"Well, since you know so much, he was what is called fast. Married men of his position often were in his day--quite openly. Yesterday, I should have hesitated--"
"Fire away. Don"t mind me. Yes, I know what fast is. Lots of men are to-day. Even members of the A. A."
"A. A.?"
"Ancient Aristocracy. The kind England and France would like to have."
"I"m ashamed of you. Have you no pride of blood? The best blood of the South, to say nothing of--"
"I"m tickled to death. I just dote on being a Groome, plus Ballinger, plus. And I"m not guying, neither. I"d hate like the mischief to be second rate, no matter what I won later. It must be awful to have to try to get to places that should be yours by divine right, as it were.
But all that"s no reason for being a moss-back, a back number, for not having any fun--to be glued to the ancestral rock like a lot of old limpets.... And it should preserve us from being sn.o.bs," she added.
"Sn.o.bs?"
"The "I will maintain" sort, as Aileen puts it."
"Don"t quote that dreadful child to me. I haven"t an atom of sn.o.bbery in my composition. I reserve the right to know whom I please, and to exclude from my house people to whom I cannot accustom myself. Why I know quite a number of people at Burlingame. I dined there informally last night."
"Yes, because it has the fascination for you that wine has for the clergyman"s son." Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the only people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those of the old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were one of us. They went there to live because they were tired of being moss-backs. Why don"t you follow their example and go the whole hog?
They--and their girls--have a ripping time."
"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the young people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women drink and smoke quite openly on the verandah."
"You may bet your sweet life they do. They are honest, and quite as sure of their position as you are. But tell me about father. How did mother come to marry him? If he was such a naughty person I should think she would have exercised the sound Ballinger instincts and thrown him down."
"Mother met him in Washington. Grandfather Ballinger was senator at the time--"
"From Virginia or California?"
"It is shocking that you do not know more of the family history. From California, of course. He had great gifts and political aspirations, and realized that there would be more opportunity in the new state--particularly in such a famous one--than in his own where all the men in public life seemed to have taken root--I remember his using that expression. So, he came here with his bride, the beauty of Richmond--"
"Oh, Lord, I know all about her. Remember the flavor in my mother"s milk--"
"Well, you"d look like her if you had brown eyes and a white skin, and if your mouth were smaller. And until you learn to stand up straight you"ll never have anything like her elegance of carriage. However....
Of course they had plenty of money--for those days. They had come to Virginia in the days of Queen Elizabeth and received a large grant of land--"
"Don"t fancy I haven"t heard _that_!"
"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--"
"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!"
"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new community, and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that small band of social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs.
Hunt McLane, the Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the Gearys, the Talbots, the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom"s grandmother--"
"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother, although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she was a leader herself and "money wasn"t everything." We never had so much of it anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle old house--"
Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was.
"This house and its traditions are sacred--"
"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast man."
"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He was a young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the first year of the war and returned at once to California; of course he had been one of the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by no means poor. Of course in Washington he was asked to the best houses.
At that time he was very ambitious and absorbed in politics and the advancement of California. Afterward he renounced Washington for reasons I never clearly understood; although he told me once that California was the only place for a man to live; and--well--I am afraid he could do more as he pleased out here without criticism--from men, at least. The standards--for men--were very low in those days. But when he met mother--"
"Was mother ever very pretty?"
"She was handsome," replied Mrs. Abbott guardedly. "Of course she had the freshness and roundness of youth. I am told she had a lovely color and the brightest eyes. And she had a beautiful figure. She had several proposals, but she chose father."
"And had the devil"s own time with him. She let out that much this morning."
"I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child"s brain was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at the revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the problem of "handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made generalities.
"Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time and held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever accused him of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes more than one reform to his determination and ability.
"He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, for he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own cla.s.s; what men call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a brilliant group of disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married women here have always been great gossips.
Well--you may as well know it--it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary, who are the most abstemious of men--he drank and gambled and had too much to do with those unspeakable women....
"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he hadn"t gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks), he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married. But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her share of the Ballinger estate--not very much."
VII
"Why didn"t mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?"
"Mother did everything a good woman could do."
"Maybe she was too good."
"You abominable child. A woman can"t be too good."
"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has different tastes."
"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father."
"Well, I wouldn"t, neither. I"d just light out and leave him. Why didn"t mother get a divorce?"
"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very dear friends had been forced by circ.u.mstances into the divorce court. I didn"t approve even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home."
"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and he was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I did decide to marry Mr. Dwight--mind, I don"t say I care the tip of my little finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have to admit that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he doesn"t drink, or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works hard and is as steady as--I was going to say as a judge, but I"ve been told that all judges, in this town at least, are not as steady as you think. Anyhow, he is. His family is as old as ours, even if it did have reverses or something. And you can"t deny that he is a gentleman, every inch of him."
"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But--well, he was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents.
He admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a broker"s office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it."
"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what power you have left."