Part 27 (1/2)
”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 a.s.sume the role 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 skysc.r.a.per 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?”