I
Ruyler had half promised to go to a dinner that night at the house of
John Gwynne, whose wife would chaperon his wife afterward to the last of
the Assembly dances.
Gwynne was his English friend who had abandoned the ancient title
inherited untimely when he was making a reputation in the House of
Commons, and become an American citizen in California, where he had a
large ranch originally the property of an American grandmother. His
migration had been justified in his own eyes by his ready adaptation to
the land of his choice and to the opportunities offered in the rebuilding
of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire, as well as in the
renovation of its politics. He had made his ranch profitable, read law as
a stepping-stone to the political career, and had just been elected to
Congress. Ruyler was one of his few intimate friends and had promised to
go to this farewell dinner if possible. A place would be kept vacant for
him until the last minute.
Gwynne had married Isabel Otis[A], a Californian of distinguished beauty
and abilities, whose roots were deep in San Francisco, although she had
"run a ranch" in Sonoma County. The Gwynnes and the Thorntons until
Ruyler met Hélène had been the friends whose society he had sought most
in his rare hours of leisure, and he had spent many summer week-ends at
their country homes. He had hoped that the intimacy would deepen after
his marriage, but Hélène during the past year had gone almost exclusively
with the younger set, the "dancing squad"; natural enough considering her
age, but Ruyler would have expected a girl of so much intelligence, to
say nothing of her severe education, to have tired long since of that
artificial wing of society devoted solely to froth, and gravitated
naturally toward the best the city afforded. But she had appeared to like
the older women better at first than later, although she accepted their
invitations to large dinners and dances.
[Footnote A: See "Ancestors."]
Ruyler made up his mind to attend this dinner at Gwynne's, and telephoned
his acceptance before he left Long's. Business or no business, he should
be his wife's bodyguard hereafter. There were blackmailers in society as
out of it, and it was possible that his ubiquity would frighten them off.
Whether to demand his wife's confidence or not he was undecided. Better
let events determine.
II
When he arrived at home he went directly to Hélène's room, but paused
with his hand on the knob of the door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice
and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position
to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when
Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones.
"And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I
never believed--"
Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he
had taken a cold shower and was half dressed that he permitted
himself to think.
That wretch had known, then! It was she who had been blackmailing her
daughter. And the poor child had been afraid to confide in him, to ask
him for money. No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a
fortune of her own....
An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point. His wife was
not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself. True, she was French
and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of
self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his
centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.
What woman would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets
which were no fault of hers? A much older woman would not be above
entombing them, if the fates were kind. But it saddened him to think that
his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way. Poor child,
he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit
and shift her burden to his own shoulders.
Having learned through the medium of the house telephone that his
mother-in-law had departed, he knocked at his wife's door. She opened it
at once and there was no mark of agitation on her little oval face under
its proudly carried crown of heavy braids. She was looking very lovely in
a severe black velvet gown whose texture and depth cunningly matched her
eyes and threw into a relief as artful the white purity of her skin and
the delicate pink of lip and cheek.
She smiled at him brilliantly. "It can't be true that you are
going with me?"
"I've reformed. I shall go with you everywhere from this time forth. But
I thought I heard your mother's voice when I came in--"
"She often comes in about dressing time to see me in a new frock. How
heavenly that you will always go with me." Her voice shook a little and
she leaned over to smooth a possible wrinkle in her girdle.
"Will you come down to the library? We are rather early."
He went directly to the safe and took out the ruby and clasped the chain
about her neck. The chain was long and the great jewel took a deeper and
more mysterious color from the somber background of her bodice.
Hélène gasped. "Am I to wear it to-night? That would be too wonderful.
This is the last great night in town."
"Why not? I shall be there to mount guard. You shall always wear it when
I am able to go out with you."
She lifted her radiant face, although it remained subtly immobile with a
new and almost formal self-possession. "I am even more delighted than I
was yesterday, for at the fête there will be so much novelty to distract
attention. You always think of the nicest possible things."
When they were in the taxi he put his arm about her.
"I wonder," he began gropingly, "if you would mind not going out when I
cannot go with you? I'll go as often as I can manage. There are
reasons--"
He felt her light body grow rigid. "Reasons? You told me only
yesterday--"
"I know. But I have been thinking it over. That is rather a fast lot you
run with. I know, of course, they are F.F.C.'s, and all the rest of it,
but if I ever drove up to the Club House in Burlingame in the morning and
saw you sitting on the veranda smoking and drinking gin fizzes--"
"You never will! I could not swallow a gin fizz, or any nasty mixed
drink. And although I have had my cigarette after meals ever since I was
fifteen, I never smoke in public."
"I confess I cannot see you in the picture that rose for some perverse
reason in my mind; but--well, you really are too young to go about so
much without your husband--"
"I am always chaperoned to the large affairs. Mrs. Gwynne takes me to the
Fairmont to-night."
"I know. But scandal is bred in the marrow of San Francisco. Its social
history is founded upon it, and it is almost a matter of principle to
replace decaying props. Do you mind so much not going about unless I can
be with you?"
"No, of course not." Her voice was sweet and submissive, but her body did
not relax. She added graciously: "After all, there are so many luncheons,
and we often dance in the afternoon."
He had not thought of that! What avail to guard her merely in the
evening? It was not her life that was in danger....
And he seemed as immeasurably far from obtaining her confidence as
before. He had always understood that the ways of matrimonial diplomacy
were strewn with pitfalls and wished that some one had opened a school
for married men before his time.
He made another clumsy attempt. The cab was swift and had almost covered
the long distance between the Western Addition and Russian Hill. "Other
things have worried me. You are so generous. Society here as elsewhere
has its parasites, its dead beats, trying to limp along by borrowing,
gambling, 'amusing,' doing dirty work of various sorts. It has worried me
lest one or more of these creatures may have tried to impose on you with
hard luck tales--borrow--"
She laughed hysterically. "Price, you are too funny! I do lend
occasionally--to the girls, when their allowance runs out before the
first of the month; but I don't know any dead beats."
He plunged desperately. "Your mother's voice sounded rather agitated for
her. Of course I did not stop to listen, but it occurred to me that she
may have been gambling in stocks, or have got into some bad land deal.
She is so confoundedly close-mouthed--if she wants money send her to me."
Hélène sat very straight. Her little aquiline profile against the passing
street lights was as aloof as imperial features on an ancient coin.
"Really, Price, I don't think you can be as busy as you pretend if you
have time to indulge in such flights of imagination. Maman has never
tried to borrow a penny of me, and she is the last person on earth to
gamble in stocks or any thing else. Or to buy land except on expert
advice. I think she has given up that idea, anyhow. She said this evening
she thought it was time for her to visit our people in Rouen."
"Oh, she did! Hélène, I must tell you frankly that I heard her reproach
you for having broken a promise, and she spoke with deep feeling."
It was possible that the Roman profile turned white, but in the dusk of
the car he could not be sure. His wife, however, merely shrugged her
shoulders and replied calmly:
"My dear Price, if that has worried you, why didn't you say so at once? I
am rather ashamed to tell you, all the same. Maman has been at me lately
to persuade you to let her have the ruby for a week. She is dreadfully
superstitious, poor maman, and is convinced it would bring her some
tremendous good fortune--"
"I have never met a woman who, I could swear, was freer from
superstition--"
Price closed his lips angrily. Of what use to tax her feminine defenses
further? He had known her long enough to be sure she would rather tell
the truth than lie. It was evident that she had no intention of lowering
her barriers, and he must play the game from the other end: get the proof
he needed and engineer his mother-in-law out of the United States.
Some time, however, he would have it out with his wife. Being a business
man and always alert to outwit the other man, he wanted neither intrigue
nor mystery in his home, but a serene happiness founded upon perfect
confidence. He found it impossible to remain appalled or angry at his
wife's readiness of resource in guarding a family secret that must have
shocked the youth in her almost out of existence.
He patted her hand, and felt its chill within the glove.
"It was like you never to have mentioned it," he murmured. "For, of
course, it is quite impossible."
"That is what I told her decidedly to-night, and I do not think she will
ask again. It hurts me to refuse dear maman anything. Her devotion to me
has been wonderful--but wonderful," she added on a defiant note.
"A mother's devotion, particularly to a girl of your sort, does not make
any call upon my exclamation points. But here we are."
* * * * *
The car rolled up the graded driveway Gwynne had built for the old San
Francisco house that before his day had been approached by an almost
perpendicular flight of wooden steps. They were late and the company
had assembled: the Thorntons, Trennahans, and eight or ten young
people, all of whom would be chaperoned by the married women to the
dance at the Fairmont.
Russian Hill had escaped the fire, but Nob Hill had been burnt down to
its bones, and the Thorntons and Trennahans had not rebuilt, preferring,
like many others, to live the year round in their country homes and use
the hotels in winter.
The moment Hélène entered the drawing-room it was evident that the ruby
was to make as great a sensation as the soul of woman could desire. Even
the older people flocked about her and the girls were frank and shrill in
their astonishment and rapture.
"Hélène! Darling! The duckiest thing--I never saw anything so perfectly
dandy and wonderful! I'd go simply mad! Do, just let me touch it! I
could eat it!"
Mrs. Thornton, who at any time scorned to conceal envy, or pretend
indifference, looked at the great burning stone with a sigh and turned to
her husband.
"Why didn't you manage to get it for me?" she demanded. "It would be far
more suitable--a magnificent stone like that!--on me than on that baby."
"My darling," murmured Ford anxiously, "I never laid eyes on the thing
before, or on one like it. I'll find out where Ruyler got it, and try--"
"Do you suppose I'd come out with a duplicate? You should have thought of
it years ago. You always promised to take me to India."
"It should be on you!" He gazed at her adoringly. Her hair was dressed
in a high and stately fashion to-night. She wore a gown of gold brocade
and a necklace and little tiara of emeralds and diamonds; she was
looking very handsome and very regal. Thornton was a thin, dark, nervous
wisp of a man, who had borne his share of the burdens laid upon his city
in the cataclysm of 1906, but if his wife had demanded an enormous
historic ruby he would have done his best to gratify her. But how the
deuce could a man--
Mrs. Gwynne was holding the stone in her hand and smiling into its
flaming depths without envy. She was one of those women of dazzling white
skin, black hair and blue eyes, who, when wise, never wear any jewels but
pearls. She wore the Gwynne pearls to-night and a shimmering white gown.
Ruyler glanced round the fine old room with the warm feeling of
satisfaction he always experienced at a San Francisco function, where the
women were almost as invariably pretty as they were gay and friendly. He
did not like the younger men he met on these occasions as well as he did
many of the older ones; the serious ones would not waste their time on
society, and there were too many of the sort who were asked everywhere
because they had made a cult of fashion, whether they could afford it or
not. A few were the sons of wealthy parents, and were more dissipated
than those obliged to "hold down" a job that provided them with money
enough above their bare living expenses to make them useful and
presentable.
Ruyler looked upon both sorts as cumberers of the earth, and only
tolerated them in his own house when his wife gave a party and dancing
men must be had at any price.
There was one man here to-night for whom he had always held particular
detestation. His name was Nicolas Doremus. He was a broker in a small
way, but Ruyler guessed that he made the best part of his income at
bridge, possibly poker. He lived with two other men in a handsome
apartment in one of the new buildings that were changing the old skyline
of San Francisco. His dancing teas and suppers were admirably appointed
and the most exclusive people went to them.
Ruyler knew his history in a general way. His father had made a fortune
in "Con. Virginia" in the Seventies, and his mother for a few years had
been the social equal of the women who now patronized her son. But
unfortunately the gambling microbe settled down in Harry Doremus' veins,
and shortly after his son was born he engaged his favorite room at the
Cliff House and blew out his brains. His wife was left with a large
house, which as a last act of grace he had forborne to mortgage and made
over to her by deed. She immediately advertised for boarders, and as her
cooking was excellent and she had the wit to drop out of society and give
her undivided attention to business, she prospered exceedingly.
She concentrated her ambitions upon her only child; sent him to a private
school patronized by the sons of the wealthy, and herself taught him
every ingratiating social art. She wanted him to go to college, but by
this time "Nick" was nineteen and as highly developed a snob as her
maternal heart had planned. Knowing that he must support himself
eventually, he was determined to begin his business career at once, and
believed, with some truth, that there was a prejudice in this broad field
against college men. He entered the brokerage firm of a bachelor who had
occupied Mrs. Doremus' best suite for fifteen years, and made a
satisfactory clerk, the while he cultivated his mother's old friends.
When Mrs. Doremus died he sold the house and good will for a considerable
sum, and, combining it with her respectable savings, formed a partnership
with two other young fellows, whose fathers were rich, but old-fashioned
enough to insist that their sons should work. Nick did most of the work.
His partners, during the rainy season, sat with their feet on the
radiator and read the popular magazines, and in fine weather upheld the
outdoor traditions of the state.
The firm had a slender patronage, as Ruyler happened to know, but Doremus
was a member of the Pacific Union Club, and although he dined out every
night, he must have spent six or seven thousand a year. It was amiably
assumed that his social services,--he played and sang and often
entertained exacting groups throughout an entire evening--his fetching
and carrying for one rich old lady, accounted for his ability to keep out
of debt and pay for his many extravagances; but Ruyler knew that he was
principally esteemed at the small green table, and he vaguely recalled as
he looked over his head to-night that he had heard disconnected murmurs
of less honorable sources of revenue.
As Ruyler turned away with a frown he met Gwynne's eyes traveling from
the same direction. "I didn't ask him," he said apologetically. "Hate men
too well dressed. Looks as if he posed for tailors' ads in the weeklies.
Never could stand the social parasite anyhow, but Aileen Lawton asked
Isabel to let her bring him, as they are going to open the ball to-night
with some new kind of turkey trot.
"Glad I'm off for Washington. California's the greatest place on earth in
the dry season, but I'd have passed few winters here if it hadn't been
for the work we all had to do, and even then it would have been heavy
going without my wife's companionship."
Ruyler sighed. Should he ever enjoy his wife's companionship? And into
what sort of woman would she develop if forced along crooked ways by ugly
secrets, blackmail, perpetual lying and deceit? He longed impatiently for
the decisive interview with Spaulding on the morrow. Then, at least he
could prepare for action, and, after all, even of more importance now
than winning his wife's confidence and saving her from mental anguish,
was the averting of a scandal that would echo across the continent
straight into the ears of his half-reconciled father.
IV
It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed
every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock
that afternoon.
Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in
California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish
California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had
been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial
anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had
fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group
at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested
in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had
forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone
in to dinner.
But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured
by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a discussion over
the merits of the new mayor, Price became aware that Doremus sat beside
his wife halfway down the table on the opposite side, and that they
were talking, if not arguing, in a low tone, oblivious for the moment
of the company.
The deferential bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social
explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose
beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance
of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the
aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague
threat in that poise, as if at any moment venom might dart down and
strike that drooping head with its crown of blue-black braids. Suddenly
Hélène lifted her eyes, full of appeal, to the round pale blue orbs that
at this moment openly expressed a cold and ruthless mind.
Ruyler endeavored to piece together those disconnected whispers--letters
discovered or stolen--blackmail--but such whispers were too often the
whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never
seeming to bring any culprit to book.
Had this man got hold of his wife's secret?
But this merely sequacious thought was promptly routed. The young man,
who was undeniably good looking and was rumored to possess a certain cold
charm for women--although, to be sure, the wary San Francisco heiress had
so far been impervious to it--was now leaning over Mrs. Price Ruyler with
a coaxing possessive air, and the appeal left Hélène's eyes as she smiled
coquettishly and began to talk with her usual animation; but still in a
tone that was little more than a murmur.
She moved her shoulder closer to the man she evidently was bent upon
fascinating, and her long eyelashes swept up and down while her black
eyes flashed and her pink color deepened.
There was a faint amusement mixed with Doremus' habitual air of amiable
deference, and somewhat more of assurance, but he was as absorbed as
Hélène and had no eyes for Janet Maynard, on his left, whose fortune ran
into millions.
For a moment Ruyler, who had kept his nerve through several years of
racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive,
wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations
and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition
possible in the world of finance and commerce which could shatter his
self-possession, cloud his mental processes. But his personal life had
been singularly free of storms. Even his emotional upheaval, when he had
fallen completely in love for the first time, had lacked that torment of
uncertainty which might have played a certain havoc, for a time, with
those quick unalterable decisions of the business hour; and even his
engagement had only lasted a month.
It was true that during the past six months he had worried off and on
about the shadow that had fallen upon his wife's spirits and affected his
own, but, when he had had time to think of it, before yesterday morning,
he had assumed it was due to some phase of feminine psychology which he
had never mastered. That she could be interested in another man never had
crossed his mind, in spite of his passing flare of jealousy. She was
still passionately in love with, him, for all her vagaries--or so he had
thought--
Ruyler was conscious of a riotous confusion of mind that really made him
apprehensive. Had he witnessed that scene on the dummy--this
afternoon?--it seemed a long while ago--had he heard those portentous
words of his mother-in-law to his wife?--had they meant that she had
warned her daughter against the bad blood in her veins, extracted a
promise--broken!--to walk in the narrow way of the dutiful
wife--mercifully spared by a fortunate marriage the terrible temptations
of the older woman's youth? Had Hélène confessed ... in desperate need of
help, advice? ... Doremus was just the bounder to compromise a woman and
then blackmail her.... Good God! What _was_ it?
For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only
possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a
bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the
possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were
matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo
these days.
Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco
got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But
this--if his wife had fallen in love with another man--and women had no
discrimination where love was concerned--(if a decent chap got a lovely
girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)--then indeed he
was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the
future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot....
Hélène had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it
indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to
please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should
think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never
seen her in an unbecoming _déshabillé_; she coquetted with him
shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only
upon making him happy. Until lately--
This was by no means her ordinary form.
He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories,
had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day ... there was,
beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She
moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked
almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her
remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and
talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with
the man on her right.
At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was
looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long,
thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in
his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of
the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have
remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was
being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful
woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.
Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her
until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this
instance he should be his own detective.
He turned to Mrs. Thornton.
"Going on to the Fairmont?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, I have a new gown--have you admired it? Arrived from Paris last
night--and I am chaperoning two of these girls. You are not, of course?"
"I did intend to, but it's no go. Still, I may drop in late and take my
wife home--"
"Let me take her home." Was his imagination morbid, or was there
something both peremptory and eager in Mrs. Thornton's tones? "I'm
stopping at the Fairmont, of course, but Fordy and I often take a drive
after a hot night and a heavy supper."
"If you would take her home in case I miss it. I must go to the office--"
"I'd like to. That's settled." This time her tones were warm and
friendly. Ruyler knew that Mrs. Thornton did not like his wife, but her
friendliness toward him, since her return from Europe three or four
months ago, had increased, if anything. His mind was now working with its
accustomed keen clarity. He recalled that there had been no surprise
mixed with the contempt in her regard of his wife and Doremus.... He also
recalled that several times of late when he had met her at the
Fairmont--where he often lunched with a group of men--she had regarded
him with a curious considering glance, which he suddenly vocalized as:
"How long?"
This affair had been going on for some time, then. Either it was common
talk, or some circumstance had enlightened Mrs. Thornton alone.
He glanced around the table. No one appeared to be taking the slightest
notice of one of many flirtations. At least, whatever his wife's
infatuation, he could avert gossip. Mrs. Thornton might be a tigress, but
she was not a cat.
"When do you go down to Burlingame?" she asked.
"Not for two or three weeks yet. I don't fancy merely sleeping in the
country. But by that time things will ease up a bit and I can get down
every day in time to have a game of golf before dinner."
"Shall Mrs. Ruyler migrate with the rest?"
"Hardly."
"It will be dull for her in town. No reflections on your charming
society, but of course she does not get much of it, and she will miss her
young friends. After all, she is a child and needs playmates."
Ruyler darted at her a sharp look, but she was smiling amiably. Doremus
and the men he lived with, in town had a bungalow at Burlingame and they
bought their commutation tickets at precisely the fashionable moment.
"She will stay in town," he said shortly. "She needs a rest, and San
Francisco is the healthiest spot on earth."
"But trying to the nerves when what we inaccurately call the trade winds
begin. Why not let her stay with me? Of course she would be lonely in her
own house, and is too young to stay there alone anyhow, but I'd like to
put her up, and you certainly could run down week-ends--possibly oftener.
American men are always obsessed with the idea that they are twice as
busy as they really are."
"You are too good. I'll put it up to Hélène. Of course it is for her to
decide. I'd like it mighty well." But grateful as he was, his uneasiness
deepened at her evident desire to place her forces at his disposal.