"Fall back on?"
"Oh! I never meant to let that out. However.... Perhaps it is as well.... Morty--you know his pride--everybody has his prime weakness and that is his. Transpose it into sn.o.bbery if you like.... We did not board down here. I kept a lodging house for business women. It paid well, but Morty, when he became engaged to you, insisted that I give it up. He was afraid you"d be outraged in your finest sensibilities! Well, I did. One of my lodgers resigned from her job and took it over. I entered the hospital, but kept on my room as I had to have one somewhere. Eight months later she married, and I took it back. I found I could run it as well as ever with the aid of a treasure of a Chinaman she had discovered. But I never told Morty."
Alexina laughed. "Better not. But you could run it and live with us all the same."
"No. I have too little time. I"d waste it coming back and forth, for I must be here some time every day.... Besides..."
"Your own precious atmosphere?"
"You do understand!"
"Well, come to see me often. I shall need your advice."
"You bet. And now, I"ll see you to your car; stay with you until you are safely transferred to the Fillmore car. And don"t a.s.sert your independence in just this way again. All those loafers on Fillmore Street are not spiteful socialists."
As Gora put on her hat at the distant mirror Alexina turned to Gathbroke"s picture with a scowl. She even clenched her hands into fists.
"Oh ... you ... you.... Why weren"t you.... Why didn"t you...."
CHAPTER VIII
I
Mortimer arrived on Tuesday evening, looking immaculate in spite of his day on the train, and with that air of beaming gallantry that he could always summon at will, even when all was not well with him.
To-night, however, he was quite sincere. His visit to Los Angeles had been a success; he had actually put through a deal that had translated itself into a cheque for a thousand dollars. He had, through a mistaken order, been overstocked with a certain commodity from the Orient that the retail merchants of San Francis...o...b..ught very sparingly; but he had found in Los Angeles a firm that did a large business with the swarming j.a.panese population and was glad to take it over at a reasonable figure.
II
It was after dinner; his taut trim body was relaxed in evening luxury before the wood fire of the back parlor, and he was half way through a cigar when Alexina rose and extended one arm along the mantelpiece. She looked like a long black poplar with her round narrow flexible figure and her small head held with a lofty poise; as serene as a poplar in France on a balmy day. But she quaked inside.
She glanced at her happy unsuspecting husband with an engaging smile.
"I"m afraid you will be rather cross with me," she said softly. "But I went down to the City Hall yesterday and revoked my power of attorney to you."
"You did what?" The slow blood rose to Dwight"s hair. He mechanically took the cigar from his mouth. It lost its flavor. He had a sensation of falling through s.p.a.ce ... out of somewhere....
Alexina repeated her statement.
He recovered himself. "Tom Abbott has been at you again, I suppose. Or Judge Lawton."
"Neither. Really, Morty, you must give me credit for a mind of my own.
I did it for several reasons. Sibyl was here Sunday. She motored up from Burlingame with Aileen on purpose to talk to me. She has induced Mrs. Hunter and some other of the more intelligent women down there--those that read the serious new books and go to lectures when there are any worth while--to join a cla.s.s in economics. One of the professors at Stanford is going to teach us. Aileen has lost frightfully at poker lately and wants a new interest; she put Sibyl up to it--who was delighted with the suggestion as she hasn"t been intellectual for quite a while now, and really has a practical streak; so that studying economics appealed to her.
"I jumped at the idea. It was a G.o.d-send. I have had so little to do. I don"t care for poker and one can"t read all the time.... But after they left I reflected that I should cut a rather ridiculous figure studying economies in the abstract if I didn"t have sense and "go" enough to manage my own affairs. Why, I was so ignorant I thought I couldn"t draw any money from the bank because I had given you my power of attorney.
Aileen has an allowance and the Judge makes her keep books. She usually comes out about even at poker in the course of the month, and if she doesn"t she p.a.w.ns something. I"ve been with her to p.a.w.n shops and it"s the greatest fun. I don"t mind telling you, as I know you never betray a confidence. The Judge would lock poor dear Aileen up on bread and water.
"Sibyl manages those two great houses herself. Frank gives her some stupendous sum a year and she is proud of the fact that she never runs over it. You know how she entertains.
"I should never dare admit to them--or to the professor if he asked my opinion on that sort of thing and it had to come out--that I was too lazy and too incompetent to manage my own little fortune. So I went down first thing Monday morning and revoked my power of attorney. I simply couldn"t wait. When the estate is settled and turned over to me I shall attend to everything and not bother you, Morty dear."
III
Morty dear looked at her with a long hard suspicious stare. Alexina thoughtfully turned up her eyes and changed promptly from a poplar into a saint.
"I don"t like it. I don"t like it at all."
Words were never his strong point and he could find none now adequate to express his feelings.
"I may be old-fashioned--"
"You are, Morty. That is your only fault. You belong to the old school of American husbands--"
"There are plenty of old-fashioned people left in the world."
"So there are, poor dears. It"s going to be so hard for them--"
"Are you trying to be one of those infernal new women?"
"Well, you see, I just naturally am a child of my times, in spite of my old-fashioned family. I"d be much the same if I"d never taken any interest in all these wonderful modern movements."
"It"s those chums of yours--Aileen, Sibyl, Janet. I never did wholly approve of them."
"Neither did mother and Maria, but it never made any difference."
"Do you mean to say that you intend to ignore me ... disobey me?"
"Oh, Morty, I never promised to obey you. You know the fun we all had at the rehearsal. You haven"t noticed, these three years, that I"ve had my way, in pretty nearly everything, merely because it happened to be your way too. We"ve been living in a sort of pleasure garden, just playing about, with mother as the good old fairy. But everything has changed. We must look out for ourselves now, and I cannot put the whole burden on your shoulders--"
"I do not mind in the least. That is where it belongs."
Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn"t done any more. No woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole burden of life on her husband"s shoulders. You have your own daily battle in the business world. I will do the rest."
"What d.a.m.ned emanc.i.p.ated talk."
"What a funny old-fashioned word. We don"t even say advanced or new any more."
"It"s nonsense anyhow. You"re nothing but a child."