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 rôle 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 Café 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...."
"It isn't necessary for you to go any farther. Tell me, do you mean to say that you believe this thing? Didn't you lift a hand to defend her?"
Lily Condor narrowed her eyes. "Oh, come now, Ned Stillman, don't be a fool! You know as well as I do that I'm hanging on to my own reputation by my finger-nails. I'm not taking any chances. As to whether it is so ... well, if I were to tell the committee everything I know it wouldn't help her cause any. I could wreck her reputation like that," she snapped her fingers, "with one solitary fact. If she hasn't wrecked it already with her senseless chatter.... Only last week her aunt, Mrs. Ffinch-Brown, said to me: 'So you're hiring my niece! I must say that is handsome of you!' You were sitting talking to Claire and she looked deliberately at you when she said it. Remember how I warned you, last December. I told you then that the secret of a woman's meal-ticket was never hidden very long."
During this speech Mrs. Condor's voice had dropped from its original tone of petty rancor to one of petulant self-justification. Stillman knew at once that her ill-temper had caught her off-guard and she was already trying to crawl slowly back into his favor. She had meant, no doubt, to soften her news over a glass or two of chilled white wine which she had counted on sipping during the noon hour. She might even then have gone farther and decided to cast her fortunes with Stillman and Claire if she had seen that her advantage lay in that direction. He was not sure but that she still had some such notion in her mind. But he felt suddenly sick of her past all hope of compromise, and he was determined to be rid of her once and for all.
"No doubt," he said, frigidly, "you will be glad to be relieved of Miss Robson's presence permanently. I take it that you don't consider her association exactly ... well ... shall we say discreet?"
Her eyes took on a yellow tinge as she faced him. She must have sensed the finality of his tone, the well-bred insolence that his query suggested.
"Discreet?" she echoed. "Well, I wouldn't say that that was quite what I meant. Desirable—that would be better. I don't find her association desirable.... I don't want her, in other words."
He had never been so angry in his life. Had she been a man he would have struck her. He felt himself choking. "My dear Mrs. Condor," he warned, "will you be good enough to take a little more respectful tone when you speak of Miss Robson?"
"Oh, indeed! And just what are your rights in the matter? You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't know that it was the fashion for a...." His look stopped her. She trembled a moment, tossed back her head, and finished, defiantly, "Yes, that is what I want to know, what are your rights?"
He took a step toward her. Instinctively she retreated.
"A woman like you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you," he flung at her.
She covered her face with both hands.
He left the room.
He himself was trembling as he reached the street—trembling for the first time in years. As a child he had been given to these fits of emotional tremors, but he had long since lost the faculty for recording physically his intense moments. Or had he lost the faculty for the intense moments themselves, he found himself wondering, as he walked rapidly toward his home. The evening was warm with the perfume of a bit of truant summer that had somehow escaped before its time to hearten a winter-weary world against the bitter assaults of March. Birds of passage sang among the hedges, the sun still cast a faint greenish glow in the extreme west.
His first thought was of the cowering woman he had just left. He had meant to lash her keenly with his verbal whipcords, but he had not expected to find her quite so sensitive to his cutting scorn. He remembered the gesture with which she had lifted her hand as if to screen herself from his insults. There was a whole life of futile compromise in just the manner of that gesture, a growing helplessness to give straightforward thrusts, a pitiful admission of defeat. But he knew that this surrender was temporary—a quick lifting of the mask under a relentless pressure. To-morrow, in an hour, in ten minutes, Lily Condor would be her dangerous self again, lashed into the fury of a woman scorned. For a moment he did not know whether to be relieved or dismayed at the prospect of Mrs. Condor for an enemy. How much would she really dare?
He thought with a lowering anger of Flint. He had been ready to concede everything but this former friend in the rôle of a cheap and nasty gossip. No—gossip was a pale, sickly term. Flint was a malignant toad, a nauseous mud-slinger, a deliberate liar. He had heard of men who had justified themselves with vile tales to their insipid, disgustingly virtuous wives, but he had not counted such among his acquaintances. By the side of Flint, Lily Condor loomed a very paragon of the social amenities.
Stillman was conscious that his mental process was keyed to the highest pitch of melodrama. It was not usual for him to indulge in mental abuse. He had never quite understood the dark and moving processes of red-eyed anger. There had been something absurd in the theatrical hauteur of his manner in this last scene with Mrs. Condor—that is, if it were measured by his own standards. His growing detachments from life had claimed him almost to the point of complete indifference. But now, suddenly, as if Fate had dealt him an insulting blow upon the face with her bare palm, he felt not only rage, but a sense of its futility, its impotence.
"Flint!" he thought again. And immediately he spewed forth the memory of this man in a flood of indiscriminate epithets.
Later, in the refuge of his own four walls and under the brooding solace of an after-dinner cigar, he lost some of the intensiveness of his former humor. But the force of the vehemence which had shaken him filled him with much wonder and some apprehension. He was too much a man of experience to deny questions when they were put to him squarely by circumstances.
"You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't know it was the fashion for a...."
Lily Condor's clipped question struck him squarely now. Just what were his expectations concerning Claire Robson? The thought turned him cold. Essentially he was of Puritan mold, but he had always had a theory that love of illicit pleasures must have been uncommonly strong in a people who found it necessary to fight the flesh so uncompromisingly. Battling with the elements upon the bleak shores of New England contributed, no doubt, to the gray and chastened spirits that these grim folks had won for themselves; spirits that colored and sometimes seeded swiftly under the softer skies of California. San Francisco was full of these forced blooms consumed and withered by the sudden heat of a free and traditionless life. He knew scores of old-timers—his father's friends—who had been gloriously wrecked by the passion with which they met freedom's kiss. They had pursued pleasure with an energy overtrained in wrestling with the devil and had paid the penalty of all ardent souls lacking the prudence of weakness. There was at once something fine and unlawful about the spirit of adventure: it implied courage, impatience of restraint, wilfulness—in short, all the virtues and vices of strength. He had felt at times the heritage of this strength, shorn of its power by the softness of a wilderness that had been wooed instead of conquered. His forefathers had found California a waiting, gracious bride, but there had been almost a suggestion of the courtezan in the lavishness of this land's response to the caresses of the invaders.
There was something fantastic in the memory of his father, fresh from the austere dawns of the little fishing village of Gloucester, transplanted suddenly to the wine-red sunsets of the Golden Gate. He felt that his father must have had the courage for substance-wasting without the temptation. Most men in those early days had plunged unyoked into the race—Ezra Stillman brought his bride, and therefore his household goods, with him, and unconsciously custom drew its restraining rein tight. Ezra Stillman came from a long line of salt-seasoned tempters of the sea; their virtues had been rugged and their vices equally robust; sin with them had been gaunt, sinewy, unlovely; there was nothing insinuating and soft about the lure of pleasure in that silver-nooned environment. Ezra had been the first of this long line to turn his back upon the sea, and the land had rewarded him lavishly as if determined to make his capture complete. Yet, he was not landsman enough to wrest a living direct from the soil; instead, he set up his booth in the market-place of the town and trafficked in spoils of the field, in full view of the impatient ships tugging at their anchor-chains. While others dug for gold, or garnered the yellowing grain, or built railroads, Ezra Stillman sat in his modest office and sold beans and potatoes and onions, playing the rôle of merchant, husband, and father with genial and unsensational success—a man of potential lawlessness, robbed of all wolfish tendencies by the sobering influence of domestic responsibility, after the manner of a shepherd-dog broken to guard the flock.
Ned Stillman used to wonder how much of this smoldering lawlessness had been transmitted to him; for was not there an added heritage from his thin-lipped mother who came of as hardy and masterful a stock as her husband?
Smoldering lawlessness—to-night the phrase struck him sharply. He had failed at many points, but he had held uncompromisingly to his duty, almost with a fury of self-conscious puritanical fanaticism. His wife ... yes, he had always done his duty by her—more than his duty. Then, what was to prevent him from gathering such flowers as he might.... Up to a point he could still play the game squarely. Up to a point!
He turned in futile anger and weariness from such thoughts to the tinkling refuge of the evening paper.... Ah, the Russian Ballet was opening at the Valencia Theater on Friday night! A fragrant memory of Paris blew in upon the breath of this announcement—Paris, eternally young and as eternally glamorous! And glancing swiftly at the next column, he chanced upon a full account of this tiresome Café Chantant business that had occasioned so much bother ... for the benefit of the French Tobacco Fund—France again!
Suddenly he grew thoughtful.
"A box for the Ballet and a table for the Café Chantant.... I'll ask Edington and his sister ... that ought to make things look right.... Gad! how the old ladies will stare!"
He threw the paper down and, as he chuckled, little malicious gleams darted from his eyes. He would show them, all of them! And as for her.... What did he expect?... He wanted her, wanted her, wanted her! And yet.... Smoldering lawlessness.... Yes ... he would chance everything now, even that.