The Blood Red Dawn

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-à-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 rôle 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 rôle 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 tête-à-tête.

"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.