UNDER THE VENEER
AN hour later Innes, blinking from the sun, stepped into the tent,
which had been partitioned with rough redwood boards into a bed-chamber
on the right, a combination dining-room and “parlor” on the left. Her
glance immediately segregated the three stalks of pink geraniums in the
center of the Mexican drawn-work cloth that covered the table. Gerty,
herself, in a fresh pink gingham frock, was dancing around the table
to the tune of forks and spoons. It was just like Gerty to dress up to
her setting, even though it were only a pitiful water-starved bouquet.
She had often tried to analyze her sister-in-law’s hold on her brother;
certainly they were not happy. Was it because she made him comfortable?
Was it the little air of formality, or mystery, which she drew around
her? Her rooms when Innes was allowed to enter them were always
flawless; Gerty took deep pride in her housekeeping. Why was it, Innes
wondered, that she could never shake off her suspicion of an underlying
untidiness? There was always a closed door on Gerty’s processes.
“May I help?” The sun was still yellowing the room to her.
“Hello!” Hardin looked up from the couch where he was lying. Innes
suspected it of being a frequent retreat. She had found it tumbled
once when she ran over early. It was then that Gerty made it understood
that she liked more formality. Innes was rarely in that tent except for
meals now, or during her alternating week of house-chores.
“I was afraid I was late,” said the girl.
“Lunch will be ready in a few minutes,” announced Gerty Hardin. “Won’t
you sit down? There’s the new _Journal_. Sam came to clean this
morning, and I couldn’t get to the lunch until an hour ago.”
Innes, settling herself by the reading table, caught herself observing
that it would not have taken her an hour to get a cold lunch. Still,
it would never look so inviting! If Gerty’s domestic machinery was
complicated and private, the results always were admirable. The early
tomatoes were peeled as well as sliced, and were lying on a bed of
cracked ice. The ripe black olives were resting in a lake of California
olive oil. A bowl of crisp lettuce had been iced and carefully dried.
The bread was cut in precise triangles; the butter had been shaved into
foreign-looking roses. A pitcher of the valley’s favorite beverage,
iced tea, stood by Hardin’s plate. There was a platter of cold meats.
It came home to Innes for the hundredth time, the surprise of such
a meal in that desert. A few years ago, and what had a meal been?
She threw the credit of the little lunch to sulky Tom Hardin lying
on the portière-covered couch, his ugly lower lip outthrust against
an unsmiling vision. It was Tom, Tom and his brave men, the sturdy
engineers, the dauntless surveyors, the Indians who had dug the canals,
those were the ones who had spread that pretty table, not the buxom
little woman darting about in pink gingham.
“Is it because I don’t like her?” she mused, her eyes on the pictures
in the style-book which had just come in that morning. Certainly Gerty
did have the patience of a saint with Tom’s humors. If she would only
lose that set look of martyrdom! It was not for an outsider to judge
between a husband and wife, even if the man were her own brother. She
could not put her finger on the germ of their painful scenes; she
shrank from the recollection of Tom’s temper; his coarse streak, the
Gingg fiber, her own mother had called it. Tom was rough, but she loved
him. Why was it she was sure that Gerty did not love her husband? Yet
there was the distrust, as fixed and as unjust perhaps as the suspicion
of Gerty’s little mysteries.
She said aloud: “This is your last day. My week begins to-morrow.”
Mrs. Hardin adjusted a precise napkin before she spoke.
“I think I will keep the reins for a month this time.” Her words were
reflective, as though the thought were new. “I get my hand in just as
I stop. I will be running out for my visit in a few weeks. It will be
only fair for me to do it as long as I can.”
Again the girl had a sense of subtlety. Whenever Gerty put on that air
of childish confidential deliberation, she hunted for the plot. This
was not far to seek. Her sister-in-law was passing out the hot season
to her.
“It’s all ready.” Gerty’s glance was winging, bird-like, over the
table. Nothing had been forgotten. She gave a little sigh of esthetic
satisfaction. Hardin misinterpreted it.
“I ought to be able to keep a servant for her.” It was like him to
have forgotten the Lawrence days; he was never free of the sense of
obligation to the dainty little woman who was born, he felt, for the
purple. There was nothing too good for Gerty. He felt her unspoken
disappointments; her deprivations. “Of course, she can have no respect
for me. I’m a failure.”
“Doesn’t this give you an appetite?” demanded Innes heartily. “And
I’m to be a lady for three more weeks.” The remark was thoughtless. A
bright flush spread over Gerty’s face. She caught an allusion to her
origin.
Innes saw the blush and remembered the boarding-house. She could
think of nothing to say. The three relatives sat down to that most
uncomfortable travesty, a social meal where sociability is lacking.
Innes said it had been a pleasant morning. Gerty thought it had been
hot. And then there was silence again.
Innes began to tell them of her Tucson visit, when Gerty laid down her
fork. “I’ve meant to ask you a hundred times. Did you attend to my
commission in Los Angeles?”
“I forgot to tell you. I raked the town, really I did, Gerty.” For
there was a cloud on Gerty’s pretty brow. “I could have got you the
other kind, but you said you did not want it.”
“I should think not.” The childish chin was lifted. “Those complicated
things are always getting out of order. Besides, if I had an adjustable
form, everybody’d be borrowing it.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Tom, waking up. “Who’d borrow
your what, Gert?”
“Please don’t call me Gert, Tom,” besought his wife plaintively. “A
figure. I wanted Innes to try to get one for me in Los Angeles.”
“I did try,” began Innes.
“Yours is good enough for any one. Why should you get another?” He was
openly admiring the ample bust swelling under the pink gingham.
“Don’t, Tom.”
Innes tried to explain the sincerity of her search. She had visited
every store “which might be suspected of having a figure.” She could
not bring a smile to her sister’s face. “There was none your size. They
offered to order one from Chicago. They have to be made to order, if
they are special sizes. You are not stock size, did you know that?”
“I should think not,” cried Gerty, bridling. “My waist is absurdly
small for the size of my hips and shoulders.”
Innes wondered if it would be safe to agree with her.
“When will it be here?”
“You’ll be disappointed.” Innes found herself stammering. “But not for
six weeks. I did not know whether to order it or not.”
“And I in Los Angeles with my summer sewing all done! What good will it
do me then?” The pretty eyes looked ready for childish tears.
“I know. That is, I _didn’t_ know what to do,” apologized Innes Hardin.
“I decided to order it as I’d found the place, and was right there, but
I made sure that I could countermand the order by telegram. So I can
this very afternoon. I knew you would be disappointed. I was sorry.”
“I’ll need it next winter,” admitted Gerty, helping herself to some of
the chilled tomatoes. “I’m sure I’m much obliged to you. I hope it did
not put you to much trouble.”
The words raised the wall of formality again. Innes bent over her
plate.
“What made you change your plans?” suddenly demanded his wife of
Hardin. “When Sam came in with your bag, he surprised me so.”
“My boss kept me.” Hardin’s face looked coarse, roughened by his ugly
passion. “Rickard, your old friend. He served a subpœna on me at the
station.”
“Oh,” cried Gerty. “Surely, he did not do that, Tom!”
“Sure he did.” Hardin’s face was black with his evil mood. “I’m only an
underling, a disgraced underling. He’s my boss. He’s going to make me
remember it.”
“You mustn’t say such things,” pouted his wife. “If it does not hurt
you, if you do not care, think how I must feel--”
“Oh, rot!” exclaimed Hardin. The veneer was rubbed down to the rough
wood. Innes saw the coarseness her mother had complained of, the Gingg
fiber.
“I suppose you think I like to take orders, to jump at the snap of the
whip?” He was deliberately beating up his anger into a froth. “Oh,
sure, I do. That’s a Hardin, through and through.”
Again the angry blood flooded his wife’s cheeks. He, too, was throwing
the boarding-house at her.
“You did it yourself.” Gerty with difficulty was withholding the angry
tears. “I told you how it would be. You would do it.”
“Oh, hell!” cried Tom, pushing back his plate.
His sister looked drearily out the wire-screened door. Her view was a
dusty street. Hardin got up, scraping his chair over the board floor.
“And to keep it from me,” persisted the wife. “To let me ask him to
dinner--”
“Does that dismal farce have to go on?” demanded Hardin, turning back
to the table. “You’ll have to have it without me, then. I’ll not stay
and make a fool of myself. Ask him to dinner. Me! I’ll see myself.”
Innes wished she were in the neighboring tent. Tom was lashing himself
into a coarse fury.
To her dismay, Gerty burst into tears. It was killing her, the
disgrace, she cried. She couldn’t endure it. She couldn’t stand it
there; she had not the courage to go to Los Angeles, where her friends
would pity her. It was crushing her. _She_ was not a Hardin; _she_ was
sensitive; she could not justify everything a Hardin did as right, no
matter what the consequences. The pretty eyes obscured, she rushed, a
streaming Niobe, from the room.
The brother and sister avoided each other’s eyes. Innes rose and
cleared the table of the dishes. She made a loud noise with the running
water in the shed, racketing the pans to drown the insistence of
Gerty’s sobbing.
She kept listening for Tom’s step. She wanted to go with him when he
left; he must not reach the office in the blackness of that mood. She
wished he would not betray his feelings; yet she knew it was not he who
was to blame.
When she heard the screen door slam, she flashed out the back way.
“Going?” she called after him. “Wait for me.” She dashed into her tent
for her hat. She had to run to catch up with him.
“I thought I’d go and see Mrs. Parrish,” she caught up, panting. “I’ve
not seen her since I came back, and I felt anxious. Have you heard how
she was?”
“A man’s a fool who’ll bring in a nervous silly woman like that,”
growled Hardin, stalking along. “Any man is a fool,” he added to
himself, “who expects to keep the love or the respect of a woman in
a place like this. Women want luxury, modern women. They can’t stand
hardships.” He was a fool, like Parrish.
“Any of the rigs going over in that direction to-day?” inquired his
sister. She told herself that if Gerty had made that conversational
opening, she would have convicted her of tactlessness. The Parrish
theme was certainly an inspired one!
“I should send MacLean over to the Wistaria. Those Indians shirk if we
don’t jump in on them every day.” Then his face blackened again. “I was
going to send the new machine. But I suppose the boss will be using it.”
All topics were equally dangerous with Tom in this mood!
The telegraph operator told Hardin that Rickard had gone to Imperial
with MacLean.
“Truckling,” sneered Hardin, thrusting out his lip.
Innes felt a thud of anger.
“Wish he could stand a hurt like an Innes,” she thought.
“A toady,” concluded Tom. “How do you like your new boss, boys?” The
men crowded around him. Innes, through an open window, saw MacLean,
Jr., in the company’s new machine, leaving the sheds. She ran out of
the office.
“I won’t listen to you,” she defied her disloyal thoughts. “He’s my
brother. I’ll not listen to you.”
A wide-open smile was on MacLean’s face as he swung the long gray
machine around to the morning-glories.
“Coming to Wistaria? Oh, that’s bully.”