The Web of Life Part 19

Sommers accepted gratefully the concession she made to his unsocial mood.

The ravine path revealed unexpected wildness and freshness. The peace of twilight had already descended there. Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k strolled on, apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting between them and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm of the occasion, and, content with evading the chattering crowd, refrained from all strenuous discussion. This happy, well-bred, contented woman, full of vitality and interest, soothed all asperities. She laid him in subtle subjection to her.

So they chatted of the trivial things that must be crossed and explored before understanding can come. When they neared the lake, the sun had sunk so far that the beach was one long, dark strip of shade. The little waves lapped coolly along the breakwaters. They continued their stroll, walking easily on the hard sand, each unwilling to break the moment of perfect adjustment. Finally the girl confessed her fatigue, and sat down beside a breakwater, throwing off her hat, and pushing her hair away from her temples. She looked up at the man and smiled. 'You see,' she seemed to say, 'I can meet you on your own ground, and the world is very beautiful when one gets away, when one gets away!'

"Why did you refuse to go abroad with Uncle Brome?" she asked suddenly. She was looking out idly across the lake, but something in her voice puzzled Sommers.

"I didn't want to go."

"Chicago fascinates you already!"

"There were more reasons than one," he answered, after a moment's hesitation, as if he could trust himself no farther. The girl smiled a bit, quite to herself. Her throat palpitated a little, and then she turned her head.

"Tell me about the cases. Are they so interesting?"

"There is one curious case," the young doctor responded with masculine literalness. "It's hardly a case, but an affair I have mixed myself up with. Do you remember the night of the dinner at your house when Lindsay was there? The evening before I had been at the Paysons' dance, and when I returned there was an emergency case just brought to the hospital. They had telephoned for me, but had missed me. Well, the fellow was a drunken brute that had been shot a number of times. His wife was with him."

Sommers paused, finding now that he had started on his tale that it was difficult to bring out his point, to make this girl understand the significance of it, and the reason why he told it to her. She was attentive, but he thought she was a trifle bored. Soon he began again and went over all the steps of the affair.

"You see," he concluded, "I was morally certain that, if the operation succeeded, the fellow would be worse than useless in this world. Now it's coming true. Of course _I_ have no responsibility; I did what any other doctor should have done, I suppose; and, if it had been an ordinary hospital case, I don't suppose that I should have thought twice about it.

But you see that I--this woman has got her load of misery saddled on her, perhaps for life, and partly through me."

"I think she did right," the girl responded quickly, looking at the case from an entirely different side.

"I am not sure of that," Sommers retorted brusquely.

"What kind of a woman is she?" the girl inquired with interest, ignoring his last remark.

"I don't think I could make you understand her. I don't myself now."

"Is she pretty?"

"I don't know. She makes you see her always."

The girl moved as if the evening wind had touched her, and put on her hat.

"She's a desperately literal woman, primitive, the kind you never meet--well, out here. She has a thirst for happiness, and doesn't get a drop."

"She must be common, or she wouldn't have married that man," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k commented in a hard tone. She rose, and without discussion they took the path that led along the bluff to the cottages.

"I didn't think so," the doctor answered positively. "And if you knew her, you wouldn't think so."

After a moment he said tentatively, "I wish you could meet her."

"I should be glad to," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k replied sweetly, but without interest.

Sommers realized the instant he had spoken that he had made a mistake, that his idea was a purely conventional one. The two women could have nothing but their s.e.x in common, and that common possession was as likely to be a ground for difference as for agreement. It was always useless to bring two people of different cla.s.ses together. Three generations back the families of these two women were probably on the same level of society. And, as woman to woman, the schoolteacher, who travelled the dreary path between the dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beauty as this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, to ignore the present facts. Evidently Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k had followed the same line of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly to Mrs.

Preston.

"Those people--teachers--have their own clubs and society. Mrs. Bannerton was a teacher in the schools before she was married. Do you know Mrs.

Bannerton?"

"I have met Mrs. Bannerton," Sommers answered indifferently.

He was annoyed at the trivial insertion of Mrs. Bannerton into the conversation. He had failed to make Mrs. Preston's story appear important, or even interesting, and the girl by his side had shown him delicately that he was a bore. They walked more rapidly in the gathering twilight. The sun had sunk behind the trees, and the ravine below their path was gloomy. The mood of the day had changed, and he was sorry--for everything. It was a petty matter--it was always some petty thing--that came in between them. He longed to recall the moment on the beach when she had asked him, with a flicker of a smile upon her face, why he had decided to remain in Chicago.

But they were strangers to each other now,--hopelessly strangers,--and the worst of it was that they both knew it.

There was a large house party at the Hitchc.o.c.k cottage. The Porters and the Lindsays, with other guests, were there for the holidays of the Fourth, and some more people came in for dinner. The men who had arrived on the late trains brought more news of the strike: the Illinois Central was tied up, the Rock Island service was crippled, and there were reports that the Northwestern men were going out _en ma.s.se_ on the morrow. The younger people took the matter gayly, as an opportune occasion for an extended lark. The older men discussed the strike from all sides, and looked grave.

Over the cigars the general att.i.tude toward the situation came out strongly: the strikers were rash fools; they'd find that out in a few weeks. They could do a great deal of harm under their dangerous leaders, but, if need be, the courts, the state, the federal government, would be invoked for aid. Law and order and private rights must be respected. The men said these things ponderously, with the conviction that they were reciting a holy creed of eternal right. They were men of experience, who had never questioned the worth of the society in which they were privileged to live. They knew each other, and they knew life, and at the bottom it was as useless to kick against the laws of society as to interfere with the laws of nature. Besides, it was all very good--a fair enough field for any one.

Sommers was excited by the reports. It made him restless to be lolling here outside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lake under the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, and finally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the counsel for a large railroad.

"Who is that raw youth?" old Boardman asked Porter, when the younger men joined the ladies on the veranda.

"Some protege of Alec's," Brome Porter replied. "Son of an old friend--fresh chap."

"I am afraid our young friend is not going to turn out well," Dr. Lindsay, who had overheard the discussion, added in a distressed tone. "I have done what I can for him, but he is very opinionated and green--yes, very green.

Pity--he is a clever fellow, one of the cleverest young surgeons in the city."

"He talks about what he doesn't _know_," Boardman p.r.o.nounced sententiously. "When he's lived with decent folks a little longer, he'll get some sense knocked into his puppy head, maybe."

"Maybe," Brome Porter a.s.sented, dismissing this crude, raw, green, ignorant young man with a contemptuous grunt.

Outside on the brick terrace the younger people had gathered in a circle and were discussing the polo match. Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's clear, mocking voice could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon.

The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker Hitchc.o.c.k came to his rescue.

"I say, Lou, it's absurd to compare us with the teams east. We haven't the stable. Who ever heard of playing with two ponies?"

He appealed to Sommers, who happened to be seated next him.

"Steve Bayliss buys ponies by the carload and takes his pick. You can't play polo without good ponies, can you?"

"I don't know," Sommers answered indifferently.

He was looking at the lights along the sh.o.r.e, and contriving some excuse to cut short his visit. It was clear that he was uncomfortably out of his element in the chattering circle. He was too dull to add joy to such a gathering, and he got little joy from it. And he was feverishly anxious to be doing something, to put his hand to some plough--to escape the perpetual irritation of talk.

The chatter went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach, Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talked admiringly of the manner in which the general managers had taken hold of the strike.

"Most of them are from the ranks, you know," he said, "fought their way up to the head, just as any one of those fellows could if he had the ability, and they _know_ what they're doing."

"There is no one so bitter, so arrogant, so proud as your son of a peasant who has got the upper hand," Sommers commented philosophically.

"The son of a peasant?" Lindsay repeated, bewildered.

"Yes, that's what our money-makers are,--from the soil, from the ma.s.ses.

And when they feel their power, they use it worse than the most arrogant aristocrats. Of course the strikers are all wrong, poor fools!" he hastened to add. "But they are not as bad as the others, as _those who have_.

The men will be licked fast enough, and licked badly. They always will be.

But it is a brutal game, a brutal game, this business success,--a good deal worse than war, where you line up in the open at least."