masculine biped in a blue-serge covering who paid her salary and struck attitudes that were symbols of predatory instincts rather than an indication that such instincts existed. Life had, after all, been peopled by the precisely labeled puppets of a morality play; they came on, and declaimed, and made gestures–but they remained abstractions, things apart from life, mere representations of the vices and virtues they impersonated. She had entertained this idea particularly with regard to Flint. She had felt that the day would come when he and she would occupy the stage together. He would speak his part with a great flourish of the hands and much high-sounding emphasis, and when he had finished she would reply with a carefully worded retort, setting forth the claims and rewards of virtue. Thus it would continue, argument succeeding argument, a declamatory give and take, dignified, passionless, theatrical.
They were occupying the stage now, it was true, but there was something warm and human and ragged about the performance. Flint was not a mere spiritless allegory in red-satin doublet and hose to give flame to his conventionality. Instead, she saw sitting opposite her a ponderous, quick-breathing, drunken male, handsome in a coarse, rough-hewn way, speaking in the quick, clipped speech of passion and striking her to the ground with the energy of his stage business. She was afraid, almost for the first time in her life, with a primitive, abandoned fear. And suddenly her vista of womanhood narrowed to include the ugly foreground of life that youth had looked over in its eager, far-flung scanning of the horizon beyond. Suddenly she felt all the oppression and sorrow of the sex bear down upon her and mark her with its relentless finger. Because she was a woman she would pay for every joy with a corresponding sorrow; receive a blow for every caress; know courage and fear with equal intimacy…. She stopped eating and she began to realize with a vivid terror that Flint was looking at her fixedly and beginning to speak.
“What’s the matter with the sweetbreads? Don’t you like ’em?… And the wine?… Say, I’m going to get peeved in a minute. You don’t suppose we serve this French-restaurant style of meal every day do you? I should say _not_! That’s another one of the _frau’s_ convictions. Plain living at home so as to set the right example to the _girls_!” Flint threw his head from side to side, mincing out his last statement. “Gad! I’m tired of setting a good example!… And even Sing gets tired. Chinks, you know, like to cook a bang-up meal once in a while. They like a chance to show their speed and put in all the fancy trimmings.”
His mood, during this speech, had changed with drunken facility from irritability to good humor. Claire, still attempting to marshal her wits, picked up her fork again and murmured:
“Oh, you have a Chinese cook, then? I had no idea…. The Japanese boy, you know. They say that the two never get along.”
“That’s a fairy-tale. Besides, it’s next to impossible, these days, to get a Chinese second-boy. And the missus _won’t_ hire a girl.” He winked broadly. “Can’t get one ugly enough, I guess. Sing’s a wonder. I copped him from the Tom Forsythes. _You_ know–young Edington’s in-laws. They’ve never quite forgiven me. Though they _will_ come back and tuck away one of his dinners occasionally.”
Claire’s mind closed nimbly over Flint’s statement. “The–the Tom Forsythes of Ross?” she asked.
He nodded and tossed a glass of wine off in one gulp. The Tom Forsythes of Ross … Edington’s sister … Ned Stillman! The sequence of ideas flashed through Claire’s mind with flashing detachment. She leaned back in her seat and raised the wine-glass in obvious pretense to her lips. Flint was watching her keenly: an ugly gleam was in his eyes.
“Well, Miss Robson, you might just as well make up your mind to finish that glass of wine first as last. We’re not going to have the next course until you do.”
She measured him deliberately. She knew now that it was to be a fight to a finish. She was honestly afraid and full of the courage of realization.
“I’ve had enough as it is, Mr. Flint. Besides, we must either be getting to work or figuring how I am to make the boat at Sausalito. I suppose you could send me in the car … with Jerry.”
“Oh, with Jerry? So that’s it!… No, not on your life! He’s too good-looking a boy for a job like that. No, Miss Robson, you are going to stay _right_ here…. Now, understand me, I’m not a damn fool! You seem to have an idea that because I’ve had a glass or two that I’ve lost my reason. You’re an attractive girl and all that, Miss Robson, and I am interested in you! But please don’t flatter yourself that I’m staking everything on a throw like this. As a matter of fact, I’ll see that you are properly chaperoned. We’ve plenty of neighbors. You’ve got the best excuse in the world for staying here and….”
“But, my dear Mr. Flint, can’t you see, I….”
“No, I can’t. I want you to stay _here_. My reasons are as good as yours. Now let’s get that off our mind and enjoy the meal.”
His manner struck her protests to the ground again. She was no longer fearing the immediate outcome, in fact, she never had, but she knew that if he broke her to his will now, all the safeguards, all the chaperons, all the conventions in the world wouldn’t save her from ultimate consequences. This was the try-out that was to establish her pace in the final contest; she would stand or fall upon the record she made at this moment. For she was trying out something more than Flint’s temper, something greater than a mechanical adjustment of human relationships–she was trying out _herself_. She sat for some moments, thinking hard, one hand fingering the slender base of the wine-filled glass in front of her, the other dropped in pensive limpness at her side. Flint had cleared the space in front of him of everything but his two wine-glasses. He had slipped down in his seat and his two bloodshot eyes were fixing her with a level stare.
She stirred finally and rose.
He was on his feet in an instant.
“I’m going to telephone,” she said, calmly.
“Telephone … where?… What’s the idea?”
“Mr. Flint,” she answered, a bit wearily, “at least I’m a guest in your house, am I not?”
He settled back in his seat with a grunt of acquiescence. She stood dazed for a moment, surprised at the chance that had put such telling words into her mouth. She had been fingering timidly for the key to his chivalry; quite by accident she had hit upon it in the shape of this appeal to her expectations of him in the role of host. She could have lied, of course, and told him that she wished to telephone her mother, but she had not yet been cornered sufficiently to resort to so distasteful a weapon…. As she left the room she found herself wondering whether Stillman had by any chance left the Tom Forsythes. She looked at the clock. It was not quite eight o’clock. She felt reassured, yet she was tremendously frightened…. Especially as she realized that the telephone was in the entrance hall within earshot of the dining-room….
She was decidedly more frightened when she got back from her telephoning, and looked at Flint. He was clutching at the table with both hands, his body tilted slightly forward, his lips ominously thin.
“You telephoned to the Tom Forsythes, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you asked for Stillman…. Did you get him?”
“Yes.”
“What did you want with him?”
“If you heard that much, I guess you heard the rest, Mr. Flint.”
Claire stood at her place at the table. She decided not to sit. Flint bore down on both hands until things began to creak.
“Yes, I heard everything, but, dammit all, I couldn’t believe my own ears. You’re like every woman I ever knew … you don’t play fair. You appeal to my instinct as host and then you go and outrage every privilege you’ve got me to concede. You’re a pretty guest, you are! And I sit here and let you ‘play me for a fool.’ Let you ring up Ned Stillman and ask him to fetch you away from _my_ house in _his_ car!” He stopped and took a deep breath; his words were no longer passionate; instead, they were precise and cool and venomous. “Understand me, young lady, I’m through with you. I wouldn’t care, if I thought you were really virtuous. But you’re too clever for a virtuous woman…. Oh, I dare say you subscribe to the letter of the law, all right. For instance, you take care not to run around with married men whose incumbrances are in plain view of the audience…. Oh, I’ve seen lots of clever women in my time, but in the end they always took too much rope. Remember, you’ll have your bluff called some day.”
He pushed back his chair noisily and rose. The Japanese servant came bobbing along.
“Clear away the things!” Flint bellowed. “We’re through!… Good night, Miss Robson, and a pleasant journey to you–you and your _immaculate_ friend Stillman.”
He left the room with a melodramatic flourish…. Presently Claire heard him mounting the stairs.
“He’s drunk!” flashed through her mind, as if the idea had just struck her. “Of course, he must be drunk, otherwise he wouldn’t have dared to….”
She went out into the entrance hall and put on her hat.
CHAPTER VII
Midway between Yolanda and Sausalito Stillman’s machine died with disconcerting suddenness The rain was coming down in sheets. Stillman got out.
“It’s no use,” he announced, lifting himself back into his seat. “I can’t do anything in this deluge.”
This was the first word that had been said since he and Claire had left Flint’s.
“The worst will be over in a few moments,” replied Claire, easily. But she was far from reassured.
The deluge was _not_ over in a few moments. It kept up with an ever-increasing violence, until it seemed that even the stalled car would be compelled to yield to its force. Claire had never seen it rain harder; the storm had a vindictive fury that reminded her of the dreadful tempest in “King Lear.”
Stillman maintained his usual well-bred calm and smoked cigarettes while he chattered. He touched on every conceivable subject but the one uppermost in Claire’s mind, until she began to wonder whether delicacy or contempt veiled his conversation. A half-hour passed … an hour … two. Still the rain swept from the sullen sky. Twice Stillman made a futile attempt to remedy the trouble with his engine, and twice he retired defeated to the shelter of the car. Claire was relieved that she was in the company of a man who did not emphasize the monotonous hours by indiscriminate raillery against the tricks of chance. At first he dismissed the situation with the most casual of shrugs; later he acknowledged his annoyance by an expression of regret at his companion’s discomfort, but he stopped there.
As the hours went on, with no abatement of the storm’s devastating energy, Claire grew less and less pleased at the prospect. She began to wonder whether the shelter of Flint’s roof had not been, after all, the discreet thing. Was not her headlong flight in company with Stillman more open to criticism than the frank acceptance of her employer’s hospitality? But these vagrant questions were the spawn of a colorless spirit of social expediency which fastens itself on weak natures, and in Claire’s case they died still-born. She had been too well schooled in loneliness to lean heavily on the crooked stick of public opinion. Accustomed to standing alone, she had something of the spiritual arrogance that goes with independence. People could think what they liked. And it was more a realization of her mother’s anxiety than any thought of self which made her suggest to Stillman that they might get out and walk into Sausalito.
“I think the last boat leaves there at twelve-thirty,” she finished. “Surely we could make it if we keep going.”
Stillman thrust his arm out into the drenching rain, and withdrew it instantly. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, so long as the rain keeps up, Miss Robson,” he said, in a tone of implied objection. “Perhaps if it should stop….”
Claire settled back in her seat. Stillman was right. The storm was too furious to be lightly braved.
It was eleven o’clock before a quick veering of the wind brought a downpour so violent that what had gone before seemed little better than a rather weak rehearsal.
“It will clear presently,” Stillman assured Claire. “Southeaster always break up in a flurry like this from the west.”
In ten minutes the stars were peeping brilliantly through rents in the torn clouds. Pungent odors floated up from the rain-trampled stubble of the hillsides, the air was cleared of its stifling oppressiveness, the first storm of the season was over.
Both Claire and Stillman clambered out at the first signs of the storm’s exhaustion. Stillman switched on his pocket-light and began to investigate the trouble with the engine. His decision was swift and conclusive.
“It’s hopeless,” he announced, turning to Claire with a slight grimace. “We’re stalled absolutely and no mistake. I guess we’d better strike out and walk. No doubt we’ll get a lift into Sausalito before we’ve gone very far, but I dare say it’s well to be on the safe side.”
They rolled the machine to one side of the roadway and struck out hopefully. The rain had made a thin chocolate ooze of the highway, and before they had gone a hundred yards their shoes were slimy with mud. It appeared that Stillman had been something of an aimless wanderer for many years, and as he talked on and on, giving detached glimpses of the remote places he had visited, Claire had a curious sense of futility.
She read between his clipped and vivid sentences the tragedy of a personality worsted by the soft hands of circumstances. This man might have done things. As it was he was an idler. He gave her the impression of a man waiting vaguely for opportunity–like some traveler pacing restlessly up and down a railway station platform in expectation of the momentary arrival of a delayed train. She tried to imagine him as she felt sure he must once have been–youthful, eager, ardent, a man of charming enthusiasms that just missed being extravagances, who could bring zest to his virtues as well as to his follies.
“Surely,” she thought, “something more than inclination must have pushed him into this deadly stagnation.”
And at once Miss Munch’s insinuating question leaped up to answer:
“You know about his wife, of course!”
Were men put out of countenance by such impersonal tricks of fortune? Impersonal?… this domestic tragedy?… Yes, Claire felt that it must be, otherwise the man tramping at her side would have wrestled so passionately against fate as to have come away at least spattered with the mud of defeat. No, Stillman was not defeated, he was merely arrested, restrained, held for orders.
He had been in London when the war broke out. He had stayed long enough to watch the stolid, easy-going British public awake to the seriousness of the encounter, coming home after the first air raids.
“I didn’t mind being killed,” he laughed, in explanation of his sudden flight. “But I didn’t like being so frightfully messed up in the process. I want a chance to strike back when I’m cornered. The Zeppelin game was too much like a rabbit-drive to suit me.”
As he spoke of these experiences, Claire listened with a quickening of the spirit. The prospect of finding Stillman vibrant was too stirring to be denied. But he was still sober on this colossal subject of war … a bit judicial, always well poised. He had his sympathies, but they did not appear vitalized by extravagances of feeling. Yet here and there Claire was conscious of truant warmths, like brief flashes of sunlight through a somber forest.
“And the draft–what do you think of that?” The question rose to her lips as if his answer might unlock the door to something deeper in the way of convictions.
He began with a shrug that chilled her; then his reply broke with sudden refreshment:
“It helps … some of us. There are many who can’t decide for themselves. The obvious duty isn’t always the correct one. In my case….”
He did not stop speaking suddenly, but his voice trailed off into a dim region of musing. They both fell silent. But Claire knew. There was that haunting hope, almost like a fear, that his wife might some day get better. That was what he was waiting for! It might come to-morrow … next week … in a year … never! But when it did come he felt that he must be there, ready. She wondered whether he loved his wife very much, and she found herself hoping that he did…. It would help, somehow … yes, if that were so his sacrifice gained point. On the other hand…. She put the thought away with a quick thrust, feeling that she had no right to such a speculation, and presently she was aware that they were swinging into Sausalito.
Stillman looked at his watch. Twelve-thirty-five … just five minutes late for the boat! She could see that he was disturbed.
“I thought sure we’d get a lift,” he railed, tossing aside a mangled cigar. “This _is_ luck!… I guess we’ll have to rout out the Sherwins. It’s something of a pull up the hill, but any safe port in a storm, you know.”
“The Sherwins?”
“Another one of the Edington girls. They have a bungalow at the very dizziest point in Sausalito.”
But Claire objected and held firm. “I couldn’t think of it, Mr. Stillman. No, really!… Please don’t insist.”
They agreed on a lodging for Claire in a freshly painted but otherwise rather decrepit lodging-house, just north of the ferry-slip. Its chief advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn’t approve of couples who dragged God-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the assurance that he intended looking elsewhere for quarters for himself that reconciled her to her loss of sleep and the compromise with her convictions.
For a good half-hour Claire sat with folded hands peering out from her room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide. Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open. She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of a deferred heritage. Before her stretched the eagle’s horizon, but she had only the fledgling’s strength of wing. She longed for the faith and courage and daring to take life at its word, longed with all the dangerous fierceness of one who had fed too long upon the husks of existence. And, longing, she fell asleep, sitting in a chair before the open window, without thought or preparation….
* * * * *
The morning broke cloudless. All traces of the night’s fury were obliterated as completely as sorrow from the face of a smiling child. The sun touched the open spaces with a tender, caressing warmth, but the shadows held a keen-edged chill.
Claire decided upon an early boat to town.
“I’ll be less likely to meet any of the California Street crowd,” she said to herself, as she picked her brief way toward the ferry.
The boat was crowded, especially the lower cabin. It was the artisans’ boat and the air was heavy with the smoke of pipe-tobacco. Claire passed rapidly to the dining-room. Perched upon the high revolving chairs surrounding a horseshoe counter, a score or more of soft-shirted men sat devouring huge greasy doughnuts and gulping coffee. The steward, taking note of Claire’s hesitation, came forward and led her to a seat at one of the side tables. She was about to take advantage of the chair which he had drawn out for her when she heard her name called. She turned. Miss Munch’s cousin, Mrs. Richards, was sitting alone at the table just behind. Claire’s first feeling was one of relief–she was glad to discover an acquaintance. She thanked the steward for his trouble and abandoned the proffered seat for the one opposite Mrs. Richards. Almost at once she regretted her impulsive decision.
“I didn’t know you intended staying at Flint’s all night,” Mrs. Richards began, fixing Claire with a challenging gaze.
“I didn’t intend to,” returned Claire, her voice sharpened slightly.
Mrs. Richards took the lid off the sugar-bowl and powdered her grapefruit sparingly. “Have they a nice home?” she questioned.
“Yes, very nice.”
“They gave you an early start, didn’t they?… It’s almost impossible to get servants these days to consider such a thing as serving breakfast much before eight o’clock.”
Claire glanced at the bill of fare. Mrs. Richards’s tone was a trifle too eager. “I suppose it is,” Claire assented, placing the menu-card back in its place between the vinegar and oil cruets.
Mrs. Richards remained unabashed at her vis-a-vis’s palpable indirectness. “I guess I’m old-fashioned, but, servants or no servants, I don’t believe I could let a guest of mine leave the house without breakfast. It seems to me that if I’d been Mrs. Flint I’d have gotten up and made you a cup of coffee myself.”
Claire’s growing annoyance was swallowed up in a feeling of faint amusement. “Perhaps Mrs. Flint wasn’t home,” she said, beckoning the waiter.
“Oh!” Mrs. Richards exclaimed with shocked brevity.
It was not until the arrival of Claire’s order of toast and coffee that Mrs. Richards found her voice again.
“This business of wives staying from home all night gets me,” Mrs. Richards hazarded, boldly. “Why, I never remember the time when my mother remained away overnight … not under _any_ circumstances. My father expected her to be there, and she always _was_.”
Claire distributed bits of butter over the surface of her toast. She felt that in justice to the Flint family it was not right for her to give Mrs. Richards’s dangerous tongue any further scope, however tempting was the prospect of leaving such venomous inquisitiveness ungratified.
“I think you misunderstood me, Mrs. Richards. I didn’t say that Mrs. Flint remained away from home last night. As a matter of fact I didn’t stay at Yolanda, so I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh!” faintly escaped Mrs. Richards for the second time that morning, but Claire was conscious that there was more incredulity than surprise registered in the lady’s tone.
“As a matter of fact,” Claire continued, stung to incautious exasperation, “I spent the night in Sausalito.”
Mrs. Richards met this information with a disarmingly bland smile. “I didn’t know you had friends in Sausalito,” she said, letting a spoonful of coffee trickle back into her cup.
“I haven’t. I spent the night in a lodging-house … on the water-front….”
“My dear Miss Robson, really I…. Why, I hope you don’t think I was inquisitive!”
It was the simplicity of the challenge that made it impossible to be ignored. Claire knew that she was trapped, but she was angry enough to decide on some reservation.
“The storm put the track between Yolanda and Sausalito out of commission,” Claire found herself snapping back too eagerly at her tormentor. “We tried to make the last boat by auto, but we got stalled and missed it. We had to walk a good half of the way.”
“I shouldn’t think that would have done Mr. Flint’s cold any good,” Mrs. Richards said, drawlingly.
“Mr. Flint’s cold?… I don’t quite see what that has to do with it.”
“Oh, you said ‘we’ I somehow got the impression….”
“No, Mrs. Richards, you’ve misunderstood me again.” Claire threw a cool, even glance at her antagonist. “I made the trip from Yolanda to Sausalito in Mr. Stillman’s car.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Richards for a third time, and in this instance her voice was warm with gratification.
Claire directed her attention to her plate of buttered toast and her cup of coffee. She was chagrined to think that she had fallen so easily into Mrs. Richards’s very obvious traps. Not that it mattered. She was quite sure that the truth could not harm Stillman, and she was equally sure that her position in life was too obscure to stand out conspicuously against the darts of Mrs. Richards’s vindictive tongue. But she had the pride of her reticences and she did not like to surrender these privileges at the point of insolent curiosity. The two continued to eat in silence.
It was Mrs. Richards who finished first, and she dipped her fingers hurriedly into the battered metal finger-bowl which the Japanese bus-boy thrust before her.
“Do you mind if I go along?” she inquired of Claire, with an air of polite triumph. “I think I’ll go forward where I can get a quick start … before the crowd gets too thick. I’ve got a million errands to do before nine o’clock. And I _do_ want to run into the office before Gertie settles down to work. I haven’t seen her for a week and I’ve got _more_ things to tell her!”
CHAPTER VIII
“Why, Miss Claire, how could you! Where have you been? And your mother in such a bad way!” Mrs. Finnegan broke into sudden tears.
Claire, fumbling in her bag for the front-door key, looked up. Mrs. Finnegan had swung open the door to the Robson flat and she stood like a vision of disaster upon the threshold.
“What has happened?” Claire’s voice rose with a note of swift apprehension.
“Your mother … she’s paralyzed! She was taken last night. The doctor says it would have happened, anyway. But I say it was worry, that’s what it was. With you away all night and never a word!”
Claire climbed the stairs in silence, aware that Mrs. Finnegan was following at a discreet distance. Already the house seemed permeated with an atmosphere of tragedy and gloom in spite of the morning light pouring in unscreened at every window. Mrs. Robson’s room was the only exception to this unusual excess of cold radiance–unusual, because it was one of Mrs. Robson’s prides to keep her window-shades lowered to a uniform and genteel distance.
Until Claire came face to face with her mother she almost had fancied that her neighbor was indulging in a crude and terrible joke, but one look sufficed. Mrs. Robson lay staring vacantly at the ceiling; she could not move, she could not speak, and her spirit showed through the veiled light in her eyes like a mysterious spot of sunshine in a shaded well. Above a swooning sense of calamity Claire felt the strength of a tender pretense struggling to communicate its vague hope to the stricken form. She raised the window-shade slightly and sat down upon the bed.
“Why, mother, what’s all this?” she began, in a tone of gentle banter, as she stroked the helpless hands. “Were you worried? I’m so sorry! I asked Miss Munch to let you know. Didn’t she?… I went over to Mr. Flint’s to take dictation. The storm washed out the track. I tried to make the boat in Mr. Stillman’s car, but we broke down and missed it…. I had to stay all night in Sausalito.”
Mrs. Robson, stirring faintly, attempted to speak. Claire turned helplessly to Mrs. Finnegan. “I can’t make out what she is trying to say.”
Mrs. Finnegan bent an attentive ear. “It’s about Stillman,” she explained. “Your mother don’t understand why….”
The speaker stopped with significant discretion. It was plain to Claire that _nobody_ understood, and she felt a dreary futility as she answered both her mother and Mrs. Finnegan with:
“It’s a long story. Some other time, when … when you’re feeling better.”
A look of gray disappointment crossed Mrs. Robson’s face. Mrs. Finnegan’s upper lip seemed shaped suddenly with a suspicion that died almost as quickly as it began. There was a ring at the bell. “That’s the doctor,” said Mrs. Finnegan, and she left to open the door.
The doctor chilled Claire with his steely nonchalance as she stood apart while he went through the usual forms of a professional visit that was obviously futile. She followed him to the front door. He answered her eager inquiries with the cold triumph of authority.
“How long will she last?… Well, Miss Robson, that is hard to say. She might go off to-night. Then, again, she might live twenty years. She’ll scarcely get any better, though. No, a nurse isn’t essential, unless you can afford one. But you ought to have another woman about. If you have any relatives you’d better send for them and let them help out.”
Claire did not find the doctor’s announcement that her mother might die at once nearly so brutal as his assurance that she had an equal chance for existing twenty years. _Twenty years!_ Claire closed the door and sank upon the steps overwhelmed.
But there was scant leisure on this first dreadful day of Mrs. Robson’s illness for theatrical exuberances. Claire, unaccustomed to the routine of household duties, took a thousand unnecessary steps. She tried to work calmly, to bring an acquired philosophy to her tasks, but she went through her paces with a feverish, though stolid, anxiety. The long night which followed was inconceivably a thing of horror. Her wakeful moments were dry-eyed with despair, and when she slept it was only to come back to a shivering consciousness.
Mrs. Finnegan found her next morning fresh from an attempt to rouse her mother into accepting a few swallows of milk, which had ended in pathetic and miserable failure. She had thrown herself in an abandon of grief across the narrow kitchen table, and the coffee from an overturned cup was trickling in a warm, thick stream to the floor. But the paroxysm did her good. She rose to the kindly caresses of her neighbor like a flower beaten to earth but refreshed by a relentless torrent. After this, custom and habit began to reassert themselves in spite of the crushing weight of circumstance. She ‘phoned to the office. Mr. Flint had returned, they told her. She explained her trouble to the cashier. “I’ll try to be back the first of the week,” she finished, in a burst of illogical hope.
Later in the day Mrs. Robson’s two sisters arrived in answer to Claire’s summons. Claire’s impulse to send for them had been purely instinctive–an atrophied survival of clan-spirit that persisted beyond any real faith in its significance. Perhaps she had a feeling that her mother wished it; certainly she had no illusions as to the manner in which the unwelcome news of Mrs. Robson’s illness would be received by these two self-centered females.
It was Mrs. Thomas Wynne who came in first, bundled mysteriously in her furs and holding a glass of wine jelly as a conventional symbol of the role of Lady Bountiful which she had for the moment assumed. Claire could almost fancy how conspicuously she had contrived to carry this overworked badge of the humanities, and the languid drawl of her voice as she explained to her friends _en route_:
“So sorry I can’t stop and chat. But, as you see, I’m running along to a sick-room…. Oh no, nothing serious, I hope! Just my sister…. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown? Oh, dear no! A younger sister. I don’t think you know her. She’s had a great deal of trouble and hasn’t been about much for a number of years.”
Mrs. Thomas Wynne had the trick of intrenching a stubborn family pride by throwing back her head and daring all comers to uncover any of the Carrol clan’s shortcomings. But her selfishness had at least the virtue of a live-and-let-live attitude that contrasted with the futile aggressiveness of Mrs. Edward Ffinch-Brown. She asked Claire no questions concerning her life or her prospects; she did not even pry very deeply into the chances that her sister had for an ultimate recovery. Her philosophy seemed to be founded on the knowledge that uncovered cesspools were bound to be unpleasant, and, since she had no desire to assist in their purification, she was quite content to keep them properly screened. She came and deposited her wine jelly and patted her sister’s hand and went away again without leaving even a ripple in her wake. As she departed she gave further proof of her insolent insincerity by calling back at Claire:
“Remember, Claire, if there is anything I can do, just let me know.”
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown’s visit was scarcely more comforting, but decidedly more exciting. She had not the suavity of her indifferences. Mrs. Robson’s untimely tilt with fate irritated her, and she took no pains to conceal this fact.
“I suppose your mother is just as she’s always been–a creature of nerves,” she said, as she dropped into a seat for a preliminary session with Claire before venturing upon the unwelcome sight of her stricken sister. “I don’t know why it is, but she seems to be one of those people who always has had something the matter with her. Poor Emily! Well, I suppose we are all made differently.”
When she entered the sick-room she found fault with the arrangement of the bed, the manner in which the covers slipped off, the uncovered glass of medicine on the bureau.
“You should braid your mother’s hair, too. And why don’t you pull the window down from the top?”
Claire stood in sullen silence while her aunt vented a personal annoyance on the nearest objects. But when Mrs. Ffinch-Brown’s ill-natured ministrations brought a dumb but protesting misery to the sufferer’s face, Claire found the courage to say, as gently as she could:
“Why bother, Aunt Julia? Mother is really too sick now to care much about appearances?”
This was just what Claire’s aunt had hoped for. It gave her a chance for escape without any strain upon her conscience. She did not remain long after what she was pleased to consider a rebuff.
“Well, Claire, I see I can’t be of much help,” she announced as she powdered her nose before the shabby hat-rack mirror and drew on her gloves…. After she was gone Claire found a five-dollar bill on the living-room table. She opened the gilt-edged copy of Tennyson that, together with a calf edition of Ouida’s _Moths_, had stood for years as guard over the literary pretensions of the household, and thrust the money midway between its covers. Doubtless a time was coming when she would find it necessary to use this money, but the present moment was too charged with the giver’s resentful benevolence to make such a compromise possible.
For three consecutive days Mrs. Ffinch-Brown swooped down upon the Robson household and gave vent to her pique. She had been divorced so long from these melancholy relations of hers that she had really forgotten their existence, and she displayed all the rancor of a woman who discovers suddenly a moth hole in the long undisturbed folds of a treasured cashmere shawl. Her precisely timed visits had not the slightest suspicion of attentiveness back of them, and Claire guessed almost at once that they were more in the nature of assaults carried on in the hope that she would meet enough opposition to insure an honorable retreat. Unlike Mrs. Thomas Wynne, Aunt Julia inquired minutely into family matters, insisted on knowing Claire’s plans, and was aggressively free with advice.
“You ought to be making plans, Claire,” she said, at the conclusion of her second visit. “You can’t go on like this. I’d like to be able to do more, but of course I can’t spare much time. And next week you’ll have to be getting into harness again. You’d better think it over.”
And on the next day, finding that Claire obviously had _not_ thought it over, she threw out a hint that was little save a thinly veiled threat. She came in with a more genial manner than she was accustomed to waste upon the desert air of penury, and Claire, well schooled in reading the significance of proverbial calms, had a misgiving.
“I’ve been talking to Miss Morton … about your mother,” Mrs. Ffinch-Brown began, without bothering to lead up to the subject. “You know Alice Morton…. Well, your mother does, anyway. I bumped into her yesterday, quite by accident … at a Red Cross meeting. It seems she’s one of the directors of The King’s Daughters’ Home for Incurables!” Claire was sitting opposite her aunt, nervously fingering a paper-cutter. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown eyed her niece sharply, and with an obvious determination to drive her thrusts home before her victim recovered from the first vicious stabs she continued: “It seems they haven’t a great deal of room out there, but she thinks she could arrange things. They’ll raise the price to two thousand dollars after the fifteenth of the month, so I thought that–“
“Oh, not quite yet, Aunt Julia!… Mother has a chance. Surely….”
“Now, Claire, don’t get hysterical. You’re a business woman and _you_ ought to be practical if any of us are. The price to-day is one thousand dollars. Think of it! Care for life in a ward with only _three_ others! Now I can’t ask your uncle for any more than is necessary in a case like this. If we make up our mind promptly we can save just one thousand dollars.”
For the moment Claire felt the harried desperation of a cornered animal. She had never seen anything more disagreeable than her aunt’s sidelong glance. She felt herself rise from her seat with cold dignity.
“I’m afraid, Aunt Julia, I can’t make up my mind as quickly as you wish. It isn’t so simple as it seems. I’m not above a plan like this if I’m convinced it’s necessary. But somehow…. Oh, I know what you’re thinking–you’re thinking that beggars shouldn’t be choosers. Well, I’m not quite a beggar yet. But when I am, I won’t choose…. I’ll promise you that.”
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rose also. She was in a position to triumph in any case, and she was washing her hands of the situation with eager satisfaction. “Oh, indeed! I’m glad you can say that _now_. But you weren’t always so independent. I suppose it never occurs to you to thank me for what I did when you were younger.”
Claire felt quite calm. The events of the past twenty-four hours had wrung her emotions dry. “Yes, Aunt Julia,” she said, with an air of cool defiance, “it occurred to me many times…. Perhaps if I’d had any choice….”
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown grew pale. “It’s plain that I’m wasting my time here!” she sneered.
Claire went with her aunt to the door….
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown did not cross the threshold of the Robson home again, and when on the following day Claire saw the figure of Mrs. Thomas Wynne outlined against the lace-screened front door she let the bell ring unanswered.
* * * * *
The dismissal of the last of the Carrol clan from any participation in the Robson destinies gave Claire a feeling at once independent and solitary. There had been a vague hope that this crisis might germinate some stray seeds of kinship, shriveled by the drought of uneventful years. But the poisonous nettles of memory were the only harvest that had sprung from the presence of Mrs. Robson’s sisters, and Claire was glad to uproot the arid product of their shallowness.
The week came to a close with a rush of visitors. Suddenly it seemed as if everybody knew of Mrs. Robson’s illness. Fellow church members, old school friends, casual acquaintances began to ring the front-door bell insistently. Knowing her mother’s instinctive craving for recognition, it struck Claire that it was the height of irony to see this belated crowd come swarming in on the heels of calamity at the moment when Mrs. Robson was unable to so much as see them. Mrs. Robson would have so liked to sit in even a threadbare pomp and receive the homage of her visitors, but fate had been scurvy enough to withhold this scant triumph.
Nellie Whitehead breezed in on Saturday afternoon just as Mrs. Finnegan’s cuckoo clock cooed the stroke of three; immediately the air began to move out of adversity’s tragic current. It was impossible to be wholly without hope under the impetus of Nellie Whitehead’s flaming good humor.
“I’m all out of breath,” she began, as she flopped into the first chair that came handy. “I keep forgetting I ain’t sweet sixteen any more and never been kissed. I hate to walk slow, though. Don’t you? Say, but you _are_ up against it, ain’t you! I saw that Munch dame on the street and she nearly broke her old neck trying to catch up with me. I wondered what was the matter, because she ain’t usually so keen about flagging _me_. But, _you_ know, she never misses a trick at spilling out the calamity stuff, especially if it isn’t on her…. ‘Oh, Miss Whitehead,’ she called out before I had a chance to beat it, ‘have you heard about Miss Robson’s mother?’ …When she got through I fixed her with that trusty old eye of mine and I said, ‘I suppose you see her quite often.’ And what do you think the old stiff said? ‘Oh, I’d like to, Miss Whitehead, but I really haven’t had time. You know I’m doing all Mr. Flint’s dictation now.’ And she had the nerve to try and slip me a hint that she was going to keep on doing it. But I just said to myself: ‘You should kid yourself that way, old girl! When Flint picks a bloomer like you to ornament the back office it will be because his eyesight’s failed him.’ …By the way, how do you manage to stand him off–with religious tracts or a hat-pin?”
She hardly waited for Claire’s reply, but plunged at once into another monologue.
“Do you know what I’m up to? I got my eye on the swellest fur-lined coat you ever saw … at Magnin’s. But you can bet I’m going to keep my eye on it until after the holidays. They want a hundred and a quarter for it now, but they’ll be glad to take sixty-five when the gay festivities are over, or I miss my guess. I go in every other day to have a look at it, and when the girl’s back is turned I hang it back in the case myself–‘way back where everybody else will overlook it. Oh, I know the game all right. I did the same thing with a three piece suit last summer. But I say, All is fair in war and the high cost of living. Maybe you think I haven’t had a time scraping the wherewithal for that coat together. But I brought the total up to seventy the other day by getting Billy Holmes to slip me a ten in advance for Christmas. I never trust a man to invest in anything for me if I can help it. They usually run to manicure sets in satin-lined cases or cut-glass cologne-bottles. Billy Holmes?… Oh, you know him! He ran the reinsurance desk at the Royal for years. They put him on the road last week. He’s _some_ live wire. And what’s better, he has no incumbrances. I’ll tell you what it is, Robson, I’m getting kind of tired of the goings. I’m just about ready to settle down by the old steam-radiator. And as long as I’ve got eyesight enough to look the field over, I’ve decided on a traveling-man or a sea-captain. They’ll be sticking around home just about often enough to suit me…. Not that I’m a man-hater, but I’ve never had ’em for a steady diet and I’m not going to begin to get the habit this late day.”
Nellie Whitehead stayed about an hour, and, as Claire opened the front door upon her friend’s departure the letter-man thrust an envelope into her hands. She opened it hastily and turned suddenly white.
“Well, Robson, what’s wrong now?” inquired Nellie.
“Flint … he’s let me out … Miss Munch was right!”
CHAPTER IX
On the selfsame Saturday of Claire’s dismissal from the office ranks of the Falcon Insurance Company Ned Stillman was the recipient of an early telephone message from Lily Condor. It appeared that Flora Menzies, the young woman who usually accompanied her in her vocal flights, had been laid low with pneumonia and she wanted Stillman to persuade Claire Robson to succeed to the honorary position.
“She did so famously on that night of our musicale,” Lily Condor had explained, “and Flora won’t be in shape again for a good three months. Of course, there isn’t anything in it but glory. I’m just one of those ‘sweet charity’ artists. But I think she is a dear, and I know that _you_ have influence.”
Stillman pretended to be annoyed at Mrs. Condor’s assumption that his word would carry any weight in the matter, but as a matter of fact he felt pleased in secret masculine fashion. Chancing to pass Flint’s office at the noon hour, he dropped in. It happened that Miss Munch was standing near the counter, and she answered his inquiries with suave eagerness.
“Oh, Miss Robson isn’t with us any more. She hasn’t been here for over a week–not since her mother was taken sick. Oh, I thought you knew. You’re Mr. Stillman, aren’t you? I’ve heard my cousin, Mrs. Richards, speak of you. Miss Robson went over to Mr. Flint’s on that night of the storm and she missed the boat or something–_you_ know! And when she got home next morning she found that her mother had worried herself into a stroke. They say she is quite helpless…. I’m sure I don’t know what she intends doing. We mailed her check yesterday. It’s always hard to land another position when one is dismissed.”
Stillman escaped quickly. Miss Munch’s venom was a thing too crude and unconcealed to face with indifference. Her emphatic “_you_ know” was pregnant with innuendo and malice. Still, it did not occur to Stillman that he had any part in Claire Robson’s misfortune. But he did know from Miss Munch’s tone that the unfortunate situation, growing out of the automobile ride from Yolanda to Sausalito, had received due recognition at the hands of those who made a business of blowing out bubbles of scandal from the suds of chance. It was useless for him to deny that Claire Robson from the first had been of more or less interest. She seemed to rise in such a detached fashion from her environment.
He had to admit, as later he sat in the cloistered silences of his club library and blew contemplative smoke-rings into the air, that a certain idle curiosity had been the mainspring of his concern for her. He had been like a boy who captured a strange butterfly and clapped it under a glass tumbler where he could watch how easily it would adapt itself to its new surroundings. But, having caught the butterfly and held it a brief captive, the dust from its wings still lingered upon the hands that imprisoned it. He had made the mistake of imagining that one is always master of casual incidents. To meet a young woman by the most trivial chance, to extend a brief courtesy to her, these were matters which hold scarcely the germs of a menacing situation, not menacing to him, of course–they never could be menacing to him; he was still thinking of things from the viewpoint of Claire Robson.
To tell the truth, he was annoyed at having been mixed up in Claire’s flight from the Flint household. Had Flint been a complete stranger he would not have minded so much. He was still divided by the appeal to his chivalry and the sense of loyalty that a man feels to the masculine friends of his youth. In her telephone message Claire had put the matter very casually–the track was washed out and she was wondering whether he contemplated returning to town that evening. But he guessed at once what lay back of her matter-of-fact boldness. He had guessed so completely that he had decided not only to return to town, but to start at once.
He wondered now whether he had answered the appeal because a woman was in a desperate situation or because that woman was Claire Robson. All through the dinner hour at the Tom Forsythes he had thought about her, had speculated vaguely what mischance or effrontery had been responsible for her ill-timed visit to Flint’s. He remembered trying to decide whether the young woman was extraordinarily deep or extraordinarily simple and frank. He did not like to concede that he could be influenced by anything so transparently malicious as Mrs. Richards’s statements regarding the absence of Mrs. Flint, but he was bound to admit that they did nothing to render the situation less innocent; what had particularly annoyed him was the fact that he should have given the matter a second thought. To begin with, it was none of his business and he was not a man who presumed to judge or even speculate on other people’s indiscretions. Claire Robson was no sheltered schoolgirl. She was a full-grown woman, in the thick of business life. Such women were not taken unawares. He had just dismissed the whole affair from his mind on this basis when Claire’s telephone message came to him. Even now he marveled at the sense of satisfaction that her appeal had given. But he had found no savor in a situation that compelled him to interfere in Flint’s program. Such a move on his part was contrary to his standards, to his training in comradeship, to all his acquired philosophy. He had the well-bred man’s distaste for getting into a mess. He abhorred scenes and conspicuous complications.
He had come through the incident with steadily waning enthusiasm and a decision to wash his hands in the future of all such unprofitable trifling. But the sudden knowledge that the young woman was in desperate trouble revived his interest. He had no idea how serious Mrs. Robson’s illness was or whether Claire had any hopes for a new position. But Miss Munch’s words had been significant. Claire had been _dismissed_, and Stillman knew enough about present business stagnation to conclude that for the time, at least, Claire Robson faced a bleak outlook. He realized the indelicacy of any definite move on his part, but it occurred to him that it might be well to talk the situation over with some one–preferably a woman. As he tossed his cigar butt aside, Lily Condor appealed to him as just the person for the emergency. Therefore he looked her up without further ado.
He found her at home, curled up among the cushions of a davenport that did service as a bed when the scenes were shifted. She was living in a tiny apartment consisting of one room and a kitchenette that gave Stillman the impression of a juggler’s cabinet. Nothing in this room was ever by any chance what it seemed. Things that looked like doors led nowhere; bits of stationary furniture usually yielded to the slightest pressure and revealed strange secrets. He had seen Mrs. Condor deftly construct a card-table out of an easy-chair, and he had no doubt that the oak table in the center of the room could have been converted into a chiffonier or a chassis-lounge at a given signal.
In repose, it struck Stillman that Mrs. Condor seemed very much like a purring cat. He had never seen her quite so frankly behind the scenes, robbed of both her physical and mental make-up. She was one of those women in middle age who adapt themselves to the tone of their background and while she contrived to strike a fairly vivid note, she took care not to be discordant. She was clever enough to realize that her talents were not sensational and that she could only hope for an indifferent success as a professional. But in the role of a gracious amateur she disarmed criticism and forced her way into circles that might otherwise have been at some pains to exclude her. For, if the truth were known, there had been certain phases of Mrs. Condor’s earlier life which were rather vaguely, and at the same time aptly, covered by Mrs. Finnegan’s term of “gay.” A perfectly discreet woman, for instance, would have made an effort to live down her flaming hair and almost immorally dazzling complexion, but Mrs. Condor had been much more ready to live _up_ to these conspicuous charms. In fact, she had lived up to them pretty furiously, until time began to take a ruthless toll of her contrasting points. From the concert-platform she still seemed to discount, almost to flout, the years, but in secret she yielded unmistakably to their pressure.
It was this yielding, pliant attitude that struck Stillman as he came upon her almost unawares on that early December afternoon, a yielding, pliant attitude which gave a curious sense of tenacity under the surface. And he thought, as he dropped into the chair she indicated, that she was a woman who gained strength in these moments of relaxation.
“Fancy your catching me like this!” she said, “I thought when the bell rang that you were my dressmaker…. If you want a highball you’ll have to wait on yourself. Phil Edington brought an awfully good bottle of Scotch last night. I declare I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have a youngster or two on my staff. Old men are such bores, anyway, and, as a matter of fact, they never waste time on any woman over thirty. Well, I don’t blame them. We’re a sorry, patched-up mess at best…. Tell me, did you get hold of Miss Robson?”
“I dropped in, but she wasn’t at the office,” Stillman replied, tossing his hat on the center-table.
Mrs. Condor withdrew to the relaxation of her innumerable sofa pillows again. “Wasn’t at the office? How thrilling! Is she one of the Sultan’s favorites?… I’ve heard Sawyer Flint was an easy mark if you know how to work him. Miss Robson didn’t strike me that way, though. But I ought to have known that silent women are always cleverer than they appear.”
Stillman caught the barest suggestion of a sneer in Mrs. Condor’s tone–the sneer of a woman relinquishing a stubborn hold upon the gaieties.
“Well, I guess Miss Robson didn’t know how to work him, as a matter of fact,” Stillman said, quietly. “She lost her job to-day. I’m a little bit worried about her…. I came here on purpose to talk the situation over with you.”
His directness brought Lily Condor out of her languidness with a sharp turn. She wriggled up and sat erectly on the edge of the davenport, one slippered foot dangling just above the other. “Why, Ned Stillman, what an old fraud you are! I didn’t fancy you were interested in _anybody_. I didn’t think that you…. Oh, well, throw me a cigarette and let me hear the worst in comfort!”
He opened his cigarette-case and leaned over toward her. She made her choice. He struck a match and she put her hand tightly on his wrist as she bent over the flame and slowly drew in her breath. Even after she had released her grasp his flesh still bore the imprint of the rings on her fingers. For a moment he had an impulse to bow himself out of her presence without further explanation, but already she seemed to have a proprietary interest in him. Her smile was full of friendly malice.
He ended by telling her everything, in spite of the conviction that he had approached the wrong person.
“Of course,” she hazarded, boldly, when he had finished, “you mean to help her out.”
Her presumption annoyed but rather refreshed him. “I’d like to do something, but, hang it all, what can be done?”
“What can be done? If that isn’t like a man! Or I should say, a _gentleman_!… Why don’t you plunge in boldly and damn the consequences?… It’s just your sort that sends women into the arms of men like Flint. You’re so busy keeping an eye on the proprieties that you miss all the danger signals.”
Her tone was extraordinarily familiar, and, to a man who rather prided himself upon his ability to keep people at arm’s-length, it was not precisely agreeable. Yet he knew that it would be folly to give any hint of his irritation.
“Well,” he contrived to laugh back at her, “so far as I can see, Miss Robson’s problems are quite too simple. After all, it’s largely a question of money…. I can’t go and throw gold in her lap as if she were some beggar on a street corner.”
“You mean, I suppose, that you are afraid to risk the outraged dignity of this ward of yours. I think that’s a lovely name for her. Don’t you?… You’re acquiring such a benevolent old attitude. The only thing to be done, I fancy, is to adopt some transparent ruse–some sort of Daddy-Long-Leggish deception.” She closed her eyes thoughtfully–“_Hiring_ her as my accompanist, for instance.” She rose to dispense Scotch and soda. Stillman sat in thoughtful silence, while Mrs. Condor talked to very trivial purpose. She seemed suddenly to have grown tired of the subject of Claire Robson. The arrival of the expected dressmaker broke in upon the rather one-sided tete-a-tete.
“You’ll have to go,” Lily Condor announced with an intimate air of dismissal to Stillman. “It would never do to let a mere man in on the secrets of the sewing-room.”
At the door he hesitated awkwardly over his good-by. “I was wondering,” he said, “whether you were serious about … about hiring Miss Robson as your accompanist. You know I think the plan has possibilities.”
She threw back her head and smiled with hard satisfaction. “I’ve been trying to figure if you had killed your imagination. Think it over.”
She gave him the tips of her fingers. He returned their languid pressure and departed.
As he drifted down the hall he heard her calling, half gaily, half derisively, after him:
“Don’t decide on anything rash now…. Sleep over it!…”
* * * * *
He thought it over for three days and when he called on Lily Condor again he found her divorced from her languishing mood. She was dressed for dinner down-town, and he had to confess she had made the most of what remained of her flaming hair and dazzling complexion.
He felt that she guessed the reason for his visit, although she took care to let him force the issue.
“About Miss Robson,” he said, finally, “I’ve concluded to take you at your word.”
Lily Condor smoothed out her gloves and laid them aside. “Take me at _my_ word? You’re welcome to the suggestion, if that is what you mean. As a matter of fact I wasn’t serious.”
He was annoyed to feel that he was flushing. He could not fathom her, but he had a conviction that she _had_ been serious and that this attitude was a mere pose. “Nevertheless, I think it can be managed,” he insisted. “And I want you to help me.”
She listened to his plan. “What you will call a Daddy-Long-Leggish pretense,” he explained to her with an attempt at facetiousness. “You to do the hiring and … and yours truly to provide the wherewithal. Until things look up a bit. Of course then … why, naturally, when things look up a bit for her….”
But Lily remained lukewarm. She wasn’t quite sure that it would be … oh, well, he knew what she meant! It seemed too absurd to think that he had given an ear to anything so extravagant. She would like to be of service to Miss Robson, of course, but, after all, she felt that it was taking an unfair advantage of the girl.
“If she’s everything you say she is, she’d resent it all tremendously,” she put forth as a final objection.
“But she isn’t to know! That’s the point of the whole thing,” he explained, with absurd simplicity.
“Oh, my dear man, she isn’t to know, but she _will_, ultimately. You don’t suppose the secret of a woman’s meal-ticket is hidden very long, do you? And, besides, you couldn’t offer her enough to live on. That would be absurd on the very face of it.”
“Oh, well, I could offer her enough to help out a bit, anyway, and half a loaf you know….”
He broke off, amazed at the determination her opposition had crystallized. She looked at him sharply and rose.
“I must be running along,” she commented as she drew on her gloves. “I tell you, I’ll go call on Miss Robson–some day this week. A woman can always get a better side-light on a situation like this. There are so many angles to be considered. She must have relatives. You wouldn’t want to make a false move, would you, now?”
He was too grateful to be suspicious at this sudden compromise with her convictions.
“You’re tremendously good,” he stammered. “It _will_ be a favor. And any time that I can….”
“You can be of service to me right now,” she interrupted, gaily. “Order me a taxi … that’s a good boy! I always do so like to pull up at a place in style.”
Stillman paid Lily Condor a third visit that week–this time in answer to the lady’s telephone message. She had been to see Claire Robson and her report was anything but rosy.
“Her mother’s perfectly helpless and will be for the rest of her life,” Lily volunteered almost cheerfully. “And, frankly, I don’t see what is going to become of them. It seems that Mrs. Robson is a sister of Mrs. Tom Wynne and that dreadful Ffinch-Brown woman. They both have about as much heart as a cast-iron stove. Miss Robson didn’t say so in words, but I gathered that she had called both of them off the relief job. I almost cheered when I realized that fact. I threw out a hint about there being a possibility of my needing an accompanist. I said Miss Menzies was ill and perhaps … and I intimated that there was something more than glory in it.”
“And what did Miss Robson say to that?”
“Oh, she was more self-contained than one would imagine under the circumstances. She said she would like to think it over. She put it that way on the score of leaving her mother alone nights. But, believe me, that young lady is more calculating than she seems. Of course I didn’t mention terms or anything like that. I left a good loophole in case you had changed your mind.”
For the moment Stillman was almost persuaded to tell Lily Condor that he _had_ changed his mind. Not that he had lost interest in Claire, but already he had another plan and there was something disagreeably presumptuous in Mrs. Condor’s tone. He never remembered having taken anybody into his confidence regarding a personal matter. The trouble was that he had begun the whole affair under the misapprehension that it was a most _impersonal_ thing. He still tried to look at it from that angle, but Lily Condor’s manner seemed bent on forcing home the rather disturbing conviction that he had a vital interest in the issue. She had cut in upon his reserve and he would never quite be able to recover the lost ground. He felt that she sensed his revulsion, for almost at once she adroitly changed the subject and it did not come to life again during the remainder of his call.
But when he was leaving she thrust an idle finger into the lapel of his coat and said:
“I think it’s awfully good of you, Ned, to be human enough to want to do something for others. I watched you as a young man, and when you married….” His startled look must have halted her, for she released her hold upon him and finished with a shrug.
He said good-by hastily and escaped. But he wondered, as he found his way out into the street, how long it would be before Mrs. Condor would acquire sufficient boldness to discuss with him what and whom she chose.
CHAPTER X
Christmas Day came and went with a host of bitter-sweet memories for Claire Robson. Not that she could look back on any holiday season with unalloyed happiness, but time had drawn the sting from the misfortune of the old days. Through the mist of the years outlines softened, and she was more prone to measure the results by the slight harvest that their efforts had brought. For instance, they had never been too poor to deny themselves the luxury of a tree. And a tree to Mrs. Robson meant none of the scant, indifferent affairs that most of the neighbors found acceptable strung with a few strands of dingy popcorn and pasteboard ornaments. No, the Robson tree was always an opulent work of art, freighted with bursting cornucopias and heavy glass balls and yards of quivering tinsel. The money for all this dazzling beauty usually came a fortnight or so before the eventful day in the shape of a ten-dollar bill tucked away in the folds of Gertrude Sinclair’s annual letter to Mrs. Robson. As Claire had grown older she had grown also impatient of the memory of her mother squandering what should have gone for thick shoes and warm plaid dresses upon the ephemeral joys of a Christmas tree. But now she suddenly understood, and she felt glad for a mother courageous enough to lay hold upon the beautiful symbols of life at the expense of all that was hideously practical. Shoes wore out and plaid dresses finally found their way to the rag-bag, but the glories of the spirit burned forever in the splendor of all this truant magnificence, and the years stretched back in a glittering procession of light-ladened fir-trees.
Then some time between Christmas and New-Year came the Christmas pantomime at the Tivoli, with its bewildering array of scantily clad fairies and dashing Amazons and languishing princes in pale-blue tights; to say nothing of the Queen Charlottes consumed between acts through faintly yellow straws. How Claire would mark off each day on the calendar which brought her nearer to this triumph! And what a hurry and bustle always ensued to get dinner over and be fully dressed and down to the box-office before even the doors were opened, so that they could get first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents. Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant who had worked for her mother! And the wicked old witch swept from the wings on the traditional broomstick! From that moment until the final transformation scene, when scintillating sea-shells yielded up one by one their dazzling burdens of female loveliness and a rather Hebraic Cupid descended from an invisible wire to wish everybody a happy New-Year in words appropriately rhymed, there was no halt to the wonders disclosed. With what sharp and exquisite reluctance did Claire remain glued to her seat, refusing to believe that it was all over! Even at this late date Claire had only to close her eyes to revive the delights of these rather covert excursions into the realm of fancy–covert, because a Tivoli pantomime had not precisely the sanction of such a respectable organization as the Second Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Robson, while not definitely encouraging Claire to wilful dishonesty, always managed to warn her daughter by saying:
“I wouldn’t tell any one about going to the Tivoli, Claire, if I were you … unless, of course, they should ask about it.”
Claire, in mortal terror lest any indiscretion on her part would put a stop to this annual lapse into such delightful immoralities, held her peace in spite of her desire to spread abroad the beauties which she had beheld. She had a feeling that all the participants in the pantomime must of necessity be rather wicked and abandoned creatures, and half the pleasure she had felt in viewing them arose from a secret admiration at the courage which permitted human beings to be so perfectly and desperately sinful. Although she was almost persuaded that perhaps it did not take quite such bravado to be wicked in blue-spangled gauze and satin slippers as it did to lapse from the straight and narrow path in a gingham dress and resoled boots.
The only thrill that the present Christmas Day produced came in the shape of a pot of flaming poinsettias bearing the card of Ned Stillman. These were the first flowers that Claire ever remembered having received. It pleased her also to realize that Stillman had been delicate to the point of this thoroughly unpractical gift, especially as he had every reason to assume that something more substantial would have been acceptable. She was confident that by this time he had heard through Mrs. Condor of her mother’s illness and her loss of position. Claire was still puzzled at Mrs. Condor’s visit. For all that lady’s skill at subterfuge, there were implied evasions in her manner which Claire sensed instinctively. And then Claire was not yet inured to the novelty of being in demand. To have been forced by circumstance upon Mrs. Condor as an accompanist was one thing; to be desired by her in a moment of cold calculation was quite another; and there had been more uncertainty than caution in Claire’s plea for time in which to consider the offer. But as the days flew by it became more and more apparent to Claire that she was in no position to indulge in idle speculation. She had long since given up the hope of fulfilling the demands of a regular office position, even if one had been open to her. Mrs. Finnegan’s enthusiasm to be neighborly and helpful was more a matter of theory than practice, and it did not take Claire many days to decide that she had no right to impose upon a good nature which was made up largely of ignorance of a sick-room’s demands. Claire’s final check from Flint was dwindling with alarming rapidity; indeed, she was facing the first of the year with the realization that there would be barely enough to pay the next month’s rent, let alone to settle the current bills. She had no idea what Mrs. Condor intended paying, but she fancied that it must be little enough. Surely Mrs. Condor did not receive any great sum for her singing and there must be any number of gratuitous performances. She decided quite suddenly, the day after Christmas, to take Mrs. Condor at her word, and she was a bit disturbed at both the lady’s reply and the manner of it.
“Oh,” Mrs. Condor had drawled rather disagreeably, “I thought you’d given up the idea. I spoke to somebody else only this morning. But, of course, I’m not certain about how it will turn out. I’ll keep you in mind and if the other falls through…. By the way, how is your mother? I keep asking Ned Stillman every day what the news is, but he never knows anything. All men are alike … unless they’ve got some special interest. Sometimes I marvel that he looks me up so regularly, but then I’ve known him ever since…. But there, I’ll be telling more than I should! Do come and see me. I’m always in in the morning…. Yes, I can imagine you do have a lot to do. I’m so sorry you didn’t call up sooner. But one never can tell. Good-by…. I hope you’ll have a happy New Year.”
Claire hung up the receiver. Well, she had lost an opportunity to turn an easy dollar or two and she had no one to thank but herself. Why had she delayed in accepting Mrs. Condor’s offer?
Fortunately the unexpected arrival of Nellie Whitehead cut short any further repinings. Claire was frankly glad to see her and at once she thought, “She has come to show me her new coat.”
But Nellie Whitehead was incased in a wrap that showed every evidence of a good six months’ wear.
“My new coat?” the lady echoed, in answer to Claire’s question. “There ain’t no such animal. Somebody else copped it. I didn’t shove it back far enough the last time I took a look at it, I guess. Oh, well, I should worry! I can get along very well without it….”
When Nellie Whitehead rose to leave, dusk had fallen and Claire was fumbling for matches to light the hall gas, when she felt her friend’s hand close over hers. There followed the cold pressure of several coins against Claire’s palm and the voice of her visitor sounding a bit tremulous in the dusk.
“You’ll need some extra money, Robson, or I miss my guess.”
Claire fell back with a gesture of protest. “Why, Nellie Whitehead, how could you? It’s your coat money, too! Well, _I_ never!”
And with that they both burst into tears…. When Claire recovered herself she found that Nellie Whitehead had escaped. She lit the gas and opened her palm. Four twenty-dollar gold pieces glistened in the light.
* * * * *
Next morning Claire received a telephone message from Mrs. Condor. The position of accompanist was hers at forty dollars a month if she desired it.
“It won’t be hard,” Mrs. Condor had finished, reassuringly. “Some weeks I’ve something on nearly every night. And then again there won’t be anything doing for days…. How can I afford to pay so much? Well, my dear, that is a secret. But don’t worry, you’ll earn it….”
And toward the close of the week there came another surprise for Claire in the shape of a letter from Stillman, which ran:
MY DEAR MISS ROBSON.–I am going to take a little flier at the bean market.
That was my father’s business and I know a few things about it–at least to the extent of recognizing the commodity when the sack is opened. Do you fancy you could arrange to give me a few hours a week at the typewriter? If so, we can get together and arrange terms.
Cordially,
EDWARD STILLMAN.
“At last,” flashed through Claire’s mind, “he’s going in for something worth while.”
This time she decided promptly. Over the telephone she made an appointment with Stillman, in his apartments, for beginning work on the second Wednesday in January.
CHAPTER XI
Shortly after the first of the year Claire received her initial summons from Lily Condor–they were to appear at a concert in the Colonial Ballroom of the St. Francis for the Belgian relief. Mrs. Condor had intimated that the affair was to be smart, and so it proved. It was set at a very late and very fashionable hour, and all through the program groups of torpid, though rather audible, diners kept drifting in. Claire was not slow to discover that Lily Condor was first on the bill, and she remembered reading somewhere in a newspaper that among professionals the first and last place were always loathsome positions. Judging from the noise and confusion that accompanied their efforts, Claire could well understand why this was so, and she expected to find Lily Condor resentful. But to her surprise Mrs. Condor merely shrugged her shoulders and said:
“What difference does it make? They don’t come to listen, anyway. Besides, I always open the bill. I like to get it over quickly.”
But Claire had reason to suspect, as she followed the remainder of a very excellent program, that the choice of position did not rest with Mrs. Condor. Claire began to wonder how much money Mrs. Condor received for an effort like this. And she became more puzzled as she gathered from the conversation of the other artists about her that the talent had been furnished gratuitously.
“I understand,” she heard a woman in front of her whisper to her companion, “that Devincenzi, the ‘cellist, is the only one in the crowd who is getting a red cent. But he has a rule, you know–or is it a contract? I’m sure I don’t know. At any rate, they say that the Ffinch-Browns donated his fee…. The Ffinch-Browns? Don’t you know them?… See, there they are … over there by the Tom Forsythes. She has on turquoise pendant earrings…. Oh, they’re ever so charitable! But they do say that she is something of a….”
Claire lost the remainder of this stage whisper in a rather tremulous anxiety to catch a glimpse of her aunt before she moved. Claire had to acknowledge that at a distance her aunt gave a wonderful illusion of arrested youth as she stood with one hand grasping the collar of her gorgeous mandarin coat. But Claire was more interested in the turquoise pendants than in her aunt. She had never seen the jewels before, but she had heard about them almost from the time she was able to lisp.
“They’re mine,” Mrs. Robson had repeated to Claire again and again. “My father bought them for me when I was sixteen years old. I remember the day distinctly, and how my mother said: ‘Don’t you think, John, that Emily is a little young for anything like this? I’ll keep them for her until she is twenty.’ I nearly cried myself sick, but of course mother was right, _then_…. But like everything else, I never got my hands on them again. And what is more, Julia Carrol Ffinch-Brown knows that they are mine as well as anybody, because she stood right alongside of me when I handed them over to mother. Not that I care…. It’s the principle of the thing!”
Claire felt disappointed in the pendants. They seemed so insignificant–to fall very far short of her mother’s passionate description of them, and she began to wonder which was the more pathetic, Mrs. Robson’s exaggerated notion of their worth or the pettiness that gave Aunt Julia the tenacity to hold fast to such trivial baubles.
Ned Stillman was in the audience, also. Claire saw him sitting off at the side. Indeed, she spotted him on the very moment of her entrance upon the stage. She had been nervous until his friendly smile warmed her into easy confidence; and though, while she played, her back had been toward him, she felt the glow of his sympathy. As Lily Condor and she swept back upon the stage for their rather perfunctory applause, and still more perfunctory bouquets provided by the committee, Claire could see him gently tapping his hands in her direction, and she was surprised when the usher handed her a bouquet of dazzling orchids.
“They must be for you,” Claire said, innocently enough, to Mrs. Condor. “I don’t find any name on them.”
“That shows that you’ve got a discreet admirer, at any rate,” Lily Condor returned with that bantering sneer which Claire was just beginning to notice. And the thought struck her at once that Stillman had sent the flowers. She was pleased, but also a little annoyed to think he had so deliberately ignored Mrs. Condor.
The Flints were there, too; Flint looked uncomfortable and warm in his scant full-dress suit and his wife frankly ridiculous in a low-cut gown that exhibited every angle of a hopelessly scrawny neck. Claire did not see them until she was leaving the stage, and she smiled as she saw Flint lean over and pick up the opera-glasses from his wife’s lap. But this was not all. In a far corner sat Miss Munch and her cousin, Mrs. Richards, their ferret eyes darting busily about and their tongues clicking even more rapidly. Doubtless Flint had invested in a number of tickets at the office for business reasons and passed them around for any of the office force who felt a desire to see society at close range.
Claire had not meant to stay beyond one or two numbers following her own appearance, but she kept yielding to Mrs. Condor’s insistent suggestions that she “stay for just one more,” until she discovered, to her dismay, that it was past midnight. The last artists were taking their places upon the stage. Claire resigned herself to the inevitable and sat out the remainder of the performance. She was making a quick exit into the dressing-room when she came face to face with her aunt. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown betrayed her confusion by the merest lift of the eyebrows, and she stepped back as if to get a clearer view of her niece, as she said with an air of polite surprise:
“You–_here_?”
Claire carried her head confidently. “I was on the program,” she returned, consciously eying the turquoise pendants.
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rested a closed fan against her left ear as if to screen at least one of the earrings from Claire’s frank stare. “Oh, how interesting! I must have missed you–I came in late. It’s rather odd. I thought I knew everybody on the program…. I helped arrange it.”
“Well,” Claire smiled, “I wasn’t what you would call one of the head-liners. I played Mrs. Condor’s accompaniments.”
“That accounts for it … my not knowing, I mean. I dare say your mother is better, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Claire met her aunt’s thrust calmly. “No, mother is worse, if anything. As a matter of fact, I’m here….”
She broke off abruptly, realizing suddenly that she had left her orchids behind. She turned to discover Stillman making his leisurely way toward her. He had the orchids in his hand.
“My dear Miss Robson,” he said, gently, “Mrs. Condor came very near appropriating your flowers.”
She could feel the color rising to her forehead. “I see you came to my rescue again,” she said, simply, taking them from him. “I think you know Mr. Stillman, Aunt Julia.”
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown forced a too-sweet smile as she gave Stillman a nod of recognition. “Fancy any girl forgetting so much gorgeousness!” she exclaimed with an attempt at lightness, but Claire caught the covert rancor in her voice, and as her aunt made a movement of escape she put out a restraining hand and said:
“I wanted you to know, Aunt Julia, that I’m here merely as a matter of business. Mrs. Condor has hired me to play her accompaniments.”
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown shook off Claire impatiently. “_Hired_ you!” she sneered. “How extraordinary!”
And with that she swept past, giving Stillman a glance of farewell.
Claire turned to Stillman. “What must you think of me? Leaving my flowers behind. Confess–it was you who sent them…. I was in such a rush to get away, though. I shouldn’t have stayed so long. My mother is alone…. Of course there are neighbors just below and they will look in on her, but just the same….”
His smile reassured her. “Are you forgetting about to-morrow?” he asked. “Remember we are to begin business promptly at two o’clock. I hired a typewriting-machine yesterday. I’m really thrilled at the idea of–of going into business.”
She looked at him steadily as she gave him her hand: “My dear Mr. Stillman,” she said, quite frankly, “you are very kind.”
He answered by pressing her hand warmly and she covered her face with the purple orchids. They were interrupted by Lily Condor sweeping rather arrogantly toward them.
“Haven’t you gone yet?” she asked Claire. “I thought you were in a hurry! I hope you’ve persuaded Ned to get us a taxi. I hate street-cars at this hour.” And in answer to Claire’s embarrassed protest that she had never given such a thing a thought, Mrs. Condor finished: “Well, I’ve given it a thought, and don’t you forget it. Come, Ned, is it a go?”
Claire fancied that a flicker of annoyance passed over Stillman’s face as he answered, with a dry laugh:
“You might at least have given me time to prove my gallantry.”
“I’m not taking any chances,” was the prompt reply.
Claire turned away. What had contrived to give Mrs. Condor this disagreeable air of assurance toward Ned Stillman, she found herself wondering. It had not been apparent at the Condor-Stillman musicale….
She arrived home dismayed to find the front room illuminated, but the rattle of the departing taxi brought Mrs. Finnegan to the top of the stairs with a laughing apology.
“I just looked in to see how your mother was, Miss Claire, and I found a book on the front-room table”–Mrs. Finnegan held up Ouida’s _Moths_–“and I got so interested in it that I just naturally forgot to go home. Finnegan’s out, anyway. I was telling him about your good fortune. And all he said was: ‘Well, it beats me how an old crow like Mrs. Condor gets paid for singing. I remember five years ago, when she wasn’t so uppish, we had her for a benefit performance of the Native Sons, and she didn’t get paid then. Her singing may be over my head. Anyway, it didn’t get to my ears.’ But Finnegan is always like that. He just likes to contradict. I got back at him. I said, ‘Well, if she can afford to pay Miss Claire forty a month for playing the piano, she must get a good piece of money every time she opens her mouth.’ …Mercy, look at the orchids! Well, you must have had a swell time. I’ll bet you wouldn’t like to tell who sent them…. There wasn’t any card? That’s not saying you don’t know, Miss Claire…. I hope you won’t think I’m a meddler, but I’m an older woman and…. Well, just you keep a sharp eye on the feller that sends you orchids, Miss Claire.”
She went down-stairs without further ado. Claire put the orchids in water and set them on a sill near an open window. She did not feel in the least resentful of Mrs. Finnegan’s warnings. She was too confident to be anything but faintly amused at her neighbor’s middle-class anxiety. But Finnegan’s skepticism concerning Mrs. Condor annoyed her and she remembered the disagreeable words of her aunt:
“_Hired_ you? How extraordinary!”
* * * * *
“Two o’clock _sharp_!” The memory of Stillman’s air of delicate banter as he emphasized the hour for beginning his business venture struck Claire ironically the more she pondered his words. She had a feeling that there was something farcical in the prospect, and yet there seemed nothing to do but to go through with the preliminaries. She presented herself, therefore, at the appointed time at the Stanford Court apartments.
She found Stillman quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved to be nothing to do.
“I’m all up in the air over this bean business,” Stillman confessed, nonchalantly. “The government, you know … they’re taking over all that sort of thing … regulating food and prices. Of course, in that case….”
Claire felt an enormous and illogical relief. “Then you really won’t need me,” she ventured.
“Oh, quite the contrary…. I have a certain amount of business, of a sort. And I’m tired of dropping checks along the trail of public stenographers…. Suppose we talk terms. We haven’t fixed on any salary, yet.”
Claire felt a rising impatience. His subterfuge seemed too childish and obvious. “That will depend on how much of my time you expect, Mr. Stillman.”
“Well, three times a week, anyway … to start with. Say Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from two to five…. I was thinking that something in the neighborhood of fifteen dollars a week would be fair.”
He turned a very frank gaze in her direction and she quizzically returned his glance.
“That’s rather ridiculous, don’t you think?” she said, trying to disguise her furtive annoyance. “You can hire a substitute through any typewriting agency on the basis of three dollars a day.”
“Yes, and I can buy two cigars for a nickel, but I shouldn’t want to smoke them.”
She clicked the keys of her machine idly. “That is hardly a fair comparison. You can get any number of competent girls for three dollars.”
He rested his chin on his upturned palm. “But, my dear Miss Robson, I happen to want _you_.”
She thought of any number of cheap, obvious retorts that might have been flung back at his straightforward admission, but instead she said, with equal frankness:
“That’s just what I don’t understand.”
He threw her a puzzled look and the usual placid light in his eyes quickened to resentful impatience.
“Is that a necessary part of the contract, Miss Robson?”
She caught her breath. His tone of annoyance was sharp and unexpected. There was a suggestion of Flint’s masculine arrogance in his voice. She felt how absurd was her cross-examination of him, of how absurd, under the circumstances, would have been her cross-examination of anybody ready and willing to give her work to do and an ample wage in the bargain, and yet, for all the force of his reply, she knew it to be a well-bred if not a deliberate evasion.
“You mean it is none of my business, don’t you?” she contrived to laugh back at him.
His reply was a further surprise. “Yes, precisely,” he said, with an ominous thinning of the lips.
She rose instinctively to meet this thrust and she was conscious that even Flint had never managed so to disturb her. She glanced about hastily as if measuring the room in a swift impulse toward escape. Stillman had chosen the dining-room for a temporary office, and upon the polished surface of the antique walnut table the typewriter struck an incongruous note; indeed, it was all incongruous, particularly Stillman and his assumed business airs. Yes, it was absurd for her to either cross-examine or protest, but it was equally absurd for him to pay her such an outlandish sum for nine hours a week.
“He’s doing it for me,” she thought, not without a sense of triumph. Then, turning to him, she said, a bit awkwardly:
“I guess there isn’t any use to dissuade you, Mr. Stillman. If you say fifteen dollars a week, I sha’n’t argue with you.”
He smiled back at her, all his former suavity regained. She slid into her seat again. Her mind was recalling vividly the one other time in her life when she had grappled vigorously with the masculine spirit of domination, and come away victorious. This time she had been defeated and she had impulses toward relief and fear. She looked up suddenly and trapped a solicitous glance from Stillman that rather annoyed her. And it struck her, as she mentally compared Stillman with most of the men of her acquaintance, how far he could have loomed above them if he had had the will for such a performance. As it was he fell somewhat beneath them in a curious, indefinable way. Had he been too finely tempered by circumstances or had the flame of life lacked the proper heat for fusing his virtues effectively? For the moment she found Flint’s forthright insolence more tolerable than Stillman’s sterile deference. Suddenly she began to think of home, not with any sense of security, but as something unpleasant, dark, disquieting….
CHAPTER XII
Toward six o’clock one afternoon in late February Ned Stillman, making his way from the business district at California and Montgomery Streets toward his club, suddenly remembered a forgotten luncheon engagement for that day with Lily Condor.
“Well,” he muttered at once, “I’m in for it now! I guess I might as well swing out and see her and get the thing over with.”
It was curious of late how often he was given to muttering. Previously, petty annoyances had not moved him to these half-audible and solitary comments which he had always found contemptuously amusing in others. He wondered whether this new trick was the result of his business ventures, his sly charities, or his approach toward the suggestive age of forty. Associating the name of Lily Condor with his covert charities, he was almost persuaded that they lay back of this preposterous habit. And the more he thought about it the more he muttered and became convinced that Lily Condor was usually the topic of these vocal self-communings.
Ned Stillman had always prided himself upon his sense of personal freedom concerning the trivial circumstances of life. Of course, like any man of sensibility, he was bound by the chains that deeper impulses forge, but he had never been hampered by any restraints directed at his ordinary uprisings and downsittings. In short, he had answered the beck and nod of no man, much less a woman, and he was not finding Lily Condor’s growing presumptions along this line altogether agreeable.
He would not have minded so much if there was any personal gratification in yielding to the lady’s whip-hand commands. There are certain delights in self-surrender which give a zest to slavery, but there is no joy in being held a hostage. Looking back, Stillman marveled at the indiscretion he had committed when he handed over not only his reserve, but Claire Robson’s reputation into the safekeeping of Lily Condor. Had he ever had the simplicity to imagine that a woman of Mrs. Condor’s stamp would constitute herself a safe-deposit vault for hoarding secrets without exacting a price? Well, perhaps he had expected to pay, but a little less publicly. He had not looked to have the lady in question ring every coin audibly in full view and hearing of the entire market-place, and yet, if his experience had stood him in good stead, he must have known that this was precisely what she would do. Stillman’s hidden gratitude, his private beneficences, did not serve her purpose, but the spectacle of him in the role of her debtor was a sight that went a long way to establishing a social credit impoverished by no end of false ventures.
Her command for him to take her to luncheon–and it had been a command, however suavely she had managed to veil it–bore also the stamp of urgency. Usually she was content to lay all her positive requests to the charge of mere caprice, but on this occasion she took the trouble to intimate that there was a particular reason for wanting to see him. It did not take him long to conclude that this particular reason had to do with Claire Robson. That was why he yielded with a better grace than he had been giving to his troublesome friend’s disagreeable pressure.
Stillman knew that while Lily Condor was not precisely jealous of the younger woman, she was distinctly envious–with the impersonal but acrid envy of middle age for youth. The episode of the orchids still rankled. He had to admit that in this instance his course had been tactless, but he had ignored Mrs. Condor as a challenge to the presumption which he had already begun to sense. She, while seeming definitely to evade the real issue, had answered the challenge and he had paid for his temerity a hundredfold. She had reminded him again and again in deft but none the less positive terms that she was keeping a finger on the mainspring of any advantage that came her way. Sometimes Stillman wondered whether she would really be cattish enough to betray his confidence and bring Claire Robson crashing down under the weight of the questionable position into which his indiscretion had forced her. Would she really have the face to publish abroad the pregnant fact that Ned Stillman was providing what she had been pleased to designate as a meal-ticket for a young woman in difficulty? For himself he cared little, except that he always shrank instinctively from appearing ridiculous.
He had been thinking a great deal of late as to the best course to pursue in ridding himself and Claire of this menacing incubus. He had a feeling that Claire, having exhausted the novelties of her position as accompanist to Lily Condor, was beginning to find the affair irksome.
The business venture had progressed in quite another direction from his original intention. Suddenly, without knowing how it had all come about, he found his plans clearly defined. The government needed him. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that he could be of service at a point so far from the center of war activities. He had been a good deal of an idler, it was true, but the seeds of achievement were merely lying in fallow soil.
At first, he had been stung into action more by Claire’s accusing attitude than anything else. She used to come every other afternoon at the appointed time and almost challenge him by her reproachful silence to do something, if only to provide her with an illusion. It was as if she said:
“See, I have given in to you. I know that you are doing this for me, and I am deeply grateful. But won’t you please make the situation a little less transparent? Won’t you at least justify me in the eyes of those who are watching our little performance?…”
It had all ended by his offering his services to the Food Administration. He knew something of his father’s business. He felt that he had a fair knowledge of beans, and he could learn more. He merely asked a trial, and it surprised him to find what a sense of humility suddenly possessed him. He was really overjoyed when a place was assured him. But he had to admit that his acceptance was not accorded any great enthusiasm. The newspapers mentioned it in a scant paragraph that was not even given a prominent place. He had received greater recognition for a brilliant play upon the golf-links! Well, in such stirring times he was nobody. He did not complain, even to himself, but the knowledge subconsciously rankled.
He hired an office down-town, joined the Commercial Club, religiously attended every meeting that had to do with food conservation, hunted out, absorbed, appropriated all the economic secrets that served his purpose…. Suddenly he found himself engrossed, enthusiastic, _busy_! Finally Claire said to him one day:
“Don’t you think I ought to come to you every afternoon?”
“If you can arrange it,” he almost snapped back at her.
She did arrange it, how he took no pains to inquire, and a little later she said again:
“You ought to have some one here all day. I guess you will have to look for another stenographer.”
He remembered how menacingly he had darted at her. She was dressed for the street, on her way home, and she had halted at the door.
“Do you want to desert the work that you’ve inspired?” he demanded.
“Inspired?… By _me_?” Her voice took on a note of triumph.
“You didn’t fancy that _I_ inspired it, did you?” he sneered at her.
His vehemence confused her. “I hadn’t thought…. Really, you know…. Well, as you say…. But, of course, it is absurd when you can get any number of girls to….”
“But suppose I want _you_?” he demanded of her for a second time.
She left without further reply.
When she was gone he found himself in a nasty panic. It was as if the lady who had called him to her lists had suddenly decided upon a new defender.
“Is she tired of it all … or is there some one else? Can it be possible that Flint….”
He had stopped short, amazed to find his mind descending to such a vulgar level. What had come over him? And he began to fancy things as they once had been–empty, purposeless days, and nights that found him too bored to even sleep. It seemed incredible that he could go back to them again. What lay at the bottom of his sudden deep-breathed satisfaction with life? For an instant, the truth which he had kept at bay with his old trick of evasion swept toward him.
“No … no,” he muttered. “Oh no!… That would be too absurd!”
But when he had gone to the mirror to brush his hair before venturing on the street he found thick beads of perspiration on his forehead and his hand shook as he lifted the comb.
The next day he told Claire that in the future her salary would be twenty dollars a week. He stood expecting her to rail against the increase, to try to put him to rout by explaining that she had received less for a full day’s work at Flint’s. But to his surprise she thanked him and went on with her work.
It was shortly after this that he began to haunt the various performances in which Lily Condor and Claire appeared. He always contrived to slip in during the first number, which as a rule happened to be Mrs. Condor’s offering, and he sat in a far corner where nobody but that lady could have chanced upon him. But he never knew her to fail in locating him, or to miss the opportunity to sit out the remainder of the program at his side, or to suggest crab-legs Louis at Tait’s, particularly if Claire were determined upon an early leave-taking. The effect of all this was not lost upon the general public, and it was not long before men of Stillman’s acquaintance used to remark facetiously to him over the lunch-table:
“What’s new in beans to-day?… Are _reds_ still a favorite?”
Stillman would throw back an equally cryptic answer, thinking as he did so:
“What a wigging I must be getting over the teacups! I guess I’ll cut it all out in the future.”
But he usually went no farther than his impulsive resolves.
Sometimes he wondered what Claire thought of his faithful appearance. Did she fancy that he came to bask in the smiling impertinences of Lily Condor?
As he made his way to a street-car on this vivid February afternoon, he called to mind that of late Claire had been bringing a fagged look to her daily tasks. He hoped again that Mrs. Condor’s desire to see him had to do with Claire–more particularly with her dismissal as accompanist. Miss Menzies had quite recovered and there was really no reason for Claire to continue in her service. It struck him as he pondered all these matters how strange it was to find him concerned about these feminine adjustments–he who had always stared down upon trivial circumstances with cold scorn.
He arrived at Lily Condor’s apartments almost upon the lady’s heels. Her hat was still ornamenting the center-table and her wrap lay upon a wicker rocker, where, with a quick movement of irritation, it had been cast aside.
Her greeting was not reassuring. “Oh….” she began coldly. “Isn’t this rather late for lunch?”
“I’m really very sorry,” Stillman returned as he took a chair, “but to be frank, I quite forgot about you.”
“Well,” she tried to laugh back at him, “there isn’t any virtue as disagreeable as the truth. I expected you would at least attempt to be polite enough to lie.”
“I hope you were not too greatly inconvenienced,” he said, in a deliberate attempt to ignore her irritation.
“I waited two hours, if that is what you mean. But then, _my_ time isn’t particularly valuable.”
He rose suddenly. “I’ve told you that I was sorry,” he began coldly, reaching for his hat. “But evidently you are determined to be disagreeable. I fancied you wanted to see me about something urgent, so I came almost as soon as I remembered.”
She snatched the discarded wrap from its place on the wicker rocker as she glared at him. “You’re in something of a hurry, it seems…. Well, I sha’n’t detain you. The truth is there’s a pretty kettle of fish stewed up over this young woman, Claire Robson…. I want you to tell her that she can’t play at the Cafe Chantant next Friday night.”
“Want _me_ to tell her? I don’t see where I come in…. Why don’t you tell her yourself?”
“Because I don’t choose to…. Besides, I think you might do it a little more delicately. I can’t tell her brutally that she isn’t wanted.”
“Isn’t wanted? Why, what do you mean?”
“The committee informs me that she isn’t the sort of person they are accustomed to have featured in their entertainments. It seems that Mrs. Flint….”
“Mrs. Sawyer Flint?”
“Precisely.”
“What is her objection?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?”
“Why not?”
“It appears that some time last fall Miss Robson tried to get her husband into a compromising position. She came over to the house one night when Mrs. Flint was away. Flint promptly ordered her out. It seems she went … to be quite frank … with _you_. And what is more, she….”