FEMININE LOGIC
Social life in San Francisco at this period had a distinction, a
half-foreign, bizarre picturesqueness, which it soon after lost and has
never regained. Separated from the rest of the country by a sweep of
unconquered desert, ringed on its farther side by a girdle of sea, the
pioneer city developed, undisturbed by outside influences, along its
own lines.
The adventures of forty-nine had infused into it some of the breadth
and breeziness of their wild spirit. The bonanza period of the
Comstock lode had not yet arisen to place huge fortunes in the hands
of the coarsely ambitious and frankly illiterate, and to infect the
populace with a lust of money that has never been conquered. There
were few millionaires, and the passionate desire to become one had
not yet been planted in the bosom of every simple male, who, under
ordinary conditions, would have been content to wield a pick or sweep
down the office stairs. The volcano of silver that was to belch forth
precious streams over the far West, and from thence over the world, was
beginning to stir and mutter, but its muttering was still too low to be
caught by any but the sharpest ears.
The society which welcomed June and Rosamund was probably the best the
city ever had to offer. After the manner of all flourishing communities
it aspired to renew itself by the infusion of new blood, and the young
girls were graciously greeted. Carriages rolled up to the high iron
gates, and ladies whose names were of weight trailed their silk skirts
over the flagged walk. Coming in late in the wintry dusk it was very
exciting always to find cards on the hall table.
There were often men’s cards among them. A good many moths had begun
to flutter round the flames of youth and beauty and wealth that burnt
in the Colonel’s house on Folsom Street. In his constant visits he had
formed a habit of looking over these cards as he stood in the hall
taking off his overcoat. The frequency with which the card of Mr.
Jerome Barclay lay freshly and conspicuously on top of the pile struck
him unpleasantly and caused him to remark upon the fact to June.
“Yes, Mr. Barclay comes quite often,” she said, “but so does Mr.
Davenport and Mr. Brooks and Mr. Pierce, and several others.”
She had changed color and looked embarrassed at the mention of his
name, and the Colonel had spoken to Rosamund about it. The Colonel had
begun to rely upon Rosamund, as everybody did, and, like everybody, he
had come to regard her as much the elder of the two sisters, the one to
be consulted and to seek advice of. Rosamund admitted that Mr. Barclay
did come rather often, but not indeed, as June had said, oftener than
several others.
“Does he come to see June, or you, or both of you?” the Colonel had
asked bluntly, looking at the last slip of pasteboard left by the young
man.
“Oh, June, of course,” said Rosamund, with a little quickness of
impatience. “They nearly all come to see June.”
“I don’t see what the devil business he has doing that,” said the
Colonel, throwing down the card with angry contempt. “What’s he come
round here for, anyway?”
“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Rosamund, surprised at his sudden annoyance.
“Well, he shouldn’t,” said the Colonel shortly. “That’s one sure thing.
He shouldn’t.”
And so that conversation ended, but the memory of it lingered uneasily
in Rosamund’s mind, and she found herself counting Jerry Barclay’s
calls and watching June while he was there and after he had gone.
The visits of the young man were not indeed sufficiently frequent to
warrant uneasiness on sentimental scores. He sometimes dropped in on
Sunday afternoon, and now and then on week-day evenings. What neither
Rosamund nor the Colonel knew was that he had formed a habit of meeting
June on walks she took along the fine new promenade of Van Ness Avenue,
and on several occasions had spent a friendly hour with her, sitting on
one of the benches in the little plaza on Turk Street.
The first and second times this had happened June had mentioned
the fact to her sister, and that a gentleman should accidentally
meet a lady in an afternoon stroll had seemed a matter of so little
importance that Rosamund had quickly forgotten it. The subsequent
meetings, also apparently accidental, June, for some reason known to
herself, had not mentioned to any one. Now it was hard for her to
persuade herself that she met Jerry Barclay by anything but prearranged
design; and June did not like to think that she met him, or any other
man, by prearrangement. So she let him elicit from her by skilful
questioning, her itinerary for her afternoon walks when she had no
engagements, and took some trouble to make herself believe that the
meetings still had at least an air of the accidental.
But why did she not tell her sister of these walks? Why, in fact, had
she once or twice lately almost misled Rosamund in her efforts to evade
her queries as to how she had passed the afternoon?
If June happened to be looking in the mirror when she asked herself
these questions she noticed that she reddened and looked guilty.
There was nothing wrong in meeting Mr. Barclay and walking with him
or sitting on one of the benches in the quiet little plaza. Their
conversation had never contained a word with which the strictest duenna
could have found fault. Why, then, did June not tell? She hardly
knew herself. Some delicate fiber of feminine instinct told her that
what was becoming a secretly tremulous pleasure would be questioned,
interfered with, probably stopped. She knew she was not one who could
fight and defy. They would overwhelm her, and she would submit, baffled
and miserable.
If Jerry Barclay liked to talk to her that way in the open air, or
on the park bench better than in the gloomy grandeur of the parlor in
Folsom Street, why should he not? And yet she felt that if she had said
this to Rosamund with all the defiant confidence with which she said
it to herself, Rosamund would in some unexpected way sweep aside her
argument, show it worthless, and make her feel that if Jerry did not
want to see her in her own house he ought not to see her at all. So
June used the weapons of the weak, one of the most valuable of which is
the maintaining of silence on matters of dispute.
It was in February that their father suggested that they should
return the numerous hospitalities offered them by giving a dance. It
would not be a ball. They were still too inexperienced in the art of
entertainment, and their mourning was yet too deep to permit of their
venturing on so ambitious a beginning. “Just a house-warming,” Allen
said when he saw that they were rather alarmed by the magnitude of the
undertaking. There was much talking and consulting of the Colonel.
Every night after dinner the girls sat long over the coffee and fruit,
discussing such vital points as to whether there should be two salads
at the supper and would they have four musicians or five. Allen called
them “little misers,” and told them they “never would be tracked
through life by the quarters they dropped.” It was interesting to the
Colonel to notice that Rosamund’s habits of economy clung to her, while
June had assimilated the tastes and extravagances of the women about
her with a sudden, transforming completeness.
It was at one of these after-dinner consultations that he was
presented with the list of guests written out neatly in Rosamund’s
clear hand. Was it all right, or did Uncle Jim think they had left out
anybody?
As he ran his eye over it Allen said suddenly:
“They’ve got Mrs. Newbury down there. What do you think about her?”
The Colonel, who was reading through his glasses, looked up with a
sharp glance of surprise and again down at the list, where his eyes
stopped at the questioned name.
“Oh, strike her off,” he said. “What do you want her for?”
“She’s been here to see us,” Rosamund demurred, “and she asked us once
to her house to hear somebody sing.”
“Why shouldn’t she come?” said June. “What is there about her you don’t
like?”
“I didn’t say there was anything,” he answered in a tone of irritated
impatience. “But she’s a good deal older than you, and--and--well, I
guess it wouldn’t amuse her. She doesn’t dance. You don’t want to waste
any invitations on people who may not come.”
Apparently this piece of masculine logic was to him conclusive, for he
took his pencil and made a mark through the name.
The evening of the dance arrived, and long before midnight its success
was assured. It was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant affairs of
the winter. It seemed the last touch on the ascending fortunes of June
and Rosamund. They had never looked so well. In her dress of shimmering
white, which showed her polished shoulders, Rosamund was beautiful,
and June, similarly garbed, looked, as some of the women guests
remarked, “actually pretty.” As a hostess she danced little. Three
times, however, Rosamund noticed her floating about the room encircled
by the arm of Jerry Barclay. Other people noticed it too. But June,
carried away by the excitement of the evening, was indifferent to the
comment she might create. So was Barclay. He had drunk much champagne
and felt defiant of the world. She felt defiant too, because she was so
confidently happy.
By three the last guests had gone. Allen, hardly waiting for the door
to slam on them, stumbled sleepily to bed, and June followed, a wearied
sprite, bits of torn gauze trailing from her skirt, the wreath of
jasmine blossoms she wore faded and broken, the starry flowers caught
in her curls.
“Rosie, I’m too tired to stay up a minute longer,” she called from the
stairs, catching a glimpse of the dismantled parlor with Rosamund,
followed by a yawning Chinaman, turning out lights and locking windows.
“Go up, dear,” answered Rosamund in her most maternal tone. “I’ll be
up in a minute. Sing’s so sleepy I know he’ll go to bed and leave
everything open if I don’t stay till he’s done.”
The sisters occupied two large rooms, broad-windowed and spacious, in
the front of the house. The door of connection was never shut. They
talked together as they dressed, walking from room to room. The tie
between them, that had never been broken by a week’s separation, was
unusually close even for sisters so near of an age, so united by
mutual cares and past sorrows.
June’s room shone bright in the lights from the two ground-glass globes
which protruded on gilded supports from either side of the bureau
mirror. It was furnished in the heavily gorgeous manner of the period
and place. Long curtains of coarse lace fell over the windows, which
above were garnished with pale blue satin lambrequins elaborately
draped. The deeply tufted and upholstered furniture was covered with a
blue-and-white cretonne festooned with woolen tassels and fringes. Over
the foot of the huge bed lay a satin eiderdown quilt of the same shade
as the lambrequins.
June, completely exhausted, was soon in bed, and lying peacefully
curled on her side waited for her sister’s footsteps. As she heard the
creak of Rosamund’s opening door she called softly:
“Come in here. I want to talk. I’ve millions of things to say to you.”
Rosamund swept rustling into the room and sat down on the side of
the bed. Her dress was neither crushed nor torn and the bloom of her
countenance was unimpaired by fatigue.
“Dear Rosie, you look so lovely,” said June, curling her little body
under the clothes comfortably round her sister. “There was nobody here
to-night half as good-looking as you were.”
She lightly touched. Rosamund’s arm with the tips of her fingers,
murmuring to herself,
“Lovely, marbly arms like a statue!”
Her sister, indifferent to these compliments, which she did not appear
to hear, sat looking at the toe of her slipper.
“I think it was a great success,” she said. “Everybody seemed to enjoy
it.”
“Of course they did. I know I did. I never had such a beautiful,
galumptious time in my life.”
Rosamund gave her a gravely inspecting side-glance.
“You tore your dress round the bottom, I saw. There was quite a large
piece trailing on the floor.”
“Yes, it was dreadful,” said June, nestling closer about the sitting
figure and smiling in dreamy delight. “Somebody trod on it while I was
dancing, and then they danced away with it round them, and it tore off
me in yards, as if I was a top and it was my string.”
“Were you dancing with Jerry Barclay?” asked Rosamund.
“I don’t think so.” She turned her head in profile on the pillow and
looked at her sister out of the corner of her eye. Meeting Rosamund’s
sober glance she broke into suppressed laughter.
“What’s the matter with you, Rosie?” she said, giving her a little kick
through the bed-clothes; “you look as solemn as an undertaker.”
“I don’t think you ought to have danced so often with Jerry Barclay.
It--it--doesn’t look well. It--” she stopped.
“‘It’--well, go on. Tell me all about it. A child could play with me
to-night. You couldn’t make me angry if you tried.”
“June,” said Rosamund, turning toward her with annoyed seriousness, “I
don’t think you ought to be friends with Jerry Barclay.”
“What do you say that for?”
Despite her previous remark as to the difficulty of making her angry,
there was a distinct, cold edge on June’s voice as she spoke.
“I found out to-night. Ever since we heard those men talk that evening
at Mrs. Davenport’s I had a feeling that something wasn’t right. And
then Uncle Jim being so positive about not asking Mrs. Newbury here
this evening.”
“What’s Mrs. Newbury got to do with it?”
“Everything. It’s all Mrs. Newbury. To-night in the dressing-room some
girls were talking about her and Mr. Barclay; I asked them what they
meant, and I heard it all. It’s a horrid story. I don’t like to tell it
to you.”
“What is it?” said June. She had turned her head on the pillow and
stared full face at her sister. She was tensely, frowningly grave.
“Well, they say--every one says--they’re lovers.”
“Lovers!” exclaimed June. “What do you mean by that? She’s married.”
“That’s just the dreadful part of it. They’re that kind of lovers--the
wrong kind. They’ve been for years, and she loves him desperately and
won’t let him have anything to do with anybody else. And Mr. Newbury
loves her, and doesn’t know, and thinks Jerry Barclay is his friend.”
There was a silence in the room. Rosamund had found it difficult to
tell this base and ignoble piece of scandal to her sister. Now she did
not look at June because she loved her too much to witness the shame
and pain that she knew would be hers.
“It’s too horrible,” she continued, June uttering no sound. “I
wouldn’t have told you, but--well, we don’t want him coming here if
he’s that sort of man. And Mrs. Newbury--” she made a gesture of angry
disgust--“what right had _she_ to come here and call on us?”
June still said nothing. Her hand was lying on the counterpane and
Rosamund, placing hers on it, felt that it trembled and was cold.
This, with the continued silence, alarmed her and she said, trying to
palliate the blow,
“It seems so hard to believe it. He was so kind and natural and jolly
up at Foleys, as if he was our brother.”
“_Believe_ it!” exclaimed June loudly. “You don’t suppose _I believe_
it?”
Her tone was high, almost violent. She jerked away her hand and drew
herself up in the bed in a sitting posture.
“You don’t suppose I’d believe a shameful, wicked story like that,
Rosamund Allen?”
“But they all said so,” stammered Rosamund, taken aback, almost
converted by the conviction opposing her.
“Well, then, they say what’s not true, that’s all! They’re liars. Don’t
lots of people tell lies? Haven’t you found out that down here in the
city most of the things you hear aren’t true? They just like to spread
stories like that so that people will listen to them. Everybody wants
to talk here and nobody wants to listen. It’s a lie--just a mean,
cowardly lie.”
Her face was burning and bore an expression of quivering intensity.
Rosamund, astonished by her vehemence, stared at her disquieted.
“But--but--everybody thinks so,” was all she could repeat.
“Then they think what’s not so. Do _you_ think so?” with eager
challenge.
The other looked down, her brows drawn together in worried indecision.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “When he comes up in my mind,
especially as he was at Foleys, it seems as if I couldn’t believe it
either.”
“There!” exclaimed June triumphantly. “Of course you can’t. Nobody who
has any sense could. It’s just degraded, low-minded people who have
nothing better to do than spread scandals that could believe such a
story about such a man.”
“But Mrs. Newbury,” demurred her sister. “Why did Uncle Jim not want us
to ask her to-night?”
“What’s Mrs. Newbury got to do with it? I don’t know. I don’t care
anything about her. I don’t like her. She looks like a large white
seal, walking on the tip of its tail. I think she’s common and fat and
ugly. But what does she matter? If Mr. Newbury loves her he’s got very
bad taste, that’s all I’ve got to say. And as to Jerry Barclay loving
her? Why, Rosamund--” she suddenly dropped to her most persuasive
softness of tone and expression--“you know he couldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosamund. “I don’t feel as if I knew anything
about men, or what they like, or what they don’t like. You might
think Mrs. Newbury ugly and they might think her beautiful. You
never can tell. And then those men on the steps that night at Mrs.
Davenport’s”--she shot an uneasy glance at her sister--“that was what
they meant.”
“Rosie,” said June, leaning toward her and speaking with pleading
emphasis, “you don’t believe it?”
“I don’t want to, that’s certain.”
“Well, then, say you don’t.”
“I can’t say that positively. I wish I could.”
She rose from her seat and moved away, absently drawing the hair-pins
from her coiled hair. June fell back on the pillow.
“Well, I can,” she said. “I never felt more positive about anything in
my life.”
Her sister turned back to the bedside and stood there looking
frowningly down.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I’d hate to think any man like that
had ever come here to see us or been a friend of yours.”
“So would I,” said June promptly. “So would any girl.”
“Well, good night. You’re tired to death. I’ll put the gas out.”
June saw the tall white figure move to the bureau and then darkness
fell, and she heard its rustling withdrawal.
She lay still for a time staring at the square of light that fell from
her sister’s room through the open door. Presently this disappeared
and she moved her eyes to the faint luminous line which showed the
separation of the window curtains. She was still staring at it
wide-eyed and motionless when it grew paler, whiter and then warmer
with the new day.
She had spoken the truth when she said she did not believe the ugly
story. There are many women who have the faculty of quietly shutting
a door on obvious facts and refusing them admittance into the prim
sanctuary of their acceptance. How much more might a young girl,
loving, inexperienced and tender, refuse to believe a blasting rumor
that had touched a figure already shrined in her heart!
But the shock she suffered was severe. That such a story should be
coupled with his name was revolting to her. And far down in the inner
places of her being, where nature has placed in women a chord that
thrills to danger, a creeping sense of dread and fear stirred. But she
smothered its warning vibration and, with her eyes fixed on the crack
of light, repeated over and over:
“Lies! lies! Miserable, cowardly lies!”