Ethel Bruce-Drummond was better than her word. She did not wait for the
Christmas holidays but went down to Florence early in December for
Honor's first concert, and she wrote many pages to Stephen Lorimer.
Of course you know by this time that the concert was a
success--you'll have had Honor's modest cable and the explosive and
expensive one from the fat lark! They are sending you translations
from the Italian papers, and clippings in English, and copies of
some of the notes she's had from the more important musical people,
and I really can't add anything to that side of it. You know, my
dear Stephen, when it comes to music I'm confessedly ignorant,--not
quite, perhaps, like that fabled countryman of mine who said he
could not tell whether the band were playing "God Save the Weasel"
or "Pop Goes the Queen," but bad enough in all truth. Therefore, I
keep cannily out of all discussion of Honor's voice. I gather,
however, that it has surprised every one, even the _Signorina_, and
that there is no doubt at all about her making a genuine success
if she wants to hew to the line. She has had, I hear, several
rather unusual offers already. But of course she hasn't the
faintest intention of doing anything in the world but the thing her
heart is set upon. It's rather pathetic, really. There's something
a little like Trilby about her; she does seem to be singing under
enchantment. What she really is like, though, is a lantern-jawed
young Botticelli Madonna. She's lost a goodish bit of flesh, I
should say, and her color's not so high, and she might easily have
walked out of one of the canvases in the Pitti or the Ufizzi, or
the Belli Arti. Her hair is Botticelli hair, and that "reticence of
the flesh" of which one of your American novelists
speaks--Harrison, isn't it?--and that faint austerity.
She sang quantities of _arias_ and groups of songs of all nations,
and at the end she did some American Indian things,--the native
melodies themselves arranged in modern fashion. I expect you know
them. The words are very simple and touching and the Italian
translations are sufficiently funny. Well, the very last of all was
something about a captive Indian maid, and a young chap here who
clearly adores her and whom she hasn't even taken in upon her
retina played a wailing, haunting accompaniment on the flute. As
nearly as I can remember it went something like:
From the Land of the Sky Blue Water
They brought a captive maid.
Her eyes were deep as the--(I can't remember what, Stephen)
But she was not afraid.
I go to her tent in the evening
And woo her with my flute,
But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water,
And the captive maid is mute.
My dear Stephen, I give you my word that I very nearly put my nose
in the air and howled. She _is_ a captive maid--captive to her
talent and the fat song-bird and her mother's ambition and yours,
and her mother's determination not to let her marry her lad, and to
that Carter chap, and the boy playing the flute--the whole network
of you,--but she's dreaming of the Sky Blue Water, and dreaming is
doing with that child. You'd best make up your minds to it, and
settle some money on them and marry them off. My word, Stephen, is
there so much of it lying about in the world that you can afford to
be reckless with it? I arrived too late to see her before the
concert, and I went behind--together with the bulk of the American
and English colonies--directly it was over. She was tremendously
glad to see me; I was a sort of link, you know. When I started in
to tell her how splendidly she'd sung and how every one was
rejoicing she said, "Yes,--thanks--isn't every one sweet? But did
Stepper write you that Jimsy was 'Varsity Captain this year, and
that they beat Berkeley twelve to five? And that Jimsy made _both_
touchdowns? Do you remember that game you saw with us--and how
Jimsy ran down the field and shook hands with the boy who'd scored
on us? And how that gave every one confidence again, and we won? We
_always_ won!"--and standing there with her arms full of flowers
and all sorts of really important people waiting to pat her on the
head, she hummed that old battle song:
_You can't beat L. A. High!_
_You can't beat L. A. High!_
and her eyes filled up with tears and she gave me her jolly little
grin and said, "Oh, Miss Bruce-Drummond, I can hardly wait to get
back to real living again!"
Honor was honestly happy over her success. It was good to satisfy--and
more than satisfy--the kind _Signorina_ and all the genial and
interested people she had come to know there; to send her program and
her clippings home to her mother; it was jolly to be asked out to
luncheon and dinner and tea and to be made much of; it was best of all
to have something tangible to give up for Jimsy. If she had failed,
going back to him and settling quietly down with him would have seemed
like running to sanctuary; now--with definite promises and hard figures
offered her--it was more than a gesture of renunciation. She could
understand adoring a life of that sort if she hadn't Jimsy; as it was
she listened sedately to the _Signorina's_ happy burblings and said at
intervals:
"But you know, _Signorina_ dear, that I'm going to give it up and be
married next year?"
"You cannot give it up, my poor small one. It will not give you up. It
has you, one may truly say, by the throat!"
There was no use in arguing with her. The interim had to be filled until
summer and home. She would do, docilely, whatever the _Signorina_
wished.
Jimsy was happy and congratulatory about her concert but he took it no
more seriously than Honor herself. His letters were full, in those days,
of the unrest at Stanford. Certain professors had taken a determined
stand against drinking; there was much agitation and bitterness on both
sides. Jimsy was all for freedom; he resented dictation; he could hoe
his own row and so could other fellows; the faculty had no right to
treat them like a kindergarten. Honor answered calmly and soothingly;
she managed to convey without actually setting it down on the page that
Jimsy King of all people in the world should take care not to ally
himself with the "wets," and he wrote back that he was keeping out of
the whole mess.
It came, therefore, as a fearful shock, the letters and newspapers'
account of the expelling of James King of Los Angeles, 'Varsity Captain
and prominent in college theatricals, from Stanford University for
marching in a parade of protest against the curtailing of drinking! She
was alone in her room when she opened her mail and she sat very still
for minutes with her eyes shut, her fingers gripping the tiny clasped
hands on her ring. At last, "_I'll never stop believing in you_," she
said, almost aloud.
Then she read Jimsy's own version of it. She always kept his letter for
the last, childishly, on the nursery theorem of "First the worst, second
the same, last the best of all the game."
"Skipper dearest," he wrote, in a hasty and stumbling scrawl, "I'm
so mad I can hardly see to write. I'd have killed that prof if it
hadn't been for Carter. This is how it happened. I'd been keeping
out of the whole mess as I told you I would. That night I was
digging out something at the Library and on my way back to the
House I saw a gang of fellows in a sort of parade, and some one at
the end caught hold of me and dragged me in. I asked him what the
big idea was and he said he didn't know, and I was sleepy and when
we came to the House I dropped out and went in. I wasn't in it ten
minutes and I didn't even know what it was about. But when they
called for every one who was in the parade next day I had to show
up, of course. Well, they asked me about it and I told them just
how it happened, and they said all right, then, I could go. I was
surprised and thankful, I can tell you, because they'd been
chopping off heads right and left, some of the best men in college.
Well, just as I was going out through the door the old prof called
me back and said he had one more thing to ask me. Did I consider
that his committee was absolutely right and justified in everything
they'd done? Well, Skipper, what could I say? I said just what
you'd have said and what you'd have wanted me to say--that I did
think they had been too severe and in some cases unjust and they
canned me for it."
There was a letter from Stephen Lorimer, grave and distressed,
substantiating everything that Jimsy had written. (He had taken the
first train north and gone into the matter thoroughly with the men at
the fraternity house, simmering with red rage, and the committee,
regretful but adamant.) The college career, the gay, brilliant, adored
college career of Jimsy King was at an end. Honor's stepfather had taken
great care to have the real facts in Jimsy's case printed--he sent the
clipping from the Los Angeles paper--and he had spent an evening with
James King, setting forth the truth of the case. But the fact remained
for the majority of people, gaining in sinister weight with every
repetition, that the last of the "Wild Kings" had been expelled from
Stanford University for drinking.
"Top Step," her stepfather wrote, "I'm sick with rage and
indignation. Your mother is taking it very hard--as is most every
one else. 'Expelled' is not a pretty word. I'm doing my level best
to put the truth before the public, to show that your boy is really
something of a hero in this matter, in that he might be snugly safe
at this moment if he had been willing to tell a politic lie. You'll
be unhappy over this, T. S., that's inevitable, but--I give you my
word--you need not hang your head. Jimsy played the game."
Carter, who had written seldom since the happening of the summer in
spite of her kind and casual replies to his letters, sent her now six
reassuring pages. She was not to worry. Jimsy was really doing very
well, as far as the drinking went, and he--Carter--would not let him do
anything foolish or desperate in his indignation. Three times he
repeated that she must not be anxious. A dozen times in the letter he
showed her where she might well be anxious. The word beat itself in upon
her brain until she could endure it no longer, and she went out through
the pretty streets of Florence to the cable office and sent Stephen
Lorimer one of her brief and urgent messages, "_Anxious_." Two days
later she had his answer and it was as short as her own had been,
"_Come_."
There was a stormy scene with the _Signorina_. The waves of her fury
rolled up and up and broke, crashing, over Honor's rocklike calm. At
last, breathless, her fat face mottled with temper, "Go, then," said the
singer, and went out of the room with heavy speed and slammed the door
resoundingly. But she went with Honor to her steamer at Naples and
embraced her forgivingly. "Go with God," she wept. "Live a little; it is
best, perhaps. Then, my good small one, come back to me."
Like all simple and direct persons Honor found relief in action. The
packing of her trunks and bags, the securing of tickets, cabling, had
all given her a sense of comfort. They were tangible evidences of her
progress toward Jimsy. The ocean trip was difficult; there was nothing
to _do_. Nevertheless the sea's large calm communicated itself to her;
for the greater portion of the voyage she was at peace. The situation
with Jimsy must have been grave for her stepfather to think it necessary
to send for her, but nothing could be so bad that she could not right it
when she was actually with Jimsy. She would never leave him again, she
told herself.
Feyther an' mither may a' gey mad,
But whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad!
Her mother, her poor, lovely mother, to whom she had been always such a
disappointment, would be mad enough in all conscience, but Stepper would
stand by. And nothing--no thing, no person, mattered beside Jimsy.
Friends of her mother met her steamer in New York and put her on her
train, and friends of Stephen Lorimer met her in Chicago and drove and
dined her and saw her off on the Santa Fe. She began to have at once a
warm sense of the West and home. The California poppies on the china in
the dining-car made her happy out of all proportion. When they picked up
the desert she relaxed and settled back in her seat with a sigh and a
smile. The blessed brown, the delicious dryness! The little jig-saw
hills standing pertly up against the sky; the tiny, low-growing desert
flowers; the Indian villages in the distance, the track workers' camps
close by with Mexican women and babies waving in the doorways; even a
lean gray coyote, loping homeward, looking back over his shoulder at the
train, helped to make up the sum of her joy. _The West!_ How had she
endured being away from it so long?--From its breadth and bigness, its
sweep and space and freedom? She would never go away again. She and
Jimsy would live here always, a part of it, belonging.
She stopped worrying. She was home, and Jimsy was waiting for her, and
everything would come right.
At San Bernardino her mother and stepfather and her brothers came on
board, surprising her. She had had a definite picture of them at the
Santa Fe station in Los Angeles and their sudden appearance almost
bewildered her. Her mother was a trifle tearful and reproachful but she
was radiantly beautiful in her winter plumage. Stephen's handclasp was
solid and comforting. Her little brothers had grown out of all belief,
and her big brothers were heroic size, and they were all a little shy
with her after the excitement of the first greetings. She wondered why
Jimsy had not come out with them but at once she told herself that it
was better so; it would have been hard for them to have their first hour
together under so many eyes,--her mother's especially. Jimsy would be
waiting at the station. But he was not. There were three or four of her
girl friends with their arms full of flowers and one or two older boys
who had finished college and were in business. They made much of her and
she greeted them warmly for all the cold fear which had laid hold of her
heart.
Then came the drive home, the surprising number of new business
buildings, the amazing growth of the city toward Seventh Street, the
lamentable intrusion of apartment houses and utilitarian edifices on
beautiful old Figueroa. Honor looked and listened and commented
intelligently, but--_where was Jimsy?_
The old house looked mellow and beautiful; the Japanese garden was a
symphony of green plush sod and brilliant color--the Bougainvillæa
almost smothering the little summerhouse and a mocking-bird who must be
a grandson of the one of her betrothal night was singing his giddy heart
out. Kada was waiting in the doorway, bowing stiffly, sucking in his
breath, beaming; the cook just behind him, following him in sound and
gesture, and the Japanese gardener, hat in hand, stood at the foot of
the steps as she passed to say, "How-do? Veree glod! Veree glod! Tha's
nize you coming home! Veree glod!"
Honor shook hands with them all. Then she turned to look at her
stepfather and he followed her into his study.
"And we've got three new dogs, Honor, and two cats, and----" the
smallest Lorimer besieged her at the door but she did not turn. She was
very white now and trembling.
"Stepper, where is Jimsy?"
"Top Step, I--it's like Evangeline, rather, isn't it? He went straight
through from the north without even stopping over here. He's gone to
Mexico, to his uncle's ranch. And Carter got a leave of absence and went
with him. I--you want the truth, don't you, Top Step?"
"Yes," said Honor.
"I'm afraid Jimsy rather ran amuck, in the bitterness of it all. His
father took it very hard, in spite of my explanations to him, and wrote
the boy a harsh letter; that started things, I fancy. That's when I
cabled you. Carter telephoned his mother from the station here as they
went through--they were on that special from San Francisco to Mexico
City--and she told your mother that Jimsy was pretty well shot to pieces
and that Carter didn't dare leave him alone."
"Didn't he write me?"
"He may have, of course, T. S., but there's nothing here for you. Mrs.
Van Meter told Carter that I had cabled for you, so Jimsy knows."
"Yes." She stood still, her hat and cloak on, deliberating. "Do the
trains go to Mexico every day, Stepper?"
"Why, yes, I believe they do, but you needn't wait to write, T. S. You
can telegraph, and let----"
"I didn't mean about writing," said Honor, quietly. "I meant about
going. Will you see if I can leave to-day, Stepper? Then I won't unpack
at all, you see, and that will save time."
"Top Step, I know what this means to you, but--your mother.... Do you
think you'd better?"
"I am going to Mexico," said Honor. "I am going to Jimsy."
"I'll find out about trains and reservations," said her stepfather.