"Shall we walk over to the lake," the girl suggested gently, as if anxious
to humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we can
explore, all cool and shady, and this sun is growing oppressive."
Sommers accepted gratefully the concession she made to his unsocial mood.
The ravine path revealed unexpected wildness and freshness. The peace of
twilight had already descended there. Miss Hitchcock strolled on,
apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting between
them and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm of the occasion, and,
content with evading the chattering crowd, refrained from all strenuous
discussion. This happy, well-bred, contented woman, full of vitality and
interest, soothed all asperities. She laid him in subtle subjection to her.
So they chatted of the trivial things that must be crossed and explored
before understanding can come. When they neared the lake, the sun had sunk
so far that the beach was one long, dark strip of shade. The little waves
lapped coolly along the breakwaters. They continued their stroll, walking
easily on the hard sand, each unwilling to break the moment of perfect
adjustment. Finally the girl confessed her fatigue, and sat down beside a
breakwater, throwing off her hat, and pushing her hair away from her
temples. She looked up at the man and smiled. 'You see,' she seemed to say,
'I can meet you on your own ground, and the world is very beautiful when
one gets away, when one gets away!'
"Why did you refuse to go abroad with Uncle Brome?" she asked suddenly. She
was looking out idly across the lake, but something in her voice puzzled
Sommers.
"I didn't want to go."
"Chicago fascinates you already!"
"There were more reasons than one," he answered, after a moment's
hesitation, as if he could trust himself no farther. The girl smiled a bit,
quite to herself. Her throat palpitated a little, and then she turned her
head.
"Tell me about the cases. Are they so interesting?"
"There is one curious case," the young doctor responded with masculine
literalness. "It's hardly a case, but an affair I have mixed myself up
with. Do you remember the night of the dinner at your house when Lindsay
was there? The evening before I had been at the Paysons' dance, and when I
returned there was an emergency case just brought to the hospital. They had
telephoned for me, but had missed me. Well, the fellow was a drunken brute
that had been shot a number of times. His wife was with him."
Sommers paused, finding now that he had started on his tale that it was
difficult to bring out his point, to make this girl understand the
significance of it, and the reason why he told it to her. She was
attentive, but he thought she was a trifle bored. Soon he began again and
went over all the steps of the affair.
"You see," he concluded, "I was morally certain that, if the operation
succeeded, the fellow would be worse than useless in this world. Now it's
coming true. Of course _I_ have no responsibility; I did what any
other doctor should have done, I suppose; and, if it had been an ordinary
hospital case, I don't suppose that I should have thought twice about it.
But you see that I--this woman has got her load of misery saddled on her,
perhaps for life, and partly through me."
"I think she did right," the girl responded quickly, looking at the case
from an entirely different side.
"I am not sure of that," Sommers retorted brusquely.
"What kind of a woman is she?" the girl inquired with interest, ignoring
his last remark.
"I don't think I could make you understand her. I don't myself now."
"Is she pretty?"
"I don't know. She makes you see her always."
The girl moved as if the evening wind had touched her, and put on her hat.
"She's a desperately literal woman, primitive, the kind you never
meet--well, out here. She has a thirst for happiness, and doesn't get a
drop."
"She must be common, or she wouldn't have married that man," Miss Hitchcock
commented in a hard tone. She rose, and without discussion they took the
path that led along the bluff to the cottages.
"I didn't think so," the doctor answered positively. "And if you knew her,
you wouldn't think so."
After a moment he said tentatively, "I wish you could meet her."
"I should be glad to," Miss Hitchcock replied sweetly, but without
interest.
Sommers realized the instant he had spoken that he had made a mistake, that
his idea was a purely conventional one. The two women could have nothing
but their sex in common, and that common possession was as likely to be a
ground for difference as for agreement. It was always useless to bring two
people of different classes together. Three generations back the families
of these two women were probably on the same level of society. And, as
woman to woman, the schoolteacher, who travelled the dreary path between
the dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beauty
as this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, to
ignore the present facts. Evidently Miss Hitchcock had followed the same
line of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly to Mrs.
Preston.
"Those people--teachers--have their own clubs and society. Mrs. Bannerton
was a teacher in the schools before she was married. Do you know Mrs.
Bannerton?"
"I have met Mrs. Bannerton," Sommers answered indifferently.
He was annoyed at the trivial insertion of Mrs. Bannerton into the
conversation. He had failed to make Mrs. Preston's story appear important,
or even interesting, and the girl by his side had shown him delicately that
he was a bore. They walked more rapidly in the gathering twilight. The sun
had sunk behind the trees, and the ravine below their path was gloomy. The
mood of the day had changed, and he was sorry--for everything. It was a
petty matter--it was always some petty thing--that came in between them. He
longed to recall the moment on the beach when she had asked him, with a
flicker of a smile upon her face, why he had decided to remain in Chicago.
But they were strangers to each other now,--hopelessly strangers,--and the
worst of it was that they both knew it.
* * * * *
There was a large house party at the Hitchcock cottage. The Porters and the
Lindsays, with other guests, were there for the holidays of the Fourth, and
some more people came in for dinner. The men who had arrived on the late
trains brought more news of the strike: the Illinois Central was tied up,
the Rock Island service was crippled, and there were reports that the
Northwestern men were going out _en masse_ on the morrow. The younger
people took the matter gayly, as an opportune occasion for an extended
lark. The older men discussed the strike from all sides, and looked grave.
Over the cigars the general attitude toward the situation came out
strongly: the strikers were rash fools; they'd find that out in a few
weeks. They could do a great deal of harm under their dangerous leaders,
but, if need be, the courts, the state, the federal government, would be
invoked for aid. Law and order and private rights must be respected. The
men said these things ponderously, with the conviction that they were
reciting a holy creed of eternal right. They were men of experience, who
had never questioned the worth of the society in which they were privileged
to live. They knew each other, and they knew life, and at the bottom it was
as useless to kick against the laws of society as to interfere with the
laws of nature. Besides, it was all very good--a fair enough field for any
one.
Sommers was excited by the reports. It made him restless to be lolling here
outside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lake
under the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, and
finally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the counsel for a
large railroad.
"Who is that raw youth?" old Boardman asked Porter, when the younger men
joined the ladies on the veranda.
"Some protege of Alec's," Brome Porter replied. "Son of an old
friend--fresh chap."
"I am afraid our young friend is not going to turn out well," Dr. Lindsay,
who had overheard the discussion, added in a distressed tone. "I have done
what I can for him, but he is very opinionated and green--yes, very green.
Pity--he is a clever fellow, one of the cleverest young surgeons in the
city."
"He talks about what he doesn't _know_," Boardman pronounced
sententiously. "When he's lived with decent folks a little longer, he'll
get some sense knocked into his puppy head, maybe."
"Maybe," Brome Porter assented, dismissing this crude, raw, green, ignorant
young man with a contemptuous grunt.
Outside on the brick terrace the younger people had gathered in a circle
and were discussing the polo match. Miss Hitchcock's clear, mocking voice
could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon.
The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he
had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker
Hitchcock came to his rescue.
"I say, Lou, it's absurd to compare us with the teams east. We haven't the
stable. Who ever heard of playing with two ponies?"
He appealed to Sommers, who happened to be seated next him.
"Steve Bayliss buys ponies by the carload and takes his pick. You can't
play polo without good ponies, can you?"
"I don't know," Sommers answered indifferently.
He was looking at the lights along the shore, and contriving some excuse to
cut short his visit. It was clear that he was uncomfortably out of his
element in the chattering circle. He was too dull to add joy to such a
gathering, and he got little joy from it. And he was feverishly anxious to
be doing something, to put his hand to some plough--to escape the perpetual
irritation of talk.
The chatter went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up
into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach,
Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable
purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talked
admiringly of the manner in which the general managers had taken hold of
the strike.
"Most of them are from the ranks, you know," he said, "fought their way up
to the head, just as any one of those fellows could if he had the ability,
and they _know_ what they're doing."
"There is no one so bitter, so arrogant, so proud as your son of a peasant
who has got the upper hand," Sommers commented philosophically.
"The son of a peasant?" Lindsay repeated, bewildered.
"Yes, that's what our money-makers are,--from the soil, from the masses.
And when they feel their power, they use it worse than the most arrogant
aristocrats. Of course the strikers are all wrong, poor fools!" he hastened
to add. "But they are not as bad as the others, as _those who have_.
The men will be licked fast enough, and licked badly. They always will be.
But it is a brutal game, a brutal game, this business success,--a good deal
worse than war, where you line up in the open at least."
Sommers spoke nonchalantly, as if his views could not interest Dr. Lindsay,
but were interesting to himself, nevertheless.
"That's pretty fierce!" Lindsay remarked, with a laugh. "I guess you
haven't seen much of business. If you had been here during the anarchist
riots--"
Sommers involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. The anarchist was the most
terrifying bugaboo in Chicago, referred to as a kind of Asiatic plague that
might break out at any time. Before Lindsay could get his argument
launched, however, some of the guests drifted out to the terrace, and the
two men separated.
Later in the evening Sommers found Miss Hitchcock alone, and explained to
her that he should have to leave in the morning, as that would probably be
the last chance to reach Chicago for some days. She did not urge him to
stay, and expressed her regret at his departure in conventional phrases.
They were standing by the edge of the terrace, which ran along the bluff
above the lake. A faint murmur of little waves rose to them from the beach
beneath.
"It is so heavenly quiet!" the girl murmured, as if to reproach his
dissatisfied, restless spirit. "So this is good-bye?" she added, at length.
Sommers knew that she meant this would be the end of their intimacy, of
anything but the commonplace service of the world.
"I hope not," he answered regretfully.
"Why is it we differ?" she asked swiftly. "I am sorry we should disagree on
such really unimportant matters."
"Don't say that," Sommers protested. "You know that it is just because you
are intelligent and big enough to realize that they _are_ important
that--"
"We strike them every time?" she inquired.
"Laura Lindsay and Caspar would think we were drivelling idiots."
"I am not so sure they wouldn't be right!" She laughed nervously, and
locked her hands tightly together. He turned away in discomfort, and
neither spoke for a long time. Finally he broke the silence,--
"At any rate, you can see that I am scarcely a fit guest!"
"So you are determined to go in this way--back to your--case?"
At the scorn of her last words Sommers threw up his head haughtily.
"Yes, back to my case."