The Sisters In Law Part 21

"I admit nothing of the sort, but I know your type too well to waste any time in argument--"

"My type?"

She longed to reply: "The smaller a man's brain the more enveloping his mere male arrogance. Instinct of self-defense like the turtle's sh.e.l.l or the porcupine's quills or the mephitic weasel's extravasations." But she never quarreled with Morty, and to have shared with him her opinion of his endowments would have been to deprive herself of a good deal of secret amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, you're all alike," she said lightly, and added: "Don't be too sure that Alexina hasn't intellect-the real thing. When she emerges from this beatific dream of youth she has almost hugged to death for fear it might escape her, and begins to think--"

"I'll do her thinking."

"All right, dear. You have my best wishes. But keep on the job.... I'll clear out; you want to dress--"

"Wait a moment." He sat down to draw on his socks. "I'm really cut up over Mrs. Groome's death. She was my only friend in this d.a.m.n family, and I coveted her money so little that I wish she could have lived on for twenty years."

"I wondered how you liked them as time went on."

He brought his teeth together and thrust out his jaw. "I hate the whole pack of superior patronizing condescending sn.o.bs, and it is all I can do to keep it from Alexina, who thinks her tribe perfection. But, by G.o.d!"--he brought down his fist on his knee--"I'll beat them at their own game yet. I simply live to make a million and build a house at Burlingame. They really respect money as much as they think they don't; I've got oil to that. When I'm a rich roan they'll think of me as their equal and forget I was ever anything' else."

"Well, don't speculate," said Gora uneasily. "Remember that luck was left out of our family."

"My luck changed with that legacy. I am certain of it. I have only to wait until this period of dry rot pa.s.ses--"

"But you're not speculating?"

He looked at her with eyes as cold as her own.

"I answer questions about my private affairs to no one."

"They are my affairs to the extent of half your capital."

"You have received your interest regularly, have you not?"

"Yes."

"Then you have nothing to worry about. I understand business, as well as the man's opportunities, and you do not."

"I did not ask out of curiosity, but because I shall be glad when you are doing well enough to let me have my eight thousand--"

"What do you want of it? Where could you get more interest?"

"Nowhere, possibly. But some day I shall want to take a vacation, a fling. I shall want to go to New York and Europe."

"And you would throw away your capital!"

"Why not? I have other capital in my profession; and, although you will find this difficult to grasp, in my head. I have practiced fiction writing for years. It is just ten months since I tried to get anything published, and I have recently had three stories accepted by New York magazines: one of the old group and two of the best of the popular magazines."

He looked at her with cold distaste, which deepened in a moment to alarm. "I hope you will not use your own name. These people who think themselves so much above us anyhow, look upon authors and artists and all that as about on a level with the working cla.s.s--"

"I shall use my own name and ram it down their throats. They wors.h.i.+p success like all the rest of the world. Their fancied distaste for people engaged in any of the art careers--with whom they practically never come in contact, by the way--is partly an instinctive distrust of anything they cannot do themselves and partly because they have an Elizabethan idea that all artists are common and have offensive manners."

"I don't like the idea of your using your own name. Ladies may unfortunately be obliged to earn their own living--and that you shall never do when I am rich--but they have no business putting their names up before the public like men."

Gora looked at his rigid indomitable face; the face of the Pilgrim fathers, of the revolutionary statesmen, which he had inherited intact from old John Dwight who had sat in the first congress; the American cla.s.sic face that is pa.s.sing but still crops out as unexpectedly as the last drop from a long forgotten "tar brush," or the sly recurrent Biblical profile.

"We will make a bargain," she said calmly. "I will ask you no more questions about your business for a year--when, if convenient, I should like my money--and you will kindly ignore the literary career I mean to have. It won't do you the least good in the world to formulate opinions about anything I choose to do. Now, better concentrate on Alexina.

You've got your hands full there. See you at breakfast." And she shut the door on an indignant worried and disgusted brother.

CHAPTER IV

I

When Mortimer, after tapping on his wife's door, was bidden to enter he found her sitting with Aileen over a breakfast tray, the belated tears running down into her coffee. Aileen, promising to return after she had given her father his breakfast, made a hasty retreat; and Dwight took his wife in his arms and soothed the grief which grew almost hysterical in its reaction from the insensibility of the morning.

"You won't leave me for a moment?" she sobbed, in this mood finding his sympathy exquisite and necessary. "You'll stay home--until--until--"

"Of course. I'll telephone Wicksam after breakfast. He can run the office for a day or two. By the way Maria will be here this evening; Sally is better. Joan and Tom and the rest will be here in about an hour. Tom and I will attend to everything. You are not to bother, not to think."

"Oh, you are too wonderful--always so strong--so strong--how I love it.

But I'll never get over this--poor old mommy!"

But the paroxysm pa.s.sed, and just as Mortimer was on the verge of morning starvation and too polite to mention it, she grew calm by degrees and sent him down to breakfast. The emotional phase of her grief was over.

CHAPTER V

I

It was three months later that Aileen, once more sitting in Alexina's bedroom, after her return from Santa Barbara, where she had gone with her father for the summer, said abruptly: "Dad is terribly cut up, dear old thing. He'd known your mother since they were both children, in the days when there were wooden sidewalks on Montgomery Street, and Laurel Hill was called Lone Mountain, and they had picnics in it. Odd they both should have had young daughters. Another link--what? as the English say. Well--anyhow--he told me to tell you that he was just as fond of your father as of your mother, and that you must try to imagine that he is your father from this time forth, and come to him when you are in doubt about anything."

Alexina looked her straight in the eyes. "I have sometimes thought uncle daddy didn't like Mortimer."

"On the contrary, he rather likes him. He respects a capacity for hard work, and persistence, and a reputation for uncompromising honesty. But of course Mortimer is young--in business, that is; and father thinks--but you had better talk with him."

"No. Why should I? But I don't mind you. At least I could not discuss Mortimer with any one else. I am furious with Tom Abbott. He wants me to put my money in trust, with himself and uncle daddy as trustees--ignoring Mortimer, whom he pretends to like. He says Maria's fortune has been kept intact, that he has never touched a cent of it, but that men in business are likely to get into tight places and use their wife's money. Nothing would induce Mortimer to touch my money, but he would feel pretty badly cut up if I let any one else look after my affairs. Of course I wouldn't even discuss the matter with Tom. And if Morty does need money at any time I'll lend it to him. Why not? What else would any one expect me to do?"

"Of course Tom Abbott went to work the wrong way, the blundering idiot.

No one doubts Mortimer's good faith, but the times are awful, money has paresis; and when you are obliged to take any of your own out of the stocking in order to keep business going, it is easily lost. Dad hopes you will hang on like grim death to your inheritance. You see--the times are so abnormal, Mortimer hasn't had time to prove his abilities yet; he's just been able to hold on; and if things don't mend and he should lose out, why--if you still have your own little fortune, at least you'll not be any worse off than, you are now. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see. But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times.