The pastor's announcement had been swallowed up in a hum of truant
inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the
platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, said to her mother:
"What?... Did you catch his name?"
"A foreigner of some sort!" replied Mrs. Robson, with smug sufficiency.
For a moment the elder woman's sneer dulled the edge of Claire's
anticipations, but presently the man began to speak, and at once she
felt a sense of power back of his halting words, a sudden bursting fort
of bloom amid the frozen assembly that sat ice-bound, refusing to be
melted by the fires of an alien enthusiasm. She could not help wondering
whether he felt how hopeless it would be to force a sympathetic response
from his audience. In ordinary times the Second Presbyterian Church of
San Francisco could not possibly have had any interest in Serbia except
as a field for foreign missionaries. Now, with America in the war and
speeding up the draft, these worthy people were too much concerned with
problems nearer their own hearthstones to be swept off their feet by a
specific and almost inarticulate appeal for an obscure country, made
only a shade less remote by the accident of being accounted an ally.
Claire, straining at attention, found it hard to follow him. He talked
rapidly and with unfamiliar emphasis, and he waved his hands. Frankly,
people were bored. They had come to hear a concert and incidentally
swell the Red Cross fund, but they had not reckoned on quite this type
of harangue. Besides, an appetizing smell of coffee from the church
kitchen had begun to beguile their senses. And yet, the man talked on
and on, until quite suddenly Claire Robson began to have a strange
feeling of disquiet, an embarrassment for him, such as one feels when an
intimate friend or kinsman unconsciously makes a spectacle of himself.
She wished that he would stop. She longed to rise from her seat and
scream, to create an outlandish scene, to do anything, in short, that
would silence him. At this point he turned his eyes in her direction,
and she felt the scorch of an intense inner fire. Instinctively she
lowered her glance.... When she looked up again his gaze was still fixed
upon her. She felt her color rise. From that moment on she had a sense
that she was his sole audience. He was talking to her. The others did
not matter. She still did not have any very distinct idea what it was
all about, but the manner of it held her captive. But gradually the
mists cleared, he became more coherent, and slowly, imperceptibly, bit
by bit, he won the others. Yet never for an instant did he take his
eyes from _her_. When he finished, a momentary silence blocked the final
burst of applause. But Claire Robson's hands were locked tightly
together, and it was not until he had disappeared that she realized that
she had not paid him the tribute of even a parting glance.
The pastor came back upon the platform and announced that refreshments
would be served at the conclusion of the next number. A heavy odor of
coffee continued to float from the church kitchen. A red-haired woman
stepped forward and began to sing.
Already Claire Robson dreaded the ordeal of supper. The fact that tables
were being laid further disturbed her. This meant that she and her
mother would have to push their way into some group which, at best,
would remain indifferent to their presence. When coffee was served
informally things were not so awkward. To be sure, one had to balance
coffee-cup and cake-plate with an amazing and painful skill, but, on the
other hand, table-less groups did not emphasize one's isolation. Claire
had got to the point where she would have welcomed active hostility on
the part of her fellow church members, but their utter indifference was
soul-killing. She would have liked to remember one occasion when any one
had betrayed the slightest interest in either her arrival or departure,
or rather in the arrival and departure of her mother and herself.
The solo came to an end, and the inevitable applause followed, but
before the singer could respond to the implied encore most of the
listeners began frank and determined advances upon the tables. The
concert was over.
Mrs. Robson rose and faced Claire with a look of bewilderment. As usual,
mother and daughter stood irresolutely, caught like two trembling leaves
in the backwater of a swirling eddy. At last Claire made a movement
toward the nearest table. Mrs. Robson followed. They sat down.
The scattered company speedily began to form into congenial groups.
There was a great deal of suddenly loosened chatter. Claire Robson sat
silently, rather surprised and dismayed to find that she and her mother
had chosen a table which seemed to be the objective of all the prominent
church members. The company facing her was elegant, if not precisely
smart, and there were enough laces and diamonds displayed to have done
excellent service if the proper background had been provided. Claire was
further annoyed to discover that her mother was regarding the situation
with a certain ruffling self-satisfaction which she took no pains to
conceal. Mrs. Robson bowed and smirked, and even called gaily to every
one within easy range. There was something distasteful in her mother's
sudden and almost aggressive self-assurance.
Gradually the company adjusted itself; the tables were filled. The only
moving figures were those of young women carrying huge white pitchers of
steaming coffee. Claire Robson settled into her seat with a resignation
born of subtle inner misery. Across her brain flashed the insistent and
pertinent questions that such a situation always evoked. Why was she not
one of these young women engaged in distributing refreshments? Did the
circles close automatically so as to exclude her, or did her own
aloofness shut her out? What was the secret of these people about her
that gave them such an assured manner? No one spoke to her with cordial
enthusiasm.... It was not a matter of wealth, or brains, or prominent
church activity. It was not even a matter of obscurity. Like all large
organizations, the Second Presbyterian Church was made up of every
clique in the social calendar; the obscure circle was as clannish and
distinctive in its way as any other group. But Claire Robson was forced
to admit that she did not belong even to the obscure circle. She
belonged nowhere--that was the galling and oppressive truth that was
forced upon her.
At this point she became aware that one of the most prominent church
members, Mrs. Towne, was making an unmistakably cordial advance in her
direction. Claire had a misgiving.... Mrs. Towne was never excessively
friendly except for a definite aim.
"My dear Miss Robson," Mrs. Towne began, sweetly, drooping
confidentially to a whispering posture, "I am so sorry, but I shall have
to disturb you and your mother!... It just happens that this table has
been reserved for the elders and their wives.... I hope you'll
understand!"
For a moment Claire merely stared at the messenger of evil news. Then,
recovering herself, she managed to reply:
"Oh yes, Mrs. Towne! I understand perfectly.... I am sure we were very
stupid.... Come, mother!"
Mrs. Robson responded at once to her daughter's command. The two women
rose. By this time the task of securing another place was quite
hopeless. Claire felt that every eye in the room was turned upon them.
Picking their way between a labyrinth of tables and chairs, they
literally were stumbling in the direction of an exit when Claire felt a
hand upon her arm. She turned.
"Pardon me," the man opposite her was saying, "but may I offer you a
place at our table?"
Claire said nothing; she followed blindly. Her mother was close upon her
heels.
The table was a small one, and only two people were occupying it--the
man who had halted Claire, and a woman. The man, standing with one hand
on the chair which he had drawn up for Mrs. Robson, said, simply:
"My name is Stillman, and of course you know Mrs. Condor--the lady who
has just sung for us."
Claire gave a swift, inclusive glance. Yes, it was the same woman who
had attempted to beguile a weary audience from its impending repletion;
at close range one could not escape the intense redness of her hair or
the almost immoral whiteness of the shoulders and arms which she was at
such little pains to conceal.
"Stillman?" Mrs. Robson was fluttering importantly. "Not the old Rincon
Hill family?"
"Yes, the old Rincon Hill family," the man replied.
Mrs. Robson sat down with preening self-satisfaction. Wearily the
daughter dropped into the seat which Mrs. Condor proffered. The name of
Ned Stillman was not unfamiliar to any San Franciscan who scanned the
social news with even a casual glance, and Claire had a vague
remembrance that Mrs. Condor also figured socially, but in a rather more
inclusive way than her companion. At all events, it was plain that her
mother, with unerring feminine insight, had placed the pair to her
satisfaction. Already the elder woman was contriving to let Stillman
know something of _her_ antecedents. _She_ was Emily Carrol, also of
Rincon Hill, and of course he knew her two sisters--Mrs. Thomas Wynne
and Mrs. Edward Finch-Brown! As Stillman returned a smiling assurance to
Mrs. Robson's attempts to be impressive, a young woman in white arrived
with ice-cream and messy layer-cake. Unconsciously Claire Robson began
to smile. She could not have said why, but somehow the presence of Ned
Stillman and Mrs. Condor at a table spread with such vacuous delights
seemed little short of ridiculous. They did not fit the picture any more
than her beetle-browed, red-lipped Serbian who.... She turned
deliberately and swept the room with her glance. Of course he had gone.
It was not to be expected that _he_ would descend to the level of such
puerile feasting. A sudden contempt for everything that only an hour ago
seemed so desirable rose within her, and, in answer to the young woman's
query as to whether she preferred coffee to ice-cream, she answered with
lip-curling aloofness:
"Neither, thank you.... I am not hungry."
Stillman looked at her searchingly. She returned his gaze without
flinching.
Claire Robson did not sleep that night. She lay for hours, quite
motionless, staring into the gloom of her narrow bedroom, her mind
ruthlessly shaping formless, vague intuitions into definite convictions.
She could not put her finger upon the precise reason for her inquietude.
Was it chargeable to so trivial a circumstance as a stranger's formal
courtesy or had something more subtle moved her? If the depths of her
isolation had been thrown into too high relief by the almost shameful
sense of obligation she felt toward Stillman for his courtesy, what was
to be said of the uniqueness of the solitary position which the Serbian
awarded her by singling her out for a sympathetic response? Could it be
that a vague pity had stirred him, too? Had things reached a point where
her loneliness showed through the threadbare indifference of her glance?
In short, had both men been won to gallantry by her distress? In one
case, at least, she decided that there was a reasonable chance to doubt.
And that doubt quickened her pulse like May wine.
But the humiliation of her last encounter with chivalry stuck with
profound irritation. She recalled the scene again and again. She
remembered her contemptuous silence before Stillman's obvious suavities,
the high, assured laugh which his companion, Mrs. Condor, threw out to
meet his quiet sallies, the ruffling satisfaction of her mother,
chattering on irrelevantly, but with the undisguised purpose of creating
a proper impression. How easily Stillman must have seen through Claire's
muteness and the elder woman's eager craving for an audience! And all
the time Mrs. Condor had been laughing, not ill-naturedly, but with the
irony of an experienced woman possessing a sense of humor.
And at the end, when the four had left the church together, to be
whirled home in Stillman's car, the sudden nods and smiles and farewells
that had blossomed along the path of her mother's exit! Claire could
have laughed it all away if her mother had not betrayed such eagerness
to drink this snobbish flattery to the lees....
Claire's father had never entered very largely into her calculations,
but to-night her readjusted vision included him. Stubborn, kind, a bit
weak, and inclined to copying poetry in a red-covered album, he had been
no match for the disillusionments of married life. Her mother's people
had felt a sullen resentment at his downfall--he had taken to drink and
died ingloriously when Claire was still in her seventh year. Claire,
influenced by the family traditions, had shared this resentment. But now
she found herself wondering whether there was not a word or two to be
said in his behalf. Her father had been a cheap clerk in a wholesale
house when he had married. The uncertain Carrol fortunes were waning
swiftly at the time, and Emily Carrol had been thrown at him with all
the panic that then possessed a public schooled in the fallacy that
marriage was a woman's only career. The result was to have been
expected. Extravagance, debts, too much family, drink, death--the
sequence was complete. He had been captured, withered, cast aside, by a
tribe that had not even had the decency to grant his memory the
kindness of an excuse.
Wide-eyed and restless, Claire Robson felt a sudden pity for her father.
Tears sprang to her eyes; it overwhelmed her to discover this new father
so full of human failings and yet so full of human provocation. In her
twenty-four years of life she had never shed a tear for him, or felt the
slightest pang for his failure. If she had ever doubted the Carrol
viewpoint, she had never given her lack of faith any scope. She had
taken their cast-off prejudices and threadbare convictions as docilely
as she had once received their stale garments. She had shrunk from
spiritual independence with all the obsequious arrogance of a poor
relation at a feast. Her diffidence, her self-consciousness, her
timidity, were the outward forms of an inbred snobbery. It was curious
how suddenly all this was made clear to her....
At length she fell into a troubled sleep.... When she awoke the room's
outlines were reviving before the advances of early morning. For the
first time in her life she caught the poetry of the new day at first
hand. For years she had reveled vicariously in the delights of morning.
But it had always been to her a thing apart, a matter which the writers
of romantic verse beheld and translated for the benefit of late
sleepers. It never occurred to her that the day crawling into the
light-well of her Clay Street flat was lit with precisely the same flame
that colored the far-flung peaks of the poet's song. And instantly a
phrase of the Serbian's harangue came to her--blood-red dawn! He had
repeated these words over and over again, and somehow under the heat of
his ardor and longing for his native land this hackneyed phrase took on
its real and dreadful value. In the sudden sweep of this vital
remembrance, Claire Robson rose for a moment above the fretful drip of
circumstance.... _Blood-red Dawn_!... She threw herself back upon her
bed and shuddered....
She rose at seven o'clock, but already the morning had grown pallid and
flecked with gray clouds.
An apologetic tap came at the door, and the voice of Mrs. Robson
repeating a formula that she never varied:
"Better hurry, Claire. If you don't you'll be late for the office!"