I
The train rolling rapidly over the broad salt meadows thunderously
entered the long shed of the terminal at the sea. August Turnbull rose
from his seat in the Pullman smoking compartment and took down the
coat hanging beside him. It was gray flannel; in a waistcoat his shirt
sleeves were a visible heavy mauve silk, and there was a complication
of gold chains about his lower pockets. Above the coat a finely woven
Panama hat with a narrow brim had rested, and with that now on his head
he moved arrogantly toward the door.
He was a large man, past the zenith of life, but still vigorous in
features and action. His face was full, and, wet from the heat, he
mopped it with a heavy linen handkerchief. August Turnbull's gaze was
steady and light blue; his nose was so heavy that it appeared to droop a
little from sheer weight, almost resting on the mustache brushed out
in a horizontal line across prominent lips; while his neck swelled in a
glowing congestion above a wilting collar.
He nodded to several men in the narrow corridor of the car; men like
himself in luxurious summer clothes, but for the most part fatter;
then in the shed, looking about in vain for Bernard, his son-in-law,
he proceeded to the street, where his automobile was waiting. It was a
glittering landaulet, folded back and open. Thrusting a wadded evening
paper into a crevice he sank in an upholstered corner while his
chauffeur skillfully worked out through a small confusion of similar
motor activity. Before him a carved glass vase set in a bracket held
smilax and yellow rosebuds, and he saw on the floor a fallen gold powder
box.
Picking it up his face was suffused by a darker tide; this was the
result of stooping and the angry realization that in spite of his
prohibition Louise had been using the landaulet again. She must be made
to understand that he, her father, had an absolute authority over his
family and property. Marriage to Bernard Foster did not relieve her
from obedience to the head of the house. Bernard had a car as well as
himself; yet August Turnbull knew that his son-in-law--at heart a stingy
man--encouraged her to burn the parental gasoline in place of his own.
Turned against the public Bernard's special quality was admirable; he
was indeed more successful, richer, than August had been at the other's
age; but Louise and her husband would have to recognize his precedence.
They were moving faster now on a broad paved avenue bound with steel
tracks. A central business section was left for a more unpretentious
region--small open fruit and fish stands, dingy lodging places, drab
corner saloons, with, at the intervals of the cross streets, fleet
glimpses of an elevated boardwalk and the luminous space of the sea.
Though the day was ending there was no thinning of the vaporous heat,
and a sodden humanity, shapeless in bathing suits, was still reluctantly
moving away from the beach.
Groups of women with their hair in trailing wet wisps and short uneven
skirts dripping on the pavements, gaunt children in scant haphazard garb
surged across the broad avenue or with shrill admonishments stood in
isolated helpless patches amid the swift and shining procession of
automobiles.
August Turnbull was disturbed by the sudden arrest of his progress, and
gazing out saw the insignificant cause of delay. He had again removed
his hat and a frown drew a visible heavy line between his eyes.
“More police are needed for these crossings,” he complained to the
chauffeur; “there is the same trouble every evening. The city shouldn't
encourage such rabbles; they give the place a black eye.”
All the immediate section, he silently continued, ought to be torn
down and rebuilt in solid expensive structures. It made him hot and
uncomfortable just to pass through the shabby quarter. The people in it
were there for the excellent reason that they lacked the ambition, the
force to demand better things. They got what they deserved.
August Turnbull made an impatient movement of contempt; the world,
success, was for the strong men, the men who knew what they wanted and
drove for it in a straight line. There was a great deal of foolishness
in the air at present--the war was largely responsible; though, on
the other hand, the war would cure a lot of nonsense. But America in
particular was rotten with sentimentality; it was that mainly which had
involved them here in a purely European affair. Getting into it had been
bad business.
Nowhere was the nation's failing more evident than in the attitude
toward women. It had always been maudlin; and now, long content to use
their advantages in small ways, women would become a serious menace to
the country generally. He had admitted their economic value--they filled
every possible place in the large establishment of the Turnbull Bakery;
rather, they performed all the light manual labor. There they were more
satisfactory than men, more easily controlled--yes, and cheaper. But in
Congress, voting, women in communities reporting on factory conditions
were a dangerous nuisance.
He had left the poorer part, and the suavity of the succeeding
streets rapidly increased to a soothing luxury. Wide cottages
occupied velvet-green lawns, and the women he saw were of the sort he
approved--closely skirted creatures with smooth shoulders in transparent
crêpe de Chine. They invited a contemplative eye, the thing for which
they were created--a pleasure for men; that and maternity.
The automobile turned toward the sea and stopped at his house midway
in the block. It was a square dwelling painted white with a roof of
tapestry slate, and broad awning-covered veranda on the sea. A sprinkler
was flashing on the lawn, dripping over the concrete pavement and
filling the air with a damp coolness. No one was visible and, leaving
his hat and coat on a chair in an airy hall furnished in black wicker
and flowery chintz hangings on buff walls, he descended to the basement
dressing rooms.
In his bathing suit he presented a figure of vigorous glowing
well-being. Only the silvering hair at his temples, the fatty bulge
across the back of his neck, and a considerable stomach indicated his
multiplying years. He left by a lower door, and immediately after was on
the sand. The tide was out, the lowering sun obscured in a haze, and the
sea undulated with a sullen gleam. Two men were swimming, and farther at
the left a woman stood in the water with arms raised to her head. It
was cold, but August Turnbull marched out without hesitation and threw
himself forward with an uncompromising solid splash.
He swam adequately, but he had not progressed a dozen feet before he was
conscious of a strong current sweeping him up the beach, and he regained
his feet with an angry flourish. The other men came nearer, and he
recognized Bernard Foster, his son-in-law, and Frederick Rathe, whose
cottage was directly across the street from the Turnbulls'.
Like August they were big men, with light hair and eyes. They were very
strong and abrupt in their movements, they spoke in short harsh periods,
and fingered mustaches waxed and rolled into severe points.
“A gully has cut in above,” Bernard explained, indicating a point not
far beyond them; “it's over your head. Watch where you swim.” They were
moving away.
“Are you coming over to dinner?” August Turnbull called to Bernard.
“Can't,” the latter shouted; “Victorine is sick again. Too many
chocolate sundaes.”
Left alone, August dived and floated until he was thoroughly cooled;
then he turned toward the beach. The woman, whose existence he had
forgotten, was leaving at the same time. She approached at an angle, and
he was admiring her slim figure when he realized that it was Miss Beggs,
his wife's companion. He had never seen her in a bathing suit before.
August Turnbull delayed until she was at his side.
“Good evening.” Her voice was low, and she scarcely lifted her gaze from
the sand.
He wondered why--she had been in his house for a month--he had failed
completely to notice her previously. He decided that it had been because
she was so pale and quiet. Ordinarily he didn't like white cheeks; and
then she had been deceptive; he had subconsciously thought of her as
thin.
She stopped and took off her rubber cap, performing that act slowly,
while her body, in wet satin, turned like a faultless statue of
glistening black marble.
“Do you enjoy bathing in the ocean?” he asked.
A momentary veiled glance accompanied her reply. “Yes,” she said;
“though I can't swim. I like to be beaten by the waves. I like to fight
against them.”
She hesitated, then fell definitely back; and he was forced to walk on
alone.
His wife's companion! With the frown once more scoring the line between
his eyes he satirically contrasted Miss Beggs, a servant really, and
Emmy.