Bert was not in the apartment when she reached it; she knew her
disappointment was irrational, for she had told herself he would
not be there. However, he might telephone. She curled up in the big
chair by the window, the book in her lap, and read with a continual
consciousness of waiting. She felt that his coming or the sound of his
voice would rescue her from something within herself.
At six o'clock she told herself that he would telephone within an
hour. Experience had taught her that this way of measuring time helped
it to pass more quickly. With determined effort she concentrated
her attention upon her book, shutting out voices that clamored
heart-shaking things to her. At seven o'clock she was walking up and
down the living-room, despising herself, telling herself that nothing
had happened, that he did these things only to show her his hold on
her, that at any moment now his message would come.
For another hour she thought of many things she might have done
differently. She might have walked past the office of Clark & Hayward,
meeting him as if by accident when he came out. But that might have
annoyed him. She might have gone to some of the cafés for tea on the
chance of meeting him there. But there were so many cafés! He must be
dining in one of them now, and she could not know which one. She could
not know who might be dining with him.
"Helen Davies Kennedy, stop it! Stop it!" she said aloud. She was a
little quieter then, walking to the window, and standing there, gazing
down at the street. Her heart beat suffocatingly at the sight of each
machine that passed; she thought, until it went by, that he might be in
it.
It was the old agony again, and weariness and contempt for herself were
mingled with her pain. So many times she had waited, as she was waiting
now, and always he had come back to her, laughing at her hysteria. Why
could she not learn to bear it more easily? She might have to wait
until midnight, until later than midnight. She set her teeth.
The sudden peal of the telephone-bell in the dark room startled a
smothered cry from her. She ran, stumbling against the table, and the
receiver shook at her ear; but her voice was steady and pleasant.
"Yes?"
"Helen? Bert. I'm going south to-night on the Lark. Pack my suitcases
and ship 'em express to Bakersfield, will you?"
"What? Yes, yes. Right away. Are you--will you--be gone long?"
His voice was going on, jubilant:
"Trust your Uncle Dudley to put it over! D'you know what I got from the
tightest firm in town? Unlimited letter of credit! Get that 'unlimited'?
"Oh Bert!"
"It's the biggest land proposition ever put out in the West! Ripley
Farmland Acres I'm going to put them on the map in letters a mile high!
Believe me, I'm going to wake things up! There's half a million in it
for me if it's handled right, and, believe me, I'm some little handler!"
"I know you are! O Bert, how splendid!"
"All right. Get the suitcases off early--here's my train. Bye-bye."
"Wait a minute--when're you coming back? Can't I come, too?"
"Not yet. I'll let you know. Oh, d'you want some money?"
"Well--I haven't got much--but that isn't--"
"Send you a check. From now on I'm made of money--so long--"
"Bert dear--" she cried, against the click of a closed receiver. Then
with a long, relaxing sigh she slowly put down the telephone. After a
moment she went into the bedroom, switched on the lights, and began
to pack shirts and collars into his bags. She was smiling, because
happiness and hope had come back to her; but her hands shook, for she
was exhausted.
It was thirty-two days before she heard from him again. A post-dated
check for a hundred dollars, crushed into an envelope and mailed on the
train, had come back to her, and that was all. But she assured herself
that he was too busy to write. The month went by slowly, but it was not
unbearably dreary, for she was able to keep uneasy doubts in check,
and to live over in her memory many happy hours with him. She planned,
too, the details of the house they would have if this time he really
did make a great deal of money. He would give her a house, she knew,
whenever he could do it easily and carelessly.
When the telephone awakened her one night at midnight her first
thought was that he had come back. She was struggling into a negligée
and snatching a fresh lace cap from a drawer when it rang again and
undeceived her.
Long distance from Coalinga had a call for her and wished her to
reverse charges. She repeated the name uncertainly, and the voice
repeated: "Call from Mr. Kennedy in Coalinga--"
"Oh, yes, yes! Yes. I'll pay for it. Yes, it's O.K." She waited
nervously in the darkness until his voice came faintly to her.
"Hello, Helen! Bert. Listen. Have you got any money?"
"About thirty dollars."
"Well, listen, Helen. Wire me twenty, will you? I've got to have it
right away."
"Of course. Very first thing in the morning. Are you all right?"
"Am I all right? Good God, Helen! do you think anybody's all right when
he hasn't got any money? We've just got into this rotten burg; been
driving all day long and half the night across a desert hotter than the
hinges of the main gate, and not a drink for a hundred and forty--" His
voice blurred into a buzzing on the wire, and she caught disconnected
words: "Skinflints--over on me--they've got another guess--piker
stunt--"
She reiterated loudly that she would send the money, and heard central
relaying the words Nothing more came over the wire, though she rattled
the receiver. At last she went back to bed, to lie awake till dawn came.
She was waiting at the telegraph-office when the money-order department
opened. After she had sent the twenty dollars she tried to drink a cup
of coffee, and walked quickly back to the apartment. She felt that
she should be able to think of something to do, some action she could
take which would help Bert, and many wild schemes rushed through her
feverish brain. But she knew that she could do nothing but wait.
The telephone-bell was ringing when she reached her door. It seemed
an eternity before she could reach it. Again she assured central that
she would pay the charges, and heard his voice. He wanted to know why
she had not sent the money, then when she had sent it, then why it had
not arrived. He talked a great deal, impatiently, and she saw that his
high-strung temperament had been excited to a frenzy by disasters which
in her ignorance of business she could not know. Her heart ached with a
passion of sympathy and love; she was torn by her inability to help him.
Half an hour later he called again, and demanded the same explanations.
Then suddenly he interrupted her, and told her to come to Coalinga. It
was a rotten hole, he repeated, and he wanted her.
That he should want her was almost too much happiness, but she tried to
be cool and reasonable about it. She pointed out that she had just paid
a month's rent, that she had only ten dollars, that it might be wiser,
she might be less a burden to him, if she stayed in San Francisco.
She would make the ten dollars last a month, and that would give him
time--He interrupted her savagely. He wanted her. Was she coming or was
she throwing him down? Thought he couldn't support her, did she? He
always had done it, hadn't he? Where she'd get this sudden notion he
was no good? He could tell her Gilbert Kennedy wasn't done for yet, not
by a damned sight. Was she coming or--
"Oh, yes! yes! yes! I'll come right away!" she cried.
While she was packing, she wished that she had something to pawn She
would have braved a pawnbroker's shop herself. But the diamond ring had
gone when the Guatemala rubber plantation failed; her other jewels were
paste or semi-precious stones; her furs were too old to bring anything.
She could take Bert nothing but her courage and her faith.
She found that her ticket cost nine dollars and ninety cents. When
she reached Coalinga, after a long restless night on the train and a
two-hours' careful toilet in the swaying dressing-room, she gave the
porter the remaining dime. It was a gesture of confidence in Bert and
in the future. She was going to him with a high spirit, matching his
reckless daring with her own.
He was not on the platform. When the train had gone she still waited a
few minutes, looking at a row of one-story ramshackle buildings which
paralleled the single track. Obviously they were all saloons. A few
loungers stared at her from the sagging board sidewalk. She turned her
head, to see on either side the far level stretches of a desert broken
only by dirty splashes of sage-brush. The whole scene seemed curiously
small under a high gray sky quivering with blinding heat.
She picked up her bags and walked across the street in a white glare
of sunlight. A heavy, sickening smell rose in hot waves from the oiled
road. She felt ill. But she knew that it would be a simple matter to
find Bert in a town so small. He would be at the best hotel.
She found it easily, a two-story building of cream plaster which rose
conspicuously on the one main street. There was coolness and shade in
the wide clean lobby, and the clerk told her at once that Bert was
there. He told her where to find the room on the second floor.
Her heart fluttered when she tapped on the panels and heard Bert call,
"Come in!" She dropped her bags and rushed into a dimness thick with
the smoke of cigars. The room seemed full of men, but when the first
flurry of greetings and introductions were over and she was sitting on
the edge of the bed beside Bert, she saw that there were only five.
They were all young and appeared at the moment very gloomy. Depression
was in the air as thickly as the cigar smoke. She gathered from
their bitter talk that they were land salesmen, that a campaign in
Bakersfield had ended in some sudden disaster,--"blown up," they
said,--and that they found a miserable pleasure in repeating that
Coalinga was a "rotten territory."
Bert, lounging against the heaped-up pillows on the bed, with a cigar
in his hand and whisky and ice-water at his elbow, let them talk
until it seemed that despondency could not be more blacker, then
suddenly sitting up, he poured upon them a flood of tingling words.
His eyes glowed, his face was vividly keen and alive, and his magnetic
charm played upon them like a tangible force. Helen, sitting silent,
listening to phrases which meant nothing to her, thrilled with pride
while she watched him handle these men, awakening sparks in the dead
ashes of their enthusiasm, firing them, giving them something of his
own irresistible confidence in himself.
"I tell you fellows this thing's going to go. It's going to go big.
There's thousands of dollars in it, and every man that sticks is going
to be rolling in velvet. Get out if you want to; if you're pikers, beat
it. I don't need you. I'm going to bring into this territory the livest
bunch of salesmen that ever came home with the bacon. But I don't want
any pikers in my game. If you're going to lay down on me, do it now,
and get out."
They assured him that they were with him. The most reluctant wanted to
know something about details, there was some talk of percentage and
agreements. Bert slashed at him with cutting words, and the others
bore him down with their aroused enthusiasm. Then Bert offered to buy
drinks, and they all went out together in a jovial crowd.
Helen was left alone, to realize afresh her husband's power, and to
reflect on her own smallness and stupidity. She stifled a nagging
little worry about Bert's drinking. She always wished he would not do
it, but she knew it was a masculine habit which she did not understand
because she was a woman. After all, men accomplished the big things,
and they must be allowed to do them in their own way.
She opened the windows, but letting out the smoke let in a stifling
heat and the sickening smell of crude oil. She closed them again and
reduced the confusion of the room to orderliness, smoothing the bed,
gathering up armfuls of scattered papers and unpacking her bags. When
Bert came back a few hours later she was reading with interest a pile
of literature about Ripley Farmland Acres.
He came in exuberantly, and as she ran toward him he tossed into
the air a handful of clinking gold coins. They fell around her and
scattered rolling on the floor. "Trust your Uncle Dudley to put one
over!" he cried. "Pick 'em up! They're yours!"
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she gasped, between laughter and the tears that
now she could no longer control. Her arms were around his neck, and she
did not mind his laughing at her, though she controlled herself quickly
before his amusement could change to annoyance. "I knew you'd do it!"
she said.
It was a long time before she remembered the money. Then, gathering it
up, she was astonished to find nearly a hundred dollars. He laughed
at her again when she asked him how he had got it. It was all right.
He'd got it, hadn't he? But he told her not to pay for her meals in the
dining-room, to sign the checks instead, and from this she deduced that
his business difficulties were not yet entirely overcome. She put the
money in her purse, resolving to save it.
She discovered that he now owned a large green automobile. Apparently
he had bought it in Bakersfield, for it had been some months since
he had sold the gray one. In the afternoon they drove out to the oil
leases, and she sat in the machine while the salesmen scattered to look
for land-buyers.
The novelty of the scene was sufficient occupation for her. Low hills
of yellow sand, shimmering in glassy heat-waves, were covered with
innumerable derricks, which in the distance looked like a weird forest
without leaf or shade and near at hand suggested to her grotesque
creatures animated by unnatural life, their long necks moving up and
down with a chugging sound. There were huddles of little houses,
patchworks of boards and canvas, and now and then she saw faded women
in calico dresses, or a child sitting half naked and gasping in the hot
shadows. She felt that she was in a foreign land, and the far level
desert stretching into a haze of blue on the eastern sky-line seemed
like a sea between her and all that she had known.
The salesmen were morose when they returned to the machine, and Bert's
enthusiasm was forced. "There's millions of dollars a year pouring out
of these wells," he declared. "We're going to get ours, boys, believe
me!" But they did not respond, and Helen felt an increasing tension
while they drove back to town through a blue twilight. She thought with
relief of the gold pieces in her purse.
After supper Bert sent her to their room, and she lay in her nightgown
on sheets that were hot to the touch, and panted while she read of
Ripley Farmland Acres. The literature was reassuring; it seemed to
her that any one would buy land so good on such astonishingly low
terms. But her uneasiness increased like an intolerable tightening of
the nerves, and her enforced inaction in this crisis that she did not
understand tortured her. It occurred to her that she was still able to
telegraph, and until she dismissed the thought as unfair to Bert she
was tantalized by a wild idea of once more having some control of her
fate.
It was nearly midnight when he came in, and she saw that any questions
would drive him into a fury of irritated nerves. In the morning, she
thought, he would be in a more approachable mood. But when she awakened
in the dawn he was gone.
She did not see him until nearly noon. After sitting for some time in
the lobby and exploring as much of the sleepy town as she could without
losing sight of the hotel entrance to which he might come, she had
returned to the row of chairs beside it and was sitting there when he
appeared in the green automobile.
She ran to the curb. He was flushed, his eyes were very bright, and
while he introduced her to a man and woman in the tonneau, she heard in
his voice the note she had learned to meet with instant alertness. He
told her smoothly that Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were interested in Ripley
Farmland Acres; he was driving them over to look at the proposition.
She leaned across a pile of luggage to shake hands with them and talked
engagingly to the woman, but she did not miss Bert's slightest movement
or change of expression.
When he asked her to get his driving gloves she knew that he would
follow her, and on the stairs she gripped the banister with a hand
whose quivering she could not stop. She was not afraid of Bert in this
mood, but she knew that it threatened an explosion of nervous temper as
sufficient atmospheric tension threatens lightening. He was at the door
of their room before she had closed it.
"Where's that money?"
"Right here." She hesitated, opening her purse. "Bert--it's all we
have, isn't it?"
"What difference does that make? It isn't all I'm going to have."
"Listen just a minute. Did that woman tell you she was going to buy
land?"
"Good Lord, do I have to stand here and talk? They're waiting. Give me
that money."
"But Bert. She's taking another hat with her. She's got it in a bag,
and she's got two suitcases, and she--the way she looks--I believe
she's just going somewhere and getting you to take her in the machine.
And--please let me finish--if it's all the money we have don't you
think--"
She knew that his outburst of anger was her own fault. He was nervous
and over-wrought; she should have soothed him, agreed with him in
anything, in everything. But there had been no time. Shaken as she was
by his words, she clung to her opinion, even tried to express it again.
She felt that their last hold on security was the money in her purse,
and she saw him losing it in a hopeless effort. Against his experience
and authority she could offer only an impression, and the absurdity of
talking about a hatsack in a woman's hand. The futility of such weapons
increased her desperation. His scorn ended in rage. "Are you going to
give me that money?"
Tears she would not shed blinded her. Her fingers fumbled with the
fastening of the purse. The coins slid out and scattered on the floor.
He picked them up, and the slamming of the door told her he was gone.
She no longer tried to hold her self-control. When it came back to her
it came slowly, as skies clear after a storm. Her body was exhausted
with sobs and her face was swollen and sodden, but she felt a great
relief. The glare of sunlight on the drawn shades and the stifling heat
told her that it was late in the afternoon. She undressed wearily,
bathed her face with cool water and, lying down again, was engulfed in
the pleasant darkness of sleep.
The next day and the next passed with a slowness that was like a
deliberate refinement of cruelty. She felt that time itself was
malicious, prolonging her suspense. The young salesmen shared it with
her. They had telegraphed friends and families and were awaiting money
with which to get out of town. One by one they were released and
departed joyfully. Five days passed. Six. Seven.
She would have telegraphed to Clark & Hayward, but she had no money
for the telegram. She would have found work if there had been any that
she could do. The manager of the small telegraph-office was the only
operator. In the little town there were a few stores, already supplied
with clerks, a couple of boarding-houses on Whiskey Row, and scores
of pretty little houses in which obviously no servants were employed.
The local paper carried half a dozen "help wanted" advertisements
for stenographers and cooks on the oil-leases. She did not know
stenography, and she did not have the ability to cook for twenty or
forty hungry men.
A bill in her box at the end of the week told her that her room was
costing three dollars a day, and she dared not precipitate inquiry
by asking for a cheaper one. She was appalled by the prices of the
bill-of-fare, and ate sparingly, signing the checks, however, with a
careless scrawl and a confident smile at the waitress.
She was coming from the dining-room on the evening of the seventh day
when the manager of the hotel, somewhat embarrassed, asked her not to
sign any more checks for meals. It was a new rule of the house, he
said. She smiled at him, too, and agreed easily. "Why, certainly!"
Altering her intention of going up-stairs, she walked into the lobby
and sat relaxed in a chair, glancing with an appearance of interest at
a newspaper.
So it happened that she saw the item in the middle of the column, which
at last gave her news of Bert.
BERT KENNEDY SOUGHT ON BAD CHECK CHARGE
Charging Gilbert H. Kennedy, well-known along the city's joy
zones, with cashing a bogus check for a hundred dollars on the
Metropolitan National Bank, Judge C. K. Washburne yesterday issued
a warrant for the arrest of the young man on a felony charge. The
police search for Kennedy and his young wife, a former candy-store
girl, has so far proved fruitless. Interviewed at his residence
in Los Angeles last night, former Judge G. H. Kennedy, father of
the missing man, controller of the Central Trust Company until
his indictment some years ago for mishandling its funds, denied
knowledge of his son's whereabouts, saying that he had not been on
good terms with his son for several years.
After some time she was able to rise and walk quite steadily across the
lobby. Her hand on the banister kept her from stumbling very much while
she went up-stairs. There was darkness in her room, and it covered her
like a shield. She stood straight and still, one hand pressing against
the wall.
It was Saturday night, and in the happy custom of the oil fields a
block of the oiled street had been roped off for dancing. Already
the musicians were tuning their instruments. Impatient drillers and
tool-dressers, with their best girls, were cheering their efforts with
bantering applause. The ropes were giving way before the pressure of
the holiday crowd in a tumult of shouts and laughter.
Suddenly, with a rollicking swing, the band began to play. The tune
rose gaily through the hot, still night, and beneath it ran a rustling
undertone, the shuffling of many dancing feet. Below her window the
pavement was a swirl of movement and color. Her body relaxed slowly,
letting her down into a crumpled heap, and she lay against the
window-sill with her face hidden in the circle of her arms.