DANGER SIGNALS
Jerome Barclay lived with his mother in a new house on Taylor Street,
near Jackson. They had only been there a short time. Before that South
Park had been their home. But within the last year or two the fortunes
of South Park had shown symptoms of decline, and when this happened
Mrs. Simeon Barclay had felt that she must move.
Since her arrival in San Francisco in the early fifties, Mrs. Barclay
had made many moves. These were not undertaken because her habitats had
been uncomfortable, but because the fashionable element of the city
had shown from the first a migratory tendency which was exceedingly
inconvenient for those who followed it. Mrs. Barclay had followed it
assiduously from the day she had landed from the steamer, and had
in consequence lived in many localities, ranging from what was now
Chinatown and in the fifties had been the most perfectly genteel and
exclusive region, to the quietly dignified purlieus of Taylor Street.
Simeon Barclay had crossed the plains in an emigrant train in
forty-nine, and between that and sixty-four, when he died, had made
a fair fortune, first as a contractor and afterward as a speculator
in real estate. In St. Louis, his native place, he had begun life as
a carpenter, seen but little prosperity, and married a pretty servant
girl, whose mind was full of distinctly formed ambitions. When he went
to California in the first gold rush he left his wife and son behind
him, and when, from the carpentering that he did with his own hands in
forty-nine, he passed to the affluent stage of being a contractor in a
large way of business, he sent for her to join him. This she did, found
him with what to their small experience were flourishing fortunes, and
immediately started out on that career of ambulating fashion which she
had followed ever since.
Barclay senior’s fifteen years of California life were full to the
brim. He made fortunes and lost them, lived hard, had his loves and
his hates openly and unblushingly, as men did in those wild days, and
became a prominent man in the San Francisco of the early sixties.
He had but the one child, and in him the ambitions of both parents
centered. The Missouri carpenter had never been educated. He was
always, even at the end of his life, uncertain in his grammar, and
his wife had found it difficult to teach him what she called “table
manners.”
Father and mother had early resolved that their son should be
handicapped by no such deficiencies. They sent him to the best schools
there were in San Francisco and later to Harvard. There he was well
supplied with money, developed the tastes for luxurious living that
were natural to him, forgathered with the richest and fastest men of
his class, and left a record of which collegians talked for years.
After his graduation he traveled in Europe for a twelve-month, as a
coping stone to the education his parents had resolved should be as
complete as money could compass.
Shortly after his son’s return Simeon Barclay died in the South Park
house. When it came to settling up the estate it was found that he had
left much less than had been expected. The house and the income of a
prudently invested eighty thousand dollars was all the widow and son
had to their credit when the outlying debts were paid. It was not a
mean fortune for the place and the time, but both were querulous and
felt themselves aggrieved by this sudden lightening of what had been
for fifteen years a well-filled purse.
Jerry, to whom a pecuniary stringency was one of the greatest of
trials, attempted to relieve the situation by speculating in “feet on
the lode” in Virginia City, and quickly lost the major part of his
inheritance. Even then there was no need for worry, as the son had
been taken into the business the father had built up, which still
flourished. But Jerry showed none of the devotion to commercial life
that had distinguished the elder man. In his hands the fortunes of
Barclay and Son, Real Estate Brokers, rapidly declined. He neglected
the office, as he did his home, his mother, his friends. A devotion,
more urgently engrossing and intoxicating than business could ever be,
had monopolized his thoughts, his interests and his time.
He was twenty-four when he returned from Europe, handsome,
warm-blooded, soft-tongued, a youth framed for the love of women.
It speedily found him. He had not been home six months when his
infatuation for the wife of William Newbury was common talk.
She was three years his senior, mismated to a man nearly double her
age, dry, hard, and precise. She was a woman of tragedy and passion,
suffering in her downfall. She had at first struggled fiercely against
it, sunk to her fall in anguish, and after it, known contending
conflicts of flesh and spirit, when she had tried to break from its
bondage and ever sunk again with bowed head and sickened heart. People
had wondered to see the figure of Lupé Newbury bent in prayer before
the altars of her church. In her girlhood she had not been noted for
her piety. Waking at night, her husband often heard her soft padding
footfall as she paced back and forth through the suite of rooms she
occupied. He had never understood her, but he loved her in a sober,
admiring way, showered money on her, believed in her implicitly. This
fond and unquestioning belief was the salt that her conscience rubbed
oftenest and most deeply into the wound.
In those first years Jerry had given her his promise never to marry.
He told her repeatedly that he regarded her as his wife; if she were
ever free it would be his first care to make her so before the eyes of
the world. But six years had passed since then, years during which the
man’s love had slowly cooled, while the woman’s burned deeper with an
ever-increasing fervid glow. The promise which had been given in the
heat of a passion that sought extravagant terms in which to express
itself, was now her chief hold upon him. In the scenes of recrimination
that constantly took place between them she beat it about his ears and
flourished it in his eyes. As she had no cunning to deceive him in the
beginning, she had no subtilities to reawake old tenderness, rekindle
old fires. She was as tempestuously dark in her despair as she was
furious in her upbraidings, melting in her love. He was sorry for her
and he was also afraid of her. He tried to please her, to keep her in
a good temper, and he refrained from looking into the future where his
promise and his fear of her, were writ large across his life.
It was for his protection from scenes of jealousy and tears that he
had conducted his friendship with June in a surreptitious manner. He
had the caution of selfish natures, and the underhand course that his
intrigue necessitated had further developed it. He wanted to please
himself always and to hurt no one, because people, when they are hurt,
disturb the joyous tenor of life. Now, where June was concerned, he was
not doing any harm. He saw the girl in a perfectly open manner except
that he did not see her in her own house. He had a right to spare
himself the railings to which he knew Lupé would subject him, and which
he dreaded as only a man can who hears them from the lips of a woman he
has ruined and no longer loves.
That it was unfair to June he would not permit himself to think. He
liked seeing her too much to give it up, so he assured himself that it
was a harmless pleasure for both of them. Of course he could not marry
her. Even if he were free to do so he had no such feeling for her.
They were only friends. Their conversation had never passed the nicely
designated limits of friendship. He had never touched her hand save
in the perfunctory pressure of greeting and farewell. His respect for
June was genuine, only it was not as strong as his regard for his own
pleasure and amusement.
Yet, despite the assurances of the platonic coolness of his
sentiments, his desire for her society grew with what it fed on. When
by some engagement, impossible to be evaded, they could not take
their accustomed walk together, he was filled with an unreasonable
disappointment, and was almost angry with her till she should appear
again.
On the last occasion the Colonel had interrupted them only a few
minutes after they had met. Jerry, cheated of the hour he had intended
spending on the park bench with her, left them in a rage. And so
imperative was his wish to see her that the next evening, indifferent
to the fact that he would probably find the Colonel there, he made up
his mind to go to the house on Folsom Street and pay one of his rare
calls.
Rion Gracey and Barney Sullivan were dining with the Allens that night.
There was much to talk about and the party sat long over the end of
dinner, the smoke of the men’s cigars lying in light layers across the
glittering expanse of the table. There were champagne glasses beside
each plate, the bubbles rising in the slender stems to cluster along
the rim. These had appeared midway in the dinner, when, with much
stumbling and after repeated promptings and urgings from Rion, Barney
Sullivan had announced his engagement to Summit Bruce.
With glasses held aloft the party pledged Mitty and her lover. The
encomiums of his fiancée which followed made Barney even redder than
the champagne did.
“Oh, there’s nothin’ the matter with Mitt,” he said with a lover’s
modesty, “I ain’t gone it blind choosin’ her.”
“Mitty Bruce!” the Colonel exclaimed. “Mitty Bruce is the finest girl
in the California foot-hills!”
“I guess Barney thinks just about that way,” Rion answered, forbearing
to stare at the blushing face of his superintendent.
“Oh, Mitt’s all there!” Barney repeated, allowing himself a slight
access of enthusiasm. “She’s just about on top of the heap.”
Greatly to his relief the conversation soon left his immediate affairs
and branched out to the other members of the little Foleys group. Black
Dan was still at the Buckeye Belle. His daughter was at school in New
York where she had been sent in the autumn at her own request. The
girls asked anxiously after her. The few glimpses they had had of the
spoiled beauty had inflamed their imaginations. It seemed part of the
elegant unusualness which appertained to her that she should be sent to
New York to finish her education, with beyond that a polishing year or
two of European travel.
“How wonderful she’ll be when she comes back,” Rosamund had said with
an unenvious sigh. “Perfectly beautiful and knowing everything like the
heroine of a novel.”
A slight trace of bitterness was noticeable in Rion’s answer.
“I think she’d have been a good deal more wonderful if she’d stayed
here. She’s just the apple of her father’s eye, the thing he lives for.
And now, unless he goes East, and that’s almost impossible with things
waking up this way in Virginia, he may not see her for a year or two.”
The mention of Virginia broke the spell of gossip and small talk and
the conversation settled down to the discussion of the business,
which, in different degrees, absorbed the four men. It was curious to
notice the change wrought in them by this congenial theme. Sullivan’s
uncouthness and embarrassment fell from him with the first words. His
whole bearing was transformed; it became infused with alertness and
gained in poise and weight. The heaviness of his visage gave place to
a look of sharpened concentration. His very voice took on different
tones, quick, sure and decisive.
But it was to Rion Gracey that the others deferred. June, sitting
silent in her chair, noticed that when he spoke they listened, Sullivan
with foxlike keenness of face, the Colonel with narrowed eyes,
ponderingly attentive over his cigar, her father with a motionless
interest showing in knit brows and debating glance. Leaning back in
an attitude of careless ease, Rion spoke simply but with a natural
dominance, for here he was master. A thrill of surprised admiration
passed through the girl. He was a man among men, a leader by weight of
authority, to whom the others unconsciously yielded the foremost place.
The room was dim with smoke when they finally rose from the table. The
mining discussion was still in progress, but Rion dropped out of it to
turn to his hostess and draw back her chair. As he did so he leaned
over her shoulder and said in a lowered voice:
“It’s too bad I’ve got to go on to-morrow. I wanted to see you again. I
wanted to talk to you.”
The words were simple enough. The young girl, however, looking uneasy,
turned to glance at him. She met his eyes, keen, deep-set, quiet, the
eyes of the out-door man accustomed to range over airy distances. In
them she saw a look which caused her to drop her own. Murmuring a word
or two of reply she turned and passed through the doorway into the
sitting-room just behind Rosamund. That young woman suddenly felt her
arm pressed by a small, cold hand, and in her ear heard a whisper:
“Don’t leave me alone this evening with Rion Gracey. Please don’t.”
Rosamund turned and shot an inquiring side-glance at her sister’s
perturbed face. She strolled toward the sitting-room bay-window and
began to arrange the curtains, June at her heels.
“Why not?” she said in a whisper, pulling the heavy folds together.
“I’m afraid of what he’s going to say. Oh, please”--with as much
urgency as the low tone employed permitted--“if he suggests that we go
into the drawing-room to look at photographs or albums or anything, you
come along, too.”
“But why?”
“Rosie, don’t be such a fool!” in an angry whisper.
Rosamund was about to retort with some spirit when the click of the
iron gate caught her ear. She drew back the curtains and peeped out.
A step sounded on the flagged walk and a tall, masculine figure took
shape through the density of the fog-thickened atmosphere. She closed
the curtains and looked at June with an unsmiling eye.
“You needn’t be afraid of being left alone with anybody,” she said.
“Here’s Jerry Barclay.”
June drew back, her eyebrows raised into exclamatory semi-circles, an
irrepressible smile on her lips.
“Rosamund,” called Allen from the table, “where’s the ash receiver?
Gracey’s got nothing to put his ashes in but the blue satin candy box
one of June’s young men gave her for Christmas.”
The entrance of Jerry Barclay a moment later had a marked effect upon
the company. He was known to the four men and not especially liked
by any one of them. The Colonel had begun to feel for him a sharp,
disquieted repugnance. The one person in the room to whom his entrance
afforded pleasure was June, and this she made an effort to hide under a
manner of cold politeness.
An immediate constraint fell on the party which the passage of the
evening did not dispel. Gracey was angry that the advent of this man
whom he mentally characterized as “a damned European dandy” had
deprived him of a tête-à-tête with June. He had not intended, as the
young girl feared, to ask her to marry him. He had the humility of a
true lover and he felt that he dared not broach that subject yet. But
he had hoped for an hour’s converse with her to take with him on his
journey as a sweet, comforting memory. Sullivan detested Jerry, whose
manner he found condescending, turned from him, and began talking with
an aggressive indifference to his host. But the Colonel was the most
disturbed of all. What worried him was the difference between June’s
manner to Jerry to-day, when others were present, and June’s manner to
Jerry yesterday, when they had been walking alone on Van Ness Avenue.
By eleven o’clock they had gone and Allen having stolen to bed, the
sisters were left together in the sitting-room. They were silent for a
space, Rosamund moving about to put out lights, give depressed cushions
a restoring pat, and sweep the ashes of the fire into a careful heap
beneath the grate, while June idly watched her from the depths of an
arm-chair.
“Aren’t people funny?” said the younger sister suddenly, turning from
her kneeling position on the rug, the hearth-brush in her hand. “They
seem to be so different in different places.”
“How do you mean?” said June absently. “Who’s different in a different
place?”
“Well, Barney is. He’s all right and looks just as good as anybody up
at the mines. And down here he’s entirely different, he looks so red,
and his feet are so big, and his hands never seem to know where to go
unless he’s talking about mining things. His clothes never looked so
queer up at Foleys, did they? They seemed just like everybody else’s
clothes up there.”
“Oh, Barney’s all right,” returned the other, evidently taking scant
interest in the problem. “I’m glad he and Mitty are going to be
married.”
“But Rion Gracey’s not like that,” continued Rosamund, pursuing her
own line of thought. “He’s just the same everywhere. I think he
looks better down here. He looks as if he were somebody, somebody of
importance. He even makes other people, that look all right when he’s
not by, seem sort of small and insignificant.”
“Whom did he make look small and insignificant?” said June suddenly in
a key of pugnacious interest.
“Jerry Barclay. I thought Jerry Barclay looked quite ordinary and as
if he didn’t amount to much beside Rion. The things he said seemed
snappish and sometimes silly, like what a girl says when she’s cross
and is trying to pretend she isn’t.”
“I don’t think it very polite, Rosamund,” said June in a coldly
superior tone, “to criticize people and talk them over when they’ve
hardly got out of the house.”
“Well, perhaps it isn’t,” said Rosamund contritely, returning to her
hearth-brushing, “but like lots of other things that aren’t just right
it’s awfully hard not to do it sometimes.”
The girls went up stairs and June was silent. Rosamund thought she was
still annoyed by the criticism of her friend, and so she was. For deep
in her own heart the thought that Rosamund had given voice to had
entered, paining and shocking her by its disloyalty, and making her
feel a sense of resentment against Rion Gracey.