When they docked at the foot of Russian Hill, Isabel suggested that Gwynne should leave his portmanteau with Mr. Clatt, the wharfinger that lived at the edge of the sea-wall and looked after such launches and yachts as came his way.
"I want you to stay with me if Lyster and Paula will come too," she said, hospitably. "They like that sort of thing when they happen to have a nurse. If they cannot come you will have to go to one of the hotels. In either case you can send here for your suit-case. You had better take the Jones Street car—"
"The track is bust," said Mr. Clatt, who was a laconic person.
"Walk along the docks to Polk Street and then south until you find a car—I think it turns in at Pacific Avenue. The conductor will tell you where to transfer—"
"Are there no cabs?"
"There are hacks and coup閟 at the livery-stables, if you care to expend ten or fifteen dollars for being less comfortable than in the cars. Remember our hills are little off the perpendicular."
She did not see fit to inform him that his business would not take him into the hilly district, and watched him wend his way along the noisy, dirty, evil-smelling docks with some satisfaction. Then she climbed the steep hill to her house, over the crest. There were many cottages on this side of Russian Hill and one or two fine residences, but beyond one cable-car line little or nothing had been done to make life easy for the inhabitants. It was a bit of pioneer San Francisco. One day, no doubt, there would be a boulevard at its foot, the rough inhospitable cliff would be terraced, and set with the country-like villas of people that appreciated the beauties of the bay and Tamalpais, but at present a carriage could not mount it, and it made no appeal to the luxurious.
An elderly couple lived in the "Belmont House" and did all that was necessary in the present stage of Isabel's fortunes. She found the woman house-cleaning and the old man weeding among the abundant crysanthemums and asters in the half acre which still surrounded the old mansion. She gave her orders and started for the home of her sister. A belated trade-wind was screaming through the city driving the dust before it. Isabel looked down at the towers and the domes, the steeples and walls of the great modern buildings, the low city built in the days when San Franciscans still feared earthquakes, all looming through the torn brown veil like the mirage of a city infinitely distant. But San Francisco was rarely more beautiful than in a dust-storm, which recombined her outlines and the patchwork of her crowded generations into something like harmony. She looked dreaming, proud, detached, an houri veiled to allure, to inspire a new race of poets. Gwynne holding his hat on his head with both hands, in the valley, cursed the climate, but Isabel picking her way down the crazy old staircase, although in anything but a poetical mood, paused a moment with that sudden outrush and uplift that was the only passion she had ever known. Such moments were not frequent and brought with them a sense of impersonality, as if she were but the vehicle of aspiring passionate souls long gone from their own clay, that rushed back through familiar conduits like volcanic fires, eager for the arch of the visible world.
But ancestral rights had short shrift this morning. Isabel's spirit was a very caldron. She not only still raged at the fact that for a few seconds she had been as helpless in the grip of mere brute strength as any peasant woman, but she was keenly disappointed that Gwynne had not understood her. That he might have understood her too well, his whole sex precipitating itself upon the new enemy, she would not admit for a moment; women, with a sort of dishonest mental confusion, invariably substituting the word misunderstood for failure to accept their own point of view. Above all, was she furious with herself. Instead of annihilating him with the dignity of which she possessed an uncommon share, she had been surprised into behaving as if she were the crudest of mere human creatures.
Moreover, her arms still pained, and she knew that they were black and blue.
At the foot of the bluff she ran into a basement doorway to pin on her veil more securely, and dismissed psychology as incompatible with trade-winds and dust. A block or two farther on she took a cable car which slipped rapidly down the western slope, across the narrow valley, then up another and steeper hill, all blooming with flowers in the narrow gardens. She alighted at a corner half-way to the summit, and walked back to one of those curious San Francisco "Flat Houses" with three doors in a row. It was perched high above the sidewalk, for the street but a few years since was a gully, and the grading had deepened it. It was reached by some sixty winding but solid steps, and the little terrace, off at a right angle, was full of color.
As she had expected, Mrs. Paula was sitting in the bow-window of her bedroom, gazing at the passers-by with a sort of idle eagerness. But so were a hundred others in sight, there being no idler creature than the American woman of small means, who neither belongs to clubs nor does her own work. The shallow philosophers harp upon the boredom of the idle rich whose every wish is gratified; but as a matter of fact the rich are seldom idle, and in highly organized societies are models of system and energy; whether misdirected or not, is beyond the question. It is the idle woman in a flat whose imagination riots along the highways of the great world, who keeps an avid eye for change of any sort, and finds a fictitious existence in the sentimental, the immoral, and the society novel.
Paula, who lived in the top flat, ran down the two flights of stairs and opened the door for Isabel.
"Well! you are a stranger!" she exclaimed. "I was wondering if your chickens had tuberculosis. Lots have in California. I read it in a Sunday newspaper."
"My chickens are quite healthy. How are the children?"
"As well as can be expected in this dusty windy city where they have to stay in the house half the day." Mrs. Stone's children were notoriously healthy, but she was of the stuff of which the modern martyr is made.
Isabel followed her up the stairs and into the large sunny front bedroom. The children being invisible and also inarticulate, were doubtless in the back yard. The room was vaguely untidy without being dirty. A basket of socks and stockings in various stages of repair stood on a table by the window, but pushed aside to accommodate the Saturday society papers and a novel from the circulating library. An opera-cloak lay across a chair, flung there, no doubt, the night before, and on the floor close by was a pair of pink worn slippers very narrow at the toes but bulging backward like a toy boat. On the sofa was a freshly laundried pile of shirts with detached collars and cuffs, which Mrs. Stone immediately began ostentatiously to snip along the frayed edges. The room itself was full of sunshine, which gave it a cheerful air in spite of the faded Brussels carpet and the old-fashioned walnut furniture, a contribution from the house on Russian Hill. Mrs. Paula wore a vastly becoming wrapper of red nun's veiling trimmed with a yellowish lace that by no means looked as cheap as it was. She was pretty to excess, one of those little brown women that men admire and often trust. Had she been thin she would have been bird-like with her bright darting brown glance, but her cheeks, like her tightly laced little figure, were very round, and so crimson that they excited less suspicion than the more delicate and favorite pink. And the brilliant color suited her peasant style of prettiness, her full red lips, her bright crisp bronze hair. She had a fashion of absently sweeping the loose sleeves of her wrapper and "artistic" house-gowns up to her shoulder and revealing a plump and charming arm; and the pointed toe of shoe or slipper was always visible. Her arts were lost on Isabel, who understood and despised her, but who regarded her as a sacred legacy from her mother; Mrs. Belmont had been devoted to the pretty child she had adopted just after burying three of her own, and who had waited on her hand and foot to the day of her death. Isabel was always conscious of putting on a curb the moment she entered her sister's presence, but thought it good discipline, and only spoke her mind when goaded beyond endurance.
"I tried to telephone," she began, but was interrupted by a deep sigh.
"The telephone is cut off—we owe for three months. Hateful things!—they know we always pay some time or other."
"If you are so badly off would it not be more economical to make the children's clothes—"
"Isabel! Much you know about children! One can buy ready-made things for just half."
Isabel subsided, for she felt herself at a disadvantage before this experienced young matron; although she vaguely recalled that whenever she had presented the children with little frocks and sailor suits she had expended a considerable sum. But doubtless she had gone to the wrong shops. Mrs. Paula was one of those women that haunted the cheap shops and bargain-counters, and was always in debt.
"What a heavenly suit!" she exclaimed, her eyes roving covetously over Isabel's smart black costume. "Paris, I suppose. Fancy being able to walk into a store and order a new dress whenever you feel like it. I have never done that in all my life—"
"It was for that I settled an income upon you before I left for Europe, but if it is not enough to buy a new frock occasionally—"
"Oh, it would be enough if I could use it for that purpose, but you know what my life is! If Lyster would only live economically—but it is dining out at a restaurant five nights a week—champagne half the time, especially if we have a guest, and we generally have—a Californian thinks himself disgraced if he doesn't give invited company champagne. It's all very well to brag about the magnificence and generosity of this town—when you can afford to. But most everybody I know, at least, can't, and when the first of the month comes, I guess the women all wish that San Francisco was more like New York, where they say every Californian in time avoids every other Californian for fear he'll want to borrow five dollars, and all the men let themselves go wild over Emma Eames because she's proper and doesn't cost anything. It's time we reformed instead of flinging money about like European princes—spending four times as much as you've got for fear of being called stingy. A San Franciscan would rather be called a murderer than mean. I talk and talk, and it's no use. A terrible thing has happened to us," she ended, abruptly.
"What?" asked Isabel, startled; she had lent an indifferent ear to the familiar harangue.
"Lyster has gone on a newspaper—the Ventilator. Fancy—Lyster a newspaper artist—making pictures of prize-fights, actresses, murderers, and society women at the opera. It was that or the street, and Lyster was frightened for once in his life. We owe for every mortal thing as well as the telephone."
"That is the best thing I have ever heard of Lyster," said Isabel, imperturbably. "But when he gets a respectable sum of money for a picture, as he did a little while ago, why on earth doesn't he pay his bills, and make a fresh start? I thought he had when I was down."
"Those two weeks cost a good deal," said Paula, softly.
Isabel colored but controlled her anger as she had many times before. "I was under the impression that the check I gave you when I left—"
"Oh yes, but then you really don't know much about the cost of things, in spite of the fact that you run a farm. We always had an extra man for you—"
"I could well have dispensed with the dissipated fad-ridden specimens you produced for my entertainment. I did not meet a sober man during the entire fortnight. What is the amount of your indebtedness? I will pay half, but no more."
She knew that it would be wiser to demand the bills and herself pay something on account to the desperate creditors, but she revolted from playing the mentor to that extent. When Paula, after a frowning bout with a pencil and a sheet of paper, announced the sum that would tide them over, Isabel was quite aware that she was facing the entire amount. However, she wrote a check, merely extracting a facile promise that it should be devoted to its legitimate purpose, and not to champagne or frills.
"I will also send you down one or two tailor suits I have little use for," she added. "Things are so cheap in Europe that I was often betrayed into buying more than I wanted. They can easily be altered."
"Thanks!" said Paula. "I am not the style for tailor-made things, but goodness knows I am glad enough to get anything."
Isabel glanced doubtfully at the slippers. "I have so many boots. They are rather an extravagance with me—but I am afraid my foot is longer than yours."
"Yes," said Paula, complacently, as she threaded a darning-needle. "My foot is quite fearfully small."
Isabel, who knew her foot to be far more slender and elegant than the plebeian member that never dared expose itself beyond the instep, nearly overflowed with feminine wrath; but she swallowed it, and remarked in a moment:
"I had quite forgotten why I tried to telephone. Mr. Gwynne came down with me and I should like to show him about a bit. Of course I cannot do it alone; what is more, I want him to stay in my house. Nothing could exceed his hospitality to me in England, and I should hate the idea of sending him to a hotel when I have a house with eight bedrooms. Couldn't you and Lyster come up and stay for a couple of days? And if Lyster will show Mr. Gwynne the town, as indeed he has suggested more than once, it must be understood that the expense is mine."
"Lyster would never permit it," said Paula, grandly. "You know what he is—he even lends more than he borrows; that is one reason why we are always so hard up. He is simply dying to show Mr. Gwynne about. And that means that he'll spend a month's salary before he gets it."
"Then I will pay the month's bills. You must manage it as I wish or I return to-day."
Isabel knew that Stone, if not generous in the higher sense, was delighted to play the extravagant host, and never failed to assume the r鬺e when he had money or credit. And if he was the freest and most debonair of borrowers at least he repaid when unusually prosperous; and he prided himself upon never having borrowed from a woman. Once when Isabel, who could not help liking him, had offered to pay his debts, he had promptly ascended from the depths of depression in which she had discovered him before his easel, and replied, gayly:
"Not yet! The sort of man that borrows money from a woman is the sort of man that has no intention of paying it back. I am not that sort."
With a wife who was or had been an adoring slave, it was little wonder that Stone's original selfishness had become abnormally enhanced, and Isabel took into account the feminine silliness of which he had been a victim since birth. His mother, well-born, southern, indolent, had indulged him in every whim during his boyhood; then when the familiar San Francisco crash came, he had turned to actual work with an exceeding ill grace. The easy ladies of the lower slopes, with whom he had tastes more than Bohemian in common, had admired him extravagantly, and when he finally met a girl that suited his tastes as exactly, and was respectable to boot, he became a devoted if somewhat erratic husband. He was now thirty-eight and all hope of graduation from perpetual irresponsible boyhood had been destroyed long since by a woman abjectly in love with him and too shrewd to antagonize him. With a strong brain and character a wife might have kept him on the upward artistic path and converted him to a measure of domesticity. But Paula had neither, was, moreover, quite satisfied with her mental equipment and blooming little person; so much so indeed that of late she was beginning to think herself thrown away, a matrimonial offering; to weary of being the mere annex of her brilliant husband. She was very clever in her fashion, however, and Stone still thought her his willing slave, although curtain lectures were less infrequent than of yore. And she had learned to manage him in many ways he would have thought it a waste of time to suspect.
"It will be all right," she said to Isabel. "He always thinks I have more money than I have, for he never could do arithmetic at school and still believes that two and two make five. I shall be delighted to get out of this skyscraper for a few days." And then she asked, insinuatingly, if she could not take the children.
But upon this point Isabel was obdurate, knowing that if Paula once planted her entire family in the Belmont House the police could not uproot them. Moreover, although she liked children, she detested Paula's. They were pert and spoiled, untidy and noisy, although handsome and highly bred of feature. She never saw them that she did not fall into a sort of panic at the thought that similar little creatures full of present and potential nuisance might have been her own, and then felt extraordinarily light of spirit in the reflection that she had escaped a lot she had as yet seen no reason to envy.
"Have you no nurse?" she asked.
"Oh yes. She has been threatening to leave—has been fearfully disagreeable—but I suppose she will stay, now that I can pay her." Mrs. Paula wisely gave up the point and invited her visitor to remain for luncheon. But Isabel rose hastily.
"I must go home and see that everything is in order—the beds aired, and lunch prepared for Mr. Gwynne in case he should turn up. Then you will come about four? And we will dine out somewhere?"
"I'll pack all the decent things I possess and send them up right away. Fortunately the dress Lyster gave me last month is quite fresh, so I shall not feel too small beside your magnificence, and I am sure that Mr. Gwynne, even if he is an Englishman, does not dress any better than Lyster."
"Not a bit. We shall have some jolly times together. Mr. Gwynne is very anxious to meet you."
"Well, he has not been in any particular hurry. Still, it will be fearfully nice, and I am so glad you have come down at last."