Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it had turned to stone.
He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together.
"If you knew ... if you knew ... what I have been through.... At first it was only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over ... when there was nothing left to speculate with ... then I realized what I had done ... I ... a thief ... a thief.... I had been so proud of my honor, my honesty. I never had believed that I could even be tempted. And I went to pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its first storm. There"s nothing, it seems, in being well brought up, when circ.u.mstances are too strong for you."
Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad,"
she said, rather at a loss.
"No, I wasn"t. I"d always been a cool speculator, and I"d never taken long chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in too deep. But if I could have repaid it all I"d feel nearly as demoralized. That I should have stolen ... and from women...."
Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on.
"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn"t seem to me that I had the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest sense of right and wrong ... It does not seem possible even now."
Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she should be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him that she quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She wished that she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of the physical demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared to defend him if need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that she would willingly die rather than touch him.... She wondered if souls in dissolution subtly wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too close....
"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I"ll tell Gora and engage that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now let us discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to contribute anything to the household expenses?"
"I"m afraid not. It takes time to work up a business."
"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I suppose I had better look for a job."
"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her incredulously. "You?"
"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the decorating business."
"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I could fool them then!"
"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have stuck to the old business if it had paid."
"It isn"t the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go out to earn money--why, I"d be a laughing stock."
"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this lot--"
"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to your old home ... and after fixing it up...."
"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can"t go on."
"My brain seems to have stopped. I can"t do much thinking. But ... well ... you might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my business begins to pay."
"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won"t do. Why don"t you see if you can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--"
"I won"t go back to being a salaried man. You can"t go back like that when you"ve been in the other cla.s.s." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why couldn"t Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn"t know anything about Society I never thought about it. Why couldn"t your family have let me stay where I was? I should have been head clerk with a good salary by this time, and we would have arranged our expenses accordingly when your mother died. Why can"t men give a young fellow a better chance when he goes into business for himself? Every man trying to cut every other man"s throat. What chance has a young fellow with a small capital?"
"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However ...
perhaps you are right.... Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I feel more inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all the ancestral inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are made and our characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at least resign from the club?"
He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of character his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the first Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in two ways: they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in the same way the men who can give me a leg up in business."
"Are you sure those are the only reasons?"
To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you shall go on speculating?"
"I"ve nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can help me in business."
"They don"t seem to have done much in the past. However ... At least I"ll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom no one will notice. Now I"m going upstairs to think it all over.
To-morrow I shall do something. I don"t know what it will be, yet."
He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, "that you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell this house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had recovered his usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes were as stern as his lips.
Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to understand. She nodded amiably.
"No doubt I"ll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner time. Don"t expect me at breakfast. Good-night."
CHAPTER XIII
I
Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park and signaling to her to stop.
"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one ill?"
"Not so"s you"d notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak after me quietly and don"t say a word."
Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she had fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with the "fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the small group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly disapproved of, who entertained in some form or other every day and every night, played poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of the new dances, made up brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent stimulants. Two of Joan"s former schoolmates belonged to this active set, but she was only permitted to meet them at formal dinners and large parties. She had rebelled at first, but her mother"s firm hand was too much for her still undeveloped will, and later she had concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the whole tiresome society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she was socially as conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and although full of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no prince having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and she had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She worked off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be indulged in California for eight months of the year, rode horseback every day, used all her brothers" slang she could remember when in the society of such uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided her time. Sooner or later she was determined to "get out and hustle,"--"shake a leg." That would be the only complete change from her present life, not matrimony and running with fast sets. She wanted more money, she wanted to live alone, and, while devoted to her family, she wanted interests they could not furnish, "no, not in a thousand years."
II
Joan"s slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached the rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground.
A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit and peered through the outside shutters, which had been carefully closed.
The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and shone down upon an amazing sight.
Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was evidently talking rapidly. Alexina"s mouth opened as widely as her eyes. She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that took place at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition been brought to chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter or Mrs. Thornton, or any of those fortunate Californians who visited the headquarters of fashion and sin once a year? They would do a good deal to vary the monotony of life. But that they should have corrupted Maria ... the impeccable, the superior, the unreorientable Maria!
Maria, with whom contentment and conservatism were the first articles of the domestic and the socio-religious creed!
For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face was a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid floor, were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, another old friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom"s sister, Susan Delling, austere in her virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a fine mahogany complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel not so much a harlot as a social inferior.