The Gray Dawn

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Gray Dawn

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"Aren't these early morning hours perfect? Isn't this glorious sunshine?"
she greeted him.

As a matter of fact Mrs. Morrell seldom rose before noon, and detested
early morning hours and glorious sunshine. She was inclined to consider the
usual remarks in their praise as sheer affectation. But she adored fires,
and often went to them when they promised well enough. Sometimes she
attended in company with certain of her men friends; and sometimes alone,
cloaked as a man. She liked the destruction and stimulation of them. She
had been to the fire just extinguished, and seeing Keith in the garden, had
put on her fluffiest and gone out to him. It was time this most attractive
young man next door paid her more attention.

"How does the hero of the fire survive?" she asked him archly.

"Hero?"

"Don't pretend ignorance. Charles told me all about it. He heard your tale
at the Monumental."

"It's hardly heroism to get out of a scrape the best way possible."

"It's heroic to save lives, I think; but especially heroic to keep your
head in an emergency."

"Mr. Morrell all right?" asked Keith, to change the subject.

"He is sleeping off the fire--and the after effects. You men need watching
every minute--even when we think you must be in danger of your lives."

She laughed and clipped a few flowers at random.

"Have you been moving furniture all these days? We've seen nothing of you.
I thought we were going to have some music. I do my little five-finger
exercises all by myself and nobody knows but I am playing Beethoven. You
ought in Christian charity to help me out--whether you want to or not. What
do you think of our garden? Don't you adore flowers?"

"No, I don't believe I do," replied Keith bluntly. "I like to see a pretty
woman amongst 'em," he went on gallantly, "they set her off. It's like
dresses. No good to show me pretty frocks--unless they're filled."

"La! You are so clever; at times I'm really afraid of you," said she.

She went on tossing a few blooms into her basket. Under the stimulus of the
fire she had acted on impulse in going out into the garden. She realized it
as perhaps a mistake. Keith's early morning freshness and fitness made her
feel less sure of herself than usual. She had an uneasy impression that she
was not at her best, and this reacted on her ability to exercise her usual
magnetism. In fact, Keith, the least observant of men in such things, could
not avoid noticing her rather second-hand looking skin, and that her
features were more pronounced than he had thought.

"Do come over this evening for some music," she begged. "You can take a nap
this afternoon, and you can go home early."

Keith had been just a little uneasy over this second interview with Mrs.
Morrell. His straightforward nature was inclined to look back on the
impression she had made on him at the supper party with a half-guilty sense
of some sort of vague disloyalty he could not formulate. Now he felt much
satisfied with himself, and quite relieved. Therefore, he accepted.

"I shall be very glad to," said he.

At breakfast, which was rather late, he told Nan of the meeting and the
invitation. Nan's clear lines, fresh creamy skin, bright young eyes, looked
more than usually attractive to him.

"Perhaps she _can_ play," he said. "Let's go find out. And you must wear
your prettiest gown; I'm proud of my wife, and I want her to look her very
best."

A little later he remarked:

"I wonder if she isn't considerably older than Morrell."

XVI

When he had at last reached downtown after his late breakfast, Keith found
it in a fair turmoil. Knots of men stood everywhere arguing, sometimes very
heatedly. Eureka members were openly expressing their anger over what they
called Taylor's "dirty trick" in putting hirelings on the brakes, men who
did not belong to the Monumental organization at all. If it had not been
for that the Monumentals could never have "sucked" at all. On the other
hand, the Monumentals and their friends were vehemently asserting that they
were well within their rights. Fists were brandished. Several fights
started, but were stopped before they had become serious.

Keith avoided these storm centres, waving a friendly hand, but smilingly
refusing to be drawn in. Near the Merchants' Exchange, however, he came on
a quieter, attentive group, in the centre of which stood Calhoun Bennett.
The Southerner's head was thrown back haughtily, but he was listening with
entire courtesy to a violent harangue from a burly, red-faced man in rough
clothes.

"And I tell you that sort of a trick won't go down with nobody, and the
story of why you were washed won't wash itself. It's too thin."

"I have the honah, suh," said Bennett formally, "to info'm yo' that yo' do
not know what yo' are talkin' about."

His silken tones apparently enraged the man.

"You silk-stockinged----of a----!" said he.

Without haste Calhoun Bennett rapped the man across the face with his light
rattan cane. Venting a howl of rage, the Eureka partisan leaped forward.
Calhoun Bennett, quick as a flash, drew a small derringer and fired; and
the man went down in a heap. Superbly nonchalant, Bennett, without a glance
at his victim, turned away, the ring of spectators parting to let him
through. He saw Keith, and at once joined him, drawing the young man's arm
through his own. Keith, looking back, saw the man already sitting up,
feeling his shoulder and cursing vigorously.

Bennett was fairly radiating rage, which, however, he managed to suppress
beneath a well-bred exterior calm.

"These hounds, suh," he told Keith, "profess not to believe us, suh! They
profess, suh, that our explanation of how we were washed is a fabrication.
You will oblige me, suh, by profferin' yo' personal testimony in the case."

He faced Keith resolutely toward the Eureka engine house. Keith spared a
thought to wonder what he was being let in for by this handsome young fire-
eater, but he went along unprotesting.

Around the Eureka engine house was a big crowd of men. These fell silent as
Bennett and Keith approached. The Eurekas represented quite a different
social order from the Monumentals. Its membership was recruited from those
who in the East had been small farmers, artisans, or workingmen in the more
skilled trades; independent, plain, rather rough, thoroughly democratic, a
trifle contemptuous of "silk stockings," outspoken, with little heed for
niceties of etiquette or conduct. Bennett pushed his way through them to
where stood Carter, the chief, and several of the more influential. Keith,
looking at them, met their eyes directed squarely into his. They were
steady, clear-looking, solid, rather coarse-grained, grave men.

"I have brought Mr. Keith here, who was an eyewitness, to give his
testimony as to the events of last evenin'," said Bennett formally.

Keith told his story. It was received in a blank noncommittal silence. The
men all looked at him steadily, and said nothing. Somehow, he was
impressed. This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of
words--it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself
and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to realities,
who have _done_ things in the world. Keith felt himself to be better
educated, to own a better brain, to have a wider outlook, to be possessed,
in short, of all the advantages of superiority. He had never mingled with
rough men, and he had always looked down on them. In this attitude was no
condescension and no priggishness, Now he felt, somehow, that the best of
these men had something that he had not suspected, some force of character
that raised them above his previous conception. They might be more than
mere "filling" in a city's population; they might well come to be an
element to be reckoned with.

When he had quite finished his story, there ensued a slight pause. Then
said Carter:

"We believe Mr. Keith. If Mr. Ward and Frank Munro were there, of course
there can be no doubt." Somehow Keith could not resent the implication; it
was too impersonally delivered. Carter went on with cold formality and
emphasis; "Mr. Keith had a very narrow escape. It was lucky for him that
your hired men had 'sucked' your waterbox. In view of that we can, of
course, no longer regret the fact."

"It was a dirty trick just the same!" growled a voice out of the crowd.

Carter turned a deliberate look in that direction, and nothing more was
said. Bennett ignored the interruption, bowed frigidly, and turned away.
The Eureka leaders nodded. In dead silence Keith and Bennett withdrew.

"That settles _that_!" observed Bennett, when at a little distance. "A lot
of cheap shopkeepers! It makes me disgusted every time I have anythin' to
do with them!"

As they walked away, one of the hangers-on of the police court approached,
touching his hat.

"For you, Mr. Bennett," he said most respectfully, proffering a paper.

"Me?" observed Bennett, surprised. He unfolded the paper, glanced at it,
and laughed. "I'm arrested for wingin' that 'shoulder-striker' up the
street a while back," he told Keith.

"Anything I can do?" asked Keith anxiously.

"Not a thing, thank you. There'll be no trouble at all--just a little
nuisance. May call you for a witness later."

He went away with the officer, but shortly after Keith saw him on the
street again. The matter had been easily arranged.

Keith went to his office. In spite of himself he could not entirely take
Bennett's point of view. Several of the men at Eureka headquarters looked
interesting--he would like to know them--perhaps more than interesting, the
potentiality of a reasoning and directed power.

XVII

The afternoon nap suggested by Mrs. Morrell was not enjoyed, and Keith
returned home feeling pretty tired and inclined to a quiet evening. Nan had
to remind him of his engagement.

"Oh, let's send a note over by Wing," he said, a little crossly. "I don't
feel like making an effort to-night."

But Nan's convention could not approve of anything quite so radically a
last-minute decision.

"It's a little late in the day for that," she pointed out. "She may have
stayed in just to see us. We can leave early."

Keith went, grumbling. They found Mrs. Morrell in full evening dress,
showing her neck and shoulders, which were her best points, for she was
full bosomed and rounded without losing firmness of flesh. Nan was a trifle
taken back at this gorgeousness, for she had not dressed. Keith, with his
usual directness, made no secret of pretending to be utterly overwhelmed.

"I didn't know we were expected to dress for a real concert with flowers!"
he cried, laughing.

Mrs. Morrell shrugged her fine shoulders indifferently.

"This old rag!" she said. "Don't let that bother you. I always like to put
on something cool for the evening. It's such a relief."

It developed that Morrell had an engagement, and could not stay.

"He was so disappointed," purred Mrs. Morrell.

She was all eager for the music, brushing aside this and other
preliminaries.

"You play, sing?" she asked Nan. "What a pity! I'm afraid you're going to
be terribly bored."

She turned instantly to Keith, hurrying him to the piano, giving the
impression of being too eager to wait--almost the eagerness of a drunkard
in the presence of drink. And this in turn conveyed a vibrating feeling of
magnetism, of temperament under restraint, of possibilities veiled. The
impact struck Keith's responsive nature full. He waked up, approached the
piano with reviving interest. She struck idle chords and flashed at him
over her shoulder a brilliant smile.

"What shall it be?" she demanded, still with the undercurrent of eagerness.
"You choose--a man's song--something soulful. I'm just in the mood."

"Do you know the 'Bedouin Love Song?'" he inquired.

"The 'Bedouin Love Song?' No--I'm afraid not. We are so far out of the
world."

"It's a new thing. It goes like this."

He hummed the air, and she followed it hesitatingly, feeling out the
accompaniment. Mrs. Morrell knew her instrument and had a quick ear.
Occasionally Keith leaned over her shoulder to strike for her an elusive
chord or modulation. In so doing he had to press close, and for all his
honest absorption in the matter at hand, could not help becoming aware of
her subtle perfume, the shine of her flesh, and the brightness of her crown
of hair.

"You play it," she said suddenly.

But he disclaimed the ability.

"I don't know it any better than you do, and you improvise wonderfully."

They became entirely absorbed in this most fascinating of tasks, the
working out little by little of a complicated accompaniment.

"There!" she cried gayly at last. "I believe I have it. Let's try."

Keith had a strong smooth baritone, not too well trained, but free from
glaring faults and mannerisms. It filled the little drawing-room ringingly.
He liked the song, and he sang it with fire and a certain defiance that
suited it. At its conclusion Mrs. Morrell sprang to her feet, breathing
quickly, her usual hard, quick artificiality of manner quite melted.

"It's wonderful!" she cried. "It lifts one right up! It makes me feel I'd
run away----" She checked herself abruptly, and turned to where Nan sat in
an armchair outside the circle of light, "Don't you just _adore_ it?" she
asked in a more restrained manner, and turned back to Keith, who was
standing a little flushed and excited by the song, "You have just the voice
for it--with that vibrating deep quality." She reseated herself at the
piano and struck several loud chords. Under cover of them she added, half
under her breath, as though to herself, but distinctly audible to the man
at her shoulder; "Luck for us all that you are already taken."

Keith would have been no more than human if he had not followed this cue
with a look. She did not lower her eyes, but gave him back his gaze
directly. It was as though some secret understanding sprang up between
them, though Keith,--in half-angry confusion, could not have analyzed it.

After this they compared notes until they found several songs they both
knew. Mrs. Morrell brushed aside Keith's suggestion that she herself should
sing, but she did it in a way that left the implication that he was the
important one vocally.

"No, no! I've been starved too long. I'm as tired of my little reed of a
voice as of the tinkle of a musical box."

The close of the evening was brought about only by the return of Morrell
from his engagement. Keith had utterly forgotten his fatigue, and was
tingling with the enthusiasm to which his nature always rose under
stimulus. The Englishman, very self-contained, clean-cut, incisive, brought
a new atmosphere. He was cordial and polite, but not expansive. Keith came
down from the clouds. He remembered, with compunction, Nan sitting in the
armchair, the lateness of the hour, his own fatigue.

"You should hear Mr. Keith's new song, Charley," said Mrs, Morrell. "It's
the most wonderful thing! The 'Bedouin Love Song,' You must surely sing it
at the Firemen's Ball. It will make a great hit. No, you surely must. With
a voice like yours it is selfish not to use it for the benefit of all.
Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Keith?"

"I'll sing it, if you will play my accompaniment," said Keith.

On their way home Keith's enthusiasm bubbled up again.

"Isn't it great luck to find somebody to practise with?" he cried--
"Unexpected luck in a place like this! I wish you cared for music."

"Oh, I do," said Nan. "I love it. But I just can't do it, that's all."

"Did you like it to-night?"

"I liked it when you really _sang_" replied Nan with a little yawn, "but it
always took you such a time to get at it."

A short silence fell.

"Are you really going to sing at the Firemen's Ball?" she asked curiously.

"I haven't been asked yet," he reminded her. "Don't you think it a good
idea?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Nan, but her voice had a little edge. Keith felt
it, and made the usual masculine blunder. He stopped short, thunderstruck
at a new idea.

"Why, Nan," he cried reproachfully, "I don't believe you like her!"

"Like her!" she flashed back, her anger leaping to unreasonable
proportions--"that old frump!"

No sooner had the door closed after them than Morrell's conventional smile
faded, and his countenance fell into its usual hard, cold impassivity.

"Well, what is the game there?" he demanded.

"There is no game," she replied indifferently.

"There is very little money there, I warn you," he persisted.

She turned on him with sudden fury.

"Oh, shut up!" she cried. "I know my own business!"

"And I know mine," he told her, slowly and dangerously. "And I warn you to
go slow unless I give the word."

She stared at him a moment, and he stared back. Then, quite deliberately,
she walked over to him until her breast almost touched him. Her eyes were
half closed, and a little smile parted her full lips.

"Charley," she drawled wickedly, "I warn _you_ to go slow. And I warn you
not to interfere with me--or I might interfere with you!"

Morrell shrugged his shoulders, and turned away with an assumption of
indifference.

"Please yourself. But I can't afford a scandal just now."

"_You_ can't afford a _scandal!_" she cried, and laughed hardly.

"Not just now," he repeated.

XVIII

Perhaps this unwise antagonizing by her husband, perhaps the idleness with
which the well-to-do woman was afflicted, perhaps a genuine liking for
Keith, gave Mrs. Morrell just the impulse needed. At any rate, she used the
common bond of music to bring him much into her company. This was not a
difficult matter. Keith was extravagantly fond of just this sort of
experimental amateur excursions into lighter music, and he liked Mrs.
Morrell. She was a good sort, straightforward and honest and direct, no
nonsense in her, but she knew her way about, and a man could have a sort of
pleasing, harmless flirtation to which she knew how to play up. There was
not, nor could there be--in Keith's mind--any harm in their relations. Nan
was the woman for him; but that didn't mean that he was never to see
anybody else, or that other women might not--of course in unessential and
superficial ways--answer some of his varied needs.

Mrs. Morrell was skilful at keeping up his interest, and she was equally
skilful in gradually excluding Nan. This was not difficult, for Nan was
secretly bored by the eternal practising, and repelled by Mrs. Morrell's
efforts to be fascinating. She saw them plainly enough, but was at first
merely amused and faintly disgusted, for she was proud enough to believe
absolutely that such crude methods could have no effect on Milton,
overlooking the fact that the crudities of women never appear as plainly to
a man as they do to another woman. For a woman is in the know. At first she
offered one excuse or another, in an attempt to be both polite and
plausible. She much preferred a book at home, or a whole free evening to
work at making her house attractive. Later, Keith got into the habit of
taking her attitude for granted.

"I promised to run over to the Morrells' this evening," he would say, "More
music. Of course you won't care to come. You won't be lonely? I won't be
gone late."

"Of course not," she laughed. "I'm thankful for the chance to get through
with the blue room."

Nevertheless, after a time she began to experience a faint, unreasonable
resentment; and Keith an equally faint, equally unreasonable feeling of
guilt.

Left to itself this situation would, therefore, have righted itself, but
Mrs. Morrell was keen enough to give it the required directing touches:

"Too bad we can't tear your wife away from her house and garden."

"If you only had some one to practise with regularly at home! Your voice
ought to be systematically cultivated. It is wonderful!"

And later:

"You ought not to come here so much, I suppose--" rather doubtfully, "Any
sort of practice and accompaniment--even my poor efforts--does you so much
good! You or I would understand perfectly, but it is sometimes so difficult
for the inexperienced domestic type to comprehend! An older woman who
understands men knows--but come, we must sing that once more."

The effect of these and a thousand similar speeches injected apparently at
random here and there in the tide of other things was at once to intensify
Keith's vague feeling of guilt, and to put it in the light somehow of an
injustice to himself. He had an unformulated notion that if Nan would or
could only understand the situation and be a good fellow that every one
would be happy; but as she was a mere woman, with a woman's prejudices,
this was impossible. It was absurd to expect him to give up his music just
because she wanted to be different! He had really nothing whatever to
conceal; and yet it actually seemed that difficulty and concealment would
be necessary if this sort of unspoken reproach were kept up. Women were so
confoundedly single-minded!

And as the normal, healthy, non-introspective male tends to avoid
discomfort, even of his own making, it thus came about that Keith spent
less and less time at home. He did not explain to himself why. It was
certainly no lessening of his affection for Nan. Only he felt absolutely
sure of her, and the mental situation sketched above left him more open to
the lure of downtown, which to any live man was in those days especially
great. Every evening the "fellows" got together, jawed things over, played
pool, had a drink or so, wandered from one place to another, looked with
the vivid interest of the young and able-bodied on the seething, colourful,
vital life of the new community. It was all harmless and mighty pleasant.
Keith argued that he was "establishing connections" and meeting men who
could do his profession good, which was more or less true; but it took him
from home evenings.

Nan, at first, quite innocently played into his hands. She really preferred
to stay at home rather than be bored at the Morrells'. Later, when this
tradition had been established, she began to be disturbed, not by any
suspicion that Milton's interest was straying, but by a feeling of neglect.
She was hurt. And little by little, in spite of herself, a jealousy of the
woman next door began to tinge her solitude. Her nature was too noble and
generous to harbour such a sentiment without a struggle. She blamed herself
for unworthy and wretched jealousy, and yet she could not help herself.
Often, especially at first, Keith in an impulse would throw over his plans,
and ask her to go to the theatre or a concert, of which there were many and
excellent. She generally declined, not because she did not want to go, but
because of that impelling desire, universal in the feminine soul, to be a
little wooed to it, to be compelled by gentle persuasion that should at
once make up for the past and be an earnest for the future. Only Keith took
her refusal at its face value. Nan was lonely and hurt.

Her refusals to respond to his rather spasmodic attempts to be nice to her
were adopted by Keith's subconscious needs for comfort. If she didn't want
to see anything of life, she shouldn't expect him to bury himself. His
restless mind gradually adopted the fiction persistently held before him by
Mrs. Morrell that his wife was indeed a domestic little body, fond only of
her home and garden. As soon as he had hypnotized himself into the full
acceptance of this, he felt much happier, His uneasiness fell from him, and
he continued life with zest. If any one had told him that he was neglecting
Nan, he probably would have been surprised. They were busy; they met
amicably; there were no reproaches; they managed to get about and enjoy
things together quite a lot.

The basis for the latter illusion rested on the Sunday excursions and
picnics. Both the Keiths always attended them. There was invariably the
same crowd--the Morrells; Dick Blatchford, the contractor, and his fat,
coarse-grained, good-natured Irish wife; Calhoun Bennett; Ben Sansome:
Sally Warner, a dashing grass widow, whose unknown elderly husband seemed
to be always away "at the mines"; Teeny McFarlane, small, dainty, precise,
blond, exquisite, cool, with very self-possessed manners and decided ways,
but with the capacity for occasionally and with deliberation outdoing the
worst of them, about whom were whispered furtive things the rumour of which
died before her armoured front; her husband, a fat, jolly, round-faced,
somewhat pop-eyed man who adored her and was absolutely ignorant of one
side of her. These and a sprinkling of "fast" youths made the party.
Sometimes the celebrated Sam Brannan went along, loud, coarse, shrewd, bull
voiced, kindly when not crossed, unscrupulous, dictatorial, and
overbearing, They all got to know each other very well and to be very free
in one another's society,

The usual procedure was to drive in buggies, sometimes to the beach,
sometimes down the peninsula, starting rather early, and staying out all
day. Occasionally rather elaborate lunches were brought, with servants to
spread them; but the usual custom was to stop at one of the numerous road
houses. No man drove, walked, or talked with his own wife; nevertheless,
these affairs though rowdy, noisy, and "fast" enough, were essentially
harmless. The respectable members of the community were sufficiently
shocked, however. Gay dresses, gay laughter, gay behaviour, gay scorn of
convention, above all, the resort to the mysterious naughty road houses
were enough. It must be confessed that at times things seemed to go a bit
far; but Nan, who was at first bewildered and shocked, noticed that the
women did many things in public and nothing in private. As already her mind
and tolerance were adapting themselves to new things, she was able to
accept it all philosophically as part of a new phase of life.

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