The Sisters In Law Part 19

I

The city below--the new solid city--was obliterated under a heavy fog, pierced here and there by steeples and towers that looked like jagged dark rocks in that white and tranquil sea.

On Angel Island and on the north sh.o.r.e of the bay the deep sad bells were tolling their warning to moving craft; and from out at sea, beyond the Golden Gate, the fog horn sent forth its long lugubrious groans.

The bells sounded m.u.f.fled, so dense was the fog, and there was no other sound in the sleeping city.

Alexina wrapped her long cloak more closely about her and pulled the hood over her head.

As she walked slowly down the steep avenue it came to her with something of a shock that she had not thought of her husband since she had expressed to Gora her reluctance to disturb him.

She was doing the least conventional thing possible in leaving the house at four o'clock in the morning to seek the sympathy of a girl friend when any other young wife she knew (unless getting a divorce) would have flown to her husband and wept out her sorrow in his arms.

And she had been married only three years, and found Mortimer quite as irreproachable as ever, always kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He a.s.suredly would have said just the right things to her and not have resented in the least being deprived of a few hours of rest.

On the contrary, he would no doubt resent being ignored, for not only was he devoted to his lovely young wife but such behavior was unorthodox, and he disliked the unorthodox exceedingly.

Well, she didn't want him and that was the end of it. He didn't fill the present bill. She had never regretted her marriage, for he had quite measured up to the best feats of her maiden imagination. He made love charmingly, he was manly chivalrous and honorable, and his eager spontaneity of manner when he arrived home at six o'clock every evening never varied; to whatever level of flatness he might drop immediately afterward. When they entered a ballroom or a restaurant she knew that they made a "stunning couple" and that people commented upon their good looks, their harmonious slenderness and inches, and contrasts in nature's coloring.

II

Alexina, almost unconsciously, sat down on a bench under the trees. Her mind sought the pleasant past as a brief respite from the present; she knew that that part of her mind called heart was frozen by the suddenness of her mother's death, and that her emotions would be fluid a few hours hence.

They had had a simply heavenly time together until her mother's illness. As a clerk in the family was unthinkable Mrs. Groome had lent him the insurance on one of her burned buildings and he had started a modest exporting and importing house, that being the only business of which he had any knowledge. Judge Lawton and Tom Abbott had suggested that he open an insurance office, or start himself in any business where little capital besides office furniture was needed; as Mrs.

Groome's advisors they were averse to launching any of her moderate fortune on a doubtful venture. But Dwight had insisted that he was more likely to succeed in a business he understood than in one of which he knew nothing, and Mrs. Groome had agreed with him. Judge Lawton and Abbott paid over the insurance money with the worst grace possible.

And then Mortimer had a piece of the most astounding good luck. His aunt Eliza Goring had left stock in a mine which had run out of pay ore soon after her investment, and shut down. It had recently been recapitalized and a new vein discovered. Mrs. Goring's executor had sold her stock for something under twenty thousand dollars, delivering the proceeds, as directed in her will, to two of her amazed heirs, Mortimer and Gora Dwight.

Gora had been opposed to her brother leaving the firm of Cheever Harrison and Cheever, where, beyond question, he would be head of a department in time and safely anch.o.r.ed for life; but he had taken the step, and she reasoned that he must have a considerable knowledge of a business with which he had been a.s.sociated for fourteen years, she knew his energy and powers of application, and she resented the att.i.tude of "the family." Appreciating what his triumph would mean to him she had consented to invest her inheritance in his business and enable him to make immediate rest.i.tution to Mrs. Groome. As a matter of fact his "stock did go up" with the family, particularly as he seemed to be doing well and had the reputation of working harder than any young man on the street. As he had antic.i.p.ated, a good deal of business was thrown his way.

He had accepted as a matter of course Mrs. Groome's invitation to live with her, paying, as he insisted upon it, a stipulated sum toward the current expenses. He thought her offer quite natural; not only would she be lonely without the child of her old age, but she must desire that Alexina continue to live in the conditions to which she was accustomed; the sum Mrs. Groome consented to accept would not have kept them in a fas.h.i.+onable family hotel, much less an apartment with several servants.

Moreover, housing room was scarce; they might have been obliged to live across the Bay; and, in his opinion, the duty of parents to their offspring never ceased.

Alexina at that time thought every sentiment he expressed "simply great," and had continued to feed from her mother's hand even in the matter of pin money. Mortimer felt it to be right, so he told her, to put his surplus profits back in his business; all he could spare he needed for "front," to say nothing of pleasant little dinners at restaurants to their hospitable young friends; who thought it no adequate return to be asked to dine on Ballinger Hill.

Moreover, he often gave her a far handsomer present than he should have done, considering the "hard times;" or at least she would have preferred that he give her the combined values in the form of a monthly allowance; she would have enjoyed the sensation of being in a measure supported by her husband.

However, she and her mother a.s.sured each other that he was bound to make a fortune in time, and then she would have an allowance as large as that of Sibyl Thornd.y.k.e, who had married Frank Bascom.

It had been like playing at marriage. Alexina put it into concrete words. Subconsciously she had always known it. She had had no cares, no responsibilities. She had merely continued to play, to keep her imagination on that plane sometimes called the fool's paradise.

III

She realized abruptly that here was the secret of her longing for children. They would have been the real thing, given a serious translation to life.

But she had enjoyed the gay life of her little world, nevertheless, and with all the abandon of a youth which had just closed its first long chapter in that silent room on top of the hill. And no one could have asked for a more delightful companion to play with than Morty, when his working hours were over.

Mortimer loved society. It had been simply delicious, poor darling, to watch his secret delight, under his perfect repose, the first time they spent a week-end in Mrs. Hunter's magnificent "villa" at Burlingame.

Even Aileen had treated his initiation as a matter of course; and they had spent the afternoon at the club, where he drank whiskey and soda on equal terms with many millionaires.

IV

It was doubtful if he enjoyed similarly his first visit to Rincona during their engagement: after all the powwow was over and the family had grimly surrendered to avoid the scandal of an elopement.

Alexina recalled that dreadful day. They had all sat on the verandah on the shady side of the house: her mother, Aunt Clara Groome, Maria, Susan Belling and Grace Montgomery, Tom Abbott's sisters, whose homes were in Alta, and Coralie Geary, born Brannan, of Fair Oaks (now Atherton) who had married a nephew of Mrs. Groome. All these were as one united family. They met every day, wandering in and out at all hours, and although they had many healthy disagreements they agreed on all the fine old fundamentals, and they stood by one another through thick and thin.

The hair of all looked freshly washed. Their complexions had perished asking no quarter. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Geary were as slim and smart as Mrs. Abbott, but the others were expanding rapidly, and Aunt Clara, who was only a year older than Mrs. Groome, was shamelessly fat, and her face was so weather-beaten that the freckled skin hung as loosely as her old wrapper.

All wore white, the simplest white, and all sewed quietly for the new refugee babies; all except Alexina who talked feverishly to cover the awful pauses, and young Joan, who had crawled under the table and stuffed an infant's flannel petticoat into her mouth to m.u.f.fle her giggles.

Tom had escaped to the golf links. Mortimer sat in the midst of the Irregular circle and smoked three cigars. He smiled when he spoke, which was seldom, and appeared appreciative of the determined efforts to be "nice" of these ladies who had called him Mortimer as soon as he arrived, and who made him fed more like a poor relation whose feelings must be spared, every moment.

Finally Alexina, who was on the verge of hysteria, dragged Joan from under the table, and the two carried him off to the tennis court.

In subsequent visits, now covering a period of three years, their gracious civil "kind" att.i.tude had never varied, save only when their consciences hurt them for disliking him more than usual, and then they were not only heroic but fairly effusive in their efforts to be nice.

Nevertheless, it was quite patent to Alexina that he enjoyed smoking his after-dinner cigar on that old verandah whose sweet-scented vines had been planted in the historic sixties; or under the ancient oaks of the park where he dreamed aloud to her of sitting under similar oaks of England, the guest of Lady Barnstable or Lady Arrowmount, belles of the eighties who faithfully exchanged letters once a year with Maria Abbott and Coralie Geary.

From the family there was always the refuge of the tennis court and he played an excellent game. He also seemed to enjoy those dinners given them in certain other old Peninsula mansions, and if they were dull he was duller.

V

Alexina had admitted to herself some time since (never to that wretch, Aileen Lawton) that he _was_ rather dull, poor darling.

For a long time the aftermath of the earthquake and fire had supplied topics for conversation. For quite two years there had been an acutely painful interest in the Graft Prosecution, which, beginning with an attempt merely to bring to justice the political boss, his henchman the mayor, and his ignorant obedient board of supervisors, had unthinkably resolved itself into a declaration of war, with State's Prison as its goal, upon some of the most prominent capitalists in San Francisco.

The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, bent upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, and the basest abuses of political power. They had a.s.sumed as a matter of course that those of their own cla.s.s, who for years had expressed in private their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to the board of supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be only too glad to expose the malefactors.

But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and bribery. They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or renounce their great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law had technical terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so had the public.

All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred thousand dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics.

Supervisors, by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand Jury indicted not only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of eminent citizens.

Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now and again they burst into hysteria as they did it. Mrs. Ferdinand Thornton, at a dinner party, left the room as Mrs. Hofer entered it, and Mrs. Hofer gave a magnificent exhibition of Celtic temperament.

The editor who supported the prosecution with the full strength of his historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his cell. There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would reinst.i.tute the lynch law of the fifties.