The Sisters In Law Part 28

"You may just bet your life I'm not a child. Nor have I awakened all of a sudden. In one sense I have. But not in this particular branch of modern science. I have read tons about it, and Aileen and I are always discussing everything that interests the public; I have even read the newspapers for two years."

"Much better you didn't. There is no reason whatever for a woman in your position knowing anything about public affairs. It detracts from your charm."

"Maybe, but we'll find more charm in Life as we grow older."

His memory ran back along a curved track and returned with something that looked like a bogey.

"May I ask what your program is? Your household program? I had got everything down to a fine point.... It seems too bad you should bother...."

"Bother? I've been bored to death, and feeling like a silly little good-for-nothing besides. The trouble is, it's too little bother. James and I have had a long talk. Housekeeping will be reduced to its elements with him, but at least I shall begin to feel really grown up when I pore over monthly bills and 'slips' and sign cheques."

She hesitated. "You mustn't think for a minute that I want to make you feel out of it, Morty. It. is only that I _must_. The time has come, ... Of course, you have been paying half the bills anyhow. We could simply go on along those lines. I will tell you what it all amounts to, shortly after the first of the month, and you'll give me half."

IV

Dwight stared at the end of his cigar. His was not an agile brain but in that moment it had an illuminating flash. He realized that this sheltered creature, with whom her mother had never discussed household economics, and from whom he had purposely kept all knowledge of his business, took for granted that he could pay his share of the monthly expenses, merely because all the men she knew did twice as much, however they might grumble. For the matter of that she never saw Tom Abbott that he did not curse the ascending prices, but there was no change whatever in his bountiful fashion of living. Alexina knew that the times were bad and that her husband was having something of a struggle, and, as a dutiful wife, was anxious to help him out for the present, but it was simply beyond her powers of comprehension to grasp the fact that he was in no position to pay half the expenses of their small establishment.

If he told her ... tried to make her understand ... even if she did, how would he appear in her eyes?

Of all people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina ... he had never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at their worst than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to and precariously achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she craved luxury and pomp, but because she would be forced to look up to him with admiration and a lively grat.i.tude. He had, in this spirit, given her; in the most casual manner, handsome presents, or brilliant little dinners at fashionable restaurants, in all of which she took a fervent young pleasure. He had dipped into his slender capital, but of this she had not even a suspicion ... he had made some airy remark about celebrating a "good deal" ... no wonder ... he had her too well bluffed.

For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But he did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl that short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide astonished eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set his teeth and vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand would last several months, even if he made no more than his expenses meanwhile.

He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a lingering and malodorous death.

"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young and carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is your own look-out."

"Thank you, Morty dear."

She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen and Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of economics with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had been tutoring in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to him whom Aileen disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash.

CHAPTER IX

I

Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Mrs. Francis Leslie Bascom and Miss Aileen Livingston Lawton.

His reasons for coming to Ballinger House--which even he knew was inaccessible to the common herd--were separate and tabulated. Alexina had fascinated him against his best cla.s.s principles; but he not only jumped at the chance of meeting her again, he was excessively curious to understand a woman of her cla.s.s, to watch her in different moods and situations. He was equally curious to meet other women of the same breed; he had never brushed their skirts before, but he had often stood and gazed at them hungrily as they pa.s.sed in their limousines or driving their smart little electric cars.

He was also curious to see several of those "interiors" he had read so much about, and hoped his pupils would meet in turn at their different homes. He was a sincere and honest socialist, was Mr. Kirkpatrick, and he had a good healthy cla.s.s-consciousness and cla.s.s-hatred. But he also had a large measure of intelligent curiosity. He had never expected to have the opportunity to gratify it in respect to "bourgeois" inner circles, and when it came he had only hesitated long enough to search his soul and a.s.sure himself that he was in no danger of growing compliant and soft. Moreover he might possibly make converts, and in any case it was not a bad way, society being still what it was, of turning an honest penny.

But in this the first lesson he was as disconcerted as a socialist serene in his faith could be.

The three girls had curved their slender bodies forward, resting one elbow on a knee. At the end of each of these feline arches was a pair of fixed and glowing eyes. No doubt there were faces also, but he was only vaguely aware of three white disks from which flowed forth lambent streams of concentrated light. They looked like three little sea-monsters, slim, flexible, malignant, ready to spring.

He exaggerated in his embarra.s.sment, but he was not so very far wrong.

"The little devils!" he thought in his righteous wrath. "I'll teach 'em, all right."

As it was necessary to break the farcical silence he said in a voice too loud for the small library. "Well, what is it about socialism that you don't just know? Mrs. Dwight told me you had read some."

"There is one thing I want to say before we begin," said Aileen in her high light impertinent voice, "and that is that if there is one thing that makes us more angry than another it is to be called _bourgeois_."

"And ain't you?"

"We are not. I suppose your Marx didn't know the difference, although he is said to have married well, but _bourgeois_ for centuries in Europe had meant middle-cla.s.s. Just that and nothing more. Marx had no right to pervert an honest historic old word into something so different and so obnoxious."

"To Marx all capitalists were in the same cla.s.s. I suppose what you mean is that you society folks call yourselves aristocrats, even when you have less capital than some of them that can't get in."

"Sure thing. Take it from me."

He gazed at her astounded, and once more had recourse to his rather heavy sarcasm.

"Even when they use slang."

"Oh, we're never afraid to--like lots of the middle-cla.s.s--bourgeois.

Too sure of ourselves to care a hang what any one thinks of us."

Alexina came hastily to the rescue, for a dull glow was kindling in Mr.

Kirkpatrick's small sharp eyes. She didn't mind baiting him a little, but as he was in a way her guest he must be protected from the naughtiness of Aileen and the insolence of Sibyl Bascom, who had taken a cigarette from a gold bejeweled case that dangled from her wrist and was asking him for a light. He gave her measure for measure, for he lifted his heavy boot and struck a match on the sole.

"You must not be too hard on us, Mr. Kirkpatrick." Alexina upreared and leaned against the high back of her chair with a sweet and gracious dignity, "We are really a pack of ignoramuses, full of prejudices, which, however, we would get rid of if we knew how. We are hoping everything from these lessons."

"Do _you_ smoke?"

"No, I don't happen to like the taste of tobacco, but I quite approve of my friends smoking--unless they smoke their nerves out by the roots, as Miss Lawton does. Don't give her a light. But I'm sure you smoke.

I'll get you a cigar."

She pinched Aileen, glared at Sibyl, and left the room.

II

Mortimer was smoking furiously, trying to concentrate his mind on the evening paper.

"Give me a cigar, Morty dear."