The Sisters-In-Law by Gertrude Atherton

“You know how hard Mortimer works, poor dear. And I do not feel in the least like crying. I shall write telegrams to Ballinger and Geary: my brothers, you know.” (Gora ground her teeth.) “It was too sad they could not get here, but Ballinger is in South America and Geary on a diet. I must also write a cablegram to an old friend of mine who has married a Frenchman, Olive de Morsigny. She was always so fond of mother. Would you also mind telephoning to Rincona about seven?”

“I’ll do all the telephoning. Go back to bed as soon as possible. It is only a little after two.” As Gora turned to leave the room Alexina put her hand on her arm and summoned a faint sweet smile.

“I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Gora dear, how grateful we all are. You have been simply wonderful–“

“I am a good nurse if I do say it myself,” said Gora lightly. “But you must remember there are others quite as good; and that I–“.

“I know you would do your duty as devotedly by any stranger.” Alexina interrupted her with sweet insistence. “But it has been wonderful to be able to have you, all the same. It has also given me the chance to know you at last, and I shall never quite let you go again.”

Gora, to her secret anger, had never accustomed herself to the unswerving graciousness of these people, and all that it implied, but her sharp mind had long since warned her that as she had neither the position nor the training to emulate it, at least she must not betray a sense of social inferiority by open resentment.

Her voice was deep and naturally abrupt but she achieved a fair imitation of Alexina’s sweet cordiality. “It has meant quite as much to me, Alexina, I can assure you. And now that I am on my own and shall have a day or two between cases I know where I shall spend them. I am only too thankful that I graduated in time to take care of dear Mrs. Groome. Write your telegrams and I will give them to the doctor when he comes. I must telephone to him at once.”

III

After she had gone Alexina wrote not only her telegrams and cablegrams, but the “letters to follow.” It was nearly four o’clock when she finished. Old Dr. Maitland had not yet come and she put her bulletins on the table in the hall.

She heard Gora moving about her mother’s room and retreated into her own. She did not want to go to her mother yet nor did she care particularly to see Gora again, although she had certainly been very nice and a great comfort to them all.

Alexina was quite unaware that her attitude to her sister-in-law was one of unconsicous condescension, of a well-bred determination never to wound the pride of a social inferior. She found Gora an “interesting personality” and quite extraordinarily efficient.

It had been the greatest relief to all the family when that very capable Miss Dwight–Gora, that is; one must remember–had been brought by Dr. Maitland to take charge of the case after Mrs. Groome’s cardiac trouble became acute and she demanded constant attention.

Gora had slept in Mrs. Groome’s bedroom for six weeks, relieved for several hours of the afternoon by a member of the family or one of Mrs. Groome’s many anxious friends. It was her first case and it interested her profoundly. Moreover, her personal devotion placed her for the moment on a certain basis of equality with a family whose mental processes were quite transparent to her contemptuous mind. She was excessively annoyed with herself for still caring, but the roots were too deep, and there had been nothing in her life during the past three years to diminish her fierce sense of democracy as she interpreted it.

Alexina had never given a thought to her sister-in-law’s psychology, although the sensitive plates of her brain received an impression now and again of a violent inner life behind that business-like exterior. But she had seen little of her until lately, and during the past six weeks her mind had been too concentrated upon her mother’s sufferings and possible danger to have any disposition for analysis.

She certainly did not feel the least need of her now. She wished, indeed, that she had asked Aileen to remain in the house last night. Aileen was her own age, they had been intimate since childhood, often without the slightest regard for each other’s feelings, and was more like a sister than even dear Sally and Maria.

Suddenly she determined to go to her. She had her own latch key and would disturb no one but Aileen. She dressed herself warmly and slipped down stairs and out of the house.

CHAPTER II

The city below–the new solid city–was obliterated under a heavy fog, pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged dark rocks in that white and tranquil sea.

On Angel Island and on the north shore of the bay the deep sad bells were tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond the Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans. The bells sounded muffled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other sound in the sleeping city.

Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the hood over her head.

As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with something of a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she had expressed to Gora her reluctance to disturb him.

She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the house at four o’clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl friend when any other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) would have flown to her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms.

And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He assuredly would have said just the right things to her and not have resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest.

On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only was he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was unorthodox, and he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly.

Well, she didn’t want him and that was the end of it. He didn’t fill the present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had quite measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made love charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o’clock every evening never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that they made a “stunning couple” and that people commented upon their good looks, their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in nature’s coloring.

Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she knew that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the suddenness of her mother’s death, and that her emotions would be fluid a few hours hence.

They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother’s illness. As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent him the insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a modest exporting and importing house, that being the only business of which he had any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested that he open an insurance office, or start himself in any business where little capital besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs. Groome’s advisors they were averse to launching any of her moderate fortune on a doubtful venture. But Dwight had insisted that he was more likely to succeed in a business he understood than in one of which he knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed with him. Judge Lawton and Abbott paid over the insurance money with the worst grace possible.

And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His aunt Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore soon after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been recapitalized and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring’s executor had sold her stock for something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering the proceeds, as directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, Mortimer and Gora Dwight.

Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever Harrison and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a department in time and safely anchored for life; but he had taken the step, and she reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a business with which he had been associated for fourteen years, she knew his energy and powers of application, and she resented the attitude of “the family.” Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had consented to invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to make immediate restitution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his “stock did go up” with the family, particularly as he seemed to be doing well and had the reputation of working harder than any young man on the street. As he had anticipated, a good deal of business was thrown his way.

He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome’s invitation to live with her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the current expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would she be lonely without the child of her old age, but she must desire that Alexina continue to live in the conditions to which she was accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome consented to accept would not have kept them in a fashionable family hotel, much less an apartment with several servants.

Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their offspring never ceased.

Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed “simply great,” and had continued to feed from her mother’s hand even in the matter of pin money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to put his surplus profits back in his business; all he could spare he needed for “front,” to say nothing of pleasant little dinners at restaurants to their hospitable young friends; who thought it no adequate return to be asked to dine on Ballinger Hill.

Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have done, considering the “hard times;” or at least she would have preferred that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly allowance; she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure supported by her husband.

However, she and her mother assured each other that he was bound to make a fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large as that of Sibyl Thorndyke, who had married Frank Bascom.

It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her imagination on that plane sometimes called the fool’s paradise.

III

She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for children. They would have been the real thing, given a serious translation to life.

But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have asked for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his working hours were over.

Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter’s magnificent “villa” at Burlingame. Even Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they had spent the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on equal terms with many millionaires.

It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona during their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family had grimly surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement.

Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, Susan Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott’s sisters, whose homes were in Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now Atherton) who had married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as one united family. They met every day, wandering in and out at all hours, and although they had many healthy disagreements they agreed on all the fine old fundamentals, and they stood by one another through thick and thin.

The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and smart as Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt Clara, who was only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, and her face was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as loosely as her old wrapper.

All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the awful pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and stuffed an infant’s flannel petticoat into her mouth to muffle her giggles.

Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, which was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts to be “nice” of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he arrived, and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings must be spared, every moment.

Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from under the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court.

In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their gracious civil “kind” attitude had never varied, save only when their consciences hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they were not only heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice.

Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking his after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines had been planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of the park where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of England, the guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the eighties who faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott and Coralie Geary.

From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given them in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he was duller.

Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling.

For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an attempt merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the mayor, and his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably resolved itself into a declaration of war, with State’s Prison as its goal, upon some of the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco.

The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, bent upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, and the basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter of course that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in private their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to the board of supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be only too glad to expose the malefactors.

But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and bribery. They might have been “held up,” forced to “come through,” or renounce their great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law had technical terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so had the public.

All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred thousand dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. Supervisors, by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand Jury indicted not only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of eminent citizens.

Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now and again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand Thornton, at a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, and Mrs. Hofer gave a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament.

The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his cell. There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would reinstitute the lynch law of the fifties.

Nothing came of it all but such a prolonged exposure of general vileness that it was possible to effect a certain number of reforms later by popular vote. The system remained inviolate, even during the mayorship of a fine old citizen too estimable to build up a rival machine; and the men of the prosecution, after many bitter harassed months, when they walked and slept with their lives in their hands, resigned themselves to the fact that no San Francisco jury would ever convict a man who had the money to bribe it.

All this had given Mortimer abundant material for conversation and he had entertained Mrs. Groome and Alexina night after night with a report of the day’s events and the gossip of the street. Mrs. Groome had been intensely interested, for this upheaval reminded her of personal episodes in the life of her husband and father, the latter having been a member of the vigilance committees of the fifties.

She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina to invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle were accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, nothing could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to follow the example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer.

Alexina had never been interested in the details of the prosecution; the large moments of the drama and the social convulsions were enough for her. She refused to cut Mrs. Hofer, although she ceased to call on her, as her mother and her husband made such a point of it; but she gave little thought to the sorrows of that ambitious young matron. She had other fish to fry.

Two great hotels whose interiors had been swept by the fire were renovated and furnished and their restaurants and ballrooms eagerly patronized. The Assembly balls were resumed. There were dinners and dances in the Western Addition, where many of the finest homes in the city had been built during the past ten or twenty years; and entertaining Down the Peninsula had not paused for more than two months after the disaster.

Nevertheless, she had exulted in the fact that the husband of her choice was able to please and entertain her mother-no easy feat. Moreover, as time went on and interest in the Graft Prosecution wore thin, it was evident that Mortimer had established himself firmly in his mother-in-law’s graces. He was not only the perfect husband but the son of her old age.

She had lost Ballinger and Geary in her comparative youth, and Tom was rarely in the house when she visited Rincona. But Mortimer was as devoted to her in the little ways so appreciated by women of any age as he was to his wife, and he was noiseless in the house and as prompt as the clock. During her illness his devotion touched even Mrs. Abbott, although Mrs. Groome was the only member of the family he ever won over.

Poor Morty. In a way he was a failure, after all. The men of her set did not seem to care any more for him than they did before her marriage, although they were always polite and amiable; and the promise of those old family friends to throw business in his way seemed to be forgotten as time went on.

No doubt they had thought he was able to stand on his own feet after a while, but he had often looked depressed during the panic of nineteen-seven and the long period of business drought that had followed. Still, he had managed to hold his own, and his constitutional optimism was unshaken. He _knew_ that when times changed he would soon be a rich man, and Alexina shared his faith. Not that she had ever cared particularly for great wealth, but he talked so much about it that he had excited her imagination; after all money was the thing these days, no doubt of that, and she had heard “poor talk” all her life and was tired of it.

Moreover, nothing could be more positive than that if Morty’s father had made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and administered it with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons of rich men to-day from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he would be as logically intimate with those young capitalists who were the renewed pillars of San Francisco society, as she was with the most aloof and important of her own sex.

She had heard Judge Lawton and other men say that if a man were still a clerk at thirty he was hopeless. The ruts were packed with the mediocre whose destiny was the routine work of the world, whatever might be their secret opinions of their unrecognized abilities and their resentment against a system that anchored them.

The young man of brains and initiative, of energy, ambition, vision and balance, provided he were honorable as well, and temperate in his pleasures, was the man the eager world was always waiting for.

Alexina knew that the United States was almost as prolific in this fine breed of young men as she still was in opportunities for the exceptional of every class.

And it was possible that Mortimer was not one of them.

Once more she put a fact into bald words. She knew that her butterfly youth had come to an end with her mother’s death, and for a year she should be very much alone, to say nothing of her new burden of responsibilities. Thinking during that period was inevitable. She might as well begin now.

Mortimer had some of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was ambitious and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his brain was clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that it lacked originality.

Did it also lack initiative, resource, that peculiar alertness and quick pouncing quality of which she had heard? She wished she knew, but she had never discussed her husband with any one. Certainly he had stood still. Or was that merely the fault of the hard times? She had heard other men complain as bitterly.

“Fate handed you a lemon, old girl.”

Alexina could almost hear Aileen’s mocking voice. She even gave a startled glance down the quiet avenue. Well, she would never discuss him with Aileen or any one else.

Did she love him any longer? Had she ever loved him? What was love? She had been quite happy with him in her own little way. What did girls of eighteen know of love? Deliberately in her youthful arrogance and unlicensed imagination she had manufactured a fool’s paradise; and, a hero being indispensable, had dragged him in after her.

Perhaps she still loved him. She had read and seen enough to know that love changed its character as the years went on. She respected his many admirable qualities and she would never forget his devotion to her mother.

She certainly liked him. And the family attitude roused her obstinate championship as much as ever. At least she would always remain his good friend, helping him as far as lay in her power. She had deliberately selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not the masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate enough to have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving devotion to her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received Bob Cheever one afternoon when she was alone, and had forbidden her ever to receive a man in the daytime again. If men wanted to call on a married woman they could do so in the evening. She no longer danced more than twice with any man at a party, and he refused to read her favorite books, new or old, and chilled any attempt to discuss them in his presence.

VII

Well, after all, what did it matter? She had dreamed her dream and he was better than most. She sprang to her feet and ran down the hill and across the street to the house of Judge Lawton.

CHAPTER III

Gora waited until her brother had finished his bath and returned to his room. When she was admitted he had a brush in either hand polishing his pale brown immaculately cut hair. He turned to her, startled, his good American gray eyes showing no trace of sleep. He always awoke with alert mind and refreshed body.

“What is it? Not–“

Gora nodded. “At two this morning. Alexina wouldn’t let me call you–“

His wide masculine eyebrows met. It was correct to be angry and he was. “I never heard of such a thing–“

“She was not a bit overcome and wrote letters to her brothers and friends for at least two hours. It really wouldn’t have been worth while to disturb you–I must say I was astonished; thought she’d go to pieces–but you never know.”

“I’ll go to her at once.”

“I’d dress first. Aileen Lawton is with her.”

Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and never descended to small game.

“Oh, of course!” Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out a pair of black socks. “I like Aileen well enough, but she has altogether too much influence over Alexina. She’d have more than myself if I didn’t keep a close watch.”

“I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as time goes on. She hasn’t that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean things in some people.”

He gave her a quick suspicious glance, but her pale gray eyes were fixed on the windmill beyond the window, that odd old landmark in a now fashionable quarter of San Francisco.

“I shall always control her,” he said, setting his large finely cut lips. “I wish her to remain a child as long as possible, for she is quite perfect as she is. She is bright and all that, but of course she has no intellect–“

Gora forgot her message of death and laughed outright.

“Men–American men, anyhow–are really the funniest things in the world. Even intellectual men are absurd in their patronizing attitude toward the cleverest of women; but when it conies to mere masculine arrogance…don’t you really respect any woman’s brains?”

“I never denied that some women were clever and all that, but the best of them cannot compare with men. You must admit that.”

“I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste any time in argument–“

“My type?”

She longed to reply: “The smaller a man’s brain the more enveloping his mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle’s shell or the porcupine’s quills or the mephitic weasel’s extravasations.” But she never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion of his endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of secret amusement.

“Oh, you’re all alike,” she said lightly, and added: “Don’t be too sure that Alexina hasn’t intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from this beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it might escape her, and begins to think–“

“I’ll do her thinking.”

“All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job….I’ll clear out; you want to dress–“

“Wait a moment.” He sat down to draw on his socks. “I’m really cut up over Mrs. Groome’s death. She was my only friend in this damn family, and I coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on for twenty years.”

“I wondered how you liked them as time went on.”

He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. “I hate the whole pack of superior patronizing condescending snobs, and it is all I can do to keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by God!”–he brought down his fist on his knee–“I’ll beat them at their own game yet. I simply live to make a million and build a house at Burlingame. They really respect money as much as they think they don’t; I’ve got oil to that. When I’m a rich roan they’ll think of me as their equal and forget I was ever anything’ else.”

“Well, don’t speculate,” said Gora uneasily. “Remember that luck was left out of our family.”

“My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to wait until this period of dry rot passes–“

“But you’re not speculating?”

He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own.

“I answer questions about my private affairs to no one.”

“They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital.”

“You have received your interest regularly, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well as the man’s opportunities, and you do not.”

“I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you are doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand–“

“What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?”

“Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a fling. I shall want to go to New York and Europe.”

“And you would throw away your capital!”

“Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction writing for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything published, and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York magazines: one of the old group and two of the best of the popular magazines.”

He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to alarm. “I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think themselves so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and all that as about on a level with the working class–“

“I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They worship success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for people engaged in any of the art careers–with whom they practically never come in contact, by the way–is partly an instinctive distrust of anything they cannot do themselves and partly because they have an Elizabethan idea that all artists are common and have offensive manners.”

“I don’t like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living–and that you shall never do when I am rich–but they have no business putting their names up before the public like men.”

Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim fathers, of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact from old John Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American classic face that is passing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the last drop from a long forgotten “tar brush,” or the sly recurrent Biblical profile.

“We will make a bargain,” she said calmly. “I will ask you no more questions about your business for a year–when, if convenient, I should like my money–and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to have. It won’t do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina. You’ve got your hands full there. See you at breakfast.” And she shut the door on an indignant worried and disgusted brother.

CHAPTER IV

When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife’s door, was bidden to enter he found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took his wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical in its reaction from the insensibility of the morning.

“You won’t leave me for a moment?” she sobbed, in this mood finding his sympathy exquisite and necessary. “You’ll stay home–until–until–“

“Of course. I’ll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the office for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; Sally is better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an hour. Tom and I will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not to think.”

“Oh, you are too wonderful–always so strong–so strong–how I love it. But I’ll never get over this–poor old mommy!”

But the paroxysm passed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of morning starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by degrees and sent him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her grief was over.

CHAPTER V

It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina’s bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with her father for the summer, said abruptly: “Dad is terribly cut up, dear old thing. He’d known your mother since they were both children, in the days when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel Hill was called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they both should have had young daughters. Another link–what? as the English say. Well–anyhow–he told me to tell you that he was just as fond of your father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine that he is your father from this time forth, and come to him when you are in doubt about anything.”

Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. “I have sometimes thought uncle daddy didn’t like Mortimer.”

“On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But of course Mortimer is young–in business, that is; and father thinks–but you had better talk with him.”

“No. Why should I? But I don’t mind you. At least I could not discuss Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me to put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as trustees–ignoring Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria’s fortune has been kept intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, but that men in business are likely to get into tight places and use their wife’s money. Nothing would induce Mortimer to touch my money, but he would feel pretty badly cut up if I let any one else look after my affairs. Of course I wouldn’t even discuss the matter with Tom. And if Morty does need money at any time I’ll lend it to him. Why not? What else would any one expect me to do?”

“Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot. No one doubts Mortimer’s good faith, but the times are awful, money has paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes you will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see–the times are so abnormal, Mortimer hasn’t had time to prove his abilities yet; he’s just been able to hold on; and if things don’t mend and he should lose out, why–if you still have your own little fortune, at least you’ll not be any worse off than, you are now. Don’t you see?”

“Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. They always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able to hold on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of course we shall live here and run the house–as mother did. I couldn’t bear to live anywhere else, and Morty adores it too.”

“Oh, rather. I couldn’t imagine you anywhere else.”

“Geary and Ballinger sent me ten thousand dollars for a wedding present and Morty bought some bonds for me, but I’m going to sell a few and refurnish the lower rooms. I love the old house but I like cheerful modern things. The poor old parlors and dining-room do look like sarcophagi.”

“Good. I’ll help. We’ll have no end of fun.”

There was a pause and then Alexina said: “Mortimer is so determined to be a rich man and thinks of so little else and works so hard, that he is bound to be. Otherwise, such gifts would be meaningless.”

She made the statements with an unconscious rising inflection. Aileen did not answer and turned her sharp revealing green eyes on the eucalyptus grove which concealed Ballinger House from the vulgar gaze, and incidentally shut off a magnificent view.

“I don’t know whether I like Gora Dwight or not,” she remarked.

“Neither do I. But I admire her. She is a wonder.”

“Oh, yes, I admire her, and I’ve a notion she’s got something big in her, some sort of destiny. But those light eyes in that dark face give me the creeps. It isn’t that I don’t trust her. I believe her to be insolently honest and honorable–and just, if you like. But–perhaps it’s only the accident of her queer coloring–she gives me the impression that while she might go to the stake for her pride, she’d murder you in cold blood if you got in her way.”

“Poor Gora! You make her all the more interesting.”

“Did she ever tell you that she corresponds with that Englishman who was out here at the time of the earthquake and fire and had that ghastly adventure with his sister? We all met him at the Hofer ball–Gathbroke his name was.”

Alexina was staring at her with an amazed frown. “Correspond–Gora?…I remember now he told me she helped him to carry his sister’s body out to the old cemetery. Is he interested in her?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. They’ve corresponded off and on ever since. I walked, home with her one afternoon before I went south–she interests me frantically–and she invited me up to her quite artistic attic in Geary Street, where she still lives, and gave me the most vivid description of that night. It made me crawl. She stared straight before her as she told it. Her eyes were just like gray oval mirrors in which it seemed to me I saw the whole thing pass….

“Then she showed me a photograph he had recently sent her–stunning thing he is, all right, and looks years older than when he was here. She also alluded to things he had said in a letter or two. So my phenomenally quick wits inferred that they correspond. Perhaps they are engaged. Pretty good deal for her.”

III

Alexina, to her surprise, felt intensely angry, although she had the presence of mind to cast up her eyes until the white showed below the large brilliant iris and she looked like a saint in a niche.

She had kept Gathbroke out of her thoughts for nearly four years, deliberately. For a time she had hated him. Mortimer’s love-making had seemed tame in comparison with that primitive outburst, and never had she felt any such fiery response to the man she had loved and chosen as during those few moments when she had been in that impertinent, outrageous, loathsome young Englishman’s arms. At first she had wondered and resented, loyally concluding that it was her own fault, or that of fate for endowing her with such a slender emotional equipment that she used it all up at once on the wrong man. Finally, she found it wise not to think about it at all and to dismiss the intruder from her thoughts.

Now she felt outraged in her sense of possession….Unconsciously she had enshrined him as the secret mate of her inmost secret self…a self she was barely conscious of even yet…lurking in her subconsciousness, the personal and peculiar blend of many and diverse ancestors….Sometimes she had glimpsed it…wondered a little with a not unpleasant sense of apprehension….

But for the most part Circumstance had decreed that she abide on the abundant surface of her nature and enjoy a highly enjoyable life as it came. Now, she had experienced her first grief, which at the same time was her first set-back. She did not go out at all. She saw much of Mortimer and little of any one else. It was the summer season and all her friends were in the country or in Europe.

She had given Mortimer her power of attorney (largely a gesture of defiance, this) and he had attended to all details connected with her new fortune. Between the inheritance tax, small legacies, and depreciations, she would have a little over six thousand dollars a year; which, however, with Mortimer’s contribution, would run the old house, and keep her wardrobe up to mark after she went out of mourning. She knew nothing of the value of money, and was accustomed to having little to spend and everything provided. But her mind regarding finances was quite at rest. Even if Mortimer remained a victim of the hard times, they would be quite comfortable.

The cares of housekeeping were very light. She discussed the daily menus with James, but he had run Ballinger House for years, little as Mrs. Groome had suspected it. Mortimer, shortly after his mother-in-law’s death, and while Alexina was passing a fortnight at Rincona, had given James orders to collect all bills on the first of every month and hand them to him, together with a statement of the servants’ wages. Mrs. Dwight was not to be bothered.

Alexina, when she returned, had made no protest. The details of housekeeping did not appeal to her. But the arrangement left her without occupation, and much time for thought. After a long walk morning and afternoon she had little to do but read. She was an early riser and her mind was active.

Dwight had not the least intention of using his wife’s money, for he had perfect confidence in his change of luck, and in his ability to do great things with his business as soon as the period of depression had passed. But he had no faith in any woman’s ability to invest and take care of money, he had fixed ideas in regard to a man being master in his own house, and he had asked Alexina for her power of attorney more to flaunt her confidence in him and to annoy her damnable relatives than because there might possibly be a moment when he should have need of immediate resources. Like many Americans he chose to keep his wife in ignorance of his business life, and it would have annoyed him excessively to go to her with an explanation of temporary difficulties and ask for a loan.

Moreover, he wished to keep Alexina young and superficial, ignorant of money matters, indifferent to the sordid responsibilities of life. Not only was the present Alexina no embarrassment whatever to a man full of schemes, aside from the slow march of business, for getting rich, but she was infinitely alluring.

He detested business women, intellectual women, women with careers; they tipped the even balance of the man’s world; moreover, they had no accepted place in the higher social scheme. For women wage-earners he had no antipathy and much sympathy and consideration, although he underpaid them cheerfully when circumstances would permit. It was an abiding canker that his sister was obliged to support herself; he was not ashamed of it, for nursing was an honorable (and altruistic) profession, and several young women in his new circle bad taken it up; but he hated it as a man and a brother. As for her turning herself into an authoress, however, he only hoped he would make his million before she got herself talked about.

As for Alexina she was the perfect flower of a system lie worshiped and nothing should mar or change her if his fond surveillance could prevent it.

On the whole he was quite happy at this time, despite his passionate desire for wealth and his natural resentment, at the attitude of the Abbotts and their intimate circle of old friends who were so like them that he always included them in his mind when speaking of “the family.” Although he was making barely enough to pay his sister the monthly interest on her money, the salaries of his employees, and, until recently, a monthly contribution to the household expenses, he had a comfortable and delightful home with not a few of the minor luxuries, an undisputed position in the best society, an honorable one in the business world, and a beautiful wife. Now that the conventions forced them to live the retired life, they could economize without attracting attention; as he paid the bills Alexina would not know whether he still contributed his share or not; (in time he meant to pay the whole and give his wife, with the grand gesture, her entire income for pin money) and, with Alexina’s cordial assent, he had sold the old carriage, and the horses, which were eating their heads off, dismissed the coachman-gardener, and found a young Swede to take care of the garden and outbuildings.

Later, they would have their car like other people, but there was no need for it at present, and it was neither the time nor the occasion to exhibit a tendency to extravagance. In the matter of “front” he knew precisely where to leave off.

In a certain small anxious bag-of-tricks way he was clever. But not clever enough. He knew nothing of Alexina beneath her shining surface. If he had he would have sought to crowd her mind with the details of the home, encouraged her to join in the frantic activities of some one of the women’s clubs he held in scorn, persuaded her to play golf daily at the fashionable club of which they were members, even though she ran the risk of talking, unchaperoned by himself, with other men.

He never would have left her to long hours of idleness, with only books for companions (and Alexina cared little for novels lacking in psychology, or in revelations of the many phases of life of which she was personally so ignorant); and only his own companionship evening after evening.

But he had known all the Alexina he was ever to know. Such flashing glimpses as he was destined to have later so bewildered him that he reacted obstinately to his original estimate of her,…just a child under the influence of her family or some of those friends of hers who had always hated him…erratic and irresponsible like all women…a man never could understand women because there was nothing to understand…merely a bundle of contradictions….

In some ways his mental equipment was an enviable one.

Some of all this Alexina guessed, and although she was nettled at times that he took no note of her maturing mind and character, she was, on the whole, more amused.

Indulgent by nature, and somewhat indolent, she had been more than willing that Morty should enjoy his new authority, should even delude himself that he was footing all the bills, poor dear; and she listened raptly to his evening visions of their future life in Burlingame, alternated with visits to New York and England, the while she puzzled over the intricacies of some character portrayed by a master analyst.

Sometimes he did not talk at all, utterly fagged by a strenuous day in which he had accomplished precisely nothing. But the more transparent and truncated and dull he grew the more spontaneous the “niceness” and almost effusive courtesy of his wife. Insensibly she was veering to the family attitude, but he had tagged her once for all and never saw it.

Until this moment, however, when Gathbroke had been jerked from his deep seclusion within her ivory tower by Aileen’s unwelcome news, she had never had a moment of complete self-revelation….She knew instantly that she had never loved her husband: he was not her mate and Gathbroke was. She had had three years of rippling content and light enjoyment with Mortimer, they had never quarreled seriously, and they had never taken their parts in one moment of real drama.

If she had married Gathbroke they would have quarreled furiously, they would have thrown courtesy and behavior to the winds often enough, particularly while they were young, for neither would have been in the least apprehensive of wounding the rank-pride of the other, and such mutual and passionate love as theirs naturally gave birth to a high state of irritability; they would have loved and hated and made constant discoveries about each other…there would have been depths never to be fully explored but always luring them on…and the perfect companionship…the complete fusion….

How Alexina knew all this after less than three hours’ association with Gathbroke, let any woman answer. She was not so foolish as to imagine herself the victim of a secret passion, or that she had ever loved the man, or ever would. She had merely had her chance for the great duodrama, and thrown it away for a callow dream. She had no passing wish, even in that moment of visualizing him interlocked with her own wraith in that sacred inner temple where even she had never intruded before, to meet him again. She had no intention of passing any of her abundant leisure in dreaming dreams of him and the perfect bliss. But he had been hers…and utterly…he had loved her…he had wanted her…he had precipitately begged her to marry him…he had offered her the homage of complete brutality.

Something of him would always be hers.

And even though she renounced all rights in him because she must, she did not in the least relish that any one so close to her as Gora Dwight should have him. She might have heard of his marriage to a girl of his own land and class with only a passing spasm, but his continued and possibly tender friendship with her sister-in-law shook her out of the last of her jejunity and its illusions….She was not exactly a dog in the manger…she was a maturing woman looking back with anger and dismay not only upon the fatal mistake of her youth, but upon the inexorable realities of her present life….

The reaction was a more intense feeling of loyalty to Mortimer than ever. She was entirely to blame. He not only had been innocent of conscious rivalry, even of pursuit–for she could quite easily have discouraged him in the earlier stages of his courtship–but he was dependent upon her in every way: for his happiness, for the secure social position that meant so much to him, for the greater number of his valuable connections, for even his comfort and ease of living.

Something of this had passed through her stunned mind on the morning of her mother’s death. Now it was all as sharply outlined as the etching at which she was raptly gazing, and she vowed anew that she would never desert him, never deny him the assistance of the true partner. She had signed a life contract with her eyes open and she would keep it to the letter.

Only she hoped to heaven that Gathbroke was not serious about Gora. She wished never to be reminded of his existence again.

And, as Aileen talked of Santa Barbara, she wondered vaguely why there was not a law forbidding girls to marry until they were well into their twenties….until they had had a certain amount of experience….knew their own minds….Maria had been right….

CHAPTER VI

The darkness had come early with the high rolling fog that shut out the stars. The fog horn and the bells were silent but the wind had a thin anxious note as if lost, and the long creaking eucalyptus trees angrily repelled it as if irritated beyond endurance by its eternal visitations.

Alexina, who had been reading in her bedroom, realized that it must be quite half an hour since she had turned a page. She lifted her shoulders impatiently. She was in no humor for reading.

It was only eight o’clock. Far too early for bed. Mortimer had gone to Los Angeles on business. He had been gone a week, and she admitted to herself with the new frankness she had determined to cultivate–that she might meet, with the clearest possible vision, whatever three-cornered deals Life might have in store for her–that she had not missed him at all. His absence had been a heavenly interlude. She and Aileen had gone to the moving pictures unescorted every night (a performance of which he would have disapproved profoundly), and they had lunched downtown every day until Alexina had suddenly discovered that she had no more money in her purse; and, knowing nothing whatever even of minor finance, was under the impression that having given Mortimer her power of attorney she would not be able to draw from the bank.

Aileen had gone down to Burlingame to visit Sibyl Bascom for a few days. Alexina had declined to go, although it was a quiet party; it would be embarrassing not to tip the servants.

The wind gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the house and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who shook it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the window severely for good measure.

Alexina was used to San Francisco in all her many moods, but to-night, the wind and the high gray fog shutting out the stars, the silent house–silent that is but for the mice playing innocently between the walls–her complete solitude, made her restless and a little nervous.

What could she do?

She knew quite well that she had wanted to go to see Gora for a week. She had not indulged in any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was curious to see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her mind that April day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he had outgrown his hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, and the inability to conceal the asinine condition to which she had immediately reduced him, she might have given him an equal chance with Morty.

Aileen had said that he looked older. She had a quite natural curiosity to decide for herself if, had he been born several years earlier, he would have proved the successful rival in that foundational period of their youth….Or perhaps she was the reason of his rather sudden maturity. After all there was no great chasm between twenty-three and twenty-six and three-quarters. She looked little if any older. Neither did Morty, nor any one she knew.

This idea thrilled her, and, grimly determined upon no compromise or evasion, she admitted it.

Moreover, she wanted to sound out Gora.

Somehow she had no real belief that he had transferred his affections to her dissimilar sister-in-law, but her interest in Gora was growing. She wanted to know her better.

Besides, although she had often invited her to tea on her free afternoons, and to dinner whenever possible, and had occasionally dropped in to see her while she was still in the hospital, she had never called on her in her home. As Gora only slept there after a killing day’s or night’s work, visitors were anything but welcome; nevertheless she felt that she had been negligent, rude–three years!–and as Gora was not on a case for a day or two, now was the time to atone.

Moreover, she had never been out quite alone at night, except to run down the avenue and across the street to Aileen’s. It was a long way down to Geary Street, and Fillmore Street at night was “tough.” Mortimer would be furious.

She hastily changed her dinner gown to a plain walking suit of black tweed and pinned on a close hat firmly, prepared to defy the wind and thoroughly to enjoy her little adventure. Not since she had stolen out to go to forbidden parties with Aileen had she felt such a sense of altogether reprehensible elation.

CHAPTER VI

Fillmore Street, its low-browed shops dark, but with great arcs of white lights spanning the streets that ran east and west, long shafts of yellow light shining across the sidewalk from the restaurants, the candy stores and the nicolodeons–where the pianola tinkled plaintively–was thronged with saunterers. Alexina darted quick curious glances at them as she walked rapidly along. In front of every saloon was a group of young men almost fascinatingly common to Alexina’s cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over their foreheads at an indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners of their mouths, or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at “bunches” of girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, making strident or stage-whispered comments.

A great many girls had cavaliers, and these walked with their heads tossed, unless drooping toward a padded, shoulder; and they wore perhaps a coat or two less of make-up than their still neglected sisters. These were vividly earmined, although most of them were young enough to have relied on cold water and a rough towel; their hair was arranged in enormous pompadours and topped with “lingerie” or beflowered hats. Their blouses were “peek-a-boo” and cut low, their skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated straight front corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced the debutante slouch and their jaws worked automatically.

Not all of them were “bad” by any means. Fillmore Street was a promenade at night for girls who were confined by day: waitresses, shop girls of the humbler sort, servants, clerks, or younger daughters of poor parents, who would see nothing of life at all if they sat virtuously in the kitchen every night.

The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and they were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, the dead white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, ignoring the “bums” and “cadets” lounging at the corners or before the saloons, directed intent long glances at every passing man who looked as if he had the “roll” to treat them handsomely in the back parlor of a saloon, or possibly stake them at a gaming table. The town, still in its brief period of insufferable virtue, was “closed,” but the lid was not on as irremovably as the police led the good mayor to believe; and these girls, who traveled not in “bunches” but in pairs, if they had not already begun a career of profitable vice, were anxious to start but did not exactly know how. Fillmore Street was not the hunting ground of rich men; but men with a night’s money came there, and many “boobs” from the country.

Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that many of these girls were “decent enough”; “much more decent than I would be in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no place to see a beau but the street. I’d go straight to the devil and play the only game I had for all it was worth.”

But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in “badness.” She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the great juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. Moreover, she could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars above the fog, and she had drawn herself up to her full five feet seven, thrown her shoulders back, lifted her chin and lowered her eyelids the merest trifle. She fancied that the patrician-beauty type would have little or no attraction for the men who frequented Fillmore Street. Certainly the bluntest of these males could see that she was not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum.

Moreover she was in mourning.

But she had reckoned without her youth.

“Say, kid, what you doin’ all alone?”

A hand passed familiarly through her arm.

Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn upon him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help?

Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all terrified; nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark of the sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: “When a man is even half way drunk he doesn’t know a lady from a trollop, and ten to one the lady’s a trollop anyhow.”

She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature?

She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and one girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the situation, laughed aloud and cried after her: “Don’t be frightened, kid. He’s not a slaver.”

Irrepressible curiosity made her send him a swift glance from the corner of her eye. He was a young man, thick set, with an aggressive nose set in a round hard face. His small, hard, black eyes were steady, and so were his feet. He did not look in the least drunk.

“I think you have made a mistake,” she said quietly, and with no pretense at immense dignity (she could hear Aileen say: “Cut it out. Nothing doing in that line here”). “I, also, have made a mistake–in walking at night on this street. Would you mind letting go my arm? I think I’ll take a car.”

“No, I think you’ll stay just where you are,” he said insolently. “You don’t belong here all right, but you’ve come and you can stand the consequences. You’re just the sort that needs a jolt and I like the idea of handing it.”

Alexina gave him a coldly speculative glance. “I wonder why?”

“You would? Well, I’ll tell you. Never been out alone at night before, I’ll bet, like these other girls, that ain’t got no place on earth to have any fun but the streets. Never even rubbed against the common herd? Generally go about in a machine, don’t you?”

“It is quite true that I have never been out alone at night before. I certainly shall not go again.”

“No, you don’t have to! That’s the point, all right. And if you weren’t such a beauty, damn you! I’d hate you this minute as I hate your whole parasite class.”

“Oh, you are a socialist!” Alexina looked at him with frank curiosity. “I never saw one before.”

He was obviously disconcerted. Then his face flushed with anger. “Yes, I’m a socialist all right, and you’ll see more of us before you’re many years older.”

“You might tell me about it if you _will_ walk with me. I am a long way from my destination, and that would be far more interesting than personalities.”

“I’ve got more personalities where those came from. It makes me sick to see the difference between you and these poor kids–ready to sell their souls for pretty clothes and a little fun. There’s nothing that has done so much to inflame class hatred as the pampered delicate satin-skinned women of your class, who have expensive clothes and ‘grooming’ to take the place of slathers of paint and cheap perfume. Raised in a hot house for the use of the man on top. It’s the crowning offense of capitalism, and when the system goes, they’ll all be like you, or you’ll be more like them. You’ll come down about a thousand pegs, and the ones down below will be shoved up to meet you.”

Alexina stood still and faced him.

“Are you poor?” she asked.

“What a hell of a question. Have I been talkin’ like a plutocrat?”

“Oh, there are, still, different grades. I was wondering if you would be so inconsistent as to earn a little money from me and two friends of mine. We have read socialism a bit, but, we don’t understand it very well. I am in mourning and it would interest me immensely.”

He had dropped her arm and was staring at her.

“You are not afraid of me, then?” His voice was sulky but his eyes were less hostile.

“Oh, not in the least. I fully appreciate that you merely wished to humiliate me, not to be insulting, as some of these other men might have been. My name is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight. I live on Ballinger Hill–do you know it? That old house in the eucalyptus grove?”

“I know it, all right.”

“Then you probably know, also, that I am not rich and never have been. My husband is a struggling young business man.”

“That cuts no ice. You train with that class, don’t you? You’re class yourself, reek with it. You had rich ancestors or you wouldn’t be what you are now.”

“Well, we can discuss that point another time. One of my friends is a daughter of Judge Lawton–“

“Hand in glove with every rich grafter in ‘Frisco.”

Alexina shuddered. “Please say San Francisco. I am positive you never heard a word against Judge Lawton’s probity, nor that he ever rendered an unjust decision.”

“He’s a wise old guy, all right. But it would be wastin’ time tryin’ to make you understand why I have no use for him.”

“Of course you would have no use for the husband of my other friend, Mrs. Frank Bascom.”

She fully expected that the young millionaire’s name would be the final red rag and that her escort would roar his opinion of him for the benefit of all Fillmore Street. But he surprised her by saying reluctantly:

“He’s dead straight, all right. He’s not a grafter. I’ve nothing against him personally, but he’s part of a damnable system and I’d clean him out with the rest.”

“Well, there you have three of us to your hand. Who knows but that you might convert us? Why not give us the chance? If you will give me your address I will write to you as soon as my friends come back to town.”

“I don’t know whether I want to do it or not. You may be makin’ game of me for all I know.”

“I am quite sincere. You interest me immensely. And we might teach you something too–what it means to have a sense of humor. I know enough of socialism to know that no socialist can have it. May I ask what your occupation is?”

“I’m just a plain working-man–housebuilding line.”

“Then you could only come in the evening?”

“Not at all; I get off at five. You don’t have your dinner until eight in your set, I believe,” This with a sneer that curled his upper lip almost to the septum of his nose.

“Seven. My husband works until nearly six. He rarely has time for lunch and comes home very hungry.”

Once more he looked puzzled and disconcerted, but his small steady eyes did not waver.

“My name’s James Kirkpatrick.” He found the stub of a pencil in his pocket and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. “I’ll think it over. Maybe I’ll do it. I dunno, though.”

“I do hope you will. I’m sure we can learn a good deal from each other. Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don’t the socialist tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?”

“Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight better, but I guess there’s nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your car.”

He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself on having had the last word.

CHAPTER VII

Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young sister-in-law left the car at the corner.

Gora walked up to meet her guest. “Where on earth have you, been?” she demanded. “I supposed of course that you’d take a taxi. You should not go out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest ideas; and you–“

“Haven’t. Not, any more. I’m tired of being kept in a glass case–being a parasite.” She laughed gayly at Gora’s look of amazement. “I’ve had an adventure. Almost the first I ever had.”

She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps and stairs to the attic.

Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. “Shall you tell Mortimer?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done.”

“But if you study with this man?”

“There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself as Morty’s partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over anything yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many things whether he happens to like it or not. Possibly without consulting him.”

“You’ve had time to think these past three months for the first time in your life,” said Gora shrewdly. “Here we are. I hope you don’t hate stairs. I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can’t give up the old place….And I’ve lit the candles in your honor.”

“Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!”

Thought Gora: “I do hope she’s not going to be gracious. I’ve never liked her so well before.”

But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had caught sight immediately of Gathbroke’s picture framed and enthroned on the mantelpiece.

She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old Chinese lanterns that held the candles.

“I am going to refurnish our lower rooms,” she said. “If you have time do help me. Heavens! I wish I could work off some of that old furniture on you. I like the Italian pieces well enough, but there are too many of them. That rather low Florentine cabinet in the back parlor would just fit in this corner….”

She gave a little girlish exclamation and ran forward.

“Isn’t that young Gathbroke, who was out here at the time of the earthquake and fire…or an older brother, perhaps?”

She had taken the photograph from the mantel and was examining it under one of the lanterns. Her alert ear detected the deeper and less steady note in Gora’s always hoarse voice.

“It is the same. Did you meet him?…Oh, I remember he told me he met you at the Hofer ball. He rather raved over you, in fact.”

“Did he? How sweet of him. I met him again, I remember. Mr. Gwynne brought him down to Rincona one day.”

“Oh?”

And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit.

“But he looks much much older.”

“He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey on him more and more.

“Oh.”

He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, two weeks after the fire.

Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a coaxing smile. “Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me.”

“No,” said Gora, shortly. “We are not engaged. Good friends, that is all, and write occasionally.”

“Well, he must be very much interested–and you must be a very interesting correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What does he do, anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something about the army.”

“He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me–oh, it must be nearly two years ago–that if there should be a war he would enlist as a matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and he was sick of idleness–his good middle-class energetic blood asserting itself, he said,–he was going to amuse himself with work, incidentally try to make a fortune. His mother left a good deal of money, but there are several children and I guess the present earl needs most of it to keep up his estates, to say nothing of his position. Fotten law, that–entail, I mean.”

Alexina came and sat down on the divan beside Gora, piling the cushions behind her. “Are you a socialist?”

“I am not. I believe in sticking to your own class, whether you have a grudge against it or not, or even if you think it far from perfection.”

She shot a quick challenging glance at her admittedly aristocratic sister-in-law, but Alexina had lifted the lower white of her eyes just above their soft black fringe and looked more innocent than any new born lamb. As she did not answer Gora continued:

“I remember that night I sat out with Gathbroke on Calvary he said something about socialism…that it was a confession of failure. I may feel so furious with destiny sometimes that I could go out and wave a red flag, or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers me is the thought that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a reasonable fortune I’d have no more use for socialism than for a rattlesnake in my bed. Why are you interested?”

“Only as in any subject that interests a few million people. I haven’t the least intention of being converted, but I don’t want to be an ignoramus. Aileen and Sibyl and I did start Marx’s _Das Kapital_–in German! We nearly died of it. But I felt sure that this man, Kirkpatrick, had studied his subject, if only because his language changed so completely when he talked about it. It was as if he were quoting, but intelligently. Of course the poor man had little or no education to begin with. Somehow he struck me as a pathetic figure. Perhaps when every one is educated–and there must be many thousands of naturally intelligent men in the working class whose brains if trained would be mighty useful in Washington–well, all having had equal opportunities they would surely arrive at some way to improve conditions without struggling for anything so hopeless as socialism. I know enough to be sure that it is hopeless, because it antagonizes human nature.”

“Rather. The trend under all the talk is more and more toward individualism, not self-effacing communism. As for myself I like the idea of the fight–for public recognition, I mean; and I don’t think I’d be happy at all if things were made too smooth for me; if, for instance, in a socialized state it were decided that I could devote all my time to writing, and that the state would take care of me, publish my work, and distribute it exactly where it was sure to be appreciated. I haven’t any of the old California gambling blood in me, but I guess the hardy ghost of those old days still dominates the atmosphere, and I have not been one of those to escape.”

“It’s in mine! Not that I care for gambling, really, like Aileen and Alice. But I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of taking long chances, and I have had inklings that I’ll be rather more than less fascinated as I grow older….When are your stories to be published? I am simply expiring to read them.”

“Are you?”

III

Alexina had thrust her slim index finger unerringly through Gora’s bristling armor and tickled her weakest spot. The fledgling author smiled into the dazzling eyes opposite and a deep flush rose to her high cheek bones,

“Rather!”

“Then…” Gora rose and took a magazine from the table beside her bed. She spread it open on her lap, when she had resumed her seat, and handled it as Alexina had seen young mothers fondle their first-born.

“It’s here. Just out.”

“Oh!” Alexina. gave a little shriek of genuine anticipation. “Read it to me. Quick. I can’t wait.”

Gora led a lonely life outside of her work, a lonely inner life always. She had never had an intimate friend, and she suddenly reflected that there had been a certain measure of sadness in her joy both when her manuscripts were accepted and to-day when for the first time she had gazed at herself in print….She had had no one to rejoice with her….She felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to Alexina.

But she gave this young wife of her brother whom she knew as little as Alexina knew her, another swift suspicious glance….No, there was nothing of Alexina’s usual high and careless courtesy in that eager almost excited face.

“I’d love to have your opinion….I read very badly….Make allowances….”

“Oh, fire away. If I’d written a story and had it accepted by that magazine I’d read it from the housetops.”

Gora read the story well enough, and Alexina’s mind did not wander even to Gathbroke. It was written in a pure direct vigorous English. A little less self-consciousness and it would have been distinguished. The story itself was built craftily; she had been coached by a clever instructor who was a successful writer of short stories himself; and it worked up to a climax of genuine drama. But this was merely the framework, the flexible technique for the real Gora. The story had not only an original point of view but it pulsed with the insurgent resentful passionate spirit of the writer.

Alexina gave a little gasp as Gora finished.

“Many people won’t like that story,” she said. “It shocks and jars and gives one’s smugness a pain in the middle. But those that do like it will give you a great reputation, and after all there are a few thousand intelligent readers in the United States. How on earth did that magazine come to accept it?”

Gora was staring at Alexina with an uncommonly soft expression in her opaque light eyes. She felt, indeed, as if her ego would leap through them and make a fool of her.

“The editor wrote me something of what you have just said. He wanted something new–to give his conservative old subscribers a shock. Thought it would be good for them and for the magazine. You–you–have said what I should have wanted you to say if I could have thought it out….I think I should have hated you if you had said, ‘How charming!’ or ‘How frantically interesting!'”

“Well, it’s the last if not the first. Aileen will say that and mean it. I’ll telephone to the bookstore the first thing Monday morning and get a copy. Now I must go. It’s late.”

“Let me telephone for a taxi.”

Alexina laughed merrily. “You’ll never believe it, but I’ve just thirty cents in my purse. I forgot to ask Morty for something before he left….You see, I happened to find quite a bit in mother’s desk and so I’ve never thought to ask him for an allowance. But I shall at once.”

“An allowance? But you have your own money? Or is it because the estate isn’t settled? What has Morty to do with that?”

“I believe we get the income from the estate until it is settled. But I gave my power of attorney to Morty.”

“Oh! But if there is money on deposit in the bank you can draw on it.”

“Could I? Well! I’ll just draw a round hundred on Monday at ten A.M.”

“Why did you give your power of attorney to Morty?”

“Oh…why…he asked me to…I know nothing about business, and he naturally would attend to my affairs.”

“But you are not going away. No one needs your power of attorney. And the executors are Judge Lawton and Mr. Abbott. You are here to sign such papers as they advise….Don’t he angry, please. I am not insinuating anything against Morty. He’s never bad a dishonest thought in his life…has always been, the squarest…but…”

“Well?”

Alexina’s head was very high. It was quite bad enough for Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton…but for his sister…

“It’s this way, Alexina. People in this world, more particularly men, are just about as honest as circumstances will permit them to be. Some are stronger than Life in one way or another, no doubt of it; but they make up for it by being weaker in others….I am talking particularly of the money question, the struggle for existence, which the vast majority of men are forced to make….

“Men fight Life from the hour they leave their homes, when they have any, to force success–in one way or another–out of her until the hour they are able to lay down the burden….Some are too strong and too firm in their ideals ever to do wrong; they would prefer failure, and generally they are strong enough to avoid it, even to succeed in their way against the most overwhelming odds….Many are too clever not to find some way of compromising and circumventing….Others just peg along and barely make both ends meet….Others go under and down and out.

“Morty, like millions of other young Americans, had good principles and high ideals inculcated from his earliest boyhood and took to them as a duck takes to water. Nor is he weak. But although he is a hard and steady worker he is also visionary. He speculated on the stock market before he was married. Probably not now as the market is moribund. He is frantic to get rich…for more reasons than one.”

“But he never would do anything dishonorable.”

“No. Nothing he couldn’t square with his conscience if it turned out all right. But the most honest man, when in a hole, finds little difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that what is, illogically, the possession of the women of his family, is his if he needs it.

“Moreover, no doubt you have discovered that Morty is the sort of man who looks upon women as man’s natural inferiors, that if there is any question of sacrifice the woman is not to be considered for a moment…especially where no public risk is involved. That sort of man only thinks he is too honest to refrain from taking some unrelated woman’s money, but as a matter of fact it is because she would send him to State’s Prison as readily as a man would. One’s own women are safe.

“I lent Morty my small inheritance with my eyes open. But he knows a good deal of that particular business, and I did not dream the times were going to be so bad….I doubt if I ever see it again….But you must not run the risk of losing yours. I want you to promise me that on Monday morning you will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power of attorney. And as much for Morty’s sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position again, and you would have your own income.”

“But do you mean to say that if I did revoke my power of attorney and he asked me later for money to save his business that I should not give it to him?”

“Yes, I mean just that. Morty will never take any of the prizes in the business world. He may hold on and make a living, that is all. He has plenty to start with, and tells me he is doing fairly well, in spite of the times. But he would do better in the long run as a clerk. In time he might get a large salary as a sort of general director of all the routine business of some large house–“

Alexina curled her lip. “I do not want him to be a clerk.”

“No, of course you don’t! But you’d like it still less if he cleaned you out. You–would have to sell or rent your old home and live on a hundred and fifty dollars a month in a flat in some out-of-the-way quarter. You might have to go to work yourself,”

“I shouldn’t mind that so much, except that I’m afraid I’d not be good for much. Perhaps it was snobbish of me to object lo Morty’s being a clerk. But…well, I’m not so sure that it is snobbish to prefer what you have always been accustomed to–I mean if it is a higher standard. And after all I married him when he was only a clerk.”

“You are surprisingly little of a snob, all things considered; but you are a hopeless aristocrat.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I think the line between the aristocratic and the snobbish attitude of mind is almost too fine to be put into words. But they are often confused by the undiscriminating. Will you revoke that power of attorney on Monday?”

“Shouldn’t I wait until Morty is home?…tell him first? It seems rather taking an advantage…and he will be very angry.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“What excuse shall I give him?”

“Any one of a dozen. You are bored and want to take care of your money…intend to learn something of business, as all women should, and will in time….Ring in the feminist stuff…wife’s economic independence…woman’s new position in the world….That will make Morty so raving angry that he will forget about the other. Will you do it?”

“Yes, I will. I believe you are right. So were the others…there must be something in it.”

She told Gora of the advice of Tom Abbott and Judge Lawton. Gora nodded.

“They meant more than they said. And merely because they are men of the world, not because they like and trust Morty any the less.”

Alexina did not hear her. She was staring hard at the floor….A year ago…three months ago…she couldn’t have done this thing. She had been still under the illusion that she loved her husband, that her marriage was a complete success. She would have sacrificed her last penny rather than hurt his feelings. Now she only cared that she didn’t care….She had admitted to herself that she did not love her husband but that was different from committing an overt act that proved it….She felt something crumbling within her….It was the last of the fairy edifice of her romance…of her first, her real, youth….What was to take its place? The future smugly secure on six thousand a year and an inviolate social position…a good dull husband…not even the prospect of travel….

She sprang to her feet and turned away her head.

“Why don’t you come and live with us?” she asked abruptly. “Why should you keep this on? There are so many vacant bedrooms up there. You could have one for your study. I’d love to have you. You’d have the most complete independence. Do.”

Gora shook her head. “I’ve always this to fall back on.”

“Fall back on?”

“Oh! I never meant to let that out. However….Perhaps it is as well….Morty–you know his pride–everybody has his prime weakness and that is his. Transpose it into snobbery if you like….We did not board down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid well, but Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it up. He was afraid you’d be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, I did. One of my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I entered the hospital, but kept on my room as I had to have one somewhere. Eight months later she married, and I took it back. I found I could run it as well as ever with the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman she had discovered. But I never told Morty.”

Alexina laughed. “Better not. But you could run it and live with us all the same.”

“No. I have too little time. I’d waste it coming back and forth, for I must be here some time every day….Besides…”

“Your own precious atmosphere?”

“You do understand!”

“Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice.”

“You bet. And now, I’ll see you to your car; stay with you until you are safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don’t assert your independence in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore Street are not spiteful socialists.”

As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to Gathbroke’s picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into fists.

“Oh…you…you….Why weren’t you….Why didn’t you….”

CHAPTER VIII

Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his day on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could always summon at will, even when all was not well with him.

To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had been a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated itself into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken order, been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that the retail merchants of San Francisco bought very sparingly; but he had found in Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming Japanese population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure.

It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure and her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in France on a balmy day. But she quaked inside.

She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile. “I’m afraid you will be rather cross with me,” she said softly. “But I went down to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney to you.”

“You did what?” The slow blood rose to Dwight’s hair. He mechanically took the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation of falling through space…out of somewhere….

Alexina repeated her statement.

He recovered himself. “Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or Judge Lawton.”

“Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own. I did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up from Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced Mrs. Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down there–those that read the serious new books and go to lectures when there are any worth while–to join a class in economics. One of the professors at Stanford is going to teach us. Aileen has lost frightfully at poker lately and wants a new interest; she put Sibyl up to it–who was delighted with the suggestion as she hasn’t been intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a practical streak; so that studying economics appealed to her.

“I jumped at the idea. It was a God-send. I have had so little to do. I don’t care for poker and one can’t read all the time….But after they left I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying economies in the abstract if I didn’t have sense and ‘go’ enough to manage my own affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn’t draw any money from the bank because I had given you my power of attorney. Aileen has an allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually comes out about even at poker in the course of the month, and if she doesn’t she pawns something. I’ve been with her to pawn shops and it’s the greatest fun. I don’t mind telling you, as I know you never betray a confidence. The Judge would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and water.

“Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs over it. You know how she entertains.

“I should never dare admit to them–or to the professor if he asked my opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out–that I was too lazy and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went down first thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I simply couldn’t wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me I shall attend to everything and not bother you, Morty dear.”

III

Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into a saint.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate to express his feelings.

“I may be old-fashioned–“

“You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school of American husbands–“

“There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world.”

“So there are, poor dears. It’s going to be so hard for them–“

“Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?”

“Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my old-fashioned family. I’d be much the same if I’d never taken any interest in all these wonderful modern movements.”

“It’s those chums of yours–Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly approve of them.”

“Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference.”

“Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me…disobey me?”

“Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had at the rehearsal. You haven’t noticed, these three years, that I’ve had my way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be your way too. We’ve been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just playing about, with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has changed. We must look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole burden on your shoulders–“

“I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs.”

Alexina shook her wise little head. “Oh, no. It isn’t done any more. No woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole burden of life on her husband’s shoulders. You have your own daily battle in the business world. I will do the rest.”

“What damned emancipated talk.”

“What a funny old-fashioned word. We don’t even say advanced or new any more.”

“It’s nonsense anyhow. You’re nothing but a child.”

“You may just bet your life I’m not a child. Nor have I awakened all of a sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of modern science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always discussing everything that interests the public; I have even read the newspapers for two years.”

“Much better you didn’t. There is no reason whatever for a woman in your position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from your charm.”

“Maybe, but we’ll find more charm in Life as we grow older.”

His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something that looked like a bogey.

“May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got everything down to a fine point….It seems too bad you should bother….”

“Bother? I’ve been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it’s too little bother. James and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over monthly bills and ‘slips’ and sign cheques.”

She hesitated. “You mustn’t think for a minute that I want to make you feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come,…Of course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could simply go on along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, shortly after the first of the month, and you’ll give me half.”

Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but in that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this sheltered

The Sisters-In-Law by Gertrude AthertonA Novel of Our Times (page 3)