Toward six o'clock one afternoon in late February Ned Stillman, making
his way from the business district at California and Montgomery Streets
toward his club, suddenly remembered a forgotten luncheon engagement for
that day with Lily Condor.
"Well," he muttered at once, "I'm in for it now! I guess I might as well
swing out and see her and get the thing over with."
It was curious of late how often he was given to muttering. Previously,
petty annoyances had not moved him to these half-audible and solitary
comments which he had always found contemptuously amusing in others. He
wondered whether this new trick was the result of his business ventures,
his sly charities, or his approach toward the suggestive age of forty.
Associating the name of Lily Condor with his covert charities, he was
almost persuaded that they lay back of this preposterous habit. And the
more he thought about it the more he muttered and became convinced that
Lily Condor was usually the topic of these vocal self-communings.
Ned Stillman had always prided himself upon his sense of personal
freedom concerning the trivial circumstances of life. Of course, like
any man of sensibility, he was bound by the chains that deeper impulses
forge, but he had never been hampered by any restraints directed at his
ordinary uprisings and downsittings. In short, he had answered the beck
and nod of no man, much less a woman, and he was not finding Lily
Condor's growing presumptions along this line altogether agreeable.
He would not have minded so much if there was any personal gratification
in yielding to the lady's whip-hand commands. There are certain delights
in self-surrender which give a zest to slavery, but there is no joy in
being held a hostage. Looking back, Stillman marveled at the
indiscretion he had committed when he handed over not only his reserve,
but Claire Robson's reputation into the safekeeping of Lily Condor. Had
he ever had the simplicity to imagine that a woman of Mrs. Condor's
stamp would constitute herself a safe-deposit vault for hoarding secrets
without exacting a price? Well, perhaps he had expected to pay, but a
little less publicly. He had not looked to have the lady in question
ring every coin audibly in full view and hearing of the entire
market-place, and yet, if his experience had stood him in good stead, he
must have known that this was precisely what she would do. Stillman's
hidden gratitude, his private beneficences, did not serve her purpose,
but the spectacle of him in the rôle of her debtor was a sight that went
a long way to establishing a social credit impoverished by no end of
false ventures.
Her command for him to take her to luncheon--and it had been a command,
however suavely she had managed to veil it--bore also the stamp of
urgency. Usually she was content to lay all her positive requests to the
charge of mere caprice, but on this occasion she took the trouble to
intimate that there was a particular reason for wanting to see him. It
did not take him long to conclude that this particular reason had to do
with Claire Robson. That was why he yielded with a better grace than he
had been giving to his troublesome friend's disagreeable pressure.
Stillman knew that while Lily Condor was not precisely jealous of the
younger woman, she was distinctly envious--with the impersonal but acrid
envy of middle age for youth. The episode of the orchids still rankled.
He had to admit that in this instance his course had been tactless, but
he had ignored Mrs. Condor as a challenge to the presumption which he
had already begun to sense. She, while seeming definitely to evade the
real issue, had answered the challenge and he had paid for his temerity
a hundredfold. She had reminded him again and again in deft but none the
less positive terms that she was keeping a finger on the mainspring of
any advantage that came her way. Sometimes Stillman wondered whether she
would really be cattish enough to betray his confidence and bring Claire
Robson crashing down under the weight of the questionable position into
which his indiscretion had forced her. Would she really have the face to
publish abroad the pregnant fact that Ned Stillman was providing what
she had been pleased to designate as a meal-ticket for a young woman in
difficulty? For himself he cared little, except that he always shrank
instinctively from appearing ridiculous.
He had been thinking a great deal of late as to the best course to
pursue in ridding himself and Claire of this menacing incubus. He had a
feeling that Claire, having exhausted the novelties of her position as
accompanist to Lily Condor, was beginning to find the affair irksome.
The business venture had progressed in quite another direction from his
original intention. Suddenly, without knowing how it had all come about,
he found his plans clearly defined. The government needed him. Somehow,
it had never occurred to him that he could be of service at a point so
far from the center of war activities. He had been a good deal of an
idler, it was true, but the seeds of achievement were merely lying in
fallow soil.
At first, he had been stung into action more by Claire's accusing
attitude than anything else. She used to come every other afternoon at
the appointed time and almost challenge him by her reproachful silence
to do something, if only to provide her with an illusion. It was as if
she said:
"See, I have given in to you. I know that you are doing this for me, and
I am deeply grateful. But won't you please make the situation a little
less transparent? Won't you at least justify me in the eyes of those who
are watching our little performance?..."
It had all ended by his offering his services to the Food
Administration. He knew something of his father's business. He felt that
he had a fair knowledge of beans, and he could learn more. He merely
asked a trial, and it surprised him to find what a sense of humility
suddenly possessed him. He was really overjoyed when a place was assured
him. But he had to admit that his acceptance was not accorded any great
enthusiasm. The newspapers mentioned it in a scant paragraph that was
not even given a prominent place. He had received greater recognition
for a brilliant play upon the golf-links! Well, in such stirring times
he was nobody. He did not complain, even to himself, but the knowledge
subconsciously rankled.
He hired an office down-town, joined the Commercial Club, religiously
attended every meeting that had to do with food conservation, hunted
out, absorbed, appropriated all the economic secrets that served his
purpose.... Suddenly he found himself engrossed, enthusiastic, _busy_!
Finally Claire said to him one day:
"Don't you think I ought to come to you every afternoon?"
"If you can arrange it," he almost snapped back at her.
She did arrange it, how he took no pains to inquire, and a little later
she said again:
"You ought to have some one here all day. I guess you will have to look
for another stenographer."
He remembered how menacingly he had darted at her. She was dressed for
the street, on her way home, and she had halted at the door.
"Do you want to desert the work that you've inspired?" he demanded.
"Inspired?... By _me_?" Her voice took on a note of triumph.
"You didn't fancy that _I_ inspired it, did you?" he sneered at her.
His vehemence confused her. "I hadn't thought.... Really, you know....
Well, as you say.... But, of course, it is absurd when you can get any
number of girls to...."
"But suppose I want _you_?" he demanded of her for a second time.
She left without further reply.
When she was gone he found himself in a nasty panic. It was as if the
lady who had called him to her lists had suddenly decided upon a new
defender.
"Is she tired of it all ... or is there some one else? Can it be
possible that Flint...."
He had stopped short, amazed to find his mind descending to such a
vulgar level. What had come over him? And he began to fancy things as
they once had been--empty, purposeless days, and nights that found him
too bored to even sleep. It seemed incredible that he could go back to
them again. What lay at the bottom of his sudden deep-breathed
satisfaction with life? For an instant, the truth which he had kept at
bay with his old trick of evasion swept toward him.
"No ... no," he muttered. "Oh no!... That would be too absurd!"
But when he had gone to the mirror to brush his hair before venturing on
the street he found thick beads of perspiration on his forehead and his
hand shook as he lifted the comb.
The next day he told Claire that in the future her salary would be
twenty dollars a week. He stood expecting her to rail against the
increase, to try to put him to rout by explaining that she had received
less for a full day's work at Flint's. But to his surprise she thanked
him and went on with her work.
It was shortly after this that he began to haunt the various
performances in which Lily Condor and Claire appeared. He always
contrived to slip in during the first number, which as a rule happened
to be Mrs. Condor's offering, and he sat in a far corner where nobody
but that lady could have chanced upon him. But he never knew her to fail
in locating him, or to miss the opportunity to sit out the remainder of
the program at his side, or to suggest crab-legs Louis at Tait's,
particularly if Claire were determined upon an early leave-taking. The
effect of all this was not lost upon the general public, and it was not
long before men of Stillman's acquaintance used to remark facetiously to
him over the lunch-table:
"What's new in beans to-day?... Are _reds_ still a favorite?"
Stillman would throw back an equally cryptic answer, thinking as he did
so:
"What a wigging I must be getting over the teacups! I guess I'll cut it
all out in the future."
But he usually went no farther than his impulsive resolves.
Sometimes he wondered what Claire thought of his faithful appearance.
Did she fancy that he came to bask in the smiling impertinences of Lily
Condor?
As he made his way to a street-car on this vivid February afternoon, he
called to mind that of late Claire had been bringing a fagged look to
her daily tasks. He hoped again that Mrs. Condor's desire to see him had
to do with Claire--more particularly with her dismissal as accompanist.
Miss Menzies had quite recovered and there was really no reason for
Claire to continue in her service. It struck him as he pondered all
these matters how strange it was to find him concerned about these
feminine adjustments--he who had always stared down upon trivial
circumstances with cold scorn.
He arrived at Lily Condor's apartments almost upon the lady's heels. Her
hat was still ornamenting the center-table and her wrap lay upon a
wicker rocker, where, with a quick movement of irritation, it had been
cast aside.
Her greeting was not reassuring. "Oh...." she began coldly. "Isn't this
rather late for lunch?"
"I'm really very sorry," Stillman returned as he took a chair, "but to
be frank, I quite forgot about you."
"Well," she tried to laugh back at him, "there isn't any virtue as
disagreeable as the truth. I expected you would at least attempt to be
polite enough to lie."
"I hope you were not too greatly inconvenienced," he said, in a
deliberate attempt to ignore her irritation.
"I waited two hours, if that is what you mean. But then, _my_ time isn't
particularly valuable."
He rose suddenly. "I've told you that I was sorry," he began coldly,
reaching for his hat. "But evidently you are determined to be
disagreeable. I fancied you wanted to see me about something urgent, so
I came almost as soon as I remembered."
She snatched the discarded wrap from its place on the wicker rocker as
she glared at him. "You're in something of a hurry, it seems.... Well, I
sha'n't detain you. The truth is there's a pretty kettle of fish stewed
up over this young woman, Claire Robson.... I want you to tell her that
she can't play at the Café Chantant next Friday night."
"Want _me_ to tell her? I don't see where I come in.... Why don't you
tell her yourself?"
"Because I don't choose to.... Besides, I think you might do it a little
more delicately. I can't tell her brutally that she isn't wanted."
"Isn't wanted? Why, what do you mean?"
"The committee informs me that she isn't the sort of person they are
accustomed to have featured in their entertainments. It seems that Mrs.
Flint...."
"Mrs. Sawyer Flint?"
"Precisely."
"What is her objection?"
"Do you really want me to tell you?"
"Why not?"
"It appears that some time last fall Miss Robson tried to get her
husband into a compromising position. She came over to the house one
night when Mrs. Flint was away. Flint promptly ordered her out. It seems
she went ... to be quite frank ... with _you_. And what is more,
she...."
"It isn't necessary for you to go any farther. Tell me, do you mean to
say that you believe this thing? Didn't you lift a hand to defend her?"
Lily Condor narrowed her eyes. "Oh, come now, Ned Stillman, don't be a
fool! You know as well as I do that I'm hanging on to my own reputation
by my finger-nails. I'm not taking any chances. As to whether it is so
... well, if I were to tell the committee everything I know it wouldn't
help her cause any. I could wreck her reputation like that," she snapped
her fingers, "with one solitary fact. If she hasn't wrecked it already
with her senseless chatter.... Only last week her aunt, Mrs.
Ffinch-Brown, said to me: 'So you're hiring my niece! I must say that is
handsome of you!' You were sitting talking to Claire and she looked
deliberately at you when she said it. Remember how I warned you, last
December. I told you then that the secret of a woman's meal-ticket was
never hidden very long."
During this speech Mrs. Condor's voice had dropped from its original
tone of petty rancor to one of petulant self-justification. Stillman
knew at once that her ill-temper had caught her off-guard and she was
already trying to crawl slowly back into his favor. She had meant, no
doubt, to soften her news over a glass or two of chilled white wine
which she had counted on sipping during the noon hour. She might even
then have gone farther and decided to cast her fortunes with Stillman
and Claire if she had seen that her advantage lay in that direction. He
was not sure but that she still had some such notion in her mind. But he
felt suddenly sick of her past all hope of compromise, and he was
determined to be rid of her once and for all.
"No doubt," he said, frigidly, "you will be glad to be relieved of Miss
Robson's presence permanently. I take it that you don't consider her
association exactly ... well ... shall we say discreet?"
Her eyes took on a yellow tinge as she faced him. She must have sensed
the finality of his tone, the well-bred insolence that his query
suggested.
"Discreet?" she echoed. "Well, I wouldn't say that that was quite what I
meant. Desirable--that would be better. I don't find her association
desirable.... I don't _want_ her, in other words."
He had never been so angry in his life. Had she been a man he would have
struck her. He felt himself choking. "My dear Mrs. Condor," he warned,
"will you be good enough to take a little more respectful tone when you
speak of Miss Robson?"
"Oh, indeed! And just what are your rights in the matter? You're not her
brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't know that it was
the fashion for a...." His look stopped her. She trembled a moment,
tossed back her head, and finished, defiantly, "Yes, that is what I want
to know, what _are_ your rights?"
He took a step toward her. Instinctively she retreated.
"A woman like you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you," he
flung at her.
She covered her face with both hands.
He left the room.
He himself was trembling as he reached the street--trembling for the
first time in years. As a child he had been given to these fits of
emotional tremors, but he had long since lost the faculty for recording
physically his intense moments. Or had he lost the faculty for the
intense moments themselves, he found himself wondering, as he walked
rapidly toward his home. The evening was warm with the perfume of a bit
of truant summer that had somehow escaped before its time to hearten a
winter-weary world against the bitter assaults of March. Birds of
passage sang among the hedges, the sun still cast a faint greenish glow
in the extreme west.
His first thought was of the cowering woman he had just left. He had
meant to lash her keenly with his verbal whipcords, but he had not
expected to find her quite so sensitive to his cutting scorn. He
remembered the gesture with which she had lifted her hand as if to
screen herself from his insults. There was a whole life of futile
compromise in just the manner of that gesture, a growing helplessness to
give straightforward thrusts, a pitiful admission of defeat. But he knew
that this surrender was temporary--a quick lifting of the mask under a
relentless pressure. To-morrow, in an hour, in ten minutes, Lily Condor
would be her dangerous self again, lashed into the fury of a woman
scorned. For a moment he did not know whether to be relieved or dismayed
at the prospect of Mrs. Condor for an enemy. How much would she really
dare?
He thought with a lowering anger of Flint. He had been ready to concede
everything but this former friend in the rôle of a cheap and nasty
gossip. No--gossip was a pale, sickly term. Flint was a malignant toad,
a nauseous mud-slinger, a deliberate liar. He had heard of men who had
justified themselves with vile tales to their insipid, disgustingly
virtuous wives, but he had not counted such among his acquaintances. By
the side of Flint, Lily Condor loomed a very paragon of the social
amenities.
Stillman was conscious that his mental process was keyed to the highest
pitch of melodrama. It was not usual for him to indulge in mental abuse.
He had never quite understood the dark and moving processes of red-eyed
anger. There had been something absurd in the theatrical hauteur of his
manner in this last scene with Mrs. Condor--that is, if it were measured
by his own standards. His growing detachments from life had claimed him
almost to the point of complete indifference. But now, suddenly, as if
Fate had dealt him an insulting blow upon the face with her bare palm,
he felt not only rage, but a sense of its futility, its impotence.
"Flint!" he thought again. And immediately he spewed forth the memory of
this man in a flood of indiscriminate epithets.
* * * * *
Later, in the refuge of his own four walls and under the brooding solace
of an after-dinner cigar, he lost some of the intensiveness of his
former humor. But the force of the vehemence which had shaken him filled
him with much wonder and some apprehension. He was too much a man of
experience to deny questions when they were put to him squarely by
circumstances.
"You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't
know it was the fashion for a...."
Lily Condor's clipped question struck him squarely now. Just what were
his expectations concerning Claire Robson? The thought turned him cold.
Essentially he was of Puritan mold, but he had always had a theory that
love of illicit pleasures must have been uncommonly strong in a people
who found it necessary to fight the flesh so uncompromisingly. Battling
with the elements upon the bleak shores of New England contributed, no
doubt, to the gray and chastened spirits that these grim folks had won
for themselves; spirits that colored and sometimes seeded swiftly under
the softer skies of California. San Francisco was full of these forced
blooms consumed and withered by the sudden heat of a free and
traditionless life. He knew scores of old-timers--his father's
friends--who had been gloriously wrecked by the passion with which they
met freedom's kiss. They had pursued pleasure with an energy overtrained
in wrestling with the devil and had paid the penalty of all ardent souls
lacking the prudence of weakness. There was at once something fine and
unlawful about the spirit of adventure: it implied courage, impatience
of restraint, wilfulness--in short, all the virtues and vices of
strength. He had felt at times the heritage of this strength, shorn of
its power by the softness of a wilderness that had been wooed instead
of conquered. His forefathers had found California a waiting, gracious
bride, but there had been almost a suggestion of the courtezan in the
lavishness of this land's response to the caresses of the invaders.
There was something fantastic in the memory of his father, fresh from
the austere dawns of the little fishing village of Gloucester,
transplanted suddenly to the wine-red sunsets of the Golden Gate. He
felt that his father must have had the courage for substance-wasting
without the temptation. Most men in those early days had plunged unyoked
into the race--Ezra Stillman brought his bride, and therefore his
household goods, with him, and unconsciously custom drew its restraining
rein tight. Ezra Stillman came from a long line of salt-seasoned
tempters of the sea; their virtues had been rugged and their vices
equally robust; sin with them had been gaunt, sinewy, unlovely; there
was nothing insinuating and soft about the lure of pleasure in that
silver-nooned environment. Ezra had been the first of this long line to
turn his back upon the sea, and the land had rewarded him lavishly as if
determined to make his capture complete. Yet, he was not landsman enough
to wrest a living direct from the soil; instead, he set up his booth in
the market-place of the town and tr