongate like the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever

happened to have incurred her wrath.

Mortimer glowered at her. He had many grievances. For the moment he

forgot that she might have any against him.

"And out here in broad daylight, almost on the street, in that tea

gown--"

"I have often been quite on the street in similar ones. Going over to

Aileen's. You forget that the Western Addition is like a great park set

with the homes of people more or less intimate."

Mortimer made no further remarks. He had never pretended to be a match

for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him

temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for

although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more

relish. As he settled himself to his cigar in a comfortable wicker

chair on the terrace and she was about to return to the house he spoke

abruptly in a faint firm voice.

"Will you stay here? I've got something to say to you."

"Oh?"

She wheeled about. His face was a sickly greenish white in the heavy

shade of the trees.

"It's--it's--something I've been wanting to say--tell you ... as well

now as any time."

"Oh, very well. I must write just one letter."

She ran into the house and up the stairs and shut herself in the

library, breathless, panic-stricken. He was going to confess! How

awful! How awful! How could she ever go through with it? Why, why,

hadn't she spoken at once and got it over?

She sat quite still until she had ceased trembling and her heart no

longer pounded and affected her breathing. Then she set her teeth and

went downstairs.

CHAPTER XII

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?"

He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so