The Swing of the Pendulum
MacRae did himself rather well, as the English say, when he reached
Vancouver. This was a holiday, and he was disposed to make the most of
it. He put up at the Granada. He made a few calls and presently found
himself automatically relaunched upon Vancouver's social waters. There
were a few maids and more than one matron who recalled pleasantly this
straight up-standing youngster with the cool gray eyes who had come
briefly into their ken the winter before. There were a few fellows he
had known in squadron quarters overseas, home for good now that
demobilization was fairly complete. MacRae danced well. He had the
faculty of making himself agreeable without effort. He found it pleasant
to fall into the way of these careless, well-dressed folk whose greatest
labor seemed to be in amusing themselves, to keep life from seeming
"slow." Buttressed by revenues derived from substantial sources, mines,
timber, coastal fisheries, land, established industries, these sons and
daughters of the pioneers, many but one degree removed from pioneering
uncouthness, were patterning their lives upon the plan of equivalent
classes in older regions. If it takes six generations in Europe to make
a gentleman, western America quite casually dispenses with five, and the
resulting product seldom suffers by comparison.
As the well-to-do in Europe flung themselves into revelry with the
signing of the armistice, so did they here. Four years of war had corked
the bottle of gayety. The young men were all overseas. Life was a little
too cloudy during that period to be gay. Shadows hung over too many
homes. But that was past. They had pulled the cork and thrown it away,
one would think. Pleasure was king, to be served with light abandon.
It was a fairly vigorous place, MacRae discovered. He liked it, gave
himself up to it gladly,--for a while. It involved no mental effort.
These people seldom spoke of money, or of work, or politics, the high
cost of living, international affairs. If they did it was jocularly,
sketchily, as matters of no importance. Their talk ran upon dances,
clothes, motoring, sports indoors and afield, on food,--and sometimes
genially on drink, since the dry wave had not yet drained their cellars.
MacRae floated with this tide. But he was not wholly carried away with
it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real
thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle
laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of
realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a
dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He could warm and thrill to
the beauty of a Granada ballroom, music that seduced a man's feet,
beauty of silk and satin, of face and figure, of bright eyes and
gleaming jewels, a blending of all the primary colors and every shade
between, flashing over a polished floor under high, carved ceilings.
He had surrendered Nelly Abbott to a claimant and stood watching the
swirl and glide of the dancers in the Granada one night. His eyes were
on the brilliance a little below the raised area at one end of the
floor, and so was his mind, inquiringly, with the curious concentration
of which his mind was capable. Presently he became aware of some one
speaking to him, tugging at his elbow.
"Oh, come out of it," a voice said derisively.
He looked around at Stubby Abbott.
"Regular trance. I spoke to you twice. In love?"
"Uh-uh. Just thinking," MacRae laughed.
"Deep thinking, I'll say. Want to go down to the billiard room and
smoke?"
They descended to a subterranean chamber where, in a pit lighted by
low-hung shaded globes, men in shirt sleeves clicked the red and white
balls on a score of tables. Rows of leather-upholstered chairs gave
comfort to spectators. They commandeered seats and lighted cigarettes.
"Look," Stubby said. "There's Norman Gower."
Young Gower sat across a corner from them. He was in evening clothes. He
slumped in his chair. His hands were limp along the chair arms. He was
not watching the billiard players. He was staring straight across the
room with the sightless look of one whose mind is far away.
"Another deep thinker," Stubby drawled. "Rather rough going for Norman
these days."
"How?" MacRae asked.
"Funked it over across," Stubby replied. "So they say. Careful to stay
on the right side of the Channel. Paying the penalty now. Girls rather
rub it in. Fellows not too--well, cordial. Pretty rotten for Norman."
"Think he slacked deliberately?" MacRae inquired.
"That's the story. Lord, I don't know," Stubby answered. "He stuck in
England four years. Everybody else that was fit went up the line.
That's all I know. By their deeds ye shall judge them--eh?"
"Perhaps. What does he say about that himself?"
"Nothing, so far as I know. Keeps strictly mum on the war subject,"
Stubby said.
Young Gower did not alter his position during the few minutes they sat
there. He sat staring straight ahead of him, unseeingly. MacRae suddenly
felt sorry for him. If he had told the truth he was suffering a
peculiarly distressing form of injustice, of misconception. MacRae
recalled the passionate undertone in Gower's voice when he said, "I did
the only thing I could do in the way I was told to do it." Yes, he was
sorry for Norman. The poor devil was not getting a square deal.
But MacRae's pity was swiftly blotted out. He had a sudden uncomfortable
vision of old Donald MacRae rowing around Poor Man's Rock, back and
forth in sun and rain, in frosty dawns and stormy twilights, coming home
to a lonely house, dying at last a lonely death, the sordid culmination
of an embittered life.
Let him sweat,--the whole Gower tribe. MacRae was the ancient Roman, for
the moment, wishing all his enemies had but a single head that he might
draw his sword and strike it off. Something in him hardened against that
first generous impulse to repeat to Stubby Abbott what Norman had told
him on the cliff at Squitty. Let the beggar make his own defense. Yet
that stubborn silence, the proud refusal to make words take the place of
valiant deeds expected, wrung a gleam of reluctant admiration from
MacRae. He would have done just that himself.
"Let's get back," Stubby suggested. "I've got the next dance with Betty
Gower. I don't want to miss it."
"Is she here to-night? I haven't noticed her."
"Eyesight affected?" Stubby bantered. "Sure she's here. Looking like a
dream."
MacRae felt a pang of envy. There was nothing to hold Stubby back,--no
old scores, no deep, abiding resentment. MacRae had the conviction that
Stubby would never take anything like that so seriously as he, Jack
MacRae, did. He was aware that Stubby had the curious dual code common
in the business world,--one set of inhibitions and principles for
business and another for personal and social uses. A man might be
Stubby's opponent in the market and his friend when they met on a common
social ground. MacRae could never be quite like that. Stubby could fight
Horace Gower, for instance, tooth and toenail, for an advantage in the
salmon trade, and stretch his legs under Gower's dining table with no
sense of incongruity, no matter what shifts the competitive struggle had
taken or what weapons either had used. That was business; and a man left
his business at the office. A curious thing, MacRae thought. A
phenomenon in ethics which he found hard to understand, harder still to
endorse.
He stood watching Stubby, knowing that Stubby would go straight to Betty
Gower. Presently he saw her, marked the cut and color of her gown,
watched them swing into the gyrating wave of couples that took the floor
when the orchestra began. Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he
recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele,
who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything
that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of
showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle
in her very black eyes.
He went to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know
why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive
propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as
an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of
gravity; as water flows downhill.
He took her programme.
"I don't see any vacancies," he said. "Shall I create one?"
He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was
rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a
trifle uncertainly.
"Aren't you a trifle--sweeping?" she inquired.
"Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked.
"I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we
quarrel about this time?"
"Anything you like," he made reckless answer.
"Very well, then," she said as they got up to dance. "Suppose we begin
by finding out what there is to quarrel over. Are you aware that
practically every time we meet we nearly come to blows? What is there
about me that irritates you so easily?"
"Your inaccessibility."
MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth,
although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor
policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could
not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to
understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened
briefly the night of the _Blackbird's_ wrecking, he experienced that
feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved
helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless
rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully,
whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he
was with her--
"But I'm not inaccessible."
She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met
his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them.
"What ever gave you that idea?"
"It isn't an idea; it's a fact."
The resentment against circumstances that troubled MacRae crept into his
tone.
"Oh, silly!"
There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his
moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew
her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring
of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer
folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a
weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a
genuine emotion.
"Do you like me, Betty?"
Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips:
"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been
ashamed of myself for being so transparent--on such slight provocation."
"How much?" he demanded.
"Oh--well--"
The ballroom was suddenly shrouded in darkness, saved only from a
cavelike black by diffused street light through the upper windows. A
blown fuse. A mis-pulled switch. One of those minor accidents common to
electric lighting systems. The orchestra hesitated, went on. From a
momentary silence the dancers broke into chuckles, amused laughter, a
buzz of exclamatory conversation. But no one moved, lest they collide
with other unseen couples.
Jack and Betty stood still. They could not see. But MacRae could feel
the quick beat, of Betty's heart, the rise and fall of her breast, a
trembling in her fingers. There was a strange madness stirring in him.
His arm tightened about her. He felt that she yielded easily, as if
gladly. Their mouths sought and clung in the first real kiss Jack MacRae
had ever known. And then, as they relaxed that impulse-born embrace, the
lights flashed on again, blazed in a thousand globes in great frosted
clusters high against the gold-leaf decorations of the ceiling. The
dancers caught step again. MacRae and Betty circled the polished floor
silently. She floated in his arms like thistledown, her eyes like twin
stars, a deeper color in her cheeks.
Then the music ceased, and they were swept into a chattering group, out
of which presently materialized another partner to claim Betty. So they
parted with a smile and a nod.
But MacRae had no mind for dancing. He went out through the lobby and
straight to his room. He flung off his coat and sat down in a chair by
the window and blinked out into the night. He had looked, it seemed to
him, into the very gates of paradise,--and he could not go in.
It wasn't possible. He sat peering out over the dusky roofs of the city,
damning with silent oaths the coil in which he found himself
inextricably involved. History was repeating itself. Like father, like
son.
There was a difference though. MacRae, as he grew calmer, marked that.
Old Donald had lost his sweetheart by force and trickery. His son must
forego love--if it were indeed love--of his own volition. He had no
choice. He saw no way of winning Betty Gower unless he stayed his hand
against her father. And he would not do that. He could not. It would be
like going over to the enemy in the heat of battle. Gower had wronged
and persecuted his father. He had beaten old Donald without mercy in
every phase of that thirty-year period. He had taken Donald MacRae's
woman from him in the beginning and his property in the end. Jack MacRae
had every reason to believe Gower merely sat back awaiting a favorable
opportunity to crush him.
So there could be no compromising there; no inter-marrying and
sentimental burying of the old feud. Betty would tie his hands. He was
afraid of her power to do that. He did not want to be a Samson shorn.
His ego revolted against love interfering with the grim business of
everyday life. He bit his lip and wished he could wipe out that kiss. He
cursed himself for a slavish weakness of the flesh. The night was old
when MacRae lay down on his bed. But he could find no ease for the
throbbing ferment within him. He suffered with a pain as keen as if he
had been physically wounded, and the very fact that he could so suffer
filled him with dismay. He had faced death many times with less emotion
than he now was facing life.
He had no experience of love. Nothing remotely connected with women had
ever suggested such possibilities of torment. He had known first-hand
the pangs of hunger and thirst, of cold and weariness, of anger and
hate, of burning wounds in his flesh. He had always been able to grit
his teeth and endure; none of it had been able to wring his soul. This
did. He had come to manhood, to a full understanding of sex, at a time
when he played the greatest game of all, when all his energies were
fiercely centered upon preservation for himself and certain destruction
for other men. Perhaps because he had come back clean, having never
wasted himself in complaisant liaisons overseas, the inevitable focusing
of passion stirred him more profoundly. He was neither a varietist nor a
male prude. He was aware of sex. He knew desire. But the flame Betty
Gower had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes.
Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an
imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off his eyes and shown
him his mate and the aim and object and law and fiery urge of the mating
instinct all in one blinding flash.
He lay hot and fretful, cursing himself for a fool, yet unable to find
ease, wondering dully if Betty Gower must also suffer as he should, or
if it were only an innocent, piquant game that Betty played. Always in
the background of his mind lurked a vision of her father, sitting back
complacently, fat, smug, plump hands on a well-rounded stomach,
chuckling a brutal satisfaction over another MacRae beaten.
MacRae wakened from an uneasy sleep at ten o'clock. He rose and dressed,
got his breakfast, went out on the streets. But Vancouver had all at
once grown insufferable. The swarming streets irritated him. He
smoldered inside, and he laid it to the stir and bustle and noise. He
conceived himself to crave hushed places and solitude, where he could
sit and think.
By mid-afternoon he was far out in the Gulf of Georgia, aboard a
coasting steamer sailing for island ports. If it occurred to him that he
was merely running away from temptation, he did not admit the fact.