"Well, how about that _now_?" asked young Haight with a nervous laugh.
"Ah," answered Turner, "how do I know--so soon!"
"But what do you _think_, Turner?" he persisted.
"But I haven't thought at all," she returned.
"Well, think now!" he went on. "Tell me--how about that?"
"About _what_?"
"Ah, you know what I mean," young Haight replied, feeling like a little
boy, "about what you said at your house that Sunday night. Please tell
me; you don't know how much it means to me."
"Oh, there's Delphine at the door!" suddenly exclaimed Turner. "Now,
really, I _must_ go down. She doesn't know where to go; she's so
stupid!"
"No," he answered, "not until you tell me!" He caught her hand, refusing
to let it go.
"Ah, how mean you are to corner me so!" she cried laughing and
embarrassed. "Must I--well--I know I shouldn't. _O-oh_, I just _detest_
you!" Young Haight turned her hand palm upward and kissed the little
circle of crumpled flesh that showed where her glove buttoned. Then she
tore her hand away and ran downstairs, while he followed more slowly.
On her way back to the dressing-room she met him again, crossing the
hall.
"Don't you want to see me home?" she said.
"Do I _want_ to?" shouted young Haight.
"Oh, but I forgot," she cried. "You can't. I won't let you. You have
your other dances engaged!"
"Oh, damn the other dances!" he exclaimed, but instead of being
offended, Turner only smiled.
Toward one o'clock there was a general movement to go. Henrietta Vance
and Mrs. Vance were inquired for, and the blue and white opera cloaks
reappeared, descending the stairs, disturbing the couples who were
seated there. The banging of carriage doors and the rumble of wheels
recommenced in the street. The musicians played a little longer. As the
party thinned out, there was greater dance room and a consequent greater
pleasure in dancing. These last dances at the end of the evening were
enjoyed more than all the others. But the party was breaking up fast:
Turner had already gone home; Mrs. Vance and Henrietta were back at
their places in front of the mantel, surrounded by a group of gentlemen
in capecoats and ladies in opera wraps. Every one was crying "Good-bye"
or "Good night!" and assuring Mrs. Vance and Henrietta of the
enjoyableness of the occasion. Suddenly the musicians played "Home Sweet
Home." Those still dancing uttered an exclamation of regret, but
continued waltzing to this air the same as ever. Some began to dance
again in their overcoats and opera wraps. Then at last the tired
musicians stopped and reached for the cases of their instruments, and
the remaining guests, seized with a sudden panic lest they should be the
last to leave, fled to the dressing-rooms. These were in the greatest
confusion, every one was in a hurry; in the gentlemen's dressing-room
there was a great putting on of coats and mufflers and a searching for
misplaced gloves, hats and canes. A base hum of talk rose in the air,
bits and ends of conversation being tossed back and forth across the
room. "_You_ haven't seen my hat, have you, Jimmy?" "Did you meet that
girl I was telling you about?" "Hello, old man! have a good time
to-night?" "Lost your hat? No, I haven't seen it." "Yes, about half-past
ten!" "Well, I told him that myself!" "Ah, you bet it's the man that
rustles that gets there." "Come round about four, then." "What's the
matter with coming home in _our_ carriage?"
At the doors of the dressing-rooms the ladies joined their escorts, and
a great crowd formed in the halls, worming down the stairs and out upon
the front steps. As the first groups reached the open air there was a
great cry: "Why, it's pouring rain!" This was taken up and repeated and
carried all the way back into the house. There were exclamations of
dismay and annoyance: "Why, it's raining right _down_!" "What _shall_ we
do!" Tempers were lost, brothers and sisters quarrelling with each other
over the question of umbrellas. "Ah," said Geary, delighted, peeling the
cover from his umbrella in the vestibule, "I _thought_ it was going to
rain before I left and brought mine along with me. Ah, you bet I always
look out for rain!" On the horse-block stood the caller, chanting up the
carriages at the top of his voice. The street was full of coupés,
carriages, and hacks, the raindrops showing in a golden blur as they
fell across the streaming light of their lamps. The horses were smoking
and restless, and the drivers in oilskins and rubber blankets were
wrangling and shouting. At every instant there was a long roll of wheels
interrupted by the banging of the doors. Near the caller stood a useless
policeman, his shield pinned on the outside of his wet rubber coat, on
which the carriage lamps were momentarily reflected in long vertical
streaks.
In a short time all the guests were gone except the one young lady whose
maid and carriage had somehow not been sent. Henrietta Vance's brother
took this one home in a hired hack. Mrs. Vance and Henrietta sat down to
rest for a moment in the empty parlours. The canvas-covered floors were
littered with leaves of smilax and La France roses, with bits of ribbon,
ends of lace, and discarded Phrygian bonnets of tissue paper. The butler
and the second girl were already turning down the gas in the other
rooms.
* * * * *
Long before the party broke up Vandover had gone home, stunned and
dazed, as yet hardly able to realize the meaning of what had happened.
Some strange and dreadful change had taken place; things were different,
people were different to him; not every one had been so outspoken as
Turner, Henrietta Vance and her mother, but even amongst others who had
talked to him politely and courteously enough, the change was no less
apparent. It was in the air, a certain vague shrinking and turning of
the shoulder, a general atmosphere of aversion and repulsion, an unseen
frown, an unexpressed rebuff, intangible, illusive, but as unmistakable
as his own existence. The world he had known knew him now no longer. It
was ostracism at last.
But why? Why? Sitting over his tiled flamboyant stove, brooding into the
winking coals, Vandover asked himself the question in vain. He knew what
latitude young men were allowed by society; he was sure nothing short of
discovered crime could affect them. True enough he had at one time
allowed himself to drift into considerable dissipation, but he was done
with that now, he had reformed, he had turned over a new leaf. Even at
his worst he had only lived the life of the other young men around him,
the other young men who were received as much as ever, even though
people, the girls themselves, practically knew of what they did, knew
that they were often drunk, and that they frequented the society of
abandoned women. What had he done to merit this casting off? What
_could_ he have done? He even went so far as to wonder if there was
anything wrong about his father or his sudden death.
A little after one o'clock he heard Geary's whistle in the street
outside. "Hello, old man!" he cried as Vandover opened the window. "I
was just on my way home from the hoe-down; saw a light in your window
and thought I'd call you up. Say, have you got anything wet up there?
I'm extra dry."
"Yes," said Vandover, "come on up!"
"Did you hear what Beale said to me this evening?" said Geary, as he
mixed himself a cocktail at the sideboard. "Oh, I tell you, I'm getting
right in, down at that office. Beale wants me to take the place of one
of the assistants in the firm, a fellow who's got the consumption,
coughing up his lungs all the time. It's an important place, hundred a
month; that's right. Yes, sir; you bet, I'm going to get in and rustle
now and make myself so indispensable in that fellow's place that they
can't get along without me. I'll crowd him right out; I know it may be
selfish, but, damn it! that's what you have to do to get along. It's
human nature. I'll tell you right here to-night," he exclaimed with
sudden energy, clenching his fist and slowly rapping the knuckles on the
table to emphasize each word, "that I'll be the head of that firm some
day, or I'll know the reason why."
When Geary finally became silent, the two looked into the fire for some
time without speaking. At last Geary said:
"You came home early to-night, didn't you?"
"Yes," answered Vandover, stirring uneasily. "Yes, I did."
There was another silence. Then Geary said abruptly: "It's too bad. They
are kind of stinky-pinky to you."
"Yes," said Vandover with a grin. "_I_ don't know what's the matter.
Everybody seems nasty!"
"It's that business with Ida Wade, you know," replied Geary. "It got
around somehow that she killed herself on your account. Everybody seems
to be on to it. I heard it--oh, nearly a month ago."
"Oh," said Vandover with a short laugh, "that's it, is it? I was
wondering."
"Yes, that's it," answered Geary. "You see they don't know for sure; no
one _knows_, but all at once every one seemed to be talking about it,
and they suspect an awful lot. I guess they are pretty near right,
aren't they?" He did not wait for an answer, but laughed clumsily and
went on: "You see, you always have to be awfully careful in those
things, or you'll get into a box. Ah, you bet I don't let any girl _I_
go with know _my_ last name or _my_ address if I can help it. I'm clever
enough for that; you have to manage very carefully; ah, you bet! You
ought to have looked out for that, old man!" He paused a moment and then
went on: "Oh, I guess it will be all right, all right, in a little
while. They will forget about it, you know. I wouldn't worry. I guess it
will be all right."
"Yes," answered Vandover absently, "I guess so--perhaps."
A few days later Vandover was in the reading-room of the Mechanics
Library, listlessly turning over the pages of a volume of _l'Art_. It
was Saturday morning and the place was full of ladies who were downtown
for their shopping and marketing, and who had come in either to change
their books or to keep appointments with each other. On a sudden
Vandover saw Turner just passing into the Biography alcove. He got up
and followed her. She was standing at the end of the dim book-lined
tunnel, searching the upper shelves, her head and throat bent back, and
her gloved finger on her lip. The faint odour of the perfume she always
affected came to him mingled with the fragrance of the jonquils at her
belt and the smell of leather and of books that exhaled from the shelves
on either side. He did not offer to take her hand, but came up slowly,
speaking in a low voice.
It was the last time that Vandover ever met Turner Ravis. They talked
for upward of an hour, leaning against the opposite book-shelves,
Vandover with his fists in his pockets, his head bent down, and the
point of his shoe tracing the pattern in the linoleum carpet; Turner,
her hands clasped in front of her, looking him squarely in the face,
speaking calmly and frankly.
"Now, I hope you see just how it is, Van," she said at length. "What has
happened hasn't made me cease to care for you, because if I had really
cared for you the way I thought I did, the way a girl ought to care for
the man she wants to marry, I would have stood by you through
everything, no matter what you did. I don't do so now, because I find I
don't care for you as much as I thought I did. What has happened has
only shown me that. I'm sorry, oh, so sorry to be disappointed in you,
but it's because I only think of you as being once a very good friend of
mine, not because I love you as you think I did. Once--a long time
ago--when we first knew each other, then, perhaps--things were different
then. But somehow we seem to have grown away from that. Since then we
have both been mistaken; you thought I cared for you in that way, and I
thought so, too, and I thought you cared for me; but it was only that we
were keeping up appearances, pretending to ourselves just for the sake
of old times. We don't love each other now; you know it. But I have
never intentionally deceived you or tried to lead you on; when I told
you I cared for you I really thought I did. I meant to be sincere; I
always thought so until this happened, and then when I saw how easily I
could let you go, it only proved to me that I did not care for you as I
thought I did. It was wrong of me, I know, and I should have known my
own mind before, but I didn't, I didn't. You talk about Dolly Haight;
but it is not Dolly Haight at all who has changed my affection for you.
I will be just as frank as I can with you, Van. I may learn really to
love Dolly Haight; I don't know, I think perhaps I will, but it isn't
that I care for him _just_ because I don't care for you. Can't you see,
it's just as if I had never met you. You know it's very hard for me to
say this to you, Van, and I suppose it's all mixed up, but I can't help
it. You don't know how sorry I am, because we have been such old
friends--because I really did care for you as a friend; it's a proof of
it, that there is no other man in the world I could talk to like this. I
think, too, Van, that was the only way you cared for me, just as a good
friend--except perhaps at first, when we first knew each other. You know
yourself that is so. We really haven't loved each other at all for a
long time, and now we have found it out before it was too late. And even
if everything were different, Van, don't you know how it is with girls?
They really love the man who loves them the most. Half the time they're
just in love with being loved. That's the way most girls love nowadays,
and you know yourself, Van, that Dolly Haight really loves me more than
you do." She gathered up her books and went on after a pause,
straightening up, ready to go: "If I should let myself think of what you
have done, I feel--as if--as if--why, dreadful--I--that I should hate
you, loathe you; but I try not to do that. I have been thinking it all
over since the other night. I shall always try to think of you at your
best; I have tried to forget everything else, and in forgetting it I
forgive you. I can honestly say that," she said, holding out her hand,
"I forgive you, and you must forgive me because once, by deceiving
myself, I deceived you, and made you think that I cared for you in that
way when I didn't." As their hands fell apart Turner faced him and
added, with tears in her eyes: "You know this must be good-bye for good.
You don't know how it hurts me to tell you. I know it looks as if I were
deserting you when you were alone in the world and had most need of some
one to influence you for the good. But, Van, won't you be better now?
Won't you break from it all and be your own self again? I have faith in
you. I believe it's in you to become a great man and a good man. It
isn't too late to begin all over again. Just be your better self; live
up to the best that's in you; if not for your own sake, then for the
sake of that other girl that's coming into your life some time; that
other girl who is good and sweet and pure, whom you will really, really
love and who will really, really love you."
* * * * *
All the rest of that month Vandover was wretched. So great was his shame
and humiliation over this fresh disaster that he hardly dared to show
himself out of doors. His grief was genuine and it was profound. Yet he
took his punishment in the right spirit. He did not blame any one but
himself; it was only a just retribution for the thing he had done. Only
what made it hard to bear was the fact that the chastisement had fallen
upon him long after he had repented of the crime, long after he had
resolved to lead a new and upright life; but with shut teeth he
determined still to carry out that resolve; he would devote all his
future life to living down the past. It might be hard; it might be one
long struggle through many, many years, but he would do it. Ah, yes, he
would show them; they had cast him off, but he would go away to Paris
now as he had always intended. As invariably happened when he was deeply
moved, he turned to his art, blindly and instinctively. He would go to
Paris now and study his paintings, five, ten years, and come back at
last a great artist, when these same people who had cast him off would
be proud to receive him. Turner was right in saying that he had in him
the making of a great man. He _knew_ that she was right; knew that if he
only gave the better part of him, the other Vandover, the chance, that
he would become a great artist. Well, he would do so, and then when he
came back again, when all the world was at his feet, and there were long
articles in the paper announcing his arrival, these people would throng
around him; he would show them what a great and noble nature he really
had; he would forgive them; he would ignore what they had done. He even
dramatized a little scene between himself and Turner, then Mrs. Haight.
They would both be pretty old then and he would take her children on his
lap and look at her over their heads--he could almost see those heads,
white, silky and very soft--and he would nod at her thoughtfully, and
say, "Well, I have taken your advice, do you remember?" and she was to
answer, "Yes, I remember." There were actually tears in his eyes as he
saw the scene.
At the very first he thought that he could not live without Turner; that
he loved her too much to be able to give her up. But in a little while
he saw that this was not so. She was right, too, in saying that he had
long since outlived his first sincere affection for her. He had felt for
a long time that he did not love her well enough to marry her; that he
did not love her as young Haight did, and he acknowledged to himself
that this affair at least had ended rightly. The two loved each other,
he could see that; at last he even told himself that he would be glad to
see Turner married to Dolly Haight, who was his best friend. But for all
that, it came very hard at first to give up Turner altogether; never to
see her or speak to her again.
As the first impressions of the whole affair grew dull and blunt by the
lapse of time, this humble penitential mood of Vandover's passed away
and was succeeded by a feeling of gloomy revolt, a sullen rage at the
world that had cast him off _only_ because he had been found out. He
thought it a matter of self-respect to resent the insult they had put
upon him. But little by little he ceased to regret his exile; the new
life was not so bad as he had at first anticipated, and his relations
with the men whom he knew best, Ellis, Geary, and young Haight, were in
nowise changed. He was no longer invited anywhere, and the girls he had
known never saw him when he passed them on the street. It was
humiliating enough at first, but he got used to it after a while, and by
dint of thrusting the disagreeable subject from his thoughts, by
refusing to let the disgrace sink deep in his mind, by forgetting the
whole business as much as he could, he arrived after a time to be
passably contented. His pliable character had again rearranged itself to
suit the new environment.
Along with this, however, came a sense of freedom. Now he no longer had
anything to fear from society; it had shot its bolt, it had done its
worst, there was no longer anything to restrain him, now he could do
anything.
He was in precisely this state of mind when he received the cards for
the opening of the roadhouse, the "resort" out on the Almshouse drive,
about which Toby, the waiter at the Imperial, had spoken to him.
Vandover attended it. It was a debauch of forty-eight hours, the longest
and the worst he had ever indulged in. For a long time the brute had
been numb and dormant; now at last when he woke he was raging, more
insatiable, more irresistible than ever.
The affair at the roadhouse was but the beginning. All at once Vandover
rushed into a career of dissipation, consumed with the desire of vice,
the perverse, blind, and reckless desire of the male. Drunkenness,
sensuality, gambling, debauchery, he knew them all. He rubbed elbows
with street walkers, with bookmakers, with saloonkeepers, with the
exploiters of lost women. The bartenders of the city called him by his
first name, the policemen, the night detail, were familiar with his
face, the drivers of the nighthawks recognized his figure by the street
lamps, paling in the light of many an early dawn. At one time and
another he was associated with all the different types of people in the
low "sporting set," acquaintances of an evening, whose names grew faint
to his recollection amidst the jingle of glasses and the popping of
corks, whose faces faded from his memory in the haze of tobacco smoke
and the fumes of whisky; young men of the city, rich without apparent
means of livelihood, women and girls "recently from the East" with rooms
over the fast restaurants; owners of trotting horses, actresses without
engagements, billiard-markers, pool-sellers and the sons of the
proprietors of halfway houses and "resorts." With all these Vandover
kept the pace at the Imperial, at the race-track, at the gambling tables
in the saloons and bars along Kearney and Market streets, and in the
disreputable houses amid the strong odours of musk and the rustle of
heavy silk dresses. It lasted for a year; by the end of that time he had
about forgotten his determination to go to Paris and had grown out of
touch with his three old friends, Ellis, Geary, and Haight. He seldom
saw them now; occasionally he met them in one of the little rooms of the
Imperial over their beer and Welsh rabbits, but now he always went on to
the larger rooms where one had champagne and terrapin. He felt that he
no longer was one of them.
That year the opera came to San Francisco, and Vandover hired a
messenger boy to stand in line all night at the door of the music store
where the tickets were to be sold. Vandover could still love music. In
the wreckage of all that was good that had been going on in him his love
for all art was yet intact. It was the strongest side of his nature and
it would be the last to go.