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IF TODAY BE SWEET\IF TODAY BE
SWEET
EDNAH AIKEN
Author of “The Hinges of Custom.”
“Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday
Why fret about them if today be sweet.”
Omar Khayyam
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
x923Copyright, 1923,
By EDNAH AIKEN
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORKDAVID STARR JORDAN .
World-citizen, patriot, friend of many and of
mine, this book is humbly and proudly inscribed


CONTENTS
CHAPTIB	PAGE
I	The Eyes of O'Ryan..................i
II	Monk’s Clothing.....................9
III	Frascati...........................25
IV	Celebrations.......................34
V	A New Friend.......................40
VI	The Battle Hymn....................52
VII	Richard..........................
VIII	If Today be Sweet..................62
IX	Mushrooms and Democracy ....	69
X	Beatrix ...........................76
XI	A Summer Pilot.....................81
XII Maddalena...............- ....	85
XIII	An Embassy of Love.................93
XIV	Rendezvous........................103
XV	Father and Son....................109
XVI	A Summons........................
XVII	For Lisa..........................120
XVIII	Thumbscrews.......................127
XIX	Hamilton..........................132
XX	Traps.............................13&CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER
XXI	The Price...........................x45
XXII	Opportunity.........................I5I
XXIII	Vergissmeinnicht....................160
XXIV	The Vintage Festival...............17°
XXV	The People’s Voice..................176
XXVI	Followers of the Fruit..............183
XXVII	Wild Rose...........................198
XXVIII	Dry Creek...........................208
XXIX	The Still.........................  215
XXX	Loving Cup..........................223
XXXI	Grapes of Wrath.....................231
XXXII	Alibi...............................238
XXXIII	Crossed Wires.......................247
XXXIV	The Test............................255
XXXV	Trampled Vineyards..................262
XXXVI	Forever.............................268IF TODAY BE SWEET/

i
\IF TODAY BE SWEET
CHAPTER I
THE EYES OF o’RYAN
THE long distance wire between Sacramento and
Napa was being held by two underlings of the
brewer boss, Bartholomew O’Ryan. From a
telephone booth in the state legislature Reed Wintermute,
husband of the temperance lecturer and lobbyist, was re-
porting to Dolan, messenger, secretary, slavey, nurse:
whom the friends of the brewer called the Eyes of
O’Ryan. For the boss was blind.
On the landing midway between the two floors of the
O’Ryan house, Dolan was painfully scribbling notes on
a pad, his drab, ageless face twisted into a frown. “The
wet lobby stampeded. Busch, and others, down with the
flu. Governor to recommend ratification of the national
dry amendment when he opens the legislature tomorrow.
Moral sentiment sweeping the Capitol. The four new
women representatives and Moise, leader of the drys, in
the saddle. One of the women down with the flu, was
coming to vote dry if she had to be brought to the Capitol
on a stretcher. All the plans of the wets childish, except
one: Roedel to be asked to give leadership, whitewashing
to the wets. Unless he consents, the battle is lost.
Many thought it lost at the last election when O’Ryan2
IF TODAY BE SWEET
had refused to spend money enough to send the right men
to the legislature.”
“Is that all?” quavered Dolan when the voice at the
other end finally paused. “Wait a minute.” He looked
over his notes. “Think I’d dass tell him half of it?
When are you coming down?”
“When it’s over. He told me to telephone. Oh, yes,
the drys need twenty more votes in the senate. They
expect twenty-two. In the house forty-one. They ex-
pect forty-six. The other twenty-six states have sent dry
members to their legislatures. Looks like a clean sweep.”
“Why didn’t you call him when he isn’t asleep? It’s
the hour of the nap! ”
“Let Cestella tell him,” sneered the distant voice.
“He’s not there yet? Flu?” whispered Dolan.
“His wife’s low. A baby. Third of the senate’s got
the flu, though.”
Dolan hung up the receiver and tore up his notes.
Above him a door opened. Mrs. O’Ryan crept out,
closing it with care. Drawing on her cheap cotton gloves,
she came down the stairs. Dolan raised troubled eyes to
her face.
“I heard papers rustling. It may have been the wind.”
Her tone was colorless and low. No one whispered in
that house. Hissing, the brewer called it.
“You didn’t go in?” murmured the slavey.
“He had trouble getting to sleep today. I heard him
tossing about.”
Soberly Dolan nodded, as though life itself were de-
pending on the integrity of that nap.
“If he should ask, I’m at my child labor committeeTHE EYES OF O’RYAN
3
meeting.” She moved towards the kitchen to give an
order to the cook. There had been too much salt on the
fish at noon for the master.
Dolan consulted his watch. A slight sound came from
the room above, of rustling papers. He crept up the
stairs, and stood crouching at the door. Inside there was
a creaking of bed-springs then again a stirring of
papers, as of newspapers fluttering to the floor. Noise-
lessly Dolan turned the knob and peered into the room.
Bolstered by immense, square, lace-bordered pillows,
the great, helpless head lay waiting for its eyes.
“Bad news today, Dolan?”
Dolan caught his breath, then faltered:	“It’s not
what you’d call good.”
“Tell me what was said. I’ll decide if it’s good or bad.
Who was it?”
“Mr. Wintermute, sir.”
O’Ryan forsook his pillows. “Wintermute! What
did he have to say?”
Dolan essayed another careful beginning. “It’s look-
ing the other way. But they can’t tell before it opens,
sir!”
“No editorializing, Dolan!”
“Yes, sir. It’s a bad habit of talking to myself when
I’m not thinking.”
“Be thinking, then. Is it a strong lobby? Hopeful?”
“Not very, sir.”
The storm did not break. But Dolan stood gripping
the bed end, his gaze on the staring, sightless eyes of his
chief.
“Why do you stand there, tongue-tied, like a dummy?4
IF TODAY BE SWEET
What did I take you off the streets for, to sit on the
news? You know where you’ll go if I turn you out.
Nobody else will have you. Park benches, and jailbird
friends! What did he say?”
“He said as they needed—somebody, a leader, to
whitewash, to galvanize,” stumbled Dolan.
“Go on! God in heaven!”
“The San Francisco men are solid,” Dolan brightened.
‘Which I knew. God Almighty! Give me a cork-
screw, Dolan!”
Dolan jumped towards the stand where rested an open
bottle of Old Crow.
“It’s open already, sir.”
“It’s you I wanted it for.”
“Sure and I’ve told you! It doesn’t look well, but it’s
not begun yet.”
“Take down some telegrams.”
Almost instantly, Dolan was sitting by the bedside, his
pencil poised for action. For several minutes it scraped
over the unglazed paper which O’Ryan’s nerves hated
but which his thrift prescribed. Then the bass voice
flagged, paused.
“Is Roedel up there?”
Dolan quaked.
“I asked if Roedel’s up there?”
“Mr. Wintermute did not say, sir.”
“It’ll ruin Roedel if it comes. Almost worth it, if
it’d trap the sanctimonious wine-seller, the immaculate
citizen. And it’d trap him, all right. Is Busch on
deck?”
“He has the flu,” croaked the raven.THE EYES OF O’RYAN
5
“Costella?” ,
“Not there yet, not the flu. It’s his wife. A baby,
sir.”
O’Ryan’s bellow was so loud that the slavey jumped,
dropping his pad.
“He’s still here, in Calistoga? Did he think a baby
wouldn’t keep? What do they think the county will do
when the nation goes dry? Where’ll their fine pickings
come from when nobody is buying grapes? Take off
my bed-shoes.”
Dolan had them off instantly.
“My shoes.”
“You’re not going out, sir? It’s fierce cold; driz-
zling.”
“I’m going,” thundered the boss, “to Sacramento. I’m
going to find out why they want to keep me here, to
muzzle me. If it’s any of Roedel’s doings, if it’s treach-
ery—” A fit of coughing strangled his oaths.
“Whiskey, sir?” Dolan was there with the glass.
“Put my shoes where I can reach them, I can lace
them. First order the car, then come back and dress
me.”
“Not the car, with that cough!” protested Dolan.
“I said tfie car!”
Dolan leaped for the shoes. They were placed within
reach of the brewer’s hand. Instantly he went on his
way to locate Martin, the chauffeur, who was holding
that job until the jack-of-all-trades could be taught to
fill it.
“And if you’ve any love for your ears, your job, you
won’t be .finding out on the way that you need gas, or6	IF TODAY BE SWEET
spares,” he cautioned. “He’s mad clear through, Ed
Martin!”
“He’ll sleep in Sacramento tonight,” returned Martin,
getting up reluctantly from the kitchen range where he
had been basking.
Dolan’s mood was black. “How’m I ever to get time
for that, too? If I’m not dressing the boss, or taking
down notes, or of a stormy day walking up and down
his room with him, or in the garden when it’s after being
fair, then I’m putting him to bed, or rubbing him, or
running his errands. Do you think I can ever learn it?”
Tragically he faced Martin.
“Sure you can.”
“Run it maybe, when everything goes all right. But
know what the matter is with its innards, when it
squawks, or won’t budge, with the boss sitting by me,
or worse, in the back seat where I could never turn to
answer him or we’d go bolting over a bluff? It’s ma-
chinery I don’t know nothing about. And no time to
learn it, Ed Martin!”
“Dolan!” The voice of O’Ryan came from above.
“Coming, sir!” The slavey scampered upstairs.
“Am I expected to dress myself? Give me a white
shirt. The brown suit; it’s thicker. Put several shirts
in my bag. Where in hell is my wife?”
“Her committee meeting, sir.”
“Leave a note for her. Tell her I’ve been called away
suddenly. And Dolan—”
“Yes, sir.”
“Send a wire to the hotel; a double bed and a cot.”THE EYES OF O’RYAN
7
“Martin, sir?”
“He can hustle when he gets there. He has the car to
fall back on. And Dolan—”
The ex-convict stopped at the door.
“Get Costella on the ’phone. Tell him he’s to go up
with me.”
It was not yet ten when the brewer’s car drew up in
front of the cheap Sacramento hotel where Costella a
week before had secured his room. Though the doctor
had assured him that the little wife was not dying, that
many women look like that and live, her anguished eyes
had followed him from Calistoga, goading him into a
sullen fury. Monosyllables only had the rebellious pas-
senger vouchsafed O’Ryan when at intervals during the
icy, interminable ride the boss had murmured:	“This
will ruin Roedel. Might as well empty his vats into Dry
Creek.”
Two minutes later, Dolan and O’Ryan were entering
the corridor of the hotel called by newspaper men, be-
cause of its strategic importance, the Capitol Annex.
O’Ryan’s fat white hand clutched his creature’s arm.
Martin was already on his way, it was supposed, in
search of a garage and a room, but the night was young,
and so was he. The boss was too tired to want his car
before ten the next morning. The car, the night, the
world was his.
As Dolan was inscribing in his neat, flowing hand the
name of his employer on the register, his eye fell on the
line immediately above. He stopped to whisper to
O’Ryan.IF TODAY BE SWEET
“He’s here.”
“Roedel?” For no other name had been mentioned
between Napa and Sacramento.
“Yes, and the boy. His son, Richard.”
“A bell-hop’ll take me to my room. Get over to the
Capitol and see who’s there. Tell them I’m here.
And fetch Wintermute.”
Dolan turned up his thin coat collar and went back
into the frosty streets.CHAPTER II
monk’s clothing
THE senate chamber was filled to overflowing for
the governor’s speech. During its reading Roe-
del, as he sat by his son’s side, watched the
blank, colorless face of the blind brewer, O’Ryan, who,
but for his own determined opposition, might himself at
one time have been governor of the western state, and
later, senator from their mutual county. Not once did
the pallid mask slip, not even when the unctuous, pater-
nal voice speaking from the platform hesitated before
the word “ratification.”
There was a sudden hush, as though the senate cham-
ber had caught its breath. For it was this word which
had packed the room, in spite of the inside information
which the members of the wet lobby had been diligently
circulating. They had insisted for days that the gover-
nor was going to sidestep the issue. Roedel, glancing
across the aisle, saw the fat, white hands of the boss
gripping his soft felt hat into a pulp.
“Believing,” read the governor, his tone taking on the
softness of a benediction, “that the welfare of every
human being will be protected by the total extinction of
the liquor traffic, I hope that California will have the
proud distinction of being one of the early states to
vote approval of the amendment.”
Although the conciliatory, mellow voice was still dron-
910
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ing along, the message to the majority was finished.
The aisles began at once to clear, the outer halls to con-
gest with whispering groups. The wet lobby had im-
mediately withdrawn to plan the hopeless defense.
Turning to his son Richard, Roedel observed:	“Soon
the flags of personal liberty will begin to wave. There’s
the San Francisco delegation getting ready.”
Rich growled out his disapprobation. “The kind of
men we have to fight for us! Solid ivory!”
Roedel controlled a satisfied smile. Little mother Emi-
lie had urged him not to carry Rich away from the
opening days of his second junior semester. Would he
have learned anything those few days at college equal to
this experience? Baseball, girls and poetry at Berke-
ley; here, a fresh lesson every minute!
Last evening, when the delegation of wine and liquor
men had waited on him at the hotel, while pretending
to listen to their plea for “his able direction,” his mind
was occupied with the kewpie-crouched figure on the
hotel bed; with Rich, who was drinking up experience.
Tell him all this, he could, afterwards, yes, but give it
to him, make him believe it, make him understand why
his father would sacrifice his life’s work, his vineyard,
his stocked cellar, rather than lead a hopeless fight
against prohibition, with Schimmel and O’Ryan as part-
ners? Never. Didn’t he know that Rich for some time
had been disapproving, thinking him spineless, senescent?
This was a rich lesson in democracy!
Amusing, now, to watch the youth’s unconcealed dis-
gust as Sims essayed the role of contortionist, or street
screamer, in his frantic efforts to postpone the issue. AsMONK’S CLOTHING
11
easily might he attempt to withstand an avalanche!
Rich leaned over the arm of his chair to demand ex-
citedly why the fellow didn’t get his facts straight. He
knew he wasn’t getting them straight? What in hades—
clouding the issue? Not a fool, then, but plain knave.
Why didn’t the wets have an honest representative? He
was ashamed, he declared, to be with the wet lobby,
with men like that Schimmel with the shifty gaze, with
O’Ryan, and Busch, and Sims. Why didn’t their side
launch an offensive? Didn’t they have any offensive to
launch? No plan at all? Was that the kind of cam-
paign they had been insisting that his father should lead?
He’d have been ashamed to see a father of his in that
gang!
George Roedel did not have to guard his gratified
amusement, for Rich had turned his scowling, handsome
face towards Heggerty of Modoc county, who had flung
himself into the defense with a plea for personal liberty.
A few minutes later Roedel touched his son’s arm.
“Lean over this way a bit, Rich. Do we know that
girl? In the balcony, the one with the red hair. Her
face has been bothering me.”
Richard arched his long back over the arm of the chair.
“The one with her hat off, between two grayheads,”
directed Roedel.
“Her name’s Wintermute, the daughter of the tem-
perance female. She’s in my class at Berkeley. You
couldn’t have met her. They class us with the devil, with
the saloon bunch—” His attention was again hypno-
tized by the senator from Modoc.
A few minutes later a bored Richard turned to share12
IF TODAY BE SWEET
his disgust with his father, and followed the vineyardist’s
puzzled stare at the girl in the balcony. Color, that
instant flooding her cheeks, gave her a vivid, startling
distinction. The bronze-framed face had flamed into
passionate partisanship. So might Catherine of Sienna
have glowed in her transfiguration. So might Jeanne
d’Arc have shone at Orleans.
As though begrudging his discovery, Rich admitted:
“She’s almost a beaut, Dad!”
“Not almost, quite! ” The perplexed gaze of the vine-
yardist dropped to the opposite side of the horseshoe,
where sat Madge Wintermute, the temperance leader.
Several times that day, and before, her colorless, averaged
face had turned in his direction, without recognition.
Distinctly he remembered her. She had come to him
several years before, when the temperance people had
wanted the help of the winemen against the saloon leaders.
Independent of the winemen the drys now were. The
war fervor had flung them into the saddle. He looked
again at the face in the gallery.
The late afternoon sun from a western window was
creating a strange illusion, staining the flesh-tints, mak-
ing them one with the rich color of hair and eyes; like
a bronze relief, like the noble profile of some Greek or
Roman coin. Surely somewhere he had seen that face,
been as deeply impressed with its patrician distinction.
That girl Reed Wintermute’s daughter? Nature had
played a queer trick on the colorless family, for she was
what horticulturists would call a rogue, a sport. To
some heroic ancestor she had harked back; she was a
Julia, a Medea, an Aspasia.MONK’S CLOTHING
13
His glance discovered Wintermute standing by one of
the curtained pillars, his shoulders thrown back, and
with a cheerful smile playing over his face. Something
likable about that fellow, after all; his courage, his good
nature were indomitable. He had been misplaced; life
had thrown him into bad company. Wintermute’s daugh-
ter? Ah, it had come to him! He knew where he had
seen her! His memory suddenly flashed to him a picture
of Hamilton, the soldier son, an adolescent Hamilton, on
the bank of the home creek, painting his dream girl, his
Beatrix. The picture, a flash of immature skill, was ly-
ing in his desk at Frascati. Beatrix!
How old, Hamilton had uneasily demanded, how old
did his father think she looked?
“About twenty, nineteen perhaps.” Then quizzically
he had added:	“Sad to stumble some day on your Bea-
trix and find her old enough to be your mother!”
They had talked, seriously, then of fate, of ideals.
Sitting on the bank-side, and that evening in Roedel’s li-
brary, Hamilton had been desperately afraid he was go-
ing to be laughed at. No, he had never seen her, that
is, met her, but in his dreams he was always seeing her
face, bronze-framed, splendid, heroic.
He had tried to answer intelligently, and with sympa-
thy, the boy’s questions about destiny. Indeed, he asked
himself again, what do we know of the unrolling picture
called the future, segment of the mysterious, .*inchoate
gulf we call Time? How do mortals know that they are
not moving towards shaped events as a person walks in
the dark towards a door that is closed? The door is
always there, in the darkness! How mightily he and14
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Ham had thrashed at the subject that spring evening!
And, later, what a shy, understanding bond it had been!
Hamilton’s last letter from the Rhine had not men-
tioned coming home, not even the wish to come home.
Hamilton there, and his unconscious Beatrix in the bal-
cony yonder! It should be Hamilton, instead of Rich,
who was sitting by his side.
More poignant than usual that day had been his desire
to see his long absent son. Of course, it was because
of the hourly expected troop-train which was bearing the
first detachment of the boys from overseas. One of the
newspaper men had told him, passing, that the train was
stalled in the snowsheds beyond Summit; that a heavy
snowstorm was on. The joldier boys might not reach
Sacramento for several days. Queer, how he could not
rid himself of the feeling that Hamilton was among those
home-coming boys. He should be with those boys.
“I move we eat,” yawned Rich.
“Seconded,” agreed Roedel, rising.
When they returned from the neighboring cafeteria,
the wets, led by Waste and Sims, were striving doggedly
to postpone roll call, as if, thought Roedel, some god
from the machine might still avert the coming catas-
trophe.
For though he would not raise his hand to post-
pone it, to him it was a catastrophe. He could not bring
himself to believe in prohibition. There were better
ways, surely, to shake off an evil than to exchange it
merely for others less sinister. The result, he was con-
fident, would be similar to that of the red light abatement
laws, which simply shift the lawless ones somewhere else.MONK’S CLOTHING
15
And increasingly he dreaded the inevitable violations of
law, a far more desperate evil to his mind than drunken-
ness. For if law under democracy fails, democracy it-
self must fail.
“Ideal incubator, this,” he commented to Rich, “for
the influenza!” He aborted a sneeze.
All the windows of the senate chamber were closed
against the winter air; the furnaces were going full blast.
The atmosphere reeked with carbon dioxide. He and
Rich were standing behind the curved railing, wedged
in between somber men and tense, excited women.
“Lookf| there are two women getting up! We can
get their chairs,” whispered Rich.
Safely seated, he whispered, again:	“Half of the as-
sembly is down with it. And did you hear that Costella
was sent for? That his wife was dying?”
“She died. That wasn’t flu, though.”
“I know.” His son’s voice was sober.
“Say,” he broke out, “that’s Coombs ge'tting up. Talk-
ing wet. They say he’s promised to switch at the last
moment. Water on both shoulders!”
“So naturally wet!” smiled Roedel.
He was recalling with satisfaction their talk over their
cafeteria trays. Rich had relieved himself of his scorn
of their representatives, suddenly realizing with conster-
nation, the apathy with which the public chooses its
makers of laws.
“So you don’t like the way we choose our ways of
obedience?” he had returned.
“Like it!” Rich had .snorted. “It’s a marvel to me
how we have gotten along so well!”16
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“We’re only hitching along,” had been his own an-
swer. “And, if the party that is out weren’t watching
like a gopher cat the party that is in, we wouldn’t be
doing so well even! The trouble is, Rich, we do not
choose our ways of obedience. We let a small group
do the work for us, a still smaller group represent us,
and then we kick about it forever afterwards. And that’s
what we are going to do with prohibition.”
He was still glowing from the unusual tribute from
Rich.
“Oh, no, you won’t, dad. And you won’t let us do it
when you’re aroused. You may fight a bill, but you
stand by it when it gets to be a law.”
So that principle of citizenship then had registered!
Only by such chance exclamations does a parent ever
know! To him, that tenet was the basic one of democ-
racy.
“What will you do,” he had demanded, “you and Ham,
when he gets home, and when I am not looking or listen-
ing?”
“Ham? That old closemouth? He’ll keep still!” his
son had exclaimed. “No matter how much he may hate
it; myself—if it messes things up, I guess I’ll tell the
world!”
“Will you keep the law, Rich?”
Odd look his handsome son had then turned on him!
“Will I? Will anybody, I wonder?”
Roedel could see the bronze-haired Beatrix leaning
forward from her balcony seat. Hamilton’s dream-girl 1
In the horseshoe below, the temperance leader was
that moment busily scribbling a note on her writing pad.MONK’S CLOTHING
17
Had storms of uncertainty ever swept that finished face,
Roedel questioned. Had indecision ever halted that cock-
sure spirit? Not a flicker of incertitude, of a judicial
balancing, of the sweetness and light of sympathetic
doubt changed as he watched it, the fixed missionary ex-
pression of the feminine crusader.
He saw her tear a leaf from her pad, folding it, secur-
ing at last the attention of the colored messenger at his
post by the center columns. He could see her designat-
ing Senator Waste.
Much good the polite ear of Waste would do her or
the cause of the prohibitionists! The entire dry lobby
could concentrate its strength on that senator for all the
good it would do! Didn’t she know who the constituents
were that Waste had to please?
Coombs was laboring with a comparison of the na-
tions. “There was China, abstemious, decadent. The
strong nations were wine-drinking, Germany for ex-
ample.” A hiss made him hastily change his instance
to England. “His evolved text might be:” thought Roe-
del, “ ‘Strong drink for strong men.’ ”
One of the drys leaped to his feet, waving a hand in
the air. “Mr. Speaker! A question?”
“Will Senator Coombs yield to a question?” asked Rice
from the platform.
Senator Coombs was suspiciously willing to yield. His
feet had touched quicksands. But before the historical
challenge was completed, a sound of bugles, of martial
music, brought the audience to its feet. One of the
boisterous young group from San Francisco ran to a win-
dow and flung it open. Instantly the room was disor-18
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ganized. In vain the presiding officer’s gavel rapped.
“It’s the boys from overseas!” cried Rich, the blood
flushing his face. “The boys of the Sixty-fifth!”
His father’s pulse was working unsteadily. Ham was
out there, in the city streets, his Ham, coming home!
The motion for adjournment passed by default. Men
were leaping like lads to the sills of the broad windows,
cheering, waving, yelling. In less than three minutes
the senate was cleared, the item of alcohol forgotten.
Roedel and his son were being carried along with the
throng. They were jammed and jostled through the cor-
ridors, and pulled and pushed down the narrow inner
steps. For none thought to wait for the elevators.
On the southwesterly steps the father and son found
a resting-place. Across the street the vacant square was
already dense with jubilant citizens. From every direc-
tion the school children came swarming like bands of
thin-legged, swift-footed brownies. They climbed the
trees, and lined, like a flock of crows, the neighboring
fences.
Somewhere a brass band was playing “Keep the home
fires burning.” Down the street came the sound of
marching feet. There were the boys in khaki! Roedel
felt suddenly womanish and sick. His vision blurred,
but not before he had seen with understanding the vacant
places in those brave returning lines. This was not for
all a day of rejoicing!
Directly in front of him, Moise, the leader of the dry
lobby, was standing. His ascetic dignity had vanished,
and he was splitting his voice like a college rooter for
the boys of the Sixty-fifth.MONK’S CLOTHING
19
“Who is it that the boys are carrying?” cried Rich
into his ear. “I’ll bet my hat it’s Mary! Our Mary.
She was going to meet them in San Francisco—she had
time to get up here! Dressed as a soldier, dad, do you
see her? Give it to our Mary!” His voice nearly split
his father’s eardrums. “Mary! Mary!” And after she
had passed:	“California!”
A group of young assemblymen on the steps below
took up the cry. “California! California! We’ve got
to do or die, or know the reason why! California!”
The marching, smiling boys took up the chorus: “Cali-
fornia! ”
Street and square were a pandemonium of cries, calls
and martial music, of waving flags and handkerchiefs,
of the sobs of weeping women. From poles and fences
the street urchins jangled raucous bells and blew their
hoarse whistles, while steadily towards the station, squar-
ing the Capitol, the khaki ranks stepped', bearing along
the famous picture queen who was waving, smiling, wip-
ing away her own happy, proud tears, blowing kisses to
the children in the street.
The steps of the Capitol looked like the rooting-stand
of the intercollegiate game. “We’ve got to do or die!”
During a lull, Roedel heard a woman’s voice behind
him cry:	“They look clean and straight, those boys,
God bless them! tell me, if it’s right to put a safety zone
around those boys, why shouldn’t there be a safety zone
around all our boys?”
Moise’s long, thin face turned to look at the woman
who had spoken. In his somber eyes burned inspiration.
“He will use that in his speech tonight, at the open20
IF TODAY BE SWEET
meeting,” thought Roedel. “This demonstration, these
home-coming boys have settled it. The devil’s been sick.
The devil a monk would be!”
Slowly the members of the legislature dribbled back
into their places, followed as listlessly by the lobbyists.
After a weak attempt to put life into the struggle, a vote
to adjourn brought every senator to his feet.
The joint committee meeting to be held that evening
in the assembly was to be virtually a public hearing.
The afternoon’s session disbanded like a boys’ school at
the Christmas holidays.
On his way out, Roedel caught a glimpse of Moise in
the newspaper men’s corner. His dark, lean face was
aflame.
“Fate,” thought the wineman, “has stacked the cards.
Dry zones and monks’ clothing it is to be!”
To his son’s dismay he refused to return that night to
the Capitol. If Rich wanted to hear the pyrotechnics he
would have to go by himself!
“Why, I wouldn’t miss it for a bullfight!” cried Rich,
his glance of commiseration for age amusing his father.
“I’ve heard all their speeches, many a time,” observed
Roedel, leisurely sipping his black coffee. “I’ve heard
Moise, I’ve listened to Miller plead for the viticultural
interests of the state. Have heard the prayers for per-
sonal liberty! Much they care for personal liberty!
They made the same plea in Boston in 1773 and now we
are calling it noble of the colonists for giving up the
drink they loved, for a common peril. The question is:
What is our common danger?”
“You ought to be speaking there tonight,” Rich offeredMONK’S CLOTHING
21
with patronage. “You could beat those fellows all hands
down.”
“Want to hear me reel off poetry about Omar and grape
leaves and the threat to the ‘imprisoned laughter of the
peasant girls of France’? No, I’ll leave that to Miller
when he has to answer Moise’s thriller.”
“What’s old Moses going to say?” Rich was rising,
for it was close on to eight, and standing room would
be at a premium that night in the assembly.
“ ‘If it were right to put a dry zone around those boys,
why isn’t it right to put a safety zone around all our
boys?’ ” quoted George Roedel.
Rich stared at him. “You heard that, too? How do
you know Moses did?”
“I saw him hit in the head with it.” Roedel pushed
back his chair. “But don’t you dare to wake me to tell
me about it! It’ll keep till morning.”
The next afternoon pressure was again brought to bear
on Roedel to use his withheld influence. Each time he
shook his head to say. “Why don’t you let the cat die,
man?” or:	“Bury the corpse. It’s stone-dead.”
For, as he had prophesied to Rich, the battle as far as
the upper chamber was concerned had been won at the
open meeting. The whipped side, knowing it was beaten,
was now simply talking for the people “back home.”
Horton had wired his home paper:	“Those home-coming
boys turned the trick. The state has a mawkish lump in
its throat.”
Just as everyone was resigning himself to an all-night
session, the roll was called. The doors were closed for a
call of the house. Excitedly Rich nudged his father’s22
IF TODAY BE SWEET
arm as Costella, with a crisp black band around his
sleeve, marched somberly down the aisle.
“Yes, pretty tough,” he assented, answering the flare
of commiseration in his son’s eyes. “Invisible govern-
ment is a stern taskmaster. It’s the eye that slumbers
not nor sleeps. And with the honest citizens off playing
golf or bridge or stocks, it spells the tragedy of democ-
racy.”
He caught a look of belittling appraisement in Rich’s
face. He knew quite well what he was thinking:	“Then
why do you hang back yourself, when you do believe
in prohibition?”
By that time he had ascertained that his son’s interest
lay in the fight itself, rather than in the principles it in-
volved, or in self-interest. Rich was not concerned
about Frascati as an achievement of one man’s brain
and hands. For that matter, neither was Hamilton.
Life for Rich held chances and virgin opportunity such as
Napa county had offered to his own youthful blood.
South America, he knew, held a lure for the lad; Mexico
was beckoning; the Orient was calling; Russia, too, was
soon going to summon to her the stout-hearted young
soldiers of fortune. Frascati to both his sons was noth-
ing now but a source of comfortable income and a dull
routine.
The roll was being called. Richard’s pencil began to
check off the list of senators.
“Allen. Aye, Black. Aye, Coombs. No, Dennison.”
The surprises began when one Grant of Southern Cali-
fornia, a wet, voted loudly and belligerently, “Yes!” A
stir of amazement ran through the chamber.MONK’S CLOTHING
23
“I’d have died standing, with my boots on,” contemptu-
ously whispered Rich.
“Aye, Louderback. No, Sims!” called the clerk.
“No!” bellowed Sims, glaring across the rows of desks
at Grant.
“No, Waste.”
“No!” cried Waste.
“Ayes, 24, noes, 14,” droned the automaton.
Costella leaped to his feet, his face twitching. He
turned vindictively in the direction of O’Ryan. He de-
manded that his vote be reversed.
Roedel sent a lightning glance at the brewer whose
creature Costella had been. The pallid face had swollen
purple, the fat, white hand was clenched as though over
a rat. To Roedel the gesture was as vivid as though he
had seen a rat strangled.
“I hope he doesn’t hate you that way, dad!” whispered
Rich, who had followed his father’s gaze.
“Comfort yourself. He does! ” returned the wineman.
One of the San Francisco delegation was on his feet
with a motion to have the vote reconsidered. Amid cries
of “Lazarus!” and “Bury the corpse!” his motion was
carried.
“Sheer bluff!” commented Roedel.
The next morning, that San Francisco senator was not
to be found and the motion, in laughter, was voted down.
There was little spirit in the assembly struggle. In
spite of the belief that the house rules would postpone the
vote until Tuesday, the vote was taken Monday night.
“No pep in the wets!” scoffed Rich.24
IF TODAY BE SWEET
From two o’clock until eight in the evening, the corpse
of John Barleycorn was bandied about the lower house.
Suddenly the members wearied of the farce. For, long
before the roll was called, the liquor lobby and the repre-
sentatives knew that the game was lost. O’Ryan had not
returned to the Capitol after the noon adjournment; it
was said that he had gone back to Napa. Unmistakably
California was declaring that the nation was to be bone-
dry.
“And now home, Frascati!” exclaimed Roedel, as the
clerk read the report. He got up, stretching his cramped
muscles.
“Dry Creek!” grinned Rich. “Dry Creek, and grape
juice!”
“Law, or lawlessness?” added his father.CHAPTER III
FRASCATI
ROEDEL had an errand in Sonoma, so it was eve-
ning before they came in sight of the euca-
lyptus and the naked willow trees which bor-
dered Dry Creek. The drive had been uncomfortably
raw, for the incessant rains of the previous weeks had
turned to snowfalls on the hilltops, sending frostbitten
winds through the valleys. When the travelers reached
the bridge a half mile from home, Dry Creek was denying
its name: a deep, swift current, like a lusty young river,
was running.
“Who’d believe that it will be bone-dry'in the spring?”
commented Roedel, intrigued daily by the physical differ-
ences of the western world.
“Who’d believe that we’d be bone-dry any time?”
grinned Rich, with a free hand paraphrasing.
“Wonder if Chow will give us hot eats, eh, Rich?”
gibed his father. The subject could always get an in-
effectual growl from his son, the only rebel to Chow’s
ironclad domination.
A great fire of oak logs and manzanita limbs crackled
a welcome to them as Roedel threw open the hall door.
Emilie, in the fawn-coloured silk dress which her hus-
band regularly complained looked like a hand-knit silk
sock, and was as precarious, rose happily to meet them.
Drawing back in mock alarm, lest one of his buttons or
2526
IF TODAY BE SWEET
his watch-chain should set a Jacob’s ladder running, Roe-
del grumbled that a man dared not kiss his wife these
days of chiffon and stockinet clothes. But he did kiss
her, heartily, twice, ignoring the danger, before he would
resign his place to Richard.
“Doesn’t she look like a girl, Rich, with that sky-blue
sweater on? Something new! I never saw it before!”
“My old sweater, George!” deprecated his Emilie.
She looked pleased, nevertheless. Then noticing sud-
denly the appearance of her two men she broke into low,
soft laughter.
She tried to tell them why it was funny for men who
had been attending a prohibition session to look like that!
She pointed helplessly to a mirror over the mantel, and
they saw what the frosty wind had been doing to them.
Their cheeks and their noses were flushed and blotched,
their eyes were bloodshot, their lips chapped and swollen.
The wind had given their caps a rakish slant and the
frosty air had made bristles of their hair. Richard’s
poetic beauty, usually meticulously groomed, was quite
obscured; his father looked like a caricature.
“Slander! Let’s deserve it, Rich!” chuckled Roedel.
“Cocktails, mother? When’s dinner going to be ready?
Here Rich and I have been waiting to be fed for the last
hour!”
“Ready?” echoed Emilie. “Chow’s best pudding is on
the way to ruin.”
“She calls us ‘ruin,’ Rich,” observed her husband,
throwing an arm around his wife’s shoulders, with the
other tossing his cap on a chair.
Chow put his sleek head through the dining room door-FRASCATI
27
way. His parchment-hued face wore a broad, worship-
ful smile.
“Hullo, Mlister Llodel. You come back all life?”
“Fine, but no more drinking for any of us, Chow.
We ’ve got to keep sober, you and I. The United States
is going to make us all quit drinking.”
“Too bad, too bad!” ejaculated Chow, his hands on his
thigh bones, commiseration in his face. “Flascati all
shut up bimeby?”
“Not yet,” smiled Roedel. “Not for quite a long time
yet.”
Apprehension clouded his wife’s features. As the
Chinese pattered back into his domain, shaking his head
and mumbling, she asked her husband if it had been quite
prudent telling him? Wouldn’t the news be apt to make
him restless? Comfort at Frascati involved Chow’s serv-
ice. That very minute he was probably telling Norah
that Frascati “was going to be all shut up.”
“I’ll make it all right with Chow, after dinner,” her
lord assured her, patting her hand. And then he asked
for the farm news.
“Margie’s calf came, a heifer. And Crispi had an-
other attack of his rheumatism. He had to go to the
city yesterday.”
“Crispi!” That was the reason for her concern.
There had been a sleepless night, with midnight alarms,
threats of light and noises in the cellar, footprints on the
flower-beds! “Everything quiet on the Potomac?” he
queried, looking at her shrewdly and fondly. Little
ostrich, his Emilie!
“Oh, yes, everything was all right!”28
IF TODAY BE SWEET
He asked for particulars about his right bower, Crispi,
the Milanese, who guarded the cellar where a quarter
million gallons of wine were stored as though it were the
Grail itself.
“He got home just before you did. But you haven’t
told me anything yet. About your trip. Of course, I
read the papers.”
“It is Rich’s story, about Sacramento and our Solons,”
delegated Roedel, chuckling.
Ever since childhood, the recording of events by the
sons had been a regular table assignment. Rich had long
since discovered that this was a deliberate detail of his
education. Though the demand was sometimes irksome,
perhaps a tennis game or plunge in the Frascati pool call-
ing, he no longer shirked the task. There had even been
flashes of appreciation to his parents for having been
guided past the inarticulate, clumsy habits of his class-
mates.
“Well?” demanded Roedel.
“I was brought up in my youth,” retorted Rich, “by a
man who taught me that it was manners to get rid of
what I had in my mouth before I got rid of what was on
the tip of my tongue! ”
“Good boy, Rich!” smiled his father.
Richard directed his summary towards his mother.
She would be interested to hear of the new women repre-
sentatives. “Such fine, serious women, mother! You’d
be proud of them. One has a smile like a peach orchard
blossoming. But she doesn’t win on her smile alone.
She has a mind. Everyone says the assembly is a differ-FRASCATI
29
ent place since the women took their seats. One is noth-
ing but a girl. There was one who reminded me of you,
so gentle, so reserved, but all there, I can tell you! Folks
listen when she speaks! It’s a shame you were not
with us!”
His reaction, it developed, was one of dismay. Not
the obvious selfishness, the crass crudity, the lack of a
high purpose that had most, however, disquieted him.
His own ignorance had appalled him.
“How many years have I been going to school?”
“Counting kindergarten?” asked Emilie.
“Eight, primary, elementary. Four, high. Almost
three now at college. Fifteen of free education, given
me by the state as Ham used to say, for the safety of the
state. And everything I had learned about government
was wrong, that is, hazy, incomplete. I didn’t understand
about the importance of committees; of constituents; of
invisible government, oh, except what father had told me.
We’re taught theory. Mother ! Our crowd was howling
against the way the prohibition people had prepared for
this grapple. When they swore to dad he said: ‘They
learned their tactics from us. Pot calling the kettle
black. It is a tribute to the saloon men’s technique!’
You should have seen their faces!”
“You didn’t call yourself a saloon man, George!”
“It made the thrust less brutal,” chuckled the vine-
yardist.
“Ham used to say,” pursued Rich, “that things could
be different in twelve years if education were scientific.
We’d send the right people to the legislature, into office,30
IF TODAY BE SWEET
we’d learn to conscript ourselves for such service.”
“Perhaps,” said Roedel, rising, pushing back his chair.
He wanted to run out to the wine cellar and to see old
Crispi. “Perhaps. But the after-college days are the
selfish days, Rich, and I guess it’s right that they should
be. They’re the first free days, dancing days, marrying
days. Afterwards, yes, the knowledge would make a
difference. But try to tell the professors that education,
free education, is for the service of the state, and you get
your head bumped. You feel like an ignorant old wine-
maker. Will you excuse me, mother?”
“Just because they don’t know about you, about your
Heidelberg degrees, who you are, who your folks were!”
flushed Rich.
Roedel, passing by his wife’s chair, stooped to leave a
kiss on her forehead.
“There are a few men at college who think as you and
Ham do,” said Rich, detaining him. “Particularly Snow,
from Columbia. He’s been trying to make the study of
political science and economics compulsory for the first
two years. He believes, too, that we are coming to a
patriotic service, civic instead of military service.”
Emilie was looking with apprehension after her lord.
“Take your flashlight, papa! I don’t want you falling
down and breaking your leg.”
He was chuckling as he let himself out of the back door.
After all, they are all alike in guile, the women! Some
of them employ it tenderly, some meanly, but they all do
things the same way!
He followed the bridge path to the cellar. SeveralFRASCATI
31
weeks yet before they could use the path through the
creek, obliterated now by eight or ten feet of rushing
snow waters.
Arm in arm, Richard and his mother went into the
sitting room. There Rich said he had work to do up-
stairs, and he had to be leaving for Berkeley early in the
morning. He filled his pipe, taking a few social whiffs
as he stood warming his legs before the blaze.
Emilie got out her knitting needles and her soft col-
ored wools, settling herself in her rocking-chair and pre-
paring for a sweet home evening in the comfortable room
she loved. She could never persuade Rich that there
were not too many colours, that the heavy draperies were
not too reminiscent of Germany. She herself was con-
vinced that the museum-like room was the handsomest in
the county, and that its mahogany and teakwood pieces,
with here and there a gold spindled chair, made a harmo-
nious collection.
Ten years before, a Morris chair had been added for
Roedel’s comfort; a Voltaire chair had been contributed
by an admiring friend of the wine-maker; a divan had
been attracted thither by the sprawling age of the boys.
It was now covered with a Kiskillim and numerous silk
and plush cushions. The room itself, high-ceilinged and
of no particular period or style, was redeemed by the oak
floor and the large, tiled fireplace which Roedel had had
made to surprise his Emilie one summer when he was
camping with the two boys at Yosemite. Use had given
the room dignity and to its disharmonies a sort of restless
charm.32
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Richard bent over her chair, halting the swift flashing
of the steel needles for his cool kiss. “Promise me you’ll
not get up, mother. Let me slip out quietly, for once,
without disturbing the household. No use of Chow get-
ting two breakfasts. I can eat on the ferry.”
This speech was a weekly custom. Emilie smiled
fondly. She had a weekly custom, too. Hers was to
slip into a warm wrapper and felt slippers, joining Rich
at the breakfast table as Chow pattered about with offer-
ings of eggs and superlative muffins or flaky biscuits. It
was her duty to watch the clock so that Rich might eat
till the last second. Why, what are mothers for, else?
“Good night, Rich,” she murmured, and forgot to take
up her knitting after he had gone. Her husband found
her staring plaintively into the dancing firelight.
“Well, little mother! Wishing they were small again,
so?”
She smiled back adoringly at the wonderful husband
who could always touch the fringe, at least, of her
thought.
“No. I was thinking of Rich, wishing he were not so
good-looking. It’s going to be hard for him to keep
steady, girls run after him so.”
“So they did after Hamilton, and his head wasn’t
turned,” comforted Roedel, taking the seat opposite her.
“It isn’t the same, and Rich isn’t like Hamilton,” pur-
sued Emilie. “The telephone has rung ever since he left.
‘Is Rich back?’ ‘When is Rich coming back?’ And the
letters! He’ll not get to bed before midnight if he reads
them all.”
“And answers them in rhyme!” said George Roedel.FRASCATI
33
A few minutes after they had gone upstairs—nice, com-
fortable stairs, he never failed to observe, allowing two
lovers to go arm in arm—a knock fell on Emilie’s door.
Her husband’s face, silver-crowned and kindly, was
thrust in, smiling.
“Room for a boarder? My bed’s cold.”
This was his custom, the courtesy of the knock, the
pretense of loneliness the nights when his Emilie was
nervous and lonely.
And always the same answer ran to meet him:	“Get
right into bed, George. I’ll bring you a hot water bag!”CHAPTER IV
CELEBRATIONS
TOWARDS the end of the conflict which to the
daughter of Madge Wintermute divided on
simple lines—right, progress with the amend-
ment, corruption opposing it—the strain began to tell on
her. There was no one to hint to her that her partisan-
ship was too passionate to be just; in that home the
issue could not be debated. The girl was convinced that
a great race was having its fate decided.
The senate victory left her pale and exhausted. Her
parents were watching with uneasiness for symptoms of
the dreaded epidemic. On Sunday her mother became
more apprehensive.
“This is becoming too much for you, Elizabeth. You
are letting yourself get too excited. We can’t help win-
ning now!1’
Her daughter’s gaze lifted from the page it had been
combating. “I think I will stay at home tomorrow. The
vote won’t be taken before Tuesday?”
“Assembly rules will postpone it till Tuesday, at least.”
Madge Wintermute turned again to her desk.
“Then I’ll sleep all day. I’m in arrears since we left
San Francisco. You’re a night owl. I’m not.”
“You used to think you were.” The rejoinder was ac-
companied by the scratching of a pen. “When you
wanted to sit up all night playing cards with your father,
or listening to his stories.”
34CELEBRATIONS
35
Elizabeth’s answer lacked relevance. “I’m glad we
sent father out for real eats. Toast and tea will be
enough for us if we’re going to bed early.”
Immediately after the clearing away of the few dishes,
she made up her bed on the dining room couch. Several
times during her first, restless dreams, she was dimly con-
scious of her father’s hand on her wristLjhis cool, light
fingers on her temples. Trying to reassure him, she
would find sleep engulfing her.
The next morning, though without pain or temperature,
she was spiritless. After some discussion her parents
went to the Capitol, separately, the daughter declaring
that all she needed was quiet and sleep. But after they
left, the telephone bell constantly jangled. She dressed
and moved across the hall to be in the room where it was.
Every little while she had to tell some long distance in-
quirer that her mother was not at home, and that the vote
was not to be taken until the next day.
Towards noon her father tiptoed in, carrying some win-
ter fruit and a carton of ice cream. His handsome, gray-
headed, boyish figure puttered around the room, hunting
for a thermometer, standing over her as he took her tem-
perature, later assembling saucers and spoons. His Lisa
let him do the little negligible things, though he made a
clumsy task of each simple detail. Last, he carried a
small table to the side of her couch, making an adventure
of this, as of all their tete-a-tetes. Before he left for the
Capitol, with meticulous concern he cleared up the
wreckage, making his Lisa promise that she would not
get up until he returned.
“I’ll tell your mother that you are all right.”36
IF TODAY BE SWEET
He waved a kiss to her from the door, and another
from the street below, before turning the corner. She
lay watching the Capitol grounds where she might again
see that jaunty, indomitable figure. He did not come
again into sight. She dragged herself into the next room,
securing her portfolio.
An arch, animated girl smiled back at her. Reed Win-
termute had not changed so much. The picture was fad-
ing, but it had a comic air, with the rounded side-whiskers
and queer little tub of a hat! The same indomitable
spirit shone from the youthful face of her father. She
put the pictures back in the portfolio, and fell asleep
clasping it.
A sound of a door being opened aroused her. Night
had fallen. The street lights were shining into the room.
Through a cautious crack of the door her father’s head
was thrust. She laughed at his concerned expression.
“Had he expected to find the room full of people, or her-
self ill with doctor and nurse?”
He paused in the doorframe.
“Did they tell you it passed?”
She dropped the portfolio as she jumped to her feet.
“Passed! It passed! What time did it pass? What
time is it now?”
“After nine. It went through at eight. I thought
your mother started right back home.” He looked so
penitent that she laughed again, and flung her arms about
him. She was beginning to say:	“Good news doesn’t
get stale,” when the smell of whiskey reached her. She
shrank away from him.
“I suppose she’s celebrating with her cronies.” HisCELEBRATIONS	37
look was evasive. “How shall we celebrate, Lisa? Any-
thing in the house?”
“Let’s say it in coffee!” she suggested. “You like cof-
fee, father.”
“You’re a good girl, Lisa. All right, coffee. Call me
when it’s done.”
When the percolator was murmuring over the gas flame,
and she had placed a plate of bread and butter slices,
and leeks, which she discovered in the cooler, on the
kitchen table, she went in search of him. The bathroom
door was open, but he had not heard her step. He was
facing the mirror, his back towards her; he did not see her
reflection over his shoulder. A traveling-flask, marked
by Madge Wintermute’s hand “Medicine,” was being
emptied into the glass from the toothbrush rack. When
it was half empty, he filled it from the faucet, chuckling.
Elizabeth crept back to the kitchen. A minute later
she called:	“Coffee, father!”
His^fetep had regained some of its assurance, and his
hands were steadier, but his cheeks were more deeply
flushed. He would not meet her eyes. Airily, he said:
“What’s the name of this meal? Supper? Dinner?”
Before she could answer, a sound from the hall startled
them both. A key was being turned in the outer door.
“Madge,” murmured her husband.
The door was opened, and closed. Mrs. Wintermute
entered the room.
Instantly, Elizabeth wheeled, sheltering her father
from immediate view.
Madge Wintermute herself looked flushed. Her glance
involved only her daughter.38
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Are you better? Still feverish, Elizabeth? I hope it
isn’t going to be the flu!”
“It isn’t, and it isn’t going to be. Tell me all about it.
Can’t I give you coffee, too?”
Mrs. Wintermute seemed embarrassed. “If you are
really all right, Elizabeth—they want me to go down with
them tonight. Our lobby has a special car. I thought
you would need me.”
“The midnight train?” demanded Elizabeth. “You
have oceans of time. It’s not ten yet.”
“But the closing of the apartment, giving it up, the
small bills, packing,” objected Mrs. Wintermute.
“Can’t the two of us attend to that? But you must
have something to eat before you go.”
“If you are all right, I must meet them at the restau-
rant. None of us had any dinner, few had any lunch.
It was strenuous today!”
“You mustn’t miss the celebration! Don’t bother
about your packing. Put what you need in your bag,
and we will see to the trunk tomorrow.”
Behind her Wintermute was clearing his throat, as
though about to speak. Hastily, his daughter asked
about the day’s victory. Her mother must remember to
tell her every detail the next day.
Her father’s voice interrupted her. His words were
clear and precise.
“I shall take Lisa down on the river boat. It’s moon-
light. Don’t expect us till Wednesday morning, Madge.”
Mrs. Wintermute had not waited for the completion of
his sentence. She was already on her way to her room.CELEBRATIONS
39
Almost immediately she was with them again, her travel-
ing-coat and fur over her arm.
Reed Wintermute scrambled to his feet to take her
small bag.
“I can manage it,” objected Madge Wintermute.
“I shall take you to the restaurant,” he insisted.
Looking towards Elizabeth, his wife answered:	“I
really wish you wouldn’t. I’m not helpless, yet.”
“Why, mother,” interposed Elizabeth, “you must let
him at least put you on the car, tonight! You’re the
famous member of the family. You are somebody!
You are It!”
After her parents had left her, she again threw herself
on her couch. Her father was standing over her when
she opened her eyes. His arms were full of little store-
cooked surprises, surmounted by a bunch of violets for
his Lisa. When she reproached him for his extravagance,
he explained that he had made a little pickup, a few un-
expected dollars. They were going to blow in the rest
on their river trip. A long time since he had had a jaunt
with his Lisa!CHAPTER V
A NEW FRIEND
TEMPERANCE was no longer one of the shabby
causes; its advocates did not have to be grateful
for obscure recognitions. They were offered, in-
stead, a pedestal. Madge Wintermute was at once im-
plored to address organizations which had never before
recognized her. She became conspicuously the head of
the family.
As though to avoid becoming the permanent base of
the pedestal, Reed Wintermute swaggered increasingly
towards braggadocio. He boasted incessantly of a big
job that was to be offered him, and how he had stated
that he would refuse anything not worthy of his training.
Though they bore no result, he had mysterious errands
which kept him away from the flat during the daytime.
The evenings dropped him, sad and silent, into the din-
ing room of the flat where not without misgivings Eliza-
beth resumed her vigils. Solitaire she tabooed, however,
when she found she could not insist on the rigor of the
game.
“What harm,” her father would demand, “in the sub-
stitution of a card, when one is playing with one’s self,
only to see what a different shuffling would have brought
about?”
Occasionally during his wife’s absence, for Madge
Wintermute’s lecture trips had become professional and
40A NEW FRIEND
41
regular, he would plan a modest “spree,” a motion picture
excursion, or a bay ride in the moonlight.
“I turned a few honest pennies today, Lisa,” he would
begin. “Let’s celebrate.”
Just as her studies were beginning to suffer, her father
went on one of his mysterious journeys. He was away
for two days. When he returned to the Jackson Street
flat, he had a plan for the summer.
“You remember the Frank Dollivers, Madge?” His
manner was more than usually debonair. “Of Napa
county? He tells me they intend to spend the summer
in San Francisco. A lawsuit is bringing him.”
“I like Mrs. Dolliver.” His wife looked away from
him.
“I told him,” airily said Reed Wintermute, “that he
could make this place their headquarters.”
His wife did look at him then. “May I ask what you
intend to do with us while they are here?”
Elizabeth had been watching his face, over which a
mysterious smile was playing. She clasped her hands
softly together.
* ^‘Oh, I’ve guessed! A wonderful plan!”
“I offered, tfyey are quite eager, to exchange houses. A
change for both families. We’ve not been to the country
for a long time. And Lisa has been looking pale.”
“Why shouldn’t she? Studying all day, talking, play-
ing cards with you all night!” returned his wife.
“They have a riding-horse, Lisa.”
“It will be good for Elizabeth,” acknowledged Mrs.
W intermute.
Nothing else was talked of then, for college was to42
IF TODAY BE SWEET
close in two weeks, and there was much to be done. The
flat had to be made ready for the Dollivers, and some thin
clothes were to be acquired. Cards and chess were
abandoned.
Elizabeth had never seen the country around Napa, so
her father described to her its foreign beauty, the slender
valley draped with grapevines which were beginning to
creep up the hillsides “as though they thought themselves
in crowded Italy.” He planned trips they would take to-
gether, to the geysers, up Mount St. Helena, and to the
various springs. His optimism was contagious and his
daughter found herself again believing in his abilities.
On the boat, one afternoon, she met Dr. Snow, ex-
change professor from Columbia, whose friendship had
been a deep pride with her until he had insisted upon a
closer relationship. She had been missing him, but dared
not tell him so. His lectures had made vital her college
course, had related it to the marvelously changing world.
“I had never thought of teaching. The routine, the
static content had appalled me,” she confided, after telling
him about the summer plans. “But one of your lectures
made a deep impression on me; of the opportunity today,
in the little foreign school—”
“I wish something else I’d said to you had made a deep
impression on you,” fatuously stared the young professor,
wondering for the hundredth time if the impenetrable re-
serve of the beautiful Californian meant hauteur or shy-
ness. If he knew it to be the latter, he would dare and
dare again. He was afraid to lose her utterly.
“You promised!” reminded Elizabeth, enveloping her-
self in her mantle of reserve again.A NEW FRIEND
43
“You remind me,” he could not help himself, “of a won-
derful picture I saw in Germany, or was it Italy? A
woman of snow and ice, and magic, and a poor devil
clutching her robe, praying her to let him climb to her.
Of course, it was symbolic; she was the Jungfrau, ice in
her hair, in her breast. But now she is you, and I am
the poor wretch praying—”
“Don’t you want to hear how your ideas have helped
me?”
“I’d rather you helped me make them!”
“Must I stop talking to you?”
“You can talk to me forever!”
He was discouraging about her plan to visit the country
schools, to bury herself later in one of them.
“The schools will be shut by the time.you leave,” he
insisted.
“Oh, not the little country schools?” she cried; and
that night urged her mother to carry the unfinished sew-
ing to the country. “More fitting!” she added, smiling
towards her father.
So the family trunk was lined with uncut lengths of
cotton crêpes and ginghams from basement bargain coun-
ters. Later was added a khaki riding-suit, trousers and
coat, for Elizabeth, of the shade of tawny leather, and
a leather cap. Wintermute had slipped sheepishly into
her hand one day a crisp new bill, saying:	“For the
trousseau, Lisa.”
Dr. Snow came to say good-bye to her and was amazed
that he could enjoy talking to her parents, at her bidding,
of his social creeds. He forgot to be unhappy until the
time came to say good-bye to the girl who shrank from44
IF TODAY BE SWEET
talk of love or loving. She followed him into the little
narrow hall of the flat, leaving the door open behind
her.
“You’ll answer my letters, Elizabeth?** he began.
“Oh, I shall be so proud of your letters!” she exclaimed.
“Proud! Damn!” said Dr. Snow, dropping her hand,
and leaving her.
She stood where he left her, a puzzled look in her
eyes.
Her father’s voice roused her. “Not too late for a
swift game of chess, Lisa?”
Mrs. Wintermute interfered. “She has all she can do
to get ready for the country. Look at her! Get right
to bed, Elizabeth!”
Dr. Snow’s influence followed her, though, through the
days of preparation and uprooting. It was interesting to
have an immediate plan to absorb her; to know what she
wanted to do and be. Before she unpacked, she ob-
tained a list of country schools from Mrs. Dolliver, and
at once began to make friends with Powder, who was to
give wings to her feet.
The drowsy town of St. Helena recalled Mrs. Dolliver’s
chronicle: an old man’s town, in appearance and in per-
sonnel, scarcely changed in thirty years. A few small
stores had been added; the garage was, of course, a
modern institution, and the one candy store had been pro-
moted to the dignity of an ice cream parlor. The electric
railroad had been expected to galvanize the town into ac-
tivity, her informant had told her, but it did little more
than disturb the village slumbers several times a day,A NEW FRIEND
45
when a car would flash through from Vallejo on its way
to Calistoga.
One of her expeditions carried her up Howell mountain.
Pleasant glimpses of farmhouses in the valley came to her
as she mounted the famous hill. In the distance the
barns and fences and browsing cattle looked to her like
the foreign-made toy sets one finds in the Christmas
shops. To the north of her lay Napa valley, its slender
ripeness like that of a slim adolescent, guarded by grim,
bearded hills. Above her, on her left, towered tree-
covered peaks; on her right, falling abruptly from the
dusty road, lay a precipitous ravine thickly tangled with
manzanita, vines of the wild grape, and spreading ferns.
On her map a waterfall was marked. Distantly now she
could hear it as it tumbled with a muffled splash into the
little stream at the heart of the canon.
She turned reluctantly from that scene of beauty and
lonely grandeur as Powder led her out to an opening
northwards through the hills. Below, almost hidden from
her sight, lay St. Helena. The upper valley lay disclosed,
with Calistoga like a diamond brooch at its throat, spar-
kling its windows in the sun. Elizabeth again reined in
Powder, searching for the Dolliver’s place, Casa Blanca,
locating it at last by the densely covered hills which
seemed when on the spot to spring from the garden
hedges. In the distance, like a general surveying his
troops, Mt. St. Helena towered above the range.
This time Powder wanted also to linger, but a look at
her watch made her press on. Almost immediately the
valley view was left behind as she emerged on a plateau46
IF TODAY BE SWEET
which was broken here and there by miniature hills and
canons. Soon her road began to carry her into the vine-
yard country.
She passed one vineyard of considerable size, with an
imposing wine cellar built of stone. The rest were small,
and their buildings quaint and negligible. She had ex-
pected to find neglect, abandonment. The vines were
trim and well cared for.
Several times she stopped to ask at the little homes she
was passing if she were on the road to the school. Some
of the women presented gaunt, unkempt figures at the
doors, with ragged children in the background. Some
were neatly wrappered women with demurely combed
hair and placid, pale faces. These belonged to the re-
ligious colony, Mrs. Dolliver had explained, to the sect
that forswears meat-eating and personal vanity. Eliza-
beth was given a glimpse of spotlessly clean rooms, and
she grew to recognize these houses by the brave attempt
at a mountain garden.
The morning session was just over when she reached
the mountain school. Miss Hathorn, a gentle-eyed, soft-
skinned girl, urged her to go to lunch at the near-by re-
sort where she herself boarded. But a boarding house
dining room repelled Elizabeth, who wanted to “sit on the
grass near a spring.” She had enough in her lunch box,
she felt sure, for two.
“I’ve an orange and a banana in my desk, and a few
nuts,” said the little teacher. “I don’t always want to go
in myself, so I keep something on hand. I know the
place!”
She led the way to an icy mountain spring whichA NEW FRIEND
47
bubbled out from moss-covered rocks at the foot of a
richly-hued madrone. They spread their lunch on mul-
lein leaves, and in a few minutes both girls, who made
friends shyly, were discovering each other.
“I’m afraid you’ll think me a quitter!” cried Mary
Hathorn to some of her guest’s questions. “It’s so hard
here. It’s not a question of how to live, but to live at
all.” She tried to make Elizabeth understand the kind of
poverty which cramped the mountain school.
But the clean-wrappered women Elizabeth had seen
along the roadside? She would have thought this an
ideal place to sprout the new ideas of social education?
“Those are the other people. They have a school of
their own, the kind of which you are dreaming. Oh,
you have no idea how poor we are! I had grand plans
like yours when I came here. Don’t I know! If we
can’t reach the homes, we’re just pouring water through
a sieve. I tried to get the mothers here once a month.
They had nothing to wear. All they can do to keep clean
clothes on the children; they can’t always do that! And
in winter, when we have to close the windows!”—She
broke off, frowning over the memory.
“Once we did have a parents’ day, and everyone
brought a shrub or a shovel, and we dug the path and
started a garden. I thought I had made a beginning, but
then the war came, and then prohibition—”
“Did things get worse?” demanded Elizabeth Winter-
mute.
Mary Hathorn stared back at her. “They say so. It
may be they are only scared. One family, Pasquale’s, has
to keep the children at home once a month, so their48
IF TODAY BE SWEET
clothes can be scrubbed. He used to talk about building
a house. They have a large wine cellar, but they live
like animals, Miss Wintermute! Since the first baby
came, he has been promising his wife to build something
better than their shack. But it had to be a barn first,
then a cellar. There has been a baby every year. Luck-
ily, some of them died. They used to keep a goat, and
they have some chickens, and they raise the coarse vege-
tables, but I think wine’s their main food. Even the
babies have it for breakfast. I want you to see the
Pasquales! ”
“Perhaps I can get help for them,” suggested Elizabeth.
“If I were here in the summer, I might interest some of
the summer visitors, but the upbuilding, sort of help—
there isn’t any! And the homes are so far apart. All
my children have foreign-born parents. Some of them, a
few, want their children to be educated, but most of them
want the help in the fields". They came here for freedom;
they can’t understand the laws which take away first
their children, and then their income. They are discon-
tents, rebels. How can we make good citizens of their
children—children who have wine for breakfast, who
don’t have clothes fit for school, or food enough to make
their minds work? I sometimes feel I’m just a nurse
girl, whom nobody really wants!”
One of the larger girls came to the door of the school-
house carrying a bell. She rang it lustily.
“You can’t go so soon!” exclaimed Mary Hathorn.
“Won’t you take the arithmetic class this afternoon, and
I’ll ride a little way with you. I have to go to the Pas-A NEW FRIEND
49
quale’s. The children have been away for two days.
They may be sick.”
“Surely I’ll stay!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
Two hours later Mary Hathorn, loping by the side of
Elizabeth, pointed with her whip to a red metal roof
gleaming in the sun. “That’s Pasquale’s cellar.”
They were entering an enclosure of rude fences. Vines
bordered the road, meeting the woods at the foot of a
low rise of ground. Mary Hathorn drew up by a ruined
shed, its broken panes replaced by strips of thin boards
which had been torn from fruit-boxes.
“This is their house,” said Mary.
From the rear of the shanty a woman came heavily to-
wards them, carrying a sick hen in her arms. Her faded
and torn serge skirt, shapeless and colorless from much
washing, was partially covered by a long calico jacket.
One hand was being disengaged from the hen’s wings to
thrust back the flowing locks of dark, rusty hair. She
looked shy and ashamed, as though she would have hid-
den had she not been caught.
Children seemed to spring from the ground. All of
them were dirty and half naked. Their scant garments
barely held together. They looked curiously at the new-
comer.
Mary had performed an introduction. “Have they
colds? Were they sick?” she demanded.
“I had to wash their clothes,” said the mother.
Elizabeth was watching a baby who was crawling from
the shed. Not so obscured its face with mud but she50
IF TODAY BE SWEET
could realize the vacancy of its eyes. She turned to-
wards the other children.
“Are they all boys?” she asked.
“This one’s a girl.” She pointed to a child who was
peering from behind her wretched skirts.
“What is your name?” asked Elizabeth.
“Take your hand out of your mouth. Can’t you
answer the lady? Teresa’s bashful,” she added unneces-
sarily.
Teresa’s nose and mouth were running a steady stream.
Her black hair fell like a mop over her eyes. She went
again into eclipse behind her mother’s skirt.
Elizabeth did not see Pasquale until his evil face was
at her side. Under a heavy shock of unwashed hair,
curdled, suspicious eyes were scowling. A rough stubble
of beard covered his dirty neck and face, running down to
his chest, which a torn shirt exposed. His immense girth
was thrust into wine-soaked trousers held in place by an
unrestrained stomach and a rope which took the place of
a belt. His waistline was so low that it gave him a
grotesque, deformed appearance.
Miss Hathorn began an introduction. “What yer
want?” he interrupted.
“I came to see about the children, why they were not
in school,” explained the teacher.
“Bimeby they don’ go no more,” said Pasquale.
Mary Hathorn murmured something about the law.
Pasquale’s face flamed with rage. “Law! Does the
law say who will give them clo’es so they can go decent
to school? Does it want them to go naked? It takes
away my business, your law does, and makes us starve,A NEW FRIEND
51
then tells us to send our children to school. You call it
a free country with your laws, laws!” His lips shot out
in an ugly leer.
“He’s like this all the time now,” whispered his wife
to the teacher. She turned shyly to the stranger. “I’m
ashamed to ask you in. And it’s hot in the sun. We
don’t dass even offer you anything to drink—5’
“Oh, please don’t mind. We have to go!” cried Eliza-
beth.
“They’ll be at school tomorrow?” cried Mary, as the
two girls turned the heads of their horses again towards
the county road. Outside the broken gate, they stared
helplessly at each other.
The teacher spoke first. “I don’t like your going down
the mountain, so late, alone. Won’t you-stay with me?
Mrs. Rotger’s rooms are not all taken. I shouldn’t have
taken you there. But I just wanted you to see how
things are!”
“What a beast he is!” shuddered Elizabeth. “And
those pitiful, deficient children! And the wife so hope-
lessly submerged that all she could pray for now was a
deeper, more complete submerging!”
That night, on the other side of the cloth partition,
Mary Hathorn heard an odd noise, and went in to find
Elizabeth sitting up in bed, her dark red hair falling about
her shoulders, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. “I
guess I’m cold. I can’t get to sleep.”
The little teacher closed the door. “Do you think you
would sleep if I got into bed with you?”
Strangers that morning, the two girls fell asleep towards
dawn holding each other’s hands.CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE HYMN
HERE were several trips of Elizabeth and Pow-
der to the mountain. Then when the little
schoolhouse of La Jota district had closed for the
summer, a return visit to Casa Blanca had flowered.
Mary Hathorn had protested feebly against giving a
week to friends before seeing her beloved family in Santa
Rosa, but how else, Elizabeth had argued, would she be
sure of her? Once at home, they would never let her
Before she was there a day, Wintermute had discov-
ered, over a game of chess in the sunny garden, that she
was a friend of the Roedels, and that she had visited at
Frascati. He had to encourage her to talk about them.
“You don’t dislike them!” she had exclaimed. “I
hadn’t even dared telephone to ask how they are, for
fear Rich would come tearing up the road to carry us
back with him. That’s their kind of hospitality.”
V dntermute was studying the board.
“What makes you think I dislike them?” he inquired,
moving a pawn.
Mary stared at him. “Why, I thought— They have
been classmates, Richard and Elizabeth, for three years.
She was proud to say she didn’t know him, the most popu-
lar man in college! She seemed shocked when I said
I visited there, surprised when I told her how my father,
go!
52THE BATTLE HYMN
S3
a minister, admires Mr. Roedel. Father thinks him the
finest citizen in the state.”
The Dollivers’ Korean servant came out to ask if they
would have tea served in the garden.
“Not till Miss Wintermute comes back,” said her
father.
Elizabeth had driven her mother in to St. Helena, where
Mrs. Wintermute was to address the Women’s Club on
“Liquor and the Law.”
After Tom had noiselessly removed himself, Winter-
mute went back to the subject.
“I am more liberal than my womenfolks. I drink
wine, now and then, myself. But you know how they
feel about it.”
“We don’t drink wine, but we visit the Roedels,”
smiled Mary, finding it easy to talk to Elizabeth’s
father.
“Lisa isn’t so narrow,” added her host. “You’ll find
that there are many of her classmates she doesn’t know.
She doesn’t push. And people think her haughty. That
manner of hers comes from shyness, reserve.”
Before he allowed the topic to lapse he assured her she
must feel free to announce herself to any of her friends
in the valley. It would distress Lisa, himself, if she did
not feel perfectly at home at Casa Blanca.
The next day, after Mrs. Wintermute had left for San
Francisco, and Mary was alone for an hour, she rang up
Frascati. Mrs. Roedel tried to secure the promise of a
visit before the girl returned to Santa Rosa. Mary ex-
plained that her time was not her own, that her new
friends kept it filled to the brim. Before she could ring54
IF TODAY BE SWEET
off, Richard’s mother assured her that he would be de-
lighted to know she was in the neighborhood.
Mary was wavering between the alternative of tele-
phoning to Richard and asking him not to come, or of
explaining the situation to Elizabeth, when up the road,
while they were at luncheon, boomed his roadster.
She dragged Elizabeth into the garden to meet him.
Rich was standing, hatless, under the rose-covered per-
gola. When Elizabeth, as beautiful as superb, took the
hand stretched out to her, Mary, watching, knew at once
how it must be with them.
Before the visit ended, the daughter of the house of
Wintermute and the son of the house of Roedel had es-
tablished their class relationship, had exchanged their
programs and explained their tastes. She was majoring
in political science, he in English. She discovered that
he wanted to be a writer, and that his absent brother,
Hamilton, had also majored in her subject. She acknowl-
edged that she wished to do some social service work.
She did not care to speak yet of teaching. The moun-
tain school had discouraged her.
Mary was confused when Richard turned on her sud-
denly.
“I’m going in to Napa to see a picture. Ripping, they
say. You’re going with me.”
Ll,“Oh, how can I?” she floundered.
“Why not?” asked Elizabeth, calmly smiling.
“Now, that’s settled. You make her go!” commanded
Richard of Mary, nodding towards Elizabeth.
Within ten minutes the three of them were bowling
along the county road, on the way to Napa. RichardTHE BATTLE HYMN
55
and Elizabeth, three years in the same classrooms, had
much to talk about. Mary, listening, wondered what
Mrs. Wintermute would think of it.
As they approached Frascati, she was hoping that
Richard would forget to point it out to the newcomer.
And, of course, there he was beginning:
“That’s our joint, behind those tree tops. That’s
Frascati.”
With serious interest, the daughter of Madge Winter-
mute stared, as they passed, at the spreading acres set to
vines, at the group of buildings which lay between them
and the foothills.
“I suppose it looks like the abode of Satan to you,”
boyishly challenged Rich.
“If that were not just Richard!” thought Mary, help-
lessly. Making the thing which had kept them apart all
those years at last articulate!
And when Elizabeth hesitated, he persisted. “Doesn’t
it?”
“Well, how does it seem to you?” she returned.
His turn now to hesitate, Elizabeth’s to insist in the
manner that Mary had thought stiff and stately and which
her father called shy.
“I want to know what you think about it. I’m seri-
ous. I’ve never known anybody who—justified it,” she
stumbled at the close.
“Meaning us, my father, my brother, all of us?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
“Father doesn’t believe in prohibition. He spent
his boyhood in a country where everybody drinks and no
one gets drunk. He hates whiskey, the saloons, saloon56
IF TODAY BE SWEET
politics, that’s why he wouldn’t raise his hand to prevent
ratification.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“That he didn’t? You saw us in Sacramento? You
thought we were lobbying? I knew you did. I don’t
know how Ham feels now, since he’s lived over there,
with the army. He used to speak of it as the poor man’s
compensation.”
His listener’s eyes widened.
“No one seems to remember the joy it has given.”
“Joy!”
“Yes,” insisted Richard, “joy. Look back over the
centuries. Hasn’t the poor man had a pretty tough deal?
Only a few were favored by fate. Drink, wine, for the
masses, was the only equalizer. The serf when he had a
flagon in his hand was the equal for the moment of kings.
We can’t think of life without comforts, but charity, wel-
fare work is modern. Wine was the only compensation.”
“So we are outgrowing the need of it! ” Elizabeth turned
a triumphant face to him.
“But haven’t outgrown, unless you think we’ve reached
equality! But I’m quoting. You’ll think my feeling
weak, sentimental. It hurts me to think of the passing
of this—” he waved his hand towards the gracious-leaved
vineyards which spread from the road to the north, to the
south. “Of this epic,” he concluded. “Otherwise, I
don’t care. None of us drink much, and we’ve enough
wane buried in that cellar to last for several generations.
I’d like to show it to you sometime.”
“Perhaps!” smiled Elizabeth.THE BATTLE HYMN	57
“You were to tell me’’ he flashed a brilliant smile at
her. “As the Japanese say, tell me your mind.”
She began irrelevantly. “Once during the war I heard
a woman sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. I had
always thought of its—can I say choral quality? I’ll
never forget the way her voice brought out the meaning;
it was hard for us to sit still. Up here, it follows me, as
I ride through the country on Powder, with another mean-
ing, another challenge. I find myself riding to it, sing-
ing it, declaiming it.”
“Just what do you mean?” Richard was beginning,
when his puzzled expression cleared. “I know!”
Looking away from him she repeated:	“They are
trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are
stored.”
“I don’t see much trampling of vineyards!” observed
Rich, swinging into the streets of Napa. “Well, here
we are!”CHAPTER VII
RICHARD
ELIZABETH had acquired the habit of early wak-
ing at Casa Blancha; she would lie for hours
I dreamily watching the hill behind the house,
and listening to the happy garden sounds. The day of her
arrival she had drawn her bed to the south side of the
room so that the first minute of waking, the last conscious
instant at night, might renew her joy in the riot of
bloom. To watch the tree tops redden at the coming of
the sun, to see the shrubbery silvered by the rising moon
was a never-ending joy to her whose daily view from the
city flat was a hill of drab houses of the ugly eighties.
So close did the thickly wooded slope come to the gar-
den edge, so skilfully had Mrs. Dolliver united her crea-
tion with Nature’s own, that an observer could not defi-
nitely say:	“This is garden, and that is not.” The beds
were a glorious tangle of lilacs and hollyhocks and yel-
low brooms, of delphiniums and of luscious peonies and
flaunting dahlias, of roses that flung their long, curving
branches over hedges and high uniting pergola. There
tall, swaying ferns flourished in the moist shade of native
trees, the madrone, the manzanita, and the toyon which
in other counties grows as a shrub. There, too, the wild
lilac grew, and the tall tiger lilies pushed their way
through mats of green. And there, the watcher knew, the
shy trillium and the frailer calochortus nestled among
■RICHARD
59
gold-backed ferns and wild maidenhair. No foot could
push through to the thicket beyond without ruthlessly
sacrificing this pagan altar where garden and hill were
made one.
The Chinese gong in the hall below told her in res-
onant tones that breakfast would be on the table in fifteen
minutes. Then she heard a sweet-voiced chant from
Mary and the running of the water into the bathtub on
the other side of a closed door. Her thought had not
yet touched Mary—or Richard.
Her father appeared at the breakfast table as the two
girls were preparing to leave it. He gave an air of im-
portance to his statement that he had found it unneces-
sary to go to the city, having completed his errand satis-
factorily in St. Helena. Before they had returned from
their show, he informed them, he was in bed, and sleeping.
“How did you know we went to a show?” demanded
Elizabeth.
“Tom told me. He told me you had a caller. Did
you run in to Frascati?” he inquired, sipping his coffee.
Her “no” was emphatic with surprise.
He expressed regret. “It’s a wonderful plant, I’m
told. You should take in everything you can while
you’re here, Lisa. The motto of the wise traveler is:
‘We may not pass this way again.1 ”
“I thought mother would not like it. You know how
she feels about people who sell liquor.”
“The Roedels are different,” he answered heartily.
“Your mother’s own program for a long time was not
more drastic or ambitious, one might say, than the one
proposed by Roedel. In fact, if the wine-making people60
IF TODAY BE SWEET
and the temperance leaders had come together years ago,
they could have had what both wanted—the abolition of
the saloon. The war made the clean sweep suddenly pos-
sible. Mr. Roedel is one of our leading citizens. No
Californian is more respected. He was with the Food
Administration, in Washington, a dollar a year man; led
Liberty Loan drives, and Red Cross campaigns.”
“Do you really think mother would not have minded
had I gone to Frascati?” demanded his daughter in aston-
ishment.
Wintermute sent a smile towards Mary. “It’s the
other way round. I should think they would resent meet-
ing the daughter of Madge Wintermute. Prohibition is
going to hurt them.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Mary exclaimed. “Mr. Roe-
del can afford to lie on his oars, my father says.”
Tom, the Korean, came in to say that Miss Winter-
mute was wanted on the telephone.
When she came back, several minutes later, her eyes
were bright with calm amusement. “Funny, we were
talking about them—”
“Rich?”
“He wants to take us down there this afternoon, to
Lave tea with his mother. I said we’d go. Will
you make it all right with mother if she should get back
before we do? He would have asked you, father, if I
Lad told him you were here!”
“I couldn’t go today,” he was smiling, happily. “I
Lave to run in to Napa.”
It wouldn’t hurt him with O’Ryan to mention that his
daughter was spending the afternoon with Mrs. Roedel!RICHARD
61
“I’ll tell your mother,” he agreed.
Mrs. Wintermute did not return that afternoon. The
telephone bell roused them late that night with a relayed
message from Madge Wintermute. She had failed to get
them on the telephone before leaving on the late train for
the south. It would be a week before she could get back.
When she returned, Richard Roedel was on terms of
intimacy at Casa Blanca. He had ingratiated himself
with Reed Wintermute, whom he piloted over the vine-
yard and wine cellars of Frascati. He had subsidized
Tom, the Korean, who welcomed him whether he were
serving breakfast or dinner. And he was calling Eliza-
beth by her first name, at first heartily, and then with
a strained consciousness.
Soon everyone at Casa Blanca knew that he thought
himself knee-deep in love with her; before Mary was
allowed to go home, she had seen the first steps taken in
the romance she had herself presaged. “Inevitable that
those two should care for one another!” she confided to
Emilie Roedel.
When she saw them meeting in the sunny garden, un-
der the vine-covered pergola, or reading together before
the fire when the evenings threatened chill—reading
poetry together already, Browning, Stephen Phillips and
the modernists—when she saw their beautiful faces flush-
ing over a line of verse, saw the brilliant bronze head and
the slender ebon head almost touching over their book,
she would think, with a catch of the breath, of two mat-
ing gods.CHAPTER Vili
IF TODAY BE SWEET
SURPRISES were the gift of the summer to Fras-
cati. Just when Roedel had adapted himself, he
believed, to the sabbatical hush which was to fall
over the vineyard, overtures were made to him looking to-
wards an experimental station for the government. Per-
haps never again would Frascati run at full blast, but
there was a satisfaction in knowing that the plant which
expressed the imagination and energy of the better part
of his life would not have to be endured as a sort of ceme-
tery stone, a broken column which one would look out
upon when going to bed or rising in the morning. It
was pleasing to think that everything had not been done
for the last time, after all! That the heavy ranch
wagons would again rumble up to the cellar with the over-
flowing boxes of purple and white grapes to be weighed
and crushed, that once again the wine would be staining
the chutes, rushing on its way to the vats. Otherwise, no
wine he had decided would be made; the Roedels did
not need to make their yearly quota, with the cellars al-
ready filled with the product he could not sell. They
might continue to make the wine which was known the
world around, wine, and not grape juice!
“I’m too old to begin a new business,” he would tell
his friends or business associates when they urged the
utilization of the entire plant. It involved learning new
62IF TODAY BE SWEET
63
details of making and bottling^ and of experimentation
with the grape. It meant establishing a new clientele.
“No. Let Hamilton choose when he comes home. It’s
his affair, after all. My work is done.”
He told Emilie, as they sat alone before the evening
fire, that he believed the new law would not stand. If
crime increased from the sale of narcotics and bootleg
whisky, if evasion of law should become so widespread as
to endanger the character of a people, if death and blind-
ness took their resultant toll, then prohibition would go
out as it came in. Men pledged to the program of tem-
perance of light wines and beer, would be returned to state
legislatures and to the national congress. It were even
within reason to expect a national election which would
swing on that issue.
“But not until the war has faded,” he would add,
“would one know what the nation really wants to do about
it. A nation at war’s a sick nation,” was a favorite re-
mark of his. “And it was sick when it wanted to be a
monk. Getting better it might easily say:
‘Ah, fill the cup, what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our feet;
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,
Why fret about them, if today be sweet?’ ”
Others were quoting Omar the summer of 1919, and
many were following his precepts. “Make today sweet! ”
was the natural reaction, he would add, “of selflessness
and sacrifice.”
Several times with Emilie, in terms of dollars and64
IF TODAY BE SWEET
cents, Roedel talked seriously of prohibition. He at-
tacked the subject one night before Rich. His wife need
not worry, he chuckled, even over the possible loss of
Chow. His savings could meet the strain of that Czar’s
increasing salary as he had met it heretofore.
“By this time,” he parenthesized, “were it not for those
two leeching sons of his in New York, he would be retiring
to China, the rich man of his community!”
- “As for my own sons, you and Hamilton, Rich, I have
enough to start you on your way, and that’s all I be-
lieve in doing. I don’t believe in sowing dragons’ teeth.”
Emilie, who had heard all this before, sat placidly knit-
ting, her eyes resting once in a while on her son’s face.
“Betrays lack of imagination, not knowing how to
spend what one has earned. Mother agrees with me.
W e’re going to start out on our spending tour pretty soon.
When Hamilton gets back.”
“Oh, not at once!” resisted Emilie.
“We’ll allow you a little visit with your first-born!
There’s no hurry about our honeymoon, is there, little
mother? The Orient, I get this from reliable authority,
is apt to stay there until we arrive.”
Emilie smiled over her flashing needles at her lord.
“But I will have to buy another filing cabinet! The
steamship companies have ferreted out our plans, and so
have the magazines which specialize in the Orient. I
have everything choke-full now.”
Emilie’s eyes sought Rich, who smiled back at her.
She had had to let someone into her secret, and Rich was
at hand. He knew that her hour of pretended siesta was
being spent with travel books on India and China andIF TODAY BE SWEET
65
Japan. It was going to amaze her husband that one
who had for so long lost the habit of study could have
learned so much. For once, she had confided to her son,
she yearned to be abreast of, if not perhaps to lead, her
well-read husband in information! And Rich had smug-
gled books to her, and was weekly bringing her pamphlets.
Hamilton furnished the next surprise. His letters had
prepared them for a long absence; he was going to visit
Russia and Turkey before he returned. They had been
establishing, though unconsciously, a rather pleasant life
without him. The world, relaxing from its war tension,
was once more a decent place to live in. Friends were
stock-taking, remembering old ties; people were remem-
bering more or less poignantly that life is but once, the
chance for happiness here and now. • Frascati, with
Richard home for the summer, became mildly gay. Then
a cablegram convulsed the home. Hamilton was on his
way to Paris; a few days, and he would be on his way to
California.
Emilie was sure he was coming home invalided. And
until his letters arrived, telling of the trip through France
and Belgium he was going to have with a friend all the
family already knew as “Jules,” the father shared secretly
her alarms. “There is such a thing as home-sickness!”
he beamed above the brief note on the foreign-lined
paper.
Frascati was plunged into an orgy of house-cleaning.
Hamilton’s room had to be redecorated, and new graces
bought; a new rug to live up to the walls, and fresh chair-
coverings to go with the rug. Then the living room was
discovered to be shabby, .and when that was renovated66
IF TODAY BE SWEET
the hall and dining room were thrown into such dingy
relief that the decorators again had to be summoned.
The gardens, relegated to third place during the war
months, had to have new clothes for the coming celebra-
tion; flowering plants were ordered and beds of peren-
nials replenished. Hamilton’s mother knew he would
notice at once if the roads needed graveling, and the out-
side painting had acquired a drabness which the home-
coming soldier would see at first glance! A tempest of
activity shook Frascati, and the storm center was the
kitchen.
Chow each day suggested a different menu.
“Mlister Hamilton, he like plune soufflé,” Mrs. Roedel
was told on Monday. She agreed that prune soufflé
would be nice, very nice indeed.
On Tuesday he pattered upstairs to Hamilton’s room,
where he found her spreading fresh sheets of white paper
in all the drawers.
“Mllissie Lloedel, whalla malia cleam melingue? Mlis-
ter Hamilton heap like Chow’s cleam melingue.”
Mrs. Roedel thought that an inspiration. Hamilton
used to adore Chow’s cream meringues.
But the soul of the Chinese was not at rest. Once, the
boy, now a man and a soldier, had pronounced his peach
ice cream the best thing he had ever eaten.
“All right, Chow,” assented the housekeeper, a trifle
abstractedly, for she herself was in the valley of inde-
cision. About curtains. What would a man like, accus-
tomed to grimness and plainness? Simple hemstitched
scrim, or the gay new chintzes which Frazier’s had on ex-
hibition at Napa? As Chow went back to his kitchen,IF TODAY BE SWEET
67
frowning over his problem, Emilie decided to get a chintz
which was neither plain nor grim.
Saturday night, before leaving for his game, Chow had
still another idea. It was to be lemon pie for the con-
queror. The deep kind, with flaky crust and a frothy
meringue.
Both remembered a family tragedy when one of Chow’s
lemon pies, made for company, was filched for a group of
boys who had come to see the new pool. Soberly, Chow
reminded Mrs. Roedel of this proof of preference, and
she agreed that lemon pie would have associations no
other dessert could equal.
“But, Chow,” she had to voice her misgivings, “he will
want other things than dessert! He’s a man now. You
are not forgetting the roast beef, rare, and the Yorkshire
pudding he’s so fond of?”
Chow went down the road towards the Napa-bound
electric car, shaking his head and smiling. She could
leave the rest to him!
And then suddenly, while Frascati was in upheaval,
came the unprecedented demand for grapes. From all
points of the country parched and stricken throats be-
gan to clamor for the uncrushed fruit, that it might be
turned on the individual hearthstone, honestly and legally,
into wine. The demand was so great that the price was
sent soaring.
“If this keeps up,” exclaimed Roedel coming into the
house one afternoon with a handful of orders the mail
had brought, “if this keeps up, instead of discharging
Chow we will try to find his twin, and we’ll keep the two
going at once. Tell him,” he chuckled, “to have me-68
IF TODAY BE SWEET
lingues, plune soufflé and lemon pie, “all of them, the
night Ham gets home!”
“That’s just what he is dying to do!” said his Emilie,
and that afternoon telephoned into Frazier’s to send her
the hemstitched curtains after all. She thought they
would look well with the chintz.
The back porch, she told her husband, must be painted.
It was the one thing that still looked shabby. Hamilton
would notice it at once !CHAPTER IX
MUSHROOMS AND DEMOCRACY
THOSE who had clamored over the ruin which was
to come to the growers of the grape were con-
founded. Behind closed doors, they gaped and
exclaimed over this unforeseen turn of the fortune wheel.
Where was the injustice they had been declaring? What
about the damage to the state?
“If more money can be made out of the uncrushed
grape than by crushing it,” demanded George Roedel at a
special meeting of the Wine-growers’ Association,” then
what have we all been talking about? Why should we
bring about the labors of yesteryear?”
“Even the bootlegger,” Granucci, a wine-maker of So-
noma ejaculated, “did not want prohibition to pass! And
the grape-growers harvesting fortunes! A topsy-turvy
world! No one wishing to go back to the old times ex-
cept the saloon men and the saloon bosses!”
Hoar, of Solano, had brought a resolution. Hedges,
who presided, said he hoped he was not overstepping
privilege in stating his desire for its unanimouj| adoption.
Hoar asked ponderously that the Wine-growers’ Associa-
tion be kept intact without change of name or purpose,
that the members would encourage the preservation
throughout the state of the wine grape, and that the in-
fluence of the association as a whole would be used against
the grubbing up of the vineyards.
6970
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Rassette, maker of champagne, who was waiting im-
patiently for the Hoar resolution to be concluded before
presenting a more drastic one of his own, looked reproach-
fully at Roedel when he got up to say that he wanted to
speak to the question.
“It’s a larger matter than palates or individual for-
tunes,” Roedel began. “It’s a test, I take it, of democ-
racy itself, this eighteenth amendment. The situation is
analogous with our entrance into the war. Whether we
approved or not, it was our war, and we had to meet
its demands. It would be legitimate for us to work to-
wards another amendment which will have the effect of
repealing the eighteenth, but should any of the members
of the Wine-growers’ Association become convinced that
our state, or nation, or even our county requires an ex-
ample of obedience to law by turning, let us say, our cel-
lars into mushroom beds, I want to consider myself unfet-
tered by this resolution to plant mushrooms!”
A roar of laughter greeted him. “Mushrooms!”
“Mushrooms and democracy!” could be heard on every
side. Rassette stood gloomily surveying the room. He
appealed to Hedges in indignation.
“What ees eet? A meeting? Eet ees a circus.”
Hedges gave him a reassuring wink. “Cheer up, Ras-
sette! You’re not on the brink of ruin, as you prophesied
at the last meeting to be. You’re threatened with a for-
tune. Why should any of us be glum?”
With heart-rending reproach, Rassette turned away.
What was it to sell grapes, his expression demanded, when
one can turn out the best domestic champagne in the
country? He gazed in disgust at the unsympathetic, dullMUSHROOMS AND DEMOCRACY
71
members of the association and, pocketing his resolution,
he left the room.
After the meeting, which ended with the vote on the
Hoar resolution, Roedel lunched with Hedges in an un-
derground restaurant once famous for its Muenchener
beer. Roedel’s talk had made Hedges thoughtful. Had
Italy, he demanded, ever outgrown the effect of an in-
dulgence in evasion of law? What sort of harvest would
the next generation of Americans be reaping? What
would be the national result in terms of character?
Roedel had planned for the two o’clock boat, but he
missed it, with deliberation, and spent the afternoon and
early evening wandering alone through the foreign quar-
ters of the city, Hedges’ question following him. Several
tons of Frascati grapes had been ordered sent to the east-
ern section of the town, where the Greek and Russian
colonies mingle. Consulting from time to time a copy
of a list he had given a detective that morning, Roedel
prowled for over an hour through the wind-swept blocks.
Then he crossed the city to the Latin Quarter.
Hedges had quoted a bottle-maker who said he could
not turn out bottles quickly enough to supply Little Italy.
“Every family in the Quarter is making wine.” Well
could he believe it, from the stench! The smell of the
decaying grape weighted the air. Before he left the cable
car at the foot of the hill, he had seen in vacant lots,
among tin cans and chicken feathers, the dumped lees rot-
ting in the sun. The odors of garlic and onions mingled
disagreeably with the fermenting fruit.
All at once, a better fragrance dominated. A breeze
brought to him the rich savor of boiling chocolate. Was72
IF TODAY BE SWEET
it a favorite beverage of the Quarter? He had known
that it was a partiality of the Mexicans—
The sidewalks of the Quarter were stained. Grape
boxes had spilled their precious cargo, or perhaps the lees
had been allowed to lie there, waiting the coming of the
city scavengers?
A strong wind was blowing in from the northwest.
Every gust brought a whiff of chocolate. Why, of course,
there was a chocolate factory in that neighborhood!
He walked on towards the Bay. The air was brilliant
and clear, swept clean by the fresh winds. Oakland,
Berkeley and the tree-covered hills of Sausalito and Bel-
vedere had been drawn through the illusion of atmos-
phere into a closer circle.
A strong tide was running. On the Bay the patched
lateen sails of the fishing craft pitched and rose. He
could see a ferry passing Alcatraz, the prison island.
Near by loomed an imposing brick building which blocked
off a square of the blue, unflecked sky. The cheerful
odor of heated chocolate grew stronger. This, then, was
the chocolate factory, where the new food god was striv-
ing to outsmell the old!
Memories of a lifetime it brought to him. The pic-
ture, first, made famous by daily use, the famous cocoa
maid of the Dresden Gallery; then, homely scenes, of
Frascati, of the pleasant living room full of friends,
friends of his and Emilie, and then, later, friends of the
boys. And last, another, earlier picture, blurred by tears
and faded, at last, from age, of a little cottage overhang-
ing a lake where his girlish love had brewed him choco-
late!MUSHROOMS AND DEMOCRACY
73
Age, he told himself, has its compensations. One feels,
each year, less poignantly. Just as the cocoa maid as-
serts here her sway, banishing thoughts loyal to cool, dark
cellars and bottled sunlight, so do Emilie and the new
world attain their supremacy. A kindly plan, age!
He looked at his watch. In twelve minutes a Napa
ferry, his boat, would be leaving the pier. Had it not
been for that group of boys who had just passed him, he
would spend the evening with Emilie, before the home
hearth. Mystery, secret guilt, had burned in those dark
Latin eyes. He watched the boys disappear into a blind
alley where “craps” or “a blind pig” was perhaps calling
them.
Suppose he were that age, Richard’s, say? Suppose he
were alone, and free, in a large city? What would that
city offer to him? Would he choose to go home to the
old folks, sitting before the fire?
The boat would go without him. He was going to
spend that evening as though he were Rich, as though
the blood of youth were flowing in his veins.
He left the Quarter when the sun was low in the west.
He would remember it as a place of dirty streets and wine-
stained sidewalks, of grape dumps rotting in the sun and
of the swarming childhood whose problem is America’s.
He dined at a restaurant in a side street, where he or-
dered wine questioningly and was charged only for serv-
ice. “It was the signor’s own wine.” He knew of that
trick. Never had he been in that place before.
Around him, men and women were openly drinking.
“Their own wine.” Some had cocktails and liqueurs.
Roedel kept watching the entrance.74
IF TODAY BE SWEET
If he were the age of Rich, he would enjoy that variety
of excitement, expecting a policeman to darken that door.
But his was the age which prefers to buy teaspoons and
towels. Rich liked to collect them.
He called the waiter, and told him that the wine was
not good. “Malo.” He felt easier when it had been
taken away.
Following the Rich role, he went on to one of the city
vaudeville houses. Every song carried an allusion to
liquor. The pet gag was of prohibition. "So,” thought
the older Rich, “even when the crowd is not actually
drinking, it is tickling its nerves, sharpening its palate.
Every jest has a clove in it,” he added, as he followed the
audience into the fog-swept street.
He drifted into a popular supper house where the air
was heavy with smoke and familiar fragrances. Through
silken shades the lights burned softly; girls were
passing between the tables, singing, dancing, and urging
or luring the guests to join them. It was difficult, he dis-
covered, to decide which were the paid, which the paying
entertainers. When he entered, balloons were being re-
leased into the heavy air.
He asked for a room upstairs that he might look down
on the dancers. With his oysters he ordered a whiskey
and soda. The waiter’s face was a study in blankness.
Roedel thought he had stumbled on an instance of pro-
priety; that his order would be disregarded. The oysters
were brought him without allusion to the drink.
Through the red curtains, a few minutes later, a hand
holding a flask of whiskey was thrust. No face could
be seen. He discovered a siphon of soda at his feet.MUSHROOMS AND DEMOCRACY
75
If he were a youth, this would be immensely diverting.
But he was old.
The adjoining booth was occupied by owners of youth-
ful voices, light voices of girls mingling with bass and
baritone.
His oysters were left half eaten on his plate. The
flask was not opened. He went away, in search of a
hotel room, thinking of Rich; of Rich and of mushrooms.CHAPTER X
BEATRIX
“T~ CALLED up to find if you were home. I’m go-
ing to run up,” the voice of Richard would an-
nounce systematically.
As regularly, Elizabeth would respond:	“I won’t be
home. I was'just leaving.”
“Good! I’ll meet you on the road!” an undismayed
Richard would call after her.
Once she announced a headache; that she was lying
down. Why then, he said, he must come and read
to her! What books should he bring? Lowell, Amy, of
course, or Vachel Lindsay, or some of the old-fashioned
fellows, like Stephen Phillips?
After a few days of loneliness for Mary Hathorn, Rich-
ard’s gay charm completely filled her stage. He brought
his county friends to call on her, arranged swimming bouts
at Frascati, with tea, presided over by Emilie in the
living room afterwards. It was at Emilie’s tea table
that she had met George Roedel. The look he had given
her was benign, as though of long friendship.
He complained that she rose so soon to go. He wanted
to show her his cellar, and then insisted that she would
set a day for her return.
“Perhaps next week,” evaded Elizabeth.
“What’s wrong with tomorrow?” he demanded, in Rich-
76BEATRIX
77
ard’s own manner. “I wager you have never seen a wine
cellar!”
The next day, therefore, Richard had again come for
her. He had planned a swim in the pool, and tea after,
before the visit to the cellar, but, his father at once took
possession of her, sending a sulky Richard on a farm er-
rand to Napa.
Roedel assumed that Elizabeth would want to know the
process from vine to bottle. As he carried her around
the vineyard, he gave her a running history of wine-
making in California.
She knew something about fermentation, and had the
popular impression of the primitive process. He told her
of the chemical process within the grape, of maturation,
and of the scientific labor involved in the details of
modern wine-making.
“If you are in the valley when we begin to crush for
the government, you must see it being done,” he told her,
pleased at the way Madge Wintermute’s daughter was
listening to his proud old chatter.
“But I’m seeing it done! ^her calm bronze eyes smiled
at him. “I can see the grapes carried by elevator to the
crusher, the stems shot into the air; I can see the stream
of crushed grapes running down to those waiting vats, can
feel, almost, the restless life within the must.”
That, he told her, was but the beginning of the story.
“The patience of it!” she exclaimed when he had told
her of the repeated rackings, of the separating of the
bright juice from the lees; of the care which must be
taken of the casks; of the later rackings, until years of
watchfulness make the wine safe for bottling.IF TODAY BE SWEET
“And that, too,” he added, “is only the story of healthy
wine. I’ve not told you of the diseases. Did you know
there is a pathological history of wine?”
“I know about phylloxera,” answered Elizabeth.
“That’s the disease of the vine. I always think of the
Bible when I come in here, Miss Wintermute! Nature
never intended that men should lay up treasures on earth.
There are always thieves about, microscopical as well as
human—”
“Wouldn’t it seem as though Nature repudiates fer-
mentation?” demanded his guest, who had been shudder-
ing over one of the huge vats upon whose surface a re-
pulsive crust had formed.
“Nature repudiates preservation!” he retorted, want-
ing to have this astonishingly steady young person see it
all straight. “Houses rot if we don’t keep after them
eternally; silver and brass corrode if we pack them away;
silks and linen rot without use; pearls darken and die
when they are not worn; gardens have to be fought to
keep them from running back into the wilderness—”
He broke off before the shocked comprehension of the
ruddy-hued eyes.
“I want to show you the presses before I let you go
back into the sunlight.” For he had caught her shiver-
ing again as they plunged deeper into the dark abysses of
the wine cellar.
That evening, while Emilie was in the kitchen giving
the breakfast order to Chow, Richard, puffing away at his
pipe, demanded of his father:	“Did you know that you
called Elizabeth Beatrix, Dad?”BEATRIX
79
“Did I?” exclaimed Roedel, chuckling. “Well, what
do you think of that?”
“You called her that twice,” persisted Rich, flushing
under his father’s gaze.
“Did I!” repeated Roedel.
Emilie could be heard returning. Roedel pulled him-
self up from his chair. “Come into my study, Rich. I
want to show you something.”
After carefully shutting the door, he took a covered
package from a desk drawer, and handed it to Rich.
“Elizabeth!” exclaimed Rich. He looked up at his
father. Bis it Elizabeth, or someone who looks like her?”
“Sit down. I want to tell you about it,” said his father.
They talked together for an hour. Richard did not re-
turn to the living room but went on up to bed, a scowl of
scornful skepticism on his face. Roedel had already re-
gretted his impulse. Richard, he knew, was thinking him
an old fool. Perhaps this interest was deeper than the
boy’s other affairs. Some day Rich was going to grow
up, to get steady and steadfast—like Hamilton.
Emilie looked up from her knitting to ask her husband
if he were quite satisfied about Richard. “Since pro-
hibition came in, I mean?” she asked fearfully. “He
never used to care for wine before—”
“Aren’t you borrowing trouble, little mother? I’ve
not noticed that he drinks any more than he used.”
“It’s the way he drinks it,” persisted the mother. “He
talks of it now the way he talked of hotel spoons and
towels when he was collecting them.”
“But he outgrew that, when he had one from every80
IF TODAY BE SWEET
town in the state!” reassured the father. “And he’s going
to be glad some day when he discovers that every one
of those filched idiocies has been paid for!”
“If it weren’t forbidden, if it weren’t being talked so
much about,” fretted Emilie. “Rich isn’t like Hamilton.
If I wanted him to take medicine, I’d tell him not to.”
“Why, little mother,” exclaimed Roedel, “what terrible
things are you saying? You never brought up one of
our boys by indirection! ”
“I didn’t say I did, George.” She was flushing over
her botched sentence. “I meant if I should want him to
take medicine, I could get him to take it by telling him—”
“Yes, I know!” He got up and stood behind her chair,
patting her shoulder. Her poor subjunctives! They
would always trip his Emilie!
She continued to look so crestfallen that he had to
bestir himself to bring the look of content back to her
eyes again.
In his own room, her words brought him misgivings.
“Old fool!” he thought. “Made a taboo of her, didn’t
I? Now he’ll really be falling in love with her!”CHAPTER XI
A SUMMER PILOT
WHEN Rich insisted that she was not treating
his love seriously, Elizabeth had confronted
him with his fickle past. At college his af-
fairs had been the class jest. How could anyone believe
in his protestations? There was Regina, and Marian,
and Helene and a dozen others report had engaged
him to!
Such interests, he had declared, unabashed, and not de-
nying them, were but embassies of love. Did she remem-
ber her Tennyson—“Embassies of love which tampered
with the feelings ere they found empire for life”?
“How do I know that you are not such an embassy to
me—‘Summer pilot of an empty heart’?” she had retorted.
The summer, too quickly passing, was the happiest of
her life; inevitable that Rich should share the credit.
The garden of Casa Blanca, in which she browsed and
dreamed and rested and read gave daily ecstasy, but Rich-
ard had shared that also! The hill trails which led from
the county road into luscious canons or wooded mountains
from which one could get distant views of the sea were
associated with Powder, but Rich had a way of inserting
himself into those snapshots, too! And such a diverse
Richard!
One day, a humorous comrade; the next, a Richard of
poetical turn who quoted Keats and Browning and Ar-
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IF TODAY BE SWEET
nold, and the “last minutes,” as he termed them, all with
a specialized application! And then the usual Richard,
the one she had tried to discourage, or rather to postpone
—the lover who filled her hours with tribute, and who was
beginning to demand that she give him her promise be-
fore she returned to “those thin-faced college prigs,” as
he dubbed the young instructors.
Of course she loved him, in a way, she once told him,
and so did everyone, his college mates, the county folk,
even the ranch hands. “How could anyone help it, so
gay he was, so stimulating, so enchantingly interested!”
He had seized upon her admission as though it were con-
fession.
How did she know, he had demanded, that she was not
analyzing emotions into shreds? That the great love she
was idealizing, he amended, would not enter thus simply;
softly approaching, not overwhelming her?
They were the same age, in years. In experience, in
feeling, she was years older. Maternal her affection, she
teased him by declaring. As to that, he argued, did not
all the books of romance tell her that all sweet women
have that feeling for the men they marry?
He touched, she insisted, only the outer circle of her
life. Had anyone else, though, he protested, ever en-
compassed that circle more completely?
One thing Rich—or Frascati—had settled. She knew
now she could never marry Dr. Snow. So when he wrote
from the northern college where he was giving a summer
course, asking her to let him see her, if only once, before
his return to New York, she wired, routed, begging himA SUMMER PILOT
83
girlishly to save them both that pain. Maybe not Rich,
but surely not Dr. Snow!
“Will I like you at college?” she once asked Rich.
“For I love your setting, your home, your splendid father,
your gentle, lovable mother.”
His answer was triumphant:	“I don’t care for
whose sake you love me, as long as you do love me,
Elizabeth
His verses lavished obscuring color upon her. She
was all the hues of the riotous autumn. Lovely though
his verses were, they transformed the reserved Elizabeth
into a dashing bacchante. Better his father’s prose than
the son’s poetical descriptions, she resisted, when he
carried her one of his sonnets. “ ‘Stately figure of an an-
tique coin,’” she quoted. “I love that!. I’m no wine-
worshipping dancer with flying draperies!”
“I never said it. Show me where I said it!” chal-
lenged Rich.
“You connoted it. Just the same thing!” retorted the
girl.
One day she was staring at him, at a sudden resem-
blance to his father, and Rich had mistaken the earnest-
ness. He seized her to him, and kissed her again and
again. She broke away from him, leaving him in the
garden, and though he lingered for an hour, sending plain-
tive signals up to her windows, she would not come back.
Nor would she answer the telephone when a penitent had
returned to Frascati.
Then he let a day pass, giving her time to miss him, be-
fore he again called her up.84
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“If I promise that I will not forget myself again, may
I come back?”
“No!” said Elizabeth.
“I am promising!” wheedled Rich.
4‘I’m not,” returned Elizabeth.
“I think we should wait for the evening for our ride,”
pursued the unabashed Richard. “It’s going to be a red-
hot afternoon. But the moon’s just right for a trip up
Howell Mountain. I want you to see Calistoga and
Mt. St. Helena by moonlight. I’ll be there by seven.”
And abruptly hung up the telephone receiver, without
saying good-bye, so that she had not told him she would
not go.
It was past seven before his roadster appeared. She
had been watching for him, and was at the gate when he
flashed past, carrying an absorbed face in the direction of
Calistoga.
She was on her way to the house when his machine
came roaring back.CHAPTER XII
MADDALENA
SEVERAL times during the afternoon Nora knocked
at his door to tell Master Richard that he was
' wanted at the telephone. Each time, after asking
her if it were Miss Wintermute who wanted him, he would
send Nora back to report that he could not be found, and
would they please leave their message?
Twice Emilie stole into the room where he was writing,
and seeing his desk strewn with mangled sheets of paper,
crept out again. When he had his hair rumpled like
that, and the wild look in his eye, it meant that verse-
making had him in the throes. Wonderful to have a
poet in one’s own family!
Beyond his closely drawn shades a fiery sun was searing
a pathway down the sky. The sultry days of autumn had
overtaken them. Already the grapes were ripening, un-
evenly, in patches here and there. Across the creek, be-
hind the willows, was arriving the picturesque motley
which follows the fruit. As Rich had ridden past the
station that morning, he had noticed the foreign hands at
work, busily unloading the shooks which were to be made
into grape boxes. The greater part of the crop was to be
shipped, this year, uncrushed. Frascati would soon be a
bustling, hurrying hive.
Several times there were halloos from the direction of
the wine cellar, and the name of “Richard” was called.86
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Driving past the house in his machine, the voice of George
Roedel demanded irascibly:	“Where is that boy?” And
to a low answer, of defense, from Emilie, came a bellow:
“Writing rhymes about the harvest! Tell him to come
and help it! ”
The hot afternoon wore itself out. Rich had emptied
two pitchers of ice water which Nora left at his door, and
had covered sheets of manuscript with words which ca-
ressed the lips and sounded like Swinburne, but gave no
suggestion of Elizabeth. He tore the pages into small
pieces and stole down the back stairs on his way to the
pool.
This hour, it was recognized, was his. It was the time
he loved best in the water. It was a never-failing delight
to lie outstretched on the cool grass while the sun fell
towards the beckoning arms of the overhanging oak-trees.
He loved the feel of sun-dried skin against fresh clothes
after a day of toil with ink or fruit. Even when the
rush was on, at the height of the season when the fruit
was ripening faster than the force could handle it, time
had to be allowed for Richard’s pleasant hour.
After standing about in the sun, waiting for the wagons
to roll up to the weighing shed, or helping to unload the
truck of its burden, or filling it up, later, with the “emp-
ties,” the plunge would refresh him and partially resign
him to the heathenish-timed dinner which Frascati had
to have because its cook must nightly gamble. Maids
inevitably became as tyrannical as Chow on the subject of
punctuality, as the dishes he could not finish in time to
make the seven-thirty electric at the Frascati station
had to be done by them.MADDALENA
87
“You can have things your own way when you have a
house of your own,” his father would tell him when he
overheard a complaint against a lonely or a dried-up din-
ner. “But we’re lucky to be able to keep Chow for your
mother. When there’s a sunset that must be put to
paper, or a thought which would ruin digestion, you
can come in as late as you like, provided you do
not make your mother miserable over your dried-up
food.”
The early dinner spoiled the day, spoiled Frascati, for
Rich. To him it was the hour when the world was at its
best. A desecration, he told his mother, to shut one’s
self up in a curtained, artificially lighted room while the
sun was sinking down a tempered sky! He loved the
mellowing hush which halts the clamor of the day; loved
to have his nerves caressed by the distant tinkle of cattle-
bells, by the crickets as they tuned up their orchestra.
The time of all times to throw one’s self on a saddle, or
into a low-flung car, and go riding into the heart of the
sunset!
“Want roast beef, or mutton curry at that hour?
Bah!”
Today he spent a half hour in the shaded pool, diving,
doing the Australian crawl with variations; the better
part of the time floating, his arms outstretched, his eyes
closed, with a pleasant loss of identity. Like a leaf on
the surface of the water, time, space forgot. Above his
head the brilliant sunshine was filtering through the leafy
branches of the white oaks. For some time there had
been small, crackling sounds from one of them, whose
long, brittle arms stretched across the western end of the88
IF TODAY BE SWEET
pool. The noises grew sharper, impatient, and at last
roused him from his trance.
He looked up into a ravishing, leaf-framed girlish face.
The dark eyes which were smiling into his were melting,
impish and tender. They mocked him from their deep
fringe of upturned lashes. Her hair was gleaming black;
the rich, olive skin glowed with brilliant color.
He lay silently staring at her.
Then:	“Are you a nymph, a daughter ot the great
god Pan?”
“I don’t know what it is,” she answered in a voice that
sounded like the rich, deep notes of temple bells.
“No, we don’t,” he agreed, pushing himself closer to the
shallow edge of the pool, directly under the oak-tree.
“None of us do. But how did you get there?”
“How do you think? How you get here yourse’f?” she
countered pertly.
“Same way, I reckon,” he laughed back, immensely di-
verted. He stood up in the water and looked closely at
her. She was flashing all her beauties at him—small,
white teeth, roguish smile, dancing eyes and surging
color.
He swam away from the challenge, across the pool and
back again to get the lazy blood into circulation, and
then he ran up the slope of the bank to the lawn, where
he flung himself, alert for the witch’s next move. The
tantalizing little face peered down between the branches.
After a while he called to her:	“Why don’t you come
down? Do you live up there?”
There was a peal of lovely laughter, and then a swift
rustling of leaves, a crackling sound as the branch swungMADDALENA
89
low, leaving her flushed, radiant—the most extraordi-
nary fruit—at his feet.
“Were you there?” he nodded up at the tree, “when I
came? Were you there all that time?”
“Oh, yes, and you wun’t even look at me!”
“What’s your name?” he demanded. “Have you one?”
Her clothes acknowledged that she belonged to the
fruit-picking gang from the camp on the creek. But
never before had they produced such a houri.
“Have one!” she echoed, and her laughter was irresist-
ible. Rich laughed himself at his own slight humor.
“Once you knew me. Once you used to say:	‘Hello,
Maddalena!’ ”
“Maddalena?” Rich screwed up his forehead. “There
was a Maddalena last year, a child, thin, scrawny, with
a mop of black hair always in her eyes!”
She nodded with delight.
“Not Latta’s kid?”
She clapped her hands ecstatically. “But yes! I’m
grew up las’ year! ”
“You’ve certainly done some growing, but not up,” he
told her.
It was too subtle for the Sicilian. It was her turn
to wrinkle her forehead, but not for more than an
instant. In a few seconds the volatile mind had lost
the words that had puzzled her. She was chattering to
him, telling him that she had known him right away.
“The firs’ day she had come she had seen him, when he
came down to the camp. She was hiding behind the
tent, for she was so awful dirty! And the nex’ day she
had seen him riding past on his horse, all alone; and the90
IF TODAY BE SWEET
nex’ day he had driven down the road where the big trees
are, and he was with a girl who had funny hair, like an
Irish setter dog. Did he think it was a pretty color, that
hair? She herse’f, Maddalena, wun’t want to look like a
setter dog! Once she had an Irish setter dog, but it died
on her,' way down in Fresno. Did he know where Fresno
was?” /
“That girl looks jes like my dog,” she nodded again,
and then laughed to make her audience laugh too. “Once
more I seen you by the gate. There were two girls that
time, one was the girl who looks like a dog, and the other
was a leetle girl like me.”
Rich jumped to his feet, frowning.
“I’m late, Maddalena, I’ve got to dress for dinner. I’ll
see you tomorrow, maybe, across the road, after dark,
perhaps. Crispi doesn’t let the camp people come over
here.”
He ran across the lawn, cutting across the avenue and
into the orchard to avoid the front entrance.
Maddalena sat watching the white-limbed, flashing
form until it disappeared behind the trees. When she
could no longer see the wonderful creature who lived in
the big house, she turned her eyes to her torn, stained
skirt, the work-worn blouse and her stubby, patched
shoes.
“Dressing for dinner! He dresses for dinner!”
Even his warning about Crispi did not stress so poig-
nantly the difference of their lives. She sat frowning over
a memory of the long oil-clothed table of the camp around
which the fruit-pickers in their ugly, smelling workMADDALENA
91
clothes crowded. She, Maddalena, knew how it ought to
be done!
“Han’t she seen the picture where they show the rich
people’s dining rooms? Din’t she know that folks like
the Roedels wear clean, new close for dinner, and that
the table is in white, like a bride’s table, with flickering
candles? Unless, mebbe, there is one big light in the
middle of the ceiling looking like a basin turned upside
down. And there is a servant with a white apron on and
a cap, and she slips around on her toes without mekking
no noise, and nobody has to stretch, nobody eats like a
dog!”
“Why can’t she have all this, herse’f, Maddalena?
Why can’t she learn herse’f to do things the way ladies
do, to walk, and to talk, and to mek gran’ men, like that
Richard Roedel, love her? Love her hard. Enough to
want her, to give her a gran’ home like this. She could
mek Richard Roedel love her if she wanted to! Han’t
she mek that Joe Ruiz love her like he was one crazy?
She, Maddalena, wanted to dress for dinner, too. She
wanted to eat off silver plates, or that funny, thick glass
stuff which shines in the pictures like it was made of
diamonds. She was goin’ to mek Richard Roedel love
her!”
His family had reached the dessert when Rich entered
the dining room. He told Nora that he did not wish any
soup. He made quick havoc of his dinner.
The evening was soft and clear. He did not glance at
the camp as he ran past. There were only a few ma-
chines on the road, as all of Napa county ate at that92
IF TODAY BE SWEET
heathenish hour, so Rich let out his engine and raced up
the valley.
The county was entering its moment of wistful loveli-
ness. To north, to south, the grape was reddening.
From the fields rose the rich, dry odor of hot tarweed,
and the soft breeze was bringing the scent of apples;
somebody not far off was crushing for cider. At the
height of the year’s glory had come that falling hush
which threatens winter and the slow, sure march towards
death. And people were eating in the small, dark
rooms.
A mile or so beyond Casa Blanca, he turned his ma-
chine around and went swiftly back. Elizabeth was
standing by the gate, her coat over her arm.
“Confess!” she cried, as he drew up by the gate.
“Confess that you were writing a poem, that you had
forgotten all about me!”
“Forgotten’s too strong a word. Postponed is more
accurate,” he retorted, jumping out of the roadster. She
gave him a swift, relieved glance as he helped her into the
machine.
Just a boy, Richard, after all!CHAPTER XIII
AN EMBASSY OF LOVE
BEFORE Richard returned to the university, his
mother had heard of his affair with Maddalena.
• The hands, Nora said, and Chow, even Crispi,
the close-mouthed, were whispering of “the shameless
way that Eyetalian girl is throwing herself at the young
master’s head. He can’t leave the house an’ she
ain’t waiting for him. She follows him around like a
dog! ”
Richard helped with the vintage labors, and moved on
to the halls of the university as in a dream. He wanted
to marry Elizabeth,. but the Sicilian’s beauty and her
strange little ways were bewildering and absorbing and
she clung like a crab. Never had he seen anyone so
beautiful. The sun could shine on her face without be-
traying a flaw; her beauty triumphed over her funny little
clothes. While the fever was at its height he confided to
a fraternity brother that “it is the girl who lets a fellow
kiss her who gets the shackles around his wrist!”
Uneasily, but resolute, Crispi sought his mistress one
morning after Richard’s week-end had ended. “It isn’t
talk I’m bringing you,” he declared, “though I’ve heard
plenty of that. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes.
Mr. Rich can’t keep on this way without getting into
trouble. It’s not his fault, Mrs. Roedel. The girl’s
clean crazy about him. They’re Sicilians. You know
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IF TODAY BE SWEET
how they are about their girls. If Latta gets on to it,
there’ll be trouble. If he was a Portygee, or a Mexican,
it would be different, but a Sicilian! They’re quick with
their knives.”
Not since Richard’s childhood had he complained to
her of boyish pranks. He left her sitting soberly in the
sunny, flower-banked window of the dining room. Al-
ways it was Rich who was the trouble-maker!
This was serious enough to be shared with the father
of Rich; who always found a way out of difficulties. He
made light of the story. Almost it seemed as though he
were pleased- “Let it run a little longer!” he advised
her. “Only yesterday he was thinking himself mad about
Elizabeth. What did you tell me about the daily pome-
writing? This can’t be serious yet.”
And when she continued to look apprehensive, he
added:	“And let’s try to keep from stalking him, little
mother. We don’t want to push him into anything rash,
do we?”
Sighing deeply, she went back to her secret reading.
And when Rich, the following Sunday, sauntered down to
a breakfast so late that it took the place of a luncheon,
she forbore to ask him about a dance which he had been
supposed to attend in Vallejo. Chow had seen him in
Napa with Maddalena. She was not going to stalk him.
She did not want her boy to lie to her. As she sat with
him at table, she brooded over the Frascati method which
discourages falsehoods, involving as much forbearance on
the part of the parents as rectitude on the part of the
sons.
She would not ask him where he was going, when, aAN EMBASSY OF LOVE
95
little later, he strolled casually from the house, looking
like a stage hero in his white flannels and pale yellow
silk shirt. Nor would she allow herself to watch him
from the window. She kept her rebellious eyes on her
book of travel, and though peeping through that curtain
might save her hours of pain, might show her Rich flying
off to Napa in his roadster, she would not yield. That
was what her George meant by “stalking.^
Crispi had not dared to share his complete worry with
Rich’s mother. And he hated to betray the boy he loved.
But if Master Rich were going to keep on the way he was
going, sneaking wine away in his machine every time he
left the place, it was going to bring disgrace on Frascati.
And disgrace was to be kept from Frascati.
Talking over cellar matters one day with his employer,
a week or so after his visit to the house, Crispi tried to
give a vague warning to the father. Roedel, who had
been listening to Emilie’s alarms, thought he referred to
the Sicilian girl.
Crispi carried a relieved conscience to the platform
where the grape boxes were being dumped. He had not
been asked for details. That, he confided in relief to
Tony, one of the hands, was his employer’s way. “Al-
though I had it all down in my notebook, in my pants
pocket, where I could a put my hand on it, tell the exact
number of bottles Master Rich has taken on the story
as it’s for home use, it was good not having to tell it. A
dirty trick, anyway, I had to play on Master Rich
who always looked me straight in the eye, the beautiful
young iiar, when he said to me:	'They have some thirst
up there, eh, Crispi?’ Better, maybe, to answer back:96
IF TODAY BE SWEET
‘You’re lying, and you know it, Mr. Rich, and you know
I know it. I won’t give you another bottle to break the
law with, and to be bringing sorrow to your father. The
law’s going to be kept at Frascati!’ But now the boss
knows. I’ve washed my hands of the thing.”
Roedel sought out Emilie before the lunch bell
rang. He went up behind her, putting his hand on her
shoulder.
“I guess you’re right, little mother. We’ll put a stop
to this thing. Latta’s a Sicilian—”
When she lifted her eyes to his, he saw panic.
“It isn’t as bad as that. We are not going to let it
be serious, or grand, or tragic. We are going to blow it
out with a laugh. No old fool will say this time:	‘Thou
shalt not!’ ”
She sat watching him, questioning him, her hand cov-
ering the title of her book.
“We haven’t had a house party, one of the old-
fashioned kind, for a long time, the sort that crowds the
house to the roof, so that we are afraid to go into the
kitchen or the billiard room or the bathroom for fear of
stumbling on a bed. Let’s give one soon, right now.”
“Shan’t we wait for Hamilton?” asked his wife.
“We won’t wait for anything,” returned George Roedel.
What had that to do with Latta’s daughter?
“Leave the rest to me,” he chuckled. “What was the
tune Rich was yelling around the house last year? ‘Give
me the moonlight, give me the girl, and leave the rest to
me!’ ”
Rich received a letter from home telling of the house
party for that week-end. A dozen of his friends also toldAN EMBASSY OF LOVE
97
him about it. Elizabeth was the only one who could not
accept. Roedel had arranged that the young people
should come up together Friday afternoon.
Towards the end of the week he rang up the Napa live
wire, Mrs. Rawlings, reminding her that she had ex-
pressed a wish to visit the grape-pickers’ camp. The
season would soon be drawing to an end. Would she
like to come, say Saturday morning, when he was going
to pilot a lot of young people over the plant?
Mrs. Rawlings asked permission to bring her commit-
tee. “And it so happened that one of her friends, the
state attendance officer of the board of education, was to
be visiting her that week-end. She would like also to
bring her.”
Roedel turned away from the telephone .chuckling.
At dinner on Friday no one but the listening Emilie
knew that it was her husband who had directed the gay
chatter towards an interest in the vineyard. One of the
visitors, whom Rich had “queened” six months before,
wanted to know how Mr. Roedel collected the people
who gathered the fruit? “Do they just appear miracu-
lously, when they are needed,” flippantly she asked, “or
have those people, the ones we saw as we passed the
vineyard, been here since last year, lying dormant, wait-
ing for the harvest to waken them?” Everyone laughed
but Richard.
Roedel, smiling at her deliberate frivolity, told her of
the folk who follow the fruit. How they are continually
passing up and down the state, from ripening crop to
ripening crop. From Frascati these people would soon
be moving southwards, going on to the tomato fields in98
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Santa Clara valley, and then on, perhaps, to the re-
claimed desert land of the Colorado river.
He paused for an instant. “It makes, you see, one of
our big problems. It’s a picturesque custom, but we are
beginning to see that we have been thoughtless about it.
The law has begun to concern itself about the children of
the wanderers. We have child labor laws, but how can
we enforce them while these people are jumping over the
state like fleas?”
“Fleas!” exclaimed Richard, impetuously, furiously,
collapsing when the eyes of the table were turned on him.
“By the way,” Roedel turned to his wife, “Mrs. Rawl-
ings is coming tomorrow to visit with her committee,
Americanization committee, I think she called it. She
has a plan to start classes here next season.”
The girls all begged him to include them in the expedi-
tion. Roedel avoided his wife’s eyes. It was arranged
for the house party to make the tour of the vineyard and
camp the next morning. Richard was a thundercloud the
rest of the evening. He talked of a toothache which
would send him into Napa the next morning.
At breakfast a summons from Crispi drew Roedel from
the table. “If I’m not back when Mrs. Rawlings’ friends
come, will you take my place, Rich? I’ll catch up with
you somewhere along the route.”
There was no help for it. Rich had to pilot the chat-
tering crowd; he hurried them away from Maddalena’s
tent, but not before the girls had exclaimed over the way
“these people have to live!” He had to answer a lot of
questions as to customs and habits of the fruit-pickersAN EMBASSY OF LOVE
99
put to him by the women of Mrs. Rawling’s committee,
and of the child-labor committee of Mrs. O’Ryan, who
had asked to be included in the party.
At last he was able to get them away from the settle-
ment and on their way to the vineyard. The children of
the tents followed them across the creek, gaping. As
they moved down the tree-lined avenue, the grape-pickers
stared at them over the vines. Maddalena was not to be
seen.
“Do any of them speak English?” asked a member of
one of the committees.
“They all speak English!” growled Richard.
“But I thought that we were to teach them our lan-
guage!” cried another.
Mrs. Rawlings began to explain that English was the
common medium of the fruit-pickers, who were Portu-
guese, Italian, Mexican, in fact, people from almost all
the countries of the world. Most of them could not read.
Many of the children, they would discover, had never
been to school. They had to be caught, as it were, on the
wing.
Roedel was bearing down on the party. With him was
Latta, the father of Maddalena. He was introduced to
the visitors.
Just then George Roedel discovered Maddalena, who
was squatting in the vines because of the disfiguring sack
and skirt she had donned that morning, in order that her
wardrobe might be washed for Sunday and for Richard’s
subduing. Roedel made her emerge, saying:	“This is
Maddalena Latta. You met her father just now. She100
IF TODAY BE SWEET
has been working for us ever since she was a little girl.
Let me see, how long have you been coming here, Madda-
lena?”
The Sicilian gave a wild look around the group, as
though seeking a way to escape, as though someone must
come to her aid. Richard was deeply engrossed with one
of the committee women.
“Three years, I guess,” breathed Maddalena. “No,
this is my fourth summer.”
“She came direct from Sicily,” explained Roedel.
“Mrs. Rawlings, this might be called one of your fleeting
opportunities.”
“How old are you?” Mrs. O’Ryan, the wife of the blind
brewer spoke for the first time. She was flushing, as
though everyone were looking at her.
“Sixteen,” answered Maddalena, trying to get a signal
to a singularly unobservant Richard.
“Can you read, write?” asked Mrs. O’Ryan, almost in
a whisper.
Maddalena tossed her head. “Oh, yes ! ” She was re-
covering a little of her assurance. None of those city
girls were as pretty as herself, even in that old sack of
Maria’s!
Roedel asked the girl if she would not sing for them.
“You used to, I remember.”
“Oh, please, one of those lovely Italian songs?” begged
one of Elizabeth’s immediate predecessors.
Maddalena’s gaze swept superbly over the slim fashion
plate. “Can’t she see what was happening?” she
thought. “They were all making fun of her because she
look so funny in that old jacket. Pretendin’ to be kind!AN EMBASSY CE LOVE
101
Din’t she know her hair was rough? They wanted to
mek a fool of her, those girls, before Rich. They liked
him theirselves. Oh, she could see! He was mad
ashamed, she could see that, too. But din’t he look
beau’ful in those white pants, and that blue shirt? All
those girls looking at him out of the corner of their eyes!
She sing for them? No, indeed! Not Maddalena!”
She forced a sweet, placating smile. No picture queen
could have managed a better one. "I don’ sing no more
out of doors,” she lied. She was turning back to her
task, but they were not yet through with her.
“Will you sing for me sometime, indoors, Madda-
lena?” It was Mrs. Rawlings speaking.
“Mebbe,” said Maddalena, staring at Rich.
Roedel had moved on, picking grapes as he went. He
urged his guests to fill the baskets which Crispi had
brought. Rich was hastily following with Mary Hathorn,
when a little voice spoke in his ear. “Ain’ you goin’ to
speak to me?”
Mary turned in time to see the passionate gaze of the
ridiculous little figure in the grotesque jacket, imploring
Richard for a smile. Richard’s face was crimson with
anger which seemed to include the entire universe.
“Hurry up, Mary,” he muttered, “if you want to see
the cellar.”
Maddalena was left standing in the vines, staring after
him with stabbed, betraying eyes.
“It was almost too cruel, George!” whispered Emilie
that night as she turned out her bedside light. She could
not speak aloud; there was a bed in her dressing room,10?
IF TODAY BE SWEET
for Richland a cot on the sleeping porch, where Mary
Hathorn was to spend the night.
It had been pressing on her gentle heart all day, the
black, confessing rage of her boy, and the bewildered pain
of the little Sicilian. “Too cruel,” she repeated.
“Cruel? Yes,” agreed Roedel, also whispering. “But
less cruel than to let it slip on. Sometimes, my Emilie,
it is merciful to use the knife.”CHAPTER XIV
RENDEZVOUS
FROM the willows in the creek, Maddalena waited
for Rich to come to her. Twice he came, once
at noon, marching to their oak, in the fields
across the county road, and again at six. “Jes’ ’cause his
gran’ frens were all dressing for dinner!” raged Madda-
lena, in hiding, and again would not go to him.
Coming like that, twice, meant he still loved her/and
that he was sorry he had been “mad ashamed.” But
she sensed a crisis in the affair. She must hold back,
she told herself; she must not be too easy. When every-
body had gone to bed, Richard would come back to their
tree. Even then, she would let him wait and wait, think-
ing she was never going to forgive him, never! And
when he would start to go home she would creep up be-
hind him and put her arms around his neck. She could
always make him love her when she had her arms around
his neck!
But Richard did not return at midnight, and though she
waited until the stars began to grow pale, hoping, weep-
ing, and praying to the kind Virgin that he would be sent
to her, he still stayed away.
And all day Sunday he held aloof though she kept on
praying, trudging across the road and waiting years, it
seemed, for him. By Monday, when he had driven away
103104
IF TODAY BE SWEET
with his gay crowd, on his way back to college, she was
in a passion of rage and fear.
“She was one fool to send Joe Ruiz away, jes’ for his
sake, ’cause he has a pretty face! Joe Ruiz, who was
always so good to her! She would ask Josefina, the fool-
ish one, about her brother. She would send a message to
Joe.”
Ruiz came too promptly. His rough clothes, his
speech, offended her. So when he invited her to a dance
at St. Helena, two weeks off, she said she would not go.
Rich’s face had a disagreeable way of intruding between
herself and the ardent Joe.
He kept on urging her.
“If I change my mind, I let you know,” was all the
promise she would give him.
Friday night and Saturday she watched weakly for
Rich’s return. Sunday passed, and she had not seen his
roadster, nor heard his whistle. When the following
Friday rolled around, and Rich was still away, she sent
another message by Josefina. She would go with Ruiz
to the dance.
By this time, she was needing comfort. Her self-pride
was aching for balm. She wanted to have someone smile
at her as though grateful for her kindness, someone who
was not “mad ashamed” at her. Richard’s face, as he
had glared at her, still rankled in her memory.
“Jes’ ’cause she was poor,” she told herself, “could not
wear silk stockings as other girls do, and ’cause of that
hateful jacket of Maria’s he din’t love her no more.
Every time she wore shabby things, some grand person
always came to the vineyard.” She determined to wearRENDEZVOUS
105
her best clothes underneath the sticky fruit apron which
she could tear off in a hurry. Even if her father scolded,
she would wear her best clothes!
Ruiz, she told herself, would smile at her, after she
had made him forgive her; he would smile at her, and
give her presents, “funny presents, he give her!” They
always made her laugh. But he would make her forget
Richard. And she had to forget him. “She can’t live
with that terrible pain in her heart. Fathers are right
sometimes.”
“Joe will mek a good husband for a girl when she is
ready to settle down.”
Ruiz came flying down the valley with a Ford roadster
he had hired from a friend for the great occasion. He
made his way openly into the camp on the creek, for was
not Josefina his sister? Was it not right for him to be
there? He brought Josefina a bag of lemon-drops, and
when he saw his opportunity he sent her into Madda-
lena’s tent to tell her that he would wait for her by the
big tree in the meadow ackoss the road, after the moon
came up.
Maddalena was waiting in her best dress, with some of
Joe’s ribbons in her hair. She was excited over this
dance, now that she had learned that it was a part of the
great vintage festival which was held every year in St.
Helena. She had heard the girls of the camp talking
about it, wishing they could go. No one else had a
chance to go to that dance 1 She felt grateful to Joe
Ruiz; she determined to be kind to him.
When at last the camp noises died away, and the
children had fallen asleep in her tent, Maddalena crept106
IF TODAY BE SWEET
out of the opening she had slit in the canvas, and scuttled
off through the apricot orchard. Eagerly, Ruiz advanced
to meet her. His eyes told her how pretty she was. But
he did not quite trust her. He demanded to know about
Richard. What had happened? Did they have a fight?
She tossed her pretty head. She was tired of him.
That was all. “Can’t he unnerstand that a girl gets
tired sometimes?” and she was smart enough to see his
frown and add: “and gets lonely for her ole fren’s, Joe?”
She rubbed her cheek against his sleeve.
The foolish Joe, tryin’ to hide how much he liked that!
His voice was giving him away when he say:	“How I
know that bimeby you don’ get tired of me, too?”
“But I don’ stay tired of you, Joe.” For she had to fib
a little bit. It had been such a dreadful time, those two
weeks. She could not risk losing Joe! She had to stop
thinking of that awful time, and that meant getting away
from the camp, from the foolish girls, and stupid old
people. Only Joe could help her.
He insisted upon kissing her, and she had to submit,
before he would believe her, and give her place back in
his heart.
From a distance they could see the lights of the town.
As they approached, the decorations looked to Maddalena
like fairyland. Festoons of the ripened grapevines were
suspended from poles or from second-story windows,
across the main street. Red lights, and blue and green,
twinkled from the leaves. The store fronts were a mass
of autumn leaves and ferns. Maddalena was in Paradise.
Never, she knew, would she forget that night. Most
of the dancers were in the costumes of the day’s parade.RENDEZVOUS
107
At one end of the decorated hall was a dais on which sat
a golden-haired queen and her court. Each time Madda-
lena swept past that platform she thought that it was
the climax of glory. If she could be sitting there, having
everyone look at her! Maddalena, with a wreath around
her head!
Although she did not know much about dancing, all the
boys and men wanted to dance with her. Joe had been
given the first and last numbers, but that was all. She
could see him standing in the corner by the door, or by
the platform, following her with pride as she floated
around in other men’s arms. His girl. Proud because
everybody knew she’d come with him. “That was
enough for that foolish Joe!”
“Wasn’t it the gran’ music!” she thrilled. Two vio-
lins. And the accordion that feller has is all made of
silver! Wonderful to see him swayin’ as he plays, walk-
ing up and down, his eyes closed, as he pla'ys Dardanella,
oh, it was gran’, that tune!
“An’ a girl can close her eyes, too, dancing, and the
music meks her think it is him she is with, his arms
aroun’ her, and he ain’ mad ashamed no more!”
She knew the instant Joe tired of his role. She would
have to split some dances for him to get that look off his
face. There he was coming after her now!
She got rid of two imploring youths, and once again
she was in Joe’s arms. But Joe wouldn’t let her forget
him, he would not let her close her eyes; talking to her,
making her answer him.
He was looking down upon a ravishing bit of sun-
burnished neck from which the glossy hair was brushed108
IF TODAY BE SWEET
in soul-distracting curves and curls. Her ear was so
close to his mouth that he could kiss it, if he dared.
“Don’ Joe. Not yet!” He was spoiling her evening.
He had trampled, roughshod, into her beautiful dream.
“You mek me crazy, Laina,” he whispered. “Don’
yer know that I’d do anything fer yer, Laina? I’d go
to hell fer yer!”
When Maddalena, reluctantly, followed the crowd to
the cloakroom windows, she passed Mrs. Rawlings, who
was standing with a group of ladies. “Why, isn’t this
Maddalena Latta?” she exclaimed. “Next year you must
be in the festival, Maddalena!”
Asked to be in the vintage festival! It was triumph
enough to be remembered by such a grand lady, but to
be asked to be in the festival! It was something to
dream of for a year.
When Ruiz, on the way home, tried to make her prom-
ise to marry him before the fruit-pickers moved their
camp, she only laughed at him.
“The foolish Joe!”CHAPTER XV
FATHER AND SON
ELIZABETH was sitting in a Napa-bound electric
car, weeks later, an open magazine in her lap,
when she was discovered by George Roedel.
He came up at once, in his hearty fashion.
“Well, this is nice of you! We were hurt because you
had snubbed our invitation. Coming to Frascati, of
course?”
“Not this time. I promised Mary, weeks ago, that I
would spend a week-end with her before the roads grow
too muddy. I can always come to Frascati,” she
added.
“You’re not going up the mountain tonight?” he asked,
as he took the seat by her side.
“No, tomorrow morning, at dawn, on Powder,” she
told him, and he got the impression that she was on her
way to Casa Blanca.
“Do you think I will let you pass us, like this? I’m
going to take you in to dinner with us. I’ll see that you
get to the Dollivers’ tonight.”
He saw that she was deliberating. “That’s settled,”
he concluded, and led her away from the subject. Did
Rich know she was coming up? He hadn’t mentioned it,
the selfish fellow!
“I looked for him several times this week, to tell him.
And I telephoned to his fraternity house. They said he
109110	IF TODAY BE SWEET
had gone home. I was afraid he was sick,” explained
Elizabeth.
“Never better!” Roedel smiled out of the car window.
“He came flying back Wednesday; we needed him.”
It came to him suddenly that the Dollivers were not
at Ca;»a Blanca. Was she to stay there by herself that
night?
Elizabeth had difficulty in making him see why she had
to stay at the little inn in St. Helena in order that she
might make a daybreak start the next morning. Tom
was to have the horse at the hotel at five.
“I’ll motor you in at five if you’ll stay with us,” urged
Roedel.
“I’ll take dinner with you, if you promise not to change
my plans! ”
“A promise!” returned Roedel.
He accused her family of uprooting the Dollivers.
They never used to be willing to leave the county. “Now
they are getting to be runabouts. She buried herself in
that garden. Buried his chances, his ambition, too.
Napa people don’t quarrel much. Lawyers who haven’t
rich wives would starve.”
“A nice quiet life, theirs, though,” urged Elizabeth.
“Oh, they are as happy as most people,” he answered.
“A vegetable sort of existence, as most people live up
here, as most people everywhere live, in fact.”
“Most people,” he answered her question, “make com-
monplace marriages. Tumble into it because of a pretty
face, or comfortable home waiting. Marriage ought to
be a stimulating, exciting partnership. Once in a while
it is. Two people occasionally meet who should meet,FATHER AND SON
111
and everything in their way is smashed to get at one an-
other. That’s a real marriage, no matter what the world
may call it. The rest are just prosaic arrangements.”
They were talking of prohibition, and the result of the
universal disregard for law, when Roedel discovered they
were in sight of Frascati. Picking up her suitcase and
his own packages, he led the way out of the car.
“Wait here. I’ll bring the machine.”
Within a few seconds they were moving up the home
avenue.
“Surprise mother,” he suggested, as he drew up in front
of the house. “You’ll find her knitting by the fire at
this hour. Just go right in.”
The light was in the front hall. The door into the
living room was open. Somewhere someone was smoking
a pipe.
Above the high back of the Voltaire chair, a dark head
rose. An inert hand, holding a forgotten pipe, rested on
the arm of the chair.
“Rich!” called Elizabeth. “Rich!”
A stranger rose facing her. Not Richard. An older,
broader Richard.
“It’s Hamilton!” she exclaimed, standing still.
He stood looking at her, astounded.
“I know who you are. But I haven’t a guess where
you came from!” He said at last, still staring.
“Your father, of course. I’m kidnapped,” explained
the girl.
Behind her, the door was pushed wider open, and Emi-
lie came happily forward.
“I’m so glad to see you! Isn’t it wonderful, having112
IF TODAY BE SWEET
him home again, safe? Do you think they are alike, the
brothers? Everybody thinks they are alike, but us.”
She was kissing her visitor in the hearty German fashion,
on one cheek and then the other.
“Yes, no!” smiled Elizabeth.
‘What’s all this cackling about?” Richard was stand-
ing at the door. “Elizabeth 1 How did this happen?”
* “You ought to say:	‘I’m glad to see you!’ ”
“Why, of course he’s glad! He’s transfixed!” ex-
plained the soldier brother.
Roedel came into the room, rubbing his hands together.
“Well, little mother, what are you going to do for me?
She was slipping right past Frascati, wasn’t even going to
stop and say:	‘Howdy!’ I knew you wouldn’t forgive
me if I let her carry out her nefarious plans!”
Chow thrust in his head to see if everybody had come
home at last.
“All ready! Starving, Chow!” nodded Roedel.
“Isn’t anybody going to take her hat and her wraps?
What are you all staring about? I’ll be the check boy,
Elizabeth! ”
A hand on the arm of Emilie and Elizabeth, Roedel led
the way into the dining room. Chow was serving, for
it was Nora’s day off.
After dinner, during which Emilie had chattered hap-
pily of the wonderful family reunion they had been hav-
ing, and how Hamilton had surprised them after all, she
announced that they would have their coffee by the fire
in the living room. For Hamilton, who liked it that way.
Elizabeth wanted to know why George Roedel was re-FATHER AND SON
113
fusing sugar. The man who used to want three lumps!
And he had taken no dessert! Surely, he wasn’t trying
to make himself believe he was sick?
“Just trying to keep well. We old folks eat too much.”
“There must always be something hard for him to do,
something like work, or he isn’t happy,” explained fondly
his Emilie.
Elizabeth rose early to go, declaring fatigue. Two
voices said simultaneously that their owners would see
her to her hotel if she surely could not stay at Frascati.
“Both spoke at once!” exclaimed the mother, smiling
up at her two wonderful sons. “Which will it be, Ham or
Rich?”
Before either could answer, the father had interposed.
“The old man’s prerogative. I promised to take her to
St. Helena.”
Rich, holding her coat for her, said that he was going
to try to get up the mountain on Sunday, if he could leave
Ham so soon.
“Why not take Ham along?” said a voice behind them.
Hamilton was holding out to her her forgotten maga-
zine.
“Don’t you think they might introduce us? Or am I
only to know you as—Elizabeth?”
“You said you knew who I was!” Her exclamation
had a curious effect on the room. There was a sudden
hush, which Emilie’s exclamation broke.
“I saw you talking to each other—how stupid it was
of me!”
Roedel interrupted her. “Let me have the happiness114
IF TODAY BE SWEET
of presenting my son to my dear friend, Elizabeth Winter-
mute. Whom folks tell me I sometimes call, by mistake,
‘Beatrix’!” he added, with a pleased twinkle in his eyes.
Richard’s growl was allowed to pass as “good-night.”CHAPTER XVI
A SUMMONS
‘ ARY and Mrs. Rotger were waiting for her on
the whitewashed porch of the dining room
cottage when Powder carried Elizabeth into
the orchard enclosure of the resort the next morning.
Before she could cry “Good morning!” Mrs. Rotger
was crying to her:	“Breakfast is being kept hot in the
kitchen, aber it’s not so good any more!”
“I knew I was going to be late. I could not make
Powder hurry,” remorsefully returned Elizabeth, sliding
off her horse. “I promise to eat fast.”
But Mrs. Rotger did not want that! Her muffins
should be paid proper respect. “Here this Mary is who
eats always too fast. She will be mit indigestion old
too soon wenn she always hurries so!”
The kindly little woman whom the county and a world
of summer tourists lovingly had christened “Tante” bus-
tled around them at table, bringing in from the kitchen
one superlative dish after another, and glowing at their
praise.
“Tante’s” patriotism was like her speech, hybrid, Mary
had told Elizabeth. So furiously did her resentment
against critics of Germany rage during the war that it
was a miracle she had escaped internment. But it was
no less dangerous to criticise in her presence the country
of her adoption.
■116
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Now that the war was over, and her opportunity had
come to return to the place where she was born, she no
longer spoke of leaving the land where her friends and
associations had been made. She would be a foreigner
wherever she lived: an American in habit, a German in
speech and sentiment. As easy to repress a volcano it
would have been as to suppress “Tante” at fifty.
While she was serving the waffles, Mary said:	“We
won’t be here at dinner tomorrow. Can you make us
one of your wonderful surprise box luncheons?” She
turned to Elizabeth. “The Roedels are coming, Hamil-
ton and Rich. They just telephoned. They wity
bring eats too. But we want to outdo Chow, don’t we,
‘Tante’?”
“It will be good als I can make it, aber it won’t be so
fine wie Chow’s. He has the time we have here no more.”
She scurried back into the kitchen.
The girls planned to ride over to see Mrs. Pasquale.
The children had been absent for two days this time.
Perhaps, Mary had been wondering, the new baby had
arrived. But the day slipped away as they lay on the
hillside back of the school, enjoying the late autumn sun-
shine, and talking of the Roedels.
While they were at breakfast the next morning, Hamil-
ton and Richard drove up in the big car. Mrs. Rotger
had a collection of fervid questions for the returned sol-
dier to answer. As soon as Mary could interrupt them,
she got the expedition started towards the rim of the vol-
canic plateau overlooking the broad Pope valley. There,
in a grove of redwoods, they parked their machine, and
ate the box luncheons.A SUMMONS
117
When it was time for them to start again, if they were
to make Aetna Springs that day, they cast votes:	Aetna
and a swim, or that sunny nook yonder by the ferncup
spring where the redwoods and the dogwoods grow?
Tea, then, from the automobile outfit, and the history of
the war by one Roedel? One vote said that he did not
care. Three, one sulkily, voted for the sunny nook and
the history. Richard’s bad humor did not leave him until
they were facing home, and he had managed to get
Elizabeth with him in the tonneau.
It was the first of a series of excursions the four took
together, although not again on Howell Mountain. The
rains set in early, and the roads, deeply scored by the
grape wagons and timber trucks, became too boggy for
pleasure-driving. There was a week-end at Frascati,
with Mrs. Roedel as hostess. Later, Mary made a re-
turn visit to Elizabeth in the Jackson street flat, and the
four spent a day roving over the Berkeley hills where
again Rich lost his ill humor, succumbing to the gaiety
of the others. There was a day on the San Francisco
beach, with tea at an ocean resort as a pale sun fell
gently into the ocean.
Then suddenly, Elizabeth began to discourage visits to
the flat. Life there had grown increasingly complicated.
She could not share with anyone that unhappy atmos-
phere.
She was standing in the outer hall one afternoon, shed-
ding her raincoat and her rubber overshoes, when, at her
ear, the bell rang. A uniformed messenger boy thrust
a yellow envelope into her hand.
“2440 Jackson street? Sign here.”118
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Her mother’s voice called to her as she was signing.
“A telegram for me, Elizabeth?”
To be sure, the girl looked again at the envelope.
“No, it’s for father, mother.”
“Bring it to me. It may be intended for me.”
Color rushed to Elizabeth’s face. She gave the re-
ceipt to the messenger, and shut the door after him.
Slowly she opened the door into the little sitting room
where Mrs. Wintermute was sitting at her desk.
Madge put out her hand.
“It’s for father, I said, mother.”
M rs. Wintermute looked up from the report on which
she was at work. Elizabeth’s cheeks were almost as
darkly red as her heavy hair, her eyes were ashamed,
but resolute, and the telegram was held tight against her
breast.
The brain which had kept her in important positions
served the mother now. There had been a scene, years
ago now, when her husband had opened, for the last
time, a message addressed to her. Elizabeth had been
there. Elizabeth had heard her speech about the privacy
of mail, Elizabeth who had ever since meticulously segre-
gated letters.
S'Put it by his cigar box,” said Madge Wintermute, and
went on with her report.
When Reed Wintermute, a little later, read the mes-
sage, he stuffed the sheet guiltily into his coat pocket.
It was to his daughter he turned.
“Lisa, will you throw a few things into my bag? I
am called out of town. I may be away a few days.”
He stood about, directing the packing of the bag. HeA SUMMONS
119
was at once the man of affairs again, the Harvard honor
man. Ten minutes after the message was tucked into
his pocket he was taking a hasty peck at his wife’s averted
cheek, and giving a rough, hurried embrace to his Lisa.
He could not wait to eat, he told Elizabeth when she
announced that his favorite dinner, pot-roast with com
fritters, was on the way. He was once again the deb-
onair optimist to whom everything is golden the instant
an anaemic sun begins to shine.
She stood at the window wistfully watching him. A
street lamp at the corner cast a dim light on the faces of
the men and women who were hastening towards home
and evening cheer. Her father was waiting at the cor-
ner, his shoulders thrown back, his head held proudly,
hopefully.
She heard the scraping of the brakes as the cable car
began the descent of the hill above them. She saw her
father signaling with a friendly smile and salute for the
brakeman.
Mrs. Wintermute looked up to smile and shrug at her
daughter as she entered, as though to say:	“Another
false alarm!”
Elizabeth reached the kitchen before the tears began
to fall.CHAPTER XVII
FOR LISA
ON the way to the ferry, Wintermute reread his
summons. It was brief, as the sender. “Im-
portant business. Report.” It was signed:
Bartholomew O’Ryan.
In the cabin of the upper deck Reed spread himself out
in a detached corner, obscuring himself behind the eve-
ning paper. But he did not read. Twice, he took the
telegram from his pocket.
The close air in the cabin drove him outside. There
it was sharp and cold, the decks as wet as though a heavy
rain were falling. A heavy fog had been rolling in
through the gate, obscuring the outlines of the bay. Mt.
Tamalpais was obliterated by clouds.
Wintermute was peering through the gloom for Alca-
traz, the prison island, when it rose up suddenly to the
right of the ferry. They were running so close that he
could hear voices from the island. Dim lights flickered
through the blanketing mist.
He was the first one to leave the ferry, the first of the
pressing throng to secure a seat in the electric car which
would carry him into Napa. He took the single seat in
the rear of the car and went into eclipse behind his paper.
The editorial caught his eye. On prohibition. On the
recently passed enforcement act. “The Volstead act,”
120FOR LISA
121
announced the editorial, “means that Uncle Sam is in ear-
nest.”
In front of him two men were talking about their vines,
and then arrived at the Volstead act.
“Who could have believed,” demanded the older man,
“when« those women began to scream about the crime
of alcohol, that this situation would ever be brought
about?”
“It wouldn’t have happened,” declared his companion,
whose voice owed its music to Ireland, “if it hadn’t been
for industry; the war made it necessary to safeguard in-
dustry. Hoover and the women had something to do
with it, too. They sold the idea. But it was industry
which put it over.”
Before going to his room in the Palace Hotel of Napa,
Wintermute asked at the telephone for the brewer’s num-
ber. Dolan answered. “Yes, he’s in bed. He’s not
asleep yet, though. Shall I give him your message?”
“Tell him I’m at the Palace. I suppose it’s too late
for him to see me tonight?”
In a few minutes, Dolan was speaking again to him.
“You can come up if you want to. It’s one of his wake-
ful fits,” explained the slavey.
“Send my bag to my room. I’ve got to go out,” Win-
termute told the clerk.
It was less than five blocks to O’Ryan’s. house. Win-
termute would not wait for a car. From a distance, he
could see a light from the second story. O’Ryan’s light.
The rest of the house lay in darkness.
It was nearly five minutes before the sharp little face
of Dolan peered out into the darkness of the vine-covered122
IF TODAY BE SWEET
porch. He switched on the light before he took the chain
from the door.
“You’re to go right up.”
The door of the brewer’s room was open. The boss
was sitting up, propped by great pillows. He wasted no
breath on a greeting.
“How would you like to be regional prohibition direc-
tor?” he inquired.
Wintermute’s voice was unsteady. “What’s the
chance?”'
“I’m sitting on it. Holding it down for you,” said
O’Ryan.
“You? With your breweries, your saloons—”
“Oh, of course I’m not seen! My name doesn’t figure
in the appointment!” sneered the boss. “But I’m not the
dead thing you and the rest think, not in this state. I
can still pull strings. I’ve been jerking this one for some
time.”
Quickly Wintermute threw in:	“I don’t see how you
do it! You’re a marvel the way you keep power in your
hands, O’Ryan.”
There was a hunching of the great shoulders, a subter-
ranean grunting.
“It must seem to be a reasonable, a plausible choice.
But my suggestions will be listened to. If you want it—”
“Want it?” cried Wintermute. “Want it!”
“There are conditions,” softly interposed the brewer.
He had let the creature play long enough with the idea,
let him be dazzled by its scintillating, teasing facets while
it lay, as it were, in the palm of his hand.
“What do you mean by conditions?” Wintermute hadFOR LISA
123
not been asked to sit down. He was watching the soft,
fat hands of the boss. One always watched O’Ryan’s
hands. He had trained his face; it was an inscrutable,
perfect servant. But his hands betrayed him. At that
moment they were fighting fists.
Wintermute’s manner was large and pompous. “If
they are the kind of conditions I can accept.” But
broke down. His voice had a craven, frightened
fall.
“We,” accented 0’Ryan;i“want to get Roedel. We
know that he is breaking the law. He is selling wine.
Frascati wine is on the subterranean market. We lack
the proofs, sufficient proofs. We want to learn how he
is getting it out to sea. We are going to catch him with
the goods on.”
Wintermute was silent. He was watching O’Ryan’s
hands.
“So you don’t want it?” taunted the boss.
“Tell me the rest,” said his visitor.
“I said my name was not to be known. You’ve a
plausible reason for being selected. Your wife’s posi-
tion, the way she has worked for prohibition—”
“So that’s your condition! Want me to pretend I’m
hanging on to my wife’s skirts, want me to crawl home
and sob out how grateful I am to her for helping me out
of the dust of the street? This is what I have been wait-
ing for! A plum, you called it. A plum with a worm
in it.”
“It won’t go a begging,” reminded his patron.
Wintermute caught his breath. He stood watching
those hands, and thinking of Lisa, his Lisa—124
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“I didn’t refuse,” he gasped. “Give me a minute to
think it over.”
“Take your time,” vouchsafed his host. As though the
thing were settled, the poor fish landed, he settled back
comfortably into his pillows, and his hands relaxed.
“Your family must not be told these conditions.” The
blind, white face looked calm, even gentle.
His victim gulped, made a beginning, and came to a
swift halt. He began again, pitiably:	“If I take it, it
is understood that I am to do no dirty work? That is my
condition.”
The fat fingers slipped under the pillow. That meant
his bell-rope would be pressed. In an instant Dolan
would come slinking in—
As though he had been waiting at the end of the cord,
the slavey tiptoed in to ask if there were anything Mr.
O’Ryan would like. The window shut?
“No, but Mr. Wintermute is going now, Dolan. You
can show him out.”
Wintermute turned back from the hall to remind
O’Ryan that he had not definitely committed himself.
The brewer was lying as though asleep, but his hands
were clenched.
Wintermute followed Dolan down the steps.
He went to bed as soon as he reached his room. Lisa’s
picture, which he always carried with him in a little
leather case, was propped by the reading lamp on the
hotel stand. It was nearly dawn when he fell asleep.
The shades of the flat were drawn when he swung off
the car that afternoon. The chimneys were smokeless.
He was the first one home.FOR LISA
125
A fire had been laid in the grate. He touched a match
to it, and somberly watched it burst into flame. As he
was standing there, his wife came in from the street.
“Hello!” said Wintermute, without moving toward her.
“Did you just get in?” asked his wife. And that was
all there was to it. For Elizabeth was not by, Elizabeth
with anxious, loving eyes.
By and by she came in, hastily, crying:	“Oh, I am
so late! Why, father!” She bent down and kissed him
between the eyes. As though she were sorry about some-
thing. Sorry for him.
“Going away again?” inquired Madge when they were
at the dinner-table.
“Not immediately,” Wintermute smiled across the table
at his Lisa.
It was nearly two weeks later when he told them.
Then he did it in a new way, without boasting. One of
his Lisa’s books had been telling him what was the mat-
ter with him. Perhaps all of them had been knowing
it right along, why he always boasted of what he had
done, was going to do. Because he knew he was a fail-
ure, and knew they also knew.
He began by saying that they were to Lave the Dol-
liver place again that summer. Longer, this year, as
Dolliver had to go east; a family will to be probated, or
something. Mrs. Dolliver, he thought, would want their
place.
“Not this flat.” He did not meet their astonished eyes.
“She finds it too far out. So do I. And the noise of the
children downstairs—”126
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Indeed!” said Madge. Elizabeth was staring at her
plate.
“In fact, for some time, I have been looking for an
apartment. I’ve a list of those that may suit. I’d like
you both to look at them. My new work will require me
to live nearer town—”
“Your new work?” demanded Madge.
Elizabeth raised her eyes to him.
“Oh, father!”
“Prohibition enforcement director,” said Wintermute.
Elizabeth jumped up from her seat and flung her happy
arms about him. “Oh, father!” she cried again.
“Well, they could hardly give you anything less!” ob-
served his wife.
It was in the new way that he answered her. He
pushed a wrist watch across the table. “For you. And
there’s one for Lisa. It’s been hard, having patience.
But now it’s all ended.”
The arms around his neck tightened.
“Put your hats on,” he choked. “Lisa, you’re stran-
gling me. Let’s celebrate; let’s go to a show!”
The new régime was on.CHAPTER XVIII
THUMBSCREWS
TOWARDS the close of a showery April afternoon,
Wintermute’s stenographer came into his office
with some papers. Rather consciously, she told
him that Mr. Bartholomew O’Ryan was waiting in the
outer room. Her manner suggested distaste.
“Show him in,” shrugged her employer. “And, Miss
Jackson, tell anyone who calls that I’m occupied.”
Dolan came in with the brewer, and waited to seat him.
Then he followed Miss Jackson from the room.
The blind man’s great hulk overwhelmed the office
chair.
“I came down to see my dentist. Having trouble with
my teeth. I thought I’d drop in and see how things are
with you.”
Wintermute expressed his sympathy.
O’Ryan wanted to chat about politics; about the pos-
sibility of a third party being organized. Casually he
said:	“Oh, by the way, I met young Holt, up Napa-
wards, the other day. He seems a bright, likable young
fellow.”
“The young sccfundrel! ” exploded the director. “So he
goes over my head, does he? Knows who is my boss,
does he, already? Came west, looking for loot.”
“Oh, no!” protested O’Ryan. “For adventure, per-
haps, as well as for a job.”
127128
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“He has a profession, law. Why doesn’t he stick to
it?” flared Wintermute.
“Told me flat there was more money to be made out
of the enforcement game than in any other line of work
in the United States. Flourishing his dishonesty!”
The great shoulders were shaking with quiet laughter.
Wintermute stared at the brewer. “What’s the joke?
I don’t want that kind of a man in my office. This
isn’t going to be a rotten, corrupt nest. I’m going to
play the game straight. I told you there was to be no
dirty work. I took your conditions, and that ended the
bargain.”
“Don’t get excited!” The heavy tones were silk-cov-
ered. “That’s an old trick he used. Not that he told
me, but I can see that he was trying you out. There’s
been so much talk about corruption in enforcement, and
he’s a stranger here, with a reputation to make. He
couldn’t afford a misstep. He was sounding you, Win-
termute.”
“The fellow is rotten,” scowled Wintermute. “I don’t
want him around here.”
“Would a man who had an ounce of brains give him-
self away like that? Now I remember he asked me if
you had a sense of humor. It didn’t impress me at the
time.”
W intermute did not answer.
“He brought me A 1 letters,” continued the smooth
voice. “From close associates of mine. I’m going to be
frank with you, Wintermute:	I’m going to recommend
that he be given a berth.”
Wintermute was balancing a penholder on his fore-THUMBSCREWS
129
finger. Twice, he opened his mouth to speak. Each
time, the impulse was aborted. Suddenly, he threw down
his pen. “Oh, have your way about it!”
“I want it to be perfectly agreeable to you,” silkily
murmured O’Ryan.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You want things the wa^ you
want them. And I’m not independent. I can’t say:	‘I
won’t have him.’ And that’s all there is to it.”
O’Ryan’s big body bent towards him. “What about
Roedel? How are you getting on there? Pretty slow!
I expected you to spring the trap before this. Strange
you can’t get a line on him.”
“I’m not asleep on the job,” Wintermute made haste
to assure him. “I’ve my best men watching. They
think he’s straight as a string. But I shall be in his
neighborhood myself this summer. I’ve taken the Dol-
liver house again.”
The closed eyeballs moved in a disagreeable imitation
of a wink. Wintermute got to his feet.
“That’s right. Use the young people.”
“See here, O’Ryan, you might as well know—”
His door opened cautiously, and Elizabeth looked in.
“Wait outside, Lisa,” said her father.
O’Ryan rose. “I’ll be moving along to my dentist.
Will you ring for Dolan?”
“I’ll take you out to him.”
Elizabeth passed them swiftly, her face averted. When
W intermute returned, she was looking down on the street.
She spoke to him without turning her head.
“It’s stopped sprinkling. I thought you might like to
walk home.”130
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Fine idea! But I’ve got to dictate a few letters. Can
you wait?”
He rang for Miss Jackson to bring her notebook. Sev-
eral times he glanced towards the window where his Lisa
was standing. She was gazing over the roofs of the
neighboring buildings, a queer expression on her face.
On the way up the Pine street hill, he asked if her
mother were to return that night from San Jose, where
she had been lecturing.
“No, not till tomorrow,” said Elizabeth.
His hand touched her arm. “Let’s stay down-town
then, to dinner. And a show after. What do you say?”
“Yes, to the first. But not the show. Someone is
coming in this evening, Hamilton Roedel. He tele-
graphed to Berkeley.”
“Hamilton! I thought it was Richard, Lisa!”
Soberly, ruefully she answered him. “I’m afraid it’s
both! But I don’t want to talk about it, father!”
He looked at her, startled. During dinner, at the fish
grotto, he kept looking at her, distress, misery in his face.
At last she asked him:	“What’s the matter, father?”
“Tired, that’s all, Lisa.” Neither of them could keep
the dinner from being dull.
Entering the simply furnished lobby of their apartment
house, Reed Wintermute halted, ejaculating. “If I didn’t
come off without signing some important letters! I’ll
have to go back.”
“Can’t they wait?”
“That’s what happens when handsome ladies come to
men’s dull offices! I’ll come right back. Explain it to
your soldier.”THUMBSCREWS
131
“If you don’t, I’ll be furious, father dear!” But she
gave him a heavenly smile.
Aimlessly, he walked around Union Square. Then he
joined the current moving towards the principal vaude-
ville house. He followed dejectedly the usher to a place
near the stage. All the jokes and the songs were about
prohibition. The skit was called “John Barleycorn,
Comatose.”
When the show was over, he walked again around
Union Square. Though the night was wet, a fog that was
like a rain enveloping the streets, men were sitting on
the benches in the plaza. Wintermute looked about for
a vacant place. He seated himself by a mournful wreck
of a man with a cadaverous face and a bark of a cough.
The stranger looked up. “All dressed up and nowhere
to go! Or you’re watching the door all the time. Fierce,
ain’t it?”
The prohibition enforcement director agreed that it
was fierce.CHAPTER XIX
HAMILTON
ELIZABETH had barely time to slip off her
tailored suit and into her favorite frock of
henna-colored crêpe before Hamilton’s ring
summoned her. As she passed through the sitting room
on her way to the door, the contrast between her home
and Frascati struck her afresh. There were no flowers
in any of the vases; she had not had time to light the
fire in the tiny grate.
“Cold city, yours! No, please don’t light it for me!”
For she had turned at once to the fireplace. “If you
were going to have it anyway—but let me do it.” He
took the box of matches from her hand.
The fire burned niggardly, reluctantly. It kept Ham-
ilton on his knees, working with the bellows. Elizabeth
stood watching him. When it was at last cheerily blaz-
ing, he got up, looking around the room.
“Where’s your mother?”
“In San Jose. She telephoned that she would not be
back until tomorrow.”
“And your father?” Hamilton’s wonderful smile was
dawning. It seemed pleased at her nervousness, the con-
sciousness of eyes and tongue.
“He isn’t home yet. He will be here soon.” Hamilton
came nearer, his smile full-risen, triumphant.
“Then this is my minute, the chance I have been wait-
132HAMILTON
133
ing for, scheming for, and blessed families would never
let me have! Elizabeth! It isn’t possible that you don’t
know! Don’t you know yet that we belong to each
other, have always belonged to each other?”
She did not answer him at once.
“Surely, you are not going to let little things stand in
the way? Elizabeth!”
She turned away from the expression in his eyes.
“What kind of little things?”
“The ones that have been bothering you.”
“How do you know that anything has been bothering
me?”
“How could I help knowing? Loving you, you know I
love you—Lisa, darling!”
Yes, she knew that. She had known that, oh, for a
long time!
“Tell me what else you have known?”
“You have to tell me first what you think has been
bothering me.”
“Well—but you have to look at me, so that I can know
I was right. First, Richard.”
She made a sad botch of looking at him. “Richard?
What is wrong with him?”
“Loving you. Loving you first. A terrible, tragic
family triangle!” smiled Hamilton.
“And if it were so, it would not worry you?” she asked.
“Rich!” His laugh disposed of tragedy.
“That is item one. Next!”
“You’re not looking at me. Second, Mary Hathorn.”
Her face flamed with surprise.
“So you think I have not known what you have been134
IF TODAY BE SWEET
thinking all these months. Pairing me off with Mary be-
cause she is the older friend, and perhaps once we were
in love with one another! Insisting on walking with a
tragic Rich when you wanted to run away from him.
Now, you are really looking at me, Elizabeth.”
“What else do you know?” she demanded.
He grew suddenly grave. “Cursed difference of opin-
ion. Your mother, my father. Nothing, unless you in-
sist on making it real. You couldn’t, Elizabeth. There’s
only one thing real, and that is—what this minute is say-
ing to both of us.”
He was anxiously watching her.
She moved towards the fire. He could no longer see
her face.
Suddenly, his arms were around her. “It’s not to bring
you sorrow, darling! If it does—oh, but it is not going
to! I shall wait. I’m the best waiter, Elizabeth! When
I make up my mind I want something, the way I want
you, I’ve the patience of Jacob! But no sorrow for
you, Lisa! Such a darling name! Beatrix! Beloved!
Heart’s desire!” And suddenly he let her go.
“Why—Beatrix?” she asked. It was almost a whisper.
He did not seem to hear her.
“Lisa, darling! It would have to be a pretty high wall
you’d build around yourself that I wouldn’t batter down,
or climb over. I don’t want my answer now. I want
it some day when you are happier about it.”
He drew a chair to the fire for her. “Let’s sit down.
May I stay awhile longer?”
Why, of course! He had only just come!HAMILTON
135
He began to tell her of a play he had seen in Paris,
with Jules. Some day she must know Jules. The bul-
liest kind of a fellow. He would visit Frascati.
She remembered to ask him:	“Why did you come
home so suddenly? Weren’t you planning to stay, to
travel with your friend Jules?”
“Yourself.”
“I wanted a serious answer.”
“That is a serious answer.”
“Give me another one, all of it.”
“I like to think that’s all of it. I had planned to see
some of the turbulent countries. Suddenly, I wanted to
come home. It was as though I had been called. I was
reading a letter from father. To Jules. When I had
finished, I said:	‘I’m going home.’ ”
“Go on,” said Elizabeth.
“Maybe prohibition had something to do with it. I’d
never wanted to be a wine-maker, a vineyardist. Father
wanted me to carry on. Now I don’t have to. I can
do as I want.”
“Are you willing to tell me about that too?”
He gave her a queer, beseeching look as though to say:
“Please do not fail me! You must understand!”
“Politics.”
“Politics,” repeated Elizabeth.
“I’ve wanted nothing else, but you, and that, all my
life. I’ve always been getting ready for it. When the
war came, I knew why. Political science had been my
major—”
Mary, Richard had told her.136
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“It used to seem strange to me a democracy doesn’t
use that kind of conscription—compulsory training in
government theory, and later in civil service. That, of
course, is what we must come to—anything else is fum-
bling.”
“I studied with—a man who thinks that way. His
idea was to educate towards such a plan.”
“If the world were not so sick, yes. Too slow now,”
said Hamilton. “It’s so wonderful, your understanding!
Jules is like that, too.”
“What is your idea? What can you do in your corner,
to help?”
“Serve!” answered Hamilton. “My county, my state,
if they will take me. I want to know what they are
thinking, talking about. I want to talk over the prob-
lems with the people not to them; that’s the old way!
Then—I want to run for the legislature.”
“Why, of course!” cried Elizabeth, pressing her hands
together. “Why, of course!”
“First off, there are the vineyards.” He was watching
her face. “We have never talked of that, you and I. I
wonder what you will think of what I am going to say?
That the question of what the people shall drink, even in-
volving saloon politics, bad as it was, is trivial compared
with the problem prohibition has raised. I mean disre-
gard of law. What are we willing to become, Elizabeth?
We assumed such a high position during the war! Now,
to the world we are a nation of lawbreakers! One
doesn’t like to hear what they say of us!”
“Oh, I know!”
“I thought I went across seas to fight for democracy,”HAMILTON
137
said Hamilton, getting up from his chair, and holding out
his hand to her. “I’ve come home to fight for it!”
“Going?”
“Good-bye—Beatrix!” And he was gone.CHAPTER XX
TRAPS
OLT had been for nearly two months a member
of the enforcement service when the raid which
nearly disrupted the office was “pulled off.”
Little was known of him except what he himself had
chosen to tell: that he had come out of the East, leaving a
lucrative criminal law practice in order to “grow up with
the West.” The time had been long enough for him to
acquire the dislike of the office, and to aspire to the posi-
tion and the daughter of the chief.
Mather had flung himself into the office one morning
excitedly demanding information as to Wintermute’s
whereabouts. To inquiries as to what place he had
“made,” he was dramatically mysterious. Not a man
in the office who granted a minute aside with him could
not have gained his confidence. They sat eyeing him,
each man conscious of his neighbor.
When Wintermute appeared at the outer door, Mather
jumped to his feet.
#<May I see you alone? It’s urgent.”
Holt’s eyes followed the two through the door, on which
was lettered “Reed Wintermute, Prohibition Enforcement
Director.”
His pencil began to scrawl a favorite variation:
“Lorin Holt, Prohibition Enforcement Director.”
When Mather, red of face, got back to his desk, a note
138TRAPS
139
was waiting for him. “Lunch, at the Palace. On me.
Holt.”
A supercilious grin followed Holt from the room.
Over their crab Louis, Mather opened up. He had
been “tipped off” to a millionaire trail which ended in a
California street bond office. A dozen or two of the
rich clubmen made the trail daily. “Worth between
them twenty or thirty millions. That’s the sort they
are.”
“Queer coincidence,” murmured Holt.
“What’s the coincidence?” demanded Mather.
“Sounded like a place I’m watching. You said yours
is on Montgomery street. Mine’s on California.”
“Did I say Montgomery? It’s near Montgomery.
Hope it’s not the same place! ” Mather looked troubled.
He wanted to see his name in the headlines. “Mather of
the enforcement service traps twenty-five San Francisco
millionaires.”
“I followed two of ’em yesterday.” Mather was anx-
iously watching Holt’s face. “I hid in an alley. I saw
a lot of ’em go in. After a while I went in to ask a ques-
tion about railroad stock. No one was in the outer office.
It’s elegantly fitted up. Is yours like that? Circassian
walnut, plate glass front?”
“The same place, by Jove! You ought to be a novelist
the way you describe things, Mather! It’s a peach, isn’t
it?”
“Why didn’t you tell the chief you’d made it?” sus-
piciously demanded the younger man.
Easily Holt answered:	“I wanted to pull it off first.
I didn’t want to give anyone the chance to leak. The fel-
lows in the office are strangers to me. How’d I know140
IF TODAY BE SWEET
they wouldn’t sell the secret to one of those men?”
Mather’s face was black with gloom.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Can’t we work on it together?” suggested Holt. “It’s
big enough to share responsibility, glory. Pretty big haul
to handle alone. But it’s the success that counts. That’s
the way I feel about such things. I don’t care who pulls
the thing off as long as it’s done right.”
Mather muttered something about feeling the same
way. He pulled out his notebook, and together they
pored over names which Holt already knew by reputation.
That afternoon he went with Mather to the alley and
watched the millionaires trail past. And that same eve-
ning, in a back room of the cheap hotel on Bush street
where he was staying, they planned the raid. Mather
finally agreed to wait until Friday. He wanted to spring
the trap on Wednesday before going to Stockton on an
official trip. On Thursday, while he was away, the trap
was sprung.
Most delicately, even tenderly, was it done. Holt’s
first interview was with the attendant in the Circassian
walnut office. Thirty names on his list were verified.
By the time he had completed the verification, there was
no one left in the inner office who could be related to the
half emptied bottles, the slender-necked glasses, the over-
turned boxes of cigars.
The attendant was placed under arrest, but not without
giving Holt’s telephone number to several acquaintances.
Thirty times that evening was Holt called to the telephone
booth in his hotel lobby. Thirty appointments, by taxi,TRAPS
141
did he complete before he went to bed, long past mid-
night.
Mather in Sonoma, and Wintermute in San Francisco,
read the account of the raid in the morning papers. One
phrase hit Wintermute between the eyes:	“The men,
among whom were the wealthiest clubmen of the city, got
away without divulging their names.”
“My God!” ejaculated Wintermute, and left his half
eaten breakfast. Leisurely, calmly, Holt came into the
office. He had a glib story ready for his waiting chief.
The two of them had been following the same scent.
On account of Mather’s trip, they agreed to wait till
Friday. Mather, young, enthusiastic, had probably
leaked, babbled. Someone, a reporter, got wind of it.
It would have been in the papers anyway—he had had to
act quickly, alone.
“Took the dummy, and let the patrons go!" sneered
Wintermute. “Think we can get anyone to believe we
did not sell this office out? I’m going to probe this thing.
Going to turn our best men on to it.”
Mather, afire with resentment, came running home.
The office was keen on the scent when a wire came to the
chief from O’Ryan telling him to call the office off the
case of the California street bond office. Wintermute
spent the rest of the day couching his letter of resigna-
tion.
That night, Wintermute, alone in his apartment,
Madge and Elizabeth having gone ahead of him to Napa,
answered his telephone. A strange voice told him that142
IF TODAY BE SWEET
he wanted to send a package to Mr. Wintermute.
Would he be in in half an hour? And rang off without
giving his name.
It was less than half an hour when a knock fell on
his door. A phonograph box stood on the floor. Be-
hind it waited a chauffeur, the house janitor chattering
to him.
“For me?w
“Where shall we put it?” inquired the chauffeur.
Wintermute’s hand waved vaguely towards the living
room. “On the floor. Anywhere.”
The chauffeur handed him a card. “Sign here, please.”
As he wrote, Wintermute asked:	“Who sent the
phonograph? Where did it come from?”
“Suppose there’s a card inside,” shrugged the man.
The janitor bustled ahead to the elevator. “Call me if
you need me to set the thing up, sir.”
Wintermute had difficulty prying off the upper boards.
There was a layer of straw. Then bottles. And more
bottles.
When the janitor returned, his knock was ignored.
For months he never passed that door without wonder-
ing why those folks never used their music box!
Wintermute hunted through the straw for a card.
When he abandoned the search he was surrounded by
bottles, all labeled Whiskey.
He opened one—to be certain there was no joker.
Bye and bye, he opened another—
Somebody knocking. Trying to get in, or get off.
Funny buzzing in his ears. Wanting to sleep; andTRAPS
143
wanting to keep awake, for something. Something to
do with straw. Lots of straw.
Bell ringing. Infernal bell ringing. Ringing all
night. Chauffeur had found that card. What card?
The card in the straw. Ought to answer that bell.
Ringing again. Keeps on ringing. Going to have
that bell extracted. ’Sbeen aching for a lo-ong time.
Couldn’t get to that bell. Bottles in the way. Med’cine
bottles. No more med’cine for a lo-ong time. Going
to get well. Everything going to be all right. For
Lisa—" *
Lisa!
All night the telephone rang. Wintermute in his office
clothes on the lounge slept on.
In the morning, the telephone again set up its clamor.
At length it aroused the director. He dragged himself
to the table where it stood. The voice of Holt, an ex-
cited, accusing Holt, came to him.
“For God’s sake, where’ve you been all night? Why
in Hades did you sign that card? Now they’ve got us
where they want us, for sure!”
“What card?” mumbled his chief.
“The card you signed. What’s the matter with your
voice? Have you a cold? Sounds rotten. Say, I’m
coming out to see you!”
Wintermute gave a glance at the room, at the bottles
and the straw.
“No use. Nobody here. Just leaving. I was in the
hall when you rang,” he lied. “Wait at the office.” He
hung up the receiver.144
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Clumsily, feverishly, he replaced the bottles in the
phonograph case. While at work a rapping fell on the
door, a persistent summons. He waited until he heard
steps moving away from the door. Presently the tele-
phone rang again. He did not answer it.
Several times he peered out into the hall. There was
always someone passing or waiting at the elevator. When
at last the coast was clear he managed, painfully gasp-
ing and sweating, to get the case into the cellar. There
he locked it in their store-room and got back to his apart-
ment by way of the tradesman’s staircase without hav-
ing run into the janitor.
He stood for a time in the wrecked room, his hands
pressed against his temples.
After changing his suit, and bathing his face and hands,
he went gloomily and heavily to the office to meet Holt—CHAPTER XXI
A
THE PRICE
PIPE line,” stated Holt, “could be laid at night
through his orchard.”
“The dogs,” suggested O’Ryan.
“By men who are friendly with the dogs,” answered
Holt as firmly as though the idea had not that instant
come to him. “Every man has his price.”
“What’s yours?” demanded the blind boss.
They were in the high-ceilinged bedchamber of O’Ryan,
the brewer in a smoking gown and slippers sitting stiffly
in his oversized Morris chair; Holt, hat in hand, in a reed
rocker, close by.
“Price?” drawled Holt. “I want to get on, of course.
I’m willing for a while to watch old Winterhead falling
asleep on the tracks, provided—”
“Yes, provided!” prompted his host.
“That if he does fall down, make some bad break, I’ll
be recommended as his successor.”
“If I’ve any power left then, yes!” clinched O’Ryan.
They discussed Holt’s plan minutely. The pipe line
could be laid between cellar and deserted shack near the
railroad. One night’s work after midnight, with a small
force, would complete the connection. Next morning, an
employee of the enforcement service happening to pass
might discover a line of freshly turned earth crossing the
county road. Wine would have made its initial journey,
coloring both'the pipe and the story—
145146
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Be careful of Crispi. Don’t approach him. You
can’t get him,” warned O’Ryan.
“He can be silenced,” said Holt.
They fell to discussing methods of securing the
“loyalty” of the men who worked under Crispi. The
brewer thought it might be wiser to lure away the force
by promise elsewhere of higher wages. That were easily
done. Those to be replaced by others on whom Holt
could rely. But there was a weak link in his chain:
Holt’s direction must not be known. His hand ought
not to be traced in it. “In other words, you need a
leader. A man who would seem to be one of the
groupBSttfj
“And I know the fellow!” he exclaimed. “His name’s
Pasquale. He’s worked before for me. Afraid of
nothing. Has a cellar on Howell Mountain. Dangling
a sale now, I’m told. The fool’s likely to refuse it, for
the price of grapes has gone to his head. If you would
see him, make it worth his while to work under your
direction, to seem, you understand, to be working under
Crispi, I think your plan would work.”
Holt got up. “I’ll see him today.”
Before he left, he allowed himself a little self-glory.
“I’ve been working on this for some time. I’m not
one to talk about things, though, before they’re ripe.
I had to cultivate Richard, the son, had to lose time,
hanging back, so as not to seem to be rushing him. Had
to know the place, inch by inch. They are a superior
bunch! But they won’t be so proud after the wine-
stained pipe is found crossing the county road under
a few inches of dust! The name of Roedel won’t soundTHE PRICE
147
so well after the papers have played with it for a while.”
Unctuous sounds came from the brewer’s lips, as though
intoning a mass.
“So long!” said Holt, as though to an equal.
“Keep me posted,” O’Ryan sent after him.
The roadster was soon going north, on the way to
Howell Mountain.
From afar, approaching Frascati, he could see Mad-
dalena’s orange-colored handkerchief, which the Sicilian
coquette was wearing this season wound turbanwise
round her shapely head. She was working in the vines
near the road. She waved at him as he passed.
Up the valley chugged his roadster. At St. Helena he
turned off the main road, towards the mountain. The air
was rich with the smell of the ripe grape, of ripening ap-
ples and of tarweed. The hillside was aflame with the
reddening poison oak.
He found Pasquale in front of his cellar, arguing
heatedly over money amounts. His visitor, an American,
decently dressed, looked out of place in the unkept en-
closure. Holt waved at Pasquale as he drove in, turning
his machine towards the far corner of the field, where a
fine group of trees, madrones and oaks, offered a grate-
ful shade.
The Italian left his visitor and lumbered across the
glaring space.
i-M'What you wan’?” he inquired, tying his belt rope as
he came.
“Get into the machine, and I’ll tell you,” replied Holt.
They whispered together for a few minutes, and then
Pasquale clambered down from the car. “I think we148
IF TODAY BE SWEET
make a deal, this time, and then I can talk something
else all right.”
“I’ll ride around for a half an hour. Get rid of him
by that time,” advised Holt as he turned his roadster back
towards the county road.
When he returned, Pasquale showed him a handful of
bills and a signed offer for the vineyard. “Deposit.
Pretty good, yes?”
Pasquale had had no dinner. He could not talk with-
out having had dinner. He invited his guest to share
their meal, and led the way to the back porch, where the
table was waiting. A bottle of olive oil, a bowl of lettuce
with some sliced onions and a round loaf of hard bread
furnished it.
Mrs. Pasquale in her chronic condition of impending
motherhood came out to serve them. She bore a pot of
steaming onion soup, and later a large dish of macaroni.
The children came shyly, curiously, to their places;
most of them had their thumbs in their mouths. Their
jaws drooped in an unpleasing fashion. Teresa, obscured
by a mop of cloudy hair, clung to her mother’s skirts.
The chickens followed the children to the family board,
two roosters perching on the table. A mangy dog came
and crouched at the stranger’s feet.
Pasquale was not to be hastened through his meal. A
jug of wine had to be attended to. When at last he
could be got back to his cellar, he wanted to tell Holt
first all about the deal he had just closed. “And now
where was he to go? His woman was after him to go to
the city. She thinks it is easier to have babies in the
city. It’s always ‘somewhere else’ with these women!THE PRICE
149
She’s fierce, this time. She talks of the city, nothing but
the city. I don’ wanna go in a hurry.”
Holt assured him he was right in not wanting to go in a
hurry. He should look around a little bit before investing
his money. There was a small vineyard, oh, about a hun-
dred vines or so, with a small shack, on the creek below
Frascati. He had noticed a “To Let” sign on it that
morning as he had passed. It would be a good place
to go to; he could look around from there; and be near
to Frascati for the business he wanted to talk to him
about.
He discovered that Pasquale had the idea that a big
steal was the plan, that they were to divert the wine in
the Frascati cellars by way of the pipe line. Before he
could decide whether it were better to make the plot clear
to him, or to whet the willing cupidity of- the man, a
clamor started in the yard. Looking out through a crack
of the cellar door, he saw Elizabeth Wintermute, on
Powder, entering the enclosure.
“That’s my chief’s daughter. A friend of the Roedels.
She doesn’t know she opens doors for us.” He winked
broadly at the Italian. “Can you get her into the house
so I can get afway from here without seeing her?”
“I’ll fix it,” leered Pasquale. He waddled down to-
wards the group of children flocking around the visitor.
When he got back to his guest, the Italian said:
“She’s going into the kitchen after my wife cleans up.
But you can get out the back way if you don’ want to
wait. There are back roads, now, from every vineyard!
I’ll fetch your machine ’round to you.”
Holt followed the wine-maker through the foul-smell-150
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ing, dank place* and up rickety steps which led to a
crude door behind some wine-stained boxes. A rough
road could be seen leading away from the high ground
back of the cellar, and over the hill through the thick
woods.
A minute or so later, Holt’s roadster was bowling down
the mountain, on the way back to Napa.CHAPTER XXII
OPPORTUNITY
MADDALENA had never been more puzzled or
perturbed. Two lovers at a time involved ca-
tastrophe. And experience, she was discover-
ing, gave her no help with the next adventure.
Joe’s absence had at first disquieted her. Two weeks
and more they had been in camp before he had appeared.
W aiting for the grapes to ripen under a slothful sun, Mad-
dalena had long days to waste with lovers, if they would
but come! There was no one to flirt with, to ride or
play with! Rich never came near the camp this year,
never even looked in her direction.
“What’s the matter with that Joe Ruiz? Din’t he
love her any more, neither?”
The camp boys, Matthias and Ludovici, began to tell
her thrilling, enchanting stories about her absent lover.
Joe was working in a still, back in the mountains. He
could come out very seldom. He had to be very careful,
now, that Joe Ruiz!
She was weaving romances about this new, adventur-
ous Joe when Holt’s orbit cut across her own. Then she
prayed that Joe would stay away; that he would not com-
plicate this wonderful chance she believed life had flung
to her. Holt, she knew, must be both rich and grand.
His superiority, his mocking ways, and above all, his self-
control, deeply impressed her. The first time she gavei 52
IF TODAY BE SWEET
him a pert answer, she sobbed all night into her hard
little pillow for fear he would be angry and not come
near her any more.
When Joe appeared at last, grape-picking had com-
menced. He came openly, in the electric trolley, with a
bag of candy for Josefina. Nothing different about that
old Joe Ruiz! While he talked with the older folk, she
was discrediting Matthias’ story, and comparing Joe with
the wonderful Mr. Holt. Joe had been working “rough.”
His hands and nails were stained; his store clothes were
mussed and shabby.
What was in his pockets for Maddalena? She hoped
it was no more “ribbins!” Would he never see that she
was too old for them?
She had left the group as though to go to bed. In a
few minutes Joe followed her, in the apricot orchard.
Hand in hand, they made their way to the oak-tree in the
meadow across the road.
He was so quiet that she asked him, after studying
him from under her demure lashes:	“Ain’ you glad to
see me any more?”
“Glad!” he had echoed stupidly. “Glad!”
He did not try to kiss her. He sat there, looking at
her, as though he were afraid to speak. Something
queer had come over that Joe Ruiz.
Maybe, she thought, he had met another girl; the kind
of girl he had always wanted her to be, the quiet kind,
that wants a small house, and is willing to help her man
pay for it, after. And gets old and fat and ugly. It
made her shiver, thinking how she would look! “How
all those women get to look, stooped over, and wrinkled,OPPORTUNITY	153
with a baby every year! Good women, the priests taught
them, din’t mind having a baby every year.”
She flung her head back. “I don’ want it!”
“Don’ wan’ what, Laina?”
“Don’ want what I don’ want!” she shook her dark
head saucily at him.
His look reassured her. Joe still thought her lovely.
She had forgotten how slow Joe was; not like those city
men who make a girl afraid she is the stupid one!
This was just Joe’s way!
He leaned over and whispered in her ear, as though
people were around:	“I’m goin’ to mek big money fer
you, Laina!”
So that was what was running through his head! And
he thought she did not know!
“Pretty soon I mek a good home fer you, Laina. And
get you pretty clothes.”
The foolish Joe! Talking about a home that she, Mad-
dalena, would like! He could work for years and years,
and it would then be a little house he could buy, with a
funny little sitting room, shiny and ugly, and a kitchen,
and, if he was very lucky, a bedroom and a bathroom,
maybe! That was what a grand home meant to that
foolish Joe Ruiz!
“But ain’ it awful dangerous?” she inquired, after tell-
ing him what Matthias had told her. She had to lean
against his shoulder, for it hurts a girl’s back sitting up
stiff so long!
“Dangerous, oh, yes, mebbe, but not awful dangerous,”
qualified her lover. But that was the reason, he ex-
plained, why he could not come often now to see her.154
IF TODAY BE SWEET
She would understand, though, that he was working hard
for her; all the time when he was not there, she would
remember how he was working, and for her? All for
her; for his Laina. When he could get out, he would
meet her like this, under this oak-tree, and they would
plan the house he was going to earn for her.
She had already led Holt to this oak. Sometime those
two men might meet there!
This was the minute she had been dreading. Holt had
told her the night before, under that tree, that he would
not play with a girl who had other lovers; a lover, he had
said. It wasn’t straight, he’d declared. She had
thought at first that he had said “safe.”
“Safe?” she had asked him.
“No, straight, I said,” Holt had corrected her.
It was noble of him! And just like a play! That
was why he did not kiss her yet, did not try to make her
sit on his knee!
She had told him then about Portuguese Joe; she had
promised to give him up. Even then he hadn’t tried to
kiss her. She wasn’t sure of Mr. Holt! She had never
seen anyone just like him, so cool, his eyes always steady,
with little points of laughter that made her feel afraid;
made her shiver, afterwards. She knew now how men
felt when she laughed at them. It makes one feel crazy.
She sat weighing the shabby certainty against the
grandeur of the possibility, listening, apparently to Joe’s
repetitions.
“That was one good thing about that Joe Ruiz. A
girl can listen to him, and think to herself at the same
time. Joe don’ catch her up, don’ ask questions she don’OPPORTUNITY
155
know enough to answer. He wun’t never mek much
money, Joe wun’t. He was kine, but he wun’t smart.
The camp people all know that. Even her father who
wants him to be a son-in-law, he knows it.”
At last her mind was fortified. But it was a quaver-
ing little voice that said:	“I don’ want you to come here
no more, Joe.”
She saw that he did not believe her. When he was
making money for her, earning the kind of home a girl
wants? A whole year of working for her, and she tells
him not to come back any more?
Carefully, she tried to make him understand. It was
very dangerous, that work, for him, and for her, too.
Suppose he got caught! And her father was getting aw-
ful fierce. More careful all the time. Wants her always
to be with that old Maria Cesari! “You know these Si-
cilian men!” she added.
He tossed away her placating hand. “There is some-
body else, some other fellar, again!”
“You don’ like my hand, Joe?”
“This time you let me go, I never come back no more.
Those other rich fellars fool you, Laina. You don’ wan’
to see me any more?”
His words frightened her. But she had to take
the chance. She had no mother to help her, as the girls
in the pictures have. No one to make things all right for
her, and herself sitting by, “looking like one angel!”
She, Maddalena, had to help herself.
“What fer, then, did I mek that money? What fer did
I tek that place?” He sat dazed, staring at her.
“Bimeby, when it’s more safe, I’ll send for you, mebbe,”156
IF TODAY BE SWEET
crooned Maddalena. But Joe looked so fierce that for
the first time she was afraid of him. He grabbed her
hands so roughly that the tears sprang to her eyes. This
time, they had no effect on Joe.
He demanded to know if there were “another fellar.”
He would not go away because of the danger. He would
give up that work to be near her. Unless she loved some-
one else he would not leave her.
She could not have him give up that place. She
could not have him hanging around. She told him
she was going to marry someone else.
He left her so quickly that she was stunned. She
waited for him to come back, as he had often done before,
and tell her that he was sorry, that he would always be
her friend. But though she waited until the midnight
moisture began to creep into the valley, Joe did not come
back. She crept home to her tent, miserable and fright-
ened. Suppose she had lost Joe, and Mr. Holt was only
fooling her?
But the next day life was sweet and sunny again. In
the morning, while she was in the grapes, Mr. Roedel
came down to the vineyard with the lady she had met last
year, and told her that Mrs. Rawlings wanted her to be
in the vintage festival, maid of honor to the queen. Mad-
dalena!
“My father’ll say ‘no/ ” she whispered, radiant, fearful.
“Mr. Roedel will persuade him,” assured Mrs. Rawl-
ings. “Will you tell him that I will be responsible for
her, Mr. Roedel? It will be my float, my booth where
she will be. I will take as good care of her as thoughOPPORTUNITY	157
she were my daughter. And I myself will bring her
home.”
Maddalena kept her eyes on the wonderful visitor, try-
ing to look as though she were listening. Mrs. Rawlings
was telling Mr. Roedel how they were going to carry out
the idea, this year, of the grape as food, rather than as
drink. “Raisins, preserves. And, of course, grape juice.
I think the valley, the time, demands some such demon-
stration.” She wanted Mr. Roedel to say:	“Yes, in-
deed!”
Maddalena did not hear what he said. She was going
to be in the vintage festival! Going to ride down the
street in one of those trucks all draped with flowers.
Maddalena! With a crown, or a wreath on her head, and
everyone peeping at her out of the corner of his eye!
But suppose her father would not let her go? She voiced
again her anguished doubt to Mrs. Rawlings.
“Let’s settle it, here, now. Where’s your father?” de-
manded the astonishing woman who wasn’t afraid of men,
and who talked just like one.
Maddalena followed her across the vineyard, Mr. Roe-
del leading the way. They found Latta piling the filled
boxes on a truck.
To her amazement, her father told the strange lady
tha(t she could borrow “his leetle girl,” And Mr. Roedel
said that he would pay her that day just the same as
though she were picking grapes; “just what she had
earned the day before the festival. And she could pick
hard, too!”
Life was throwing open its wonderful doors to her at158
IF TODAY BE SWEET
last! Like the pictures, when things begin to happen!
It was like looking up at somebody else’s story, on the
screen!
And that same afternoon, Mrs. O’Ryan drove in to ask
Mr. Roedel if the pretty Italian child might not ride in
her float. The child labor committee had been asked to
dress one of the trucks. She had been assigned hops to
stage as food. She told him, before Maddalena, of the
plan they had worked out; hop vines and cotton, to look
like flour, and a central figure bearing loaves of white
bread. She wanted Maddalena to be that central figure.
At home, Roedel shook with laughter over his chronicle.
“What would O’Ryan, any of us for that matter, have
done without child labor? And she wants child labor to
be her central figure!”
“It’s not your fault that she isn’t in school, that they
evade the law!” protested his wife when his face grew
suddenly grave. As grave as when with Mrs. O’Ryan in
the vineyard.
“I’m afraid she is already preempted,” he had told the
brewer’s wife. “But she can make her choice.”
It was neither loyalty nor etiquette that prompted the
girl to refuse Mrs. O’Ryan’s invitation. There had not
been a night since the dance of last year that her waking
dreams had not placed Maddalena on the queen’s float,
on the dais in the hall. Did anybody think she would
rather carry loaves of bread?
Maddalena, the correct, who modeled her manners
after the pattern of the picture queens, said that she was
very sorry Mrs. Rawlings had asked her first! Of
course, she had to keep her promise to Mrs. Rawlings!OPPORTUNITY
159
When she went back to her grape-picking, she said a
little prayer to the Virgin, asking to be forgiven for the
lie. She was glad that Mrs. O’Ryan did not come first!
If the Holy Mother would forgive her this time, she would
tell no more lies, not even to the men who loved her.
“I’ll be good, always, after this!” she whispered, cross-
ing herself in the shadow of the grapes. “I’ll never lie
no more!”CHAPTER XXIII
VERGIS SMEINNICHT
ELIZABETH came to the breakfast table one
morning in her riding clothes. Her mother
looked up from the telegraphic news.
“Good morning, Elizabeth. Off again?”
“I’m going up the mountain to see Mrs. Pasquale.
Another baby’s coming. First, I have to run in to
Frascati. Mrs. Roedel has been collecting clothes. That
was what her telephone message was about, last night,”
added Elizabeth, a conscious flush answering her mother’s
gaze.
Mrs. Wintermute poured out a cup of coffee for the
late-comer, and then buried herself again in the paper.
A letter for Elizabeth, from her father, told her that he
had been delayed in the south. It might be a week or
more before he returned.
Tom hovered solicitously about her. Not another bis-
cuit? She would not have any porridge? No more
omelet? Not even one hot cake? To keep him from
despair, she overate her calories.
Rising from the table, she hazarded:	“We are to be
widows again this week?”
“So it seems. He writes he has to go to San Diego
and Bakersfield before he returns.”
“Haven’t I the giddy parents!” She stooped and left
a light kiss on her mother’s hair. (<You speaking around
160VERGISSMEINNICHT
161
the state, father organizing, what is there left for the
butterfly daughter to do but just—butterfly?” She
threw an unanswered smile back at the absorbed reader.
Madge’s breakfast invariably chilled as she made her
morning tour of the world.
Reverently Tom adjusted the girl’s stirrups, and as fer-
vently watched her out of sight. She held a tight rein at
first, down the bit of home road, breaking into a lope after
she had tested her saddle.
The day was going to be warm, but the morning air
was still crisp from the fog which was blowing out of the
valley.
The year was slipping towards the Pluto hush, but
even the approach of winter failed to bring the pang of
death that falls like a blight on other valleys. It was a
period of rich fulfillment. And the evergreens of the
encircling hills made of winter a renewal that was of sleep
rather than of death.
The pickers were at work when she reached Frascati.
She sent a smile in the direction of Maddalena, who
looked sharply away. Riding up the main road towards
the house, Elizabeth caught sight of Hamilton on the
outer platform of the wine cellar. She waved to him.
A truck was driving up with its freight. From the upper
window the stems of the grapes were shooting into the
air, and falling on the ground below on a mound of yester-
day’s stems. The escalator was moving endlessly, carry-
ing its burden of mischievous fruit, radiant, singing color,
out of the sunlight into the gloom.
Hamilton was separating the boxes, the white and the
red. He sent her a swift smile, and went on with his task.162
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Mrs. Roedel she found in the breakfast room. She was
cutting the cords from a box which Crispi had just borne
in with the morning mail. She lifted a beaming face for
the girl’s kiss. “From papa, I mean from Mr. Roedel!”
The package was covered with express directions.
“With care. Glass. Perishable.” Mrs. Roedel pulled
off the heavy wrappings with little running hazards.
“What is it? It’s heavy. What can it be? He’s a great
one for surprises! ” And she found more paper swathings
inside the box, and still more excelsior.
The little woman exclaimed with delight as an ivory-
tinted bowl, with a dull blue rim, was disclosed. “He
remembered what I wanted! Look, Elizabeth! A nest
of cooking bowls!”
From their sheath of papers the gifts were withdrawn,
Emilie crooning over them like a child. Small paper
squares, like envelopes, fluttered to the floor.
Mrs. Roedel had retrieved them before Elizabeth could
stoop to pick them up. More carefully the bowls were
separated, and more of the little paper squares were
tucked into the pockets of the black taffeta morning
apron.
“Just what I needed for Chow,” repeated Emilie, and
wiped her eyes when Elizabeth looked away.
But the outlet had been made. She had to talk to
someone. “He is so good to me. It is always an ache,
here.”
“But such a happy ache!” cried Elizabeth, coming
closer, and taking the little woman in her arms.
“He is always trying to make it up to me.”VERGISSMEINNICHT
163
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the girl.
“I think the boys won’t mind my telling you. They
don’t like me to tell people; they don’t like to talk of
it themselves.”
“Should you, then?” Elizabeth’s clasp grew stronger.
“There was another woman, another wife. I had al-
ways lived in the same town with him. I don’t remember
a time when I didn’t love George Roedel. I was dream-
ing of him, and he always of*~someone else! An Amer-
ican couldn’t understand how hopeless his love seemed,
she was so far above him, out of reach. At last they met,
somehow, and they kept on meeting. One night they
went away together. They meant to come to America,
but before they could get passports, her people had found
her. In Naples, two, three months, maybe. I have
never dared to ask him about that time. She was young.
It was easy to say it was not a marriage. You say—
canceled?”
“Annulled,” said Elizabeth, pitifully.
“What use was it then to go to America? He came
back to Germany and began his military service. It was
years before I saw him again, in Assmanshausen.”
Elizabeth bent and kissed her forehead.
“I think he knew I loved him. My people, his people
had always known. He came to me and told me he was
leaving Germany. He wanted to live in a country where
people were free. It was not good for a man, for any
one to try to live alone, he said. Though part of him
was dead—he wouldn’t lie to me—he asked me to come
to America with him, to build up a home over here. He164
IF TODAY BE SWEET
could not say that he would ever forget her, ever get over
the hurt. I remember after he’d gone how he said that
the years carry healing.”
“Do I look like her? Was her name Beatrix?” haz-
arded Elizabeth.
“Beatrix? Oh, no. Quite different. And she was all
white and gold, with eyes that looked like the evening
sky. No wonder he loved her. All that he had made
himself be for her sake would be mine if I’d take the
broken bits of his life and put them together again. And
I’ve tried! But I often wonder what I would have done
if I’d known it would be so hard, so hard because so
sweet. Can you understand what I mean?”
“Oh, yes, I can understand,” whispered Elizabeth.
“If he’d only speak her name, just once, if he could
bring himself to do it! Then I would know the years
have brought healing, and that he is happy, now, with
me.”
“Happy? Why, he adores you!” The girl released
one of her hands to dash away the foolish tears.
“My Hamilton is like him. So quiet, so faithful. He
would never forget. Rich maybe, too, when he gets
older. They are alike, those three. I never used to feel
that I was their mother. Just as though I was taking
care of her boys.”
The strong young arms went about her again.
“I want you to see what he sent me.” Her hand dove
into the pocket of her apron. She put one of the tiny
envelopes in the girl’s hands. Little foreign packages of
flower seeds; in German script, “Vergissmeinnicht.”
“Forget-me-nots!.” whispered Emilie through happyVERGISSMEINNICHT
165
tears. icHe is always doing things like that. He is a
poet, about living. Life is his poem, Elizabeth. That is
his belief what it should be. He always thinks of ways
to make life lovely.”
Of ways to make life lovely!
Then resolutely they turned to the business at hand:
the clothes for the needed Pasquales. There were so
many that Elizabeth could take that day but a few.
After careful weeding, eliminating the satin corsets and
dancing slippers and flimsy chiffons which the Napa
women had contributed, the rest could be boxed and
sent by parcel post or express up the mountain.
Two hours later Powder and Elizabeth entered the
Pasquale’s unsightly yard. Under a distant oak a road-
ster was parked. Before the wife could get out to see
who it was that had aroused the yelping dogs, the wine-
maker was descending upon the visitor. His face was
covered with a week’s growth of hair. His face was red
and dripping. As he walked, one hand mopped his
streaming forehead, the other hitched his grotesque, wine-
stiffened trousers which the rope refused to hold in place.
His hair was uncombed and dusty. With him came the
smell of alcohol and the danker, subtler smell of damp,
unsunned earth.
He came calling aloud for his wife. “Marietta! Mari-
etta!”
She came out shyly, carrying the eight-months-old baby
in her arms. She was wearing the same shapeless skirt
of the year before, the same kind of loose calico sacque.
Her graying hair was escaping the hairpins.
“I’m busy. Take her into the house,” he ordered.166
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“But it’s so dirty. It’s been so hot,” she turned to
her visitor.
“I can’t stay. It’s all right here,” said Elizabeth.
“You’ll both have sunstroke.” He beckoned his wife
into the shadow of the house. A few minutes later he
waddled back to the wine cellar, mopping his steaming
face and hitching up his trousers.
The wife came to the front door. “You’ll have to see
it as it is. I can’t make it no better in a hurry. Funny,
whoever built this house didn’t put it under the trees! ”
But she had great news to tell. The vineyard was sold,
that is, as good as sold. He had the deposit in his pocket.
He had shown her the paper, which she couldn’t read.
They would go to the city to live. He had promised if
he sold the vineyard the new baby could be born in the
city, so that she could stay in bed for a while instead of
getting up the same day and cooking for the family. If
she could get into one of those wonderful houses, maybe,
which take care of poor women like herself, then she
wouldn’t be so wicked, getting so angry when a baby
comes. He said it was wicked.
The unusual confidences kept pouring out. Elizabeth
could not close the floodgates. Mrs. Pasquale wanted to
talk of the great changes ahead of them, and she also
wanted to beg the kind friend not to mind his ways. “He
thinks she comes around to spy on him, that it is her
father who sends her, perhaps he has told her that Pas-
quale makes one or two gallons too many? For herself
she did not know how much he made. A woman never
knows all that her man does.”VERGISSMEINNICHT
167
Elizabeth stood silent and unhappy as the woman prat-
tled on.
“I won’t come back if he thinks that,” she said at
length. “Other people must be thinking it, too! Why,,
of course, Napa, the wine cellars, the vineyards—what an
idiot I have been! Please don’t mind, Mrs. Pasquale.
It shocked me, that was all. Don’t tell him you told
me—I
A shadow fell across the floor of the shack. Pasquale
stood in the doorway.
“I’ll show you the cellar, now,” he glared.
“I don’t want to see it,” began Elizabeth, in a panic.
“Oh, yes you do. There won’t be no other day. We’ve
quit. Your free America has run us out. Come along.
You stay behind, and take care of the kids,” he advised
his wife.
“Don’t make him mad!” she whispered to her visitor.
“Go along. He’ll be all right if you don’t make him
mad.”
“She can’t come with us. She has work to do. Must
a man live like a pig? See what your laws have brought
us to!”
He pulled a bunch of keys from his pockets. One
was long and thick. He fitted it into the cellar door, a
thick, cumbersome door, and motioned her to go in first.
A stench ran to meet them. The building was dark
and damp. At her side lumbered Pasquale, heavily
breathing. As the eye became accustomed to the dark-
ness, mounds of rotting lees could be seen, and nearer the:
wall piles of decaying apples and of stored cabbages.168
IF TODAY BE SWEET
He stopped in a dark corner. She saw him pull out a
jug-
“Think what you like. Tell what you like. Won’t
hurt me. On the water wagon, now, this place. Grape
juice. No ill feeling. Try our wine.”
She had reached the entrance before he had finished
talking. He was lumbering after her, holding out the
dirty mug.
The door had been shut tight, but a fierce effort pulled
it open, and she stood blinking at the rush of sunshine.
Crying out over her shoulder:	“I’m late. I can’t stay,”
she fled towards the house.
The new dress on, Mrs. Pasquale was at the door to
meet her.
“I can wear it to the city. It doesn’t need much chang-
ing. Except the belt and the hem. I had nothing.”
“I’ll send the other things, by the stage. It looks well
on you,” gasped Elizabeth and went after Powder, who
was nibbling weeds under the oaks.
As she entered her own house that afternoon, her
mother called to her. “Richard Roedel rang up. He
wanted you to call him as soon as you came in.”
“If he calls up again, tell him that—I’m sleeping off
a headache. Don’t call me, please.” She went up to her
own room, and locked herself in.
While she was at dinner, Tom came in to say that Mr.
Hamilton Roedel wanted to speak with her.
^“Won’t you speak to him, mother?” Miserable eyes
looked across the table. “Whatever it is, I can’t do it.
Get me out of it.”
“He wanted you to ride with him this evening,” Mrs.VERGISSMEINNICHT
169
Wintermute said as she took again her place at the table.
“I’m going to study the rest of the time I’m here,” the
girl tried to explain. “I’ve been loafing too much. I
have work to do, really, and it has just come to me,
mother, it could easily be misunderstood, my going about
to places-—where they don’t ask—father. I might be—
taking notes!” She choked over the words. “I couldn’t
bear to have—people think that!”
“They could easily think it,” agreed her mother. “I
have been realizing that for some time.”
“You have realized it, and never warned me!” cried
her daughter.
“Not until I knew it was not true was there any use of
making you uncomfortable,” Madge Wintermute ex-
plained.
Elizabeth stared at her.
Throughout the week following, the Roedels telephoned
repeatedly, and both Richard and Hamilton called to be
told by the imperturbable, inscrutable Korean that “Miss
Elizabeth she is please out.”
On Sunday Hamilton rang up while she was at break-
fast alone, and he would not let the servant refuse to give
his message. He had been asked to make his maiden
political speech at Calistoga. That week; Saturday
night. He needed her advice, her criticism. He wanted
her to go with him.
Tom stood waiting for her answer, watching her.
“Tell him all right,” she said at last. “Tell him I will
go.”CHAPTER XXIV
THE VINTAGE FESTIVAL
AS soon as the “Queen’s Float” lumbered into
sight, no one saw anyone but Maddalena. She
stood at the foot of the throne radiantly deflect-
ing glances due to mimic royalty. A wreath of grape
leaves bound her dark and glossy hair, and in her arms
she bore a gilded basket of purple grapes. Branches of
the ruddy leaves fell in a shower to her feet. She stood
like a statue. But her eyes were like dancing lanterns.
Anyone could see that the street scene was a path of
glory to the Sicilian; that to her the yellow drapery unit-
ing the houses and stretching from flowered poles across
the street was not cheesecloth, but veritable cloth of gold;
the swaying banners not cleverly constructed affairs of
cardboard and paper cambric, but splendid, knightly sym-
bols; the country crowd a gallant gathering, and the vil-
lage avenue a marvelous White Way.
A few fleeting glances passed on to the local, blond-
haired queen. But they returned at once to the little
grape-picker’s starry-eyed, ecstatic beauty. She was
meeting life on tiptoes. She was the soul, the symbol of
the parade.
It added no little to her triumph to know that some-
where, from one of those crowded upper windows, Eliza-
beth Wintermute, the girl who looked like a setter dog,
who had won Richard Roedel away from her and who
170THE VINTAGE FESTIVAL
171
was to be feared with Holt, was watching her triumph.
A few days before the Napa Mercury had printed the
order of the parade, and a copy had been brought by
Matthias to Maddalena. In the social columns she had
laboriously read:
“Dr. Edward R. Holden, the popular young dentist of
St. Helena, will have as his window guests Mrs. Madge
W intermute, the well-known temperance leader, wife of
the regional prohibition enforcement director, and their
daughter, Miss Elizabeth Wintermute, who are spending
the latter’s vacation at Casa Blanca. They will also be
his guests the closing evening of the fiesta. Dr. Holden
is one of the box-holders for the ball.”
At the dance, Maddalena located at once the Holden
party. It piqued her to see the way eyes were turning
to the upper box. “Pretty, but not so pretty as me,” she
decided. She had her own eager court. “Yes, like bees,”
she thought; she herself was the flower, she whom they
must all think sweet.
Other attendants might leave that royal platform to
dance with the carnival roisterers, but not so the maid
of honor. Too important were her royal duties. As well
might the queen take off her crown and imposing train
as Maddalena step off that dais. Lesser folk might
dance; but she shared with the queen a certain dignity.
One suppliant after another was refused. Suddenly, she
saw Holt.
She exulted that he should see her thus surrounded.
Her color deepened, her eyes grew more brilliant. Holt
joined her train, at first cool, mocking, the little points of
laughter in his eyes discomforting her. But as she kept172
IF TODAY BE SWEET
shaking her head, refusing courtier after courtier, he
caught some of their fire. Maddalena, the expert, under-
stood it all quite well. When at last he would forget him-
self, look once at her the way Matthias, and Joe, and once
Richard, had looked at her, she would leave that won-
drous stand. For him, she would desert it, as for him
she would leave anything.
Then the look came for which she had waited. She
relinquished the tawdry, gilded basket. Royally she
gave one hand to Holt as she descended the few steps to
the floor. Heaven it was to have Holt grasp her eagerly
in his arms, bliss to have his breath sweeping her cheek.
Her rough little hand clutched his coat. She danced
on tiptoes that her head might more nearly reach his.
Every muscle was taut that she might be yet taller.
“I’m going to take you home, Maddalena,” he whis-
pered to her.
She told him that she could not go with him. Mrs.
Rawlings was to take her home; she had promised her
father. It filled her with ecstasy to hear him plead, to
watch the self-contained, grand Mr. Holt going the way
of the rest, losing his head! Life was a wonderful game,
once one learned to play it!
He kept urging her to tell Mrs. Rawlings that she had
a headache, that she was tired and must go home early.
And then he would take her; he would have her all
to himself.
She wanted to please him, to consent. But instinct
told her that she had not yet secured him, that she must
not be too easy.THE VINTAGE FESTIVAL
173
“Promise not to get mad with me, and I will give you
two more dances.” She arranged one of her most seduc-
tive, worshipful smiles.
“Two! I want five!” A little later, he raised it to
ten. When she pretended to want to split a fox-trot with
some of her courtiers, her swarm of bees, he would not
let her. Everyone, she knew, was noticing them; and
the girl who looked like a setter dog, she, too, was watch-
ing them.
“Mrs. Rawlings don’ like me to dance. She want me
to stay on the platform,” confided Maddalena, raising her
face to his, as though a kiss were expected.
“Did she say so?” asked Holt. She knew he was look-
ing at her lips, that he was wanting to kiss them, Holt,
the grand Mr. Holt wanting to kiss Maddalena. Al-
ready his lips had brushed her ear, her hair. But she
hadn’t been sure. It might have been an accident. But
he was loving her! He was beginning to love her hard!
“No, she don’ tell me so, but I know!”
“How do you know, little witch?”
His voice trembling, “jus’ like that Joe Ruiz!”
“Look the way she frown at me!” She drew down the
corners of her mouth into a fish curve, to make him
laugh.
“Oh, nonsense, she looks like that all the time. Mad-
dalena, little wild rose, let me take you home!”
“No, I said,” trilled the Sicilian. Never before had he
been like this. It was such a wonderful day!
She knew something was wrong when his clasp suddenly
loosened. She followed his eyes to the gallery. She174
IF TODAY BE SWEET
felt his breathing halt. He wanted to stop dancing.
Said he was:	“Dog-tired. And hot. Didn’t Madda-
lena want a lemonade?” ;
Until that minute she had been rejoicing over that par-
ticular spectator. Now she was enraged. Always spoil-
ing her fun, that red-haired girl. Why were all the men
so awful afraid of her, she’d like to know? Because she
■was rich, she decided. She must have lots of money to
make men afraid of her like that. Always spoiling her
good times; last year Rich was always running away from
her because he said he was late. Late for someone with
shining, dark red hair!
Holt dragged her into the shadow of the balcony, out
of sight of the Holden party. She could not again bring
a smile to his face. It was the other Holt; grim-lipped,
white, angry. Unless she wanted to walk back to that
platform all alone, she must pretend to want some lemon-
ade. “He was mad ashamed. He didn’t like being seen
with her!”
“Funny old country of yours, talking all the time
about being free, and don’ let you drink what you want!”
she coquetted for the benefit of others as they approached
the lemonade table.
Holt glanced at his watch. “Jove! I’d no idea it was
so late. I must be off.”
“It’s only five minutes later than it was five minutes
ago!” But she could not make him laugh. He did not
even ask her again to go home with him. He did not
want her now to go home with him. He was afraid of
that red-haired, rich girl in the gallery. My, what a wife
she would make if they were all that afraid of her now!THE VINTAGE FESTIVAL
175
She placed her hand on his arm. “I’ve two more
dances with you!” He was watching the staircase. She
made up her mind that this was a test. He was to take
her back to her platform.
“If Maddalena will let you tek her home, you will
stay?” she whispered, coming closer to him. t“You will?”
He flung her off so roughly that she staggered against
the table, splashing the lemonade from its bowl. A girl
tittered. She did not ever see who it was that laughed.
For she was watching Holt’s expression. Before she
looked up the stairway, she knew whom she would see—<
that girl coming down the steps.
He pushed his way through the crowd. She could see
him getting out his check for his hat and coat. He was
hurrying. He wanted to get out without having to meet
that girl.
Rage possessed her, but she had no sister, no friend to
spend it on, no tent to run to. She had to smile and
pretend she didn’t care. Left her alone, that Holt had,
to walk back to the platform. Thrown her off, before
all those people. Spoiled her beautiful day.
She’d never forgive him^,.never. She would not for-
give him as long as she lived!
She was going back alone then! Going to let all those
people see that other men wanted her. Going to show
them the men swarming like bees—
Mrs. Rawlings was standing at the hall entrance. Her
face was very cold and stern. “I am ready to take you
home now, Maddalena.”
She gave one anguished look at the dais.CHAPTER XXV
THE PEOPLE’S VOICE
“ "W T’S cold these nights. The fog is blowing in. Take
a wrap with you,” counseled Hamilton. He was
M standing on the Dolliver porch under the swaying
Chinese silk lanterns. “No, I won’t stop. We’ve not
much margin in case of tire troubles. I want to be on
time for the pow wow.”
“I’ll get my winter coat. It won’t take a minute.”
She was halfway up the stairs when she finished speaking.
When she returned, her coat over her arm, she called out
to Hamilton that she must see if the back doors were
locked.
He was standing in the hall when she got back.
“Where is Tom? Is it his night out?”
“He’ll be home early. He never stays late when he
knows I am alone.”
“Are you alone tonight? Both your mother and father
away?” he demanded.
“I’m often alone. I’m not timid,” she was telling him,
when he interrupted. “Where’s the telephone in this
house?”
She led the way through the dining room, unbolting
doors as she went, into the rear hall which opened on the
enclosed garden. He asked for the Frascati number.
“Nora?” he called. “I want to speak to my mother.
Tell her I’m in a hurry.”
176THE PEOPLE’S VOICE
177
“Oh, please,” murmured Elizabeth. »“Please don’t!”
He waved her aside, smiling over the receiver at her
clairvoyance.
The smile passed into the receiver. “Hello, little
mother. Elizabeth is alone on this place tonight. The
servant is away, too, though I like him that way better.
You advise her, mother. No, not yet. She wouldn’t, on
my invitation! It’s a most self-willed young person.”
He yielded his place to Elizabeth.
Mrs. Roedel would not listen to a refusal. Elizabeth
was to come back after the meeting to Frascati. The
coming nights they would discuss tomorrow. The guest
room was waiting for her. She was going out that min-
ute to pick abutilons to put in her room. She had not
forgotten that Elizabeth loved them.
“I’m not nervous. I’m never lonely,” protested Eliza-
beth.
“Say good-bye. We must go,” prompted Hamilton,
at her side.
“All right. Good-bye,” acquiesced the girl.
“Take just the things you will need tonight. I’ll bring
you back tomorrow for clothes.” Hamilton showed her
his watch.
She ran upstairs again, and flung a gown and wrapper
and brushes into her baby Gladstone. He was waiting
for her at the foot of the steps when she came out of her
room. He took the bag from her.
He watched her as she turned out the lights in hall and
porch and locked the door. “Coming down the stairs,
just as if leaving home,” he suggested “to go with me!”
His voice was unsteady.178
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“If there were a cop on this road, we’d be run in to-
night,” he told her as he tucked a robe around her knees.
It was the last word spoken before they reached Calis-
toga.
Elks’ Hall could be seen a mile off. Lights blazed
from its undraped windows. Two lines of machines
were parked along the sidewalks of Main street.
As they entered, she whispered that she wanted to sit
in the rear. She wanted to watch the faces of the peo-
ple as he talked to them.
Hamilton was the second and last speaker. Excite-
ment had sent all the color from his face. It was like
an etching, a sharp nervous sketch in black and white.
There was no cheap appeal, no grand-stand play. It
was not his voice, he told them, he wanted to hear, but
their own. He would state first the opinions that he
had been gathering throughout the county on prohibi-
tion, then he might give some of his own. Afterwards,
he wanted an open forum, a discussion. He spoke for
ten minutes. After the handshaking had been attended
to, he sat down among them, encouraging others to re-
take their seats. And then the real meeting began.
Elizabeth came to the fringe of the group, finding a
seat among a group of vineyardists. Hamilton nodded
at her over the heads of his companions.
When at last he rose to leave, she walked out ahead of
him, and was in the machine when he came out. He
demanded at once:	“Well, how did it go? Confess
you’re glad I made you bring your coat!” The fog
was blowing into the valley.
And as he climbed in, he added:	“And that you’reTHE PEOPLE’S VOICE
179
not to be allowed to go back to that lonely house! Be-
fore you’re through with me, you’ve got to acknowledge
a lot of things, so you might as well take the first les-
son!”
“All right, yes!” obeyed Elizabeth. But she wanted
to tell him about his speech. He had brought them
brand-new ideas. Why, she wanted to know, had he
never told her his plan before?
“You mean a different method of prohibition? It’s
new to me, too. I tried it out on father last night. He
thinks they are using it in Canada or somewhere.”
“It would mean nationalizing the vineyards, wouldn’t
it?” she asked.
“Nationalizing the wine cellars. It was the govern-
ment crushing that suggested it to me. Of course, the
germ of the idea came from dad. His objection to pro-
hibition is because it is not sound economically. Other
reasons, as you know. Let’s follow that one. He’s right.
It’s a step backwards, industrially. Apply the same
principle to other manufactures, let every man make his
own shoes, dip his own candles, and you deny the prin-
ciple of specialization.”
“I’ve never thought of it scientifically. Only ethi-
cally,” admitted the daughter of Madge Wintermute.
“People are going to be careless. Boys making wine,
whiskey, in their cellars! A few more deaths, a few
more cases of blindness, and no one will want to drink
anything that does not bear a printed guarantee. You’re
too tired to listen to this!”
“Tired!” chanted Elizabeth.
“The trenches got me started towards the idea, too.180
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Thinking about armaments. It’s the business of the
nation to prevent race or nation suicide. Armaments,
wine cellars! ”
“Yes!” cried the girl.
“Give every man a government card, let him squander
it, or husband it—private cellars would soon go out of
fashion. Did you speak?”
“Rude of me. Humming! Do you remember your
college song?—
“Oh, all you fellows who have peanuts,
And give us fellows none.”
His baritone joined her deep contralto tones.
“You shan’t have any of my peanuts when your
peanuts are gone!”
“I never thought, at college, that that ditty might help
to send me to the legislature!” he chuckled. “But that’s
the principle.”
“How is it going? Will you make the legislature this
time?” she asked him.
“If not this, next! We have youth. There’s no
hurry! And I’ve such patience!”
He caught her hand, pressing it, releasing it almost
immediately.
They were again discussing his speech when he turned
into the eucalyptus-bordered avenue of Frascati.
Midway between the county road and the house, he
stopped his engine.
“Do you mind waiting here a minute? I saw a light
in the apricot orchard.”THE PEOPLE’S VOICE
181
“It was a stranger,” he told her, returning. “Going
home through the orchard. His lantern was what I saw.
Said he’d been visiting friends at the camp. Seemed a
straight story enough, except that the camp’s in darkness.
I’ll take a look around after I get you home.
“And, by the way, his name’s Pasquale. Wonder if
he’s your Pasquale? That package you sent up there
was returned. The family has left, leaving no address.
I suppose some people never get mail!”
“Huge, hairy, terrible?” shuddered the girl.
“Gross. He’s just rented a small place near here. He
made me listen to all his troubles. His wife ran away
the day they got here. Took his money, several hun-
dred dollars—”
“Oh, that’s not my Mrs. Pasquale!”
“She took their little girl, the only girl. That seemed
to be his biggest grievance, that and the money. There’s
no one now to tend the baby. She won’t have much fun,
I’m afraid, with that money. There’s another baby com-
ing,” he said.
“It is my Mrs. Pasquale! You don’t know how tragic
this is!” cried Elizabeth.
“You will tell me about it tomorrow. Don’t think
about it tonight. Why, there’s mother!
“Wasn’t it good of you to wait up! Will you put her
to bed right away, Muz? Don’t stop to feed her. It’s
sleep she needs. I’m going to take a look around the
camp. Good night!” His machine went on towards
the garage.
Emilie led the way to her room, where a fire was
crackling on the little hearth. A hot water bag was in182
IF TODAY BE SWEET
her bed, Emilie told her, and a hot drink was in that
covered saucepan yonder. There were abutilons in
several vases standing about, and on the bedside a small
glass vase with forget-me-nots.
“I want you to think of it as home, Elizabeth,” said
the little woman, lifting her head for the girl’s fond kiss.
Elizabeth did not get into bed until she heard the
lower door open and close, and Hamilton’s step coming
up the stairs.CHAPTER XXVI
FOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
MADDALENA had not seen Holt since the close
of the vintage festival. But she had thought,
of nothing else. Her moods alternated be-
tween rage and self-abasement. She woke to resent-
ment, and fell asleep weeping. The day after her hu-
miliation, she would have turned from him in fury; the
day following that, she would have groveled at his shoes
had they carried him back into her hungry little life.
No other man had ever so tantalized her. Except for
that one instant at the ball, she could never make him
forget himself, could never bewitch his cool glances.
Reason at once for her subjugation and her fear, he was
too much like herself, like the mocking, ambitious Mad-
dalena!
He was not handsome, like Richard, who had always
reminded her of her first passion, the stranger who had
singled her out in the crowd, had sung to her in the
streets of Naples. Nor was he generous, like Joe, or
humble, grateful for a smile, like all the rest. “She was
one silly, little fool,” she wept into her hard little pillow*
“to let herself care for a cold, clammy fish!”
Ever since the night in the crowded Neapolitan square
when the man with the bold, beautiful eyes had discov-
ered her, other men had been praying to her, staring at
183184
IF TODAY BE SWEET
her. She ought not to waste time on one who could al-
ways laugh at her.
“That, kine of man,” she told herself, “wants to sell
hisse’f to a rich wife, the kine he is afraid of, who can
give him a big house, and lots of servants.”
Blighting was her scorn for a man who would do that.
Women might. What else can they do? But not men.
Only that once had she seen him, the stranger with the
bold eyes and the beautiful voice that had sung “Santa
Lucia,” but life had never again been the same. Looked
no different; everybody thought she was still a little girl;
but inside a woman, dreaming of love, planning for the
lover who would snatch her away from her poverty. One
short hour of ecstasy, those minutes in the crowded
square, and then the fierce Latta had driven his flock
into the terrible steerage.
She dreamed that some day he would follow her to
America. And when Sicilians or Neapolitans come to
the United States they always make their way to the
state where the sky is blue and where the sun shines hot
and clear as it does in Naples or in happy Sicily. Most
natural thing in the world that a wandering Neapolitan
with a world to choose from would discover sooner or
later the sunny valleys through which the fruit-picking
procession moved.
It was five years now since they had made their living
by following the fruit, Latta, now three years a widower,
and his unwieldy brood. Like gypsies in tents they had
lived, off the season’s fruits, with wine, in the gracious
years, to wash the meal down, with bread to give it sub-
stance, and with cheese for flavor.FOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
185
Other lovers crowded in to blur that first infatuation,
but the stranger’s image it was who kept her lamp
trimmed and filled with oil. But how she used to rebel!
How can a girl learn things she ought to know when her
father drags her always away from the schools? And
she wanted to learn, to be ready for love. Even now,
with the tender memories of Richard, and Joe, and
Matthias, and all the rest in all the other valleys, it made
her heart leap in her breast and her hands get hot and
her eyes wet to hear someone singing in the vines, or
after sundown, in camp:
O dolce Napoli, O suol beato,
Ove sorridire, voile il creato;
Tu sei l’impero, dell’ armonia,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
During the year there were weeks when the camp was
idle. Perhaps the idle time fell in the Sacramento valley,
when the hands would have to wait on the ripening of
the asparagus; or in the valley of the Colorado river,
when the melons were lagging. Then the schools would
discover the gypsies before they were ready to move on
to the next stand, and the children would be thrust into
the schoolrooms.
Maddalena was always eager to be caught. She was
in a hurry to learn the things that would make her into
a grand lady. Education, she had already discovered, is
the only thing in the free America that people must have
to make their money grand. It was because of her am-186
IF TODAY BE SWEET
bition that her father called her a good-for-nothing, the
word being one three hundredth of his simple vocabulary.
She knew she had great gaps to fill. The silver screen
had told her how much she had to learn; it was her prin-
cipal avenue to Americanization.
After a while she learned to discredit the teaching of
the schools. “They don’ learn you nothing,” she would
tell the younger sisters, Carmelita, Teresa, Concepcion
and the twins, when the sun grew too hot, or when the
desert winds blew the stinging sand into their eyes, and
they, too, yearned for the cooler leisure of the school-
room. “They don’ learn you nothing a girl wan’s
to know. It’s the pictures that learn you, teach you
how to dress, and how to walk, and how to talk jus’ like
an American.”
The most astonishing luck had fallen to her in the
matter of pictures. One of the women of the camp, good-
natured, overripe Maria Cessari, who had become by
clumsy subtlety an indispensable member of the Latta
group, was a picture “fan.” And since the death of the
ailing mother, Maria had made Maddalena, the ingrate,
her companion.
If she expected a return for her generosity in terms of
a daughterly welcome, Maddalena’s sisters, her friends,
Carmelita, Concepcion, Carlotta and Josefina could have
told her how vain were hopes. For the little head was
shrewd, though the gods had given it enough beauty,
Richard had once told her, to do without brains. Mad-
dalena often coldly debated the question of Maria at night
as they lay sleepless and stifling in their tent, or at mid-
day, under the trees or in the shade of a shed, when theyFOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
187
drooped after a heavy meal which could no longer be
buoyed by wine.
“Why should I wan’ her for my stepmother?” she
would demand. “Now, she teks care of the kids, and she
is kine to me. She teks me always to the picture shows.
She buys me candy, too, sometimes. Mebbe she wun’t
be so kine when she is a stepmother!”
Josefina and Carlotta and Matthias, all stepmothered,
affirmed her wisdom. Maria would not be so kind when
she was once a stepmother.
“He’s bad enough.” She was speaking of the fierce
Latta. “He says Sicilian girls mussent play or dance
with boys till they get married. They must stay home.
And then they have to stay home, don’ they, to cook, and
to tek care of the kids? We haven’t any home, Teresa
and Concepcion and Carmelita and me, so how can we
stay there, I like to know?”
She always had an admiring audience for her pert-
ness.
“And Domenichi and Giovanni, they play and dance
with girls, Sicilian girls sometimes, too. I think with
California Sicilian girls it is something different. Sup-
pose two people were talking about what I can do?
Bimeby, mebbe, when I wan’ to get married, it is time
for that Maria Cessari. Then she can tek my place all
the time, and comb, the twins’ hair, and brush their teeth
on Sundays. But not yet. Two people’s too much, talk-
ing about what I mus’ do!”
Thus was Maria’s fate settled by the girl who would
smile angelically at her the next Saturday night, cuddling
close to her at the movies, and telling her what a very188
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“kine fren’ ” she was! “Maddalena hope always to have
sech a kine fren’. She had tole her father so one night!”
And Maria, who was not subtle, had bought her some
peppermint drops after the show. Maddalena ate them
without qualms. For was it not the truth? Had she
not told her father that Maria was a very good friend
but that folks said she had been a very cross wife? How
did she know what her father thought about it? “Talk-
ing to him was like sending a ball into the vines. No-
body sees where it goes.”
She knew, though, that he liked her to go with that
Joe Ruiz. “He think Joe will mek a good husband. He
will, too, but not for Maddalena.”
That was all over now! Joe had always said to her:
“Some day I’m done. Some day you send me away and
I come back no more.” He meant it. He’d go on moon-
shining in those hills, making money, by and by getting
to like nothing but making money, and some day he’d
buy a shed of a house, and be proud of it. “The stupid
Joe! He din’t know what’s what!”
She had made Ludovici tell her where the still was.
Exciting to hear about it, to sit under the willows, away
from the stupid old people who are always fussing be-
cause it’s too hot, or too cold, or too dark; to whisper
with Ludovici and the girls about Joe, and what would be
done to him if the place were found where he was mak-
ing that jackass brandy!
Ludovici had told her that the still lay back in the
hills behind the house where the red-haired girl lived,
the girl Maddalena detested. Hard finding the trail,
Eudovici said, for you have to creep on your hands andFOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
189
knees for almost a half mile until you begin to come to
the big boulders, big as cabins, which nobody would be-
lieve had been pushed there. Then you can stand up
straight, for back of the rocks lies the trail.
Not very funny to go creeping through poison oak
and chaparral, and all the time holding your head up to
see if someone is watching you with a stick or a gun!
Makes one shiver when one creeps into bed late; when
the kids and the old people are all asleep!
“If that Holt wun’t come back, mebbe she would be
lonely some day for Joe. But he wun’t never come back
no more, Joe wun’t!”
“Gone back to the city, Mr. Holt had, mebbe, where
life is like the pictures tell about, restaurants, dancing
places, wonderful houses which are always glad to see so
fine a man as that Mr. Holt. Funny, now, to think she
had ever cried about that foolish Richard Roedel.”
Her thoughts pelted like hailstones as she picked her
way down the vines. Picked so fast that .she broke her
own record. The older women laughed as they watched
her, the young fury, stripping the vines of the clustered
fruit as though it annoyed her and she wished to get it
out of her way. They watched her as she worked in
their neighborhood, and chattered about her, she knew,
when she passed out of earshot. “But she din’t care
about them.”
Even her father smiled approvingly when she came to
him every little while for an “empty.” He liked the
way she was working, but she didn’t care any more about
his smiles. There was only one thing in all the world
she did care about, and she might never see him again!190
IF TODAY BE SWEET
And looking up to see who it was coming down the
tree-shaded road, she saw the familiar roadster, and
Holt!
Not caring who saw her, she shaded her eyes from the
glare of the sun, and stared hungrily at Holt. She
thought at first that he was going towards the house.
Then she saw his roadster swing west, and pause under
the oak-trees. Later, she saw him walking towards the
cellar.
Going there as a high-toned policeman. He had to see
that nothing crooked was being done. It made her smile
to think everybody would not know that Crispi was so
straight that he bends backwards, her father always said.
All the grape-pickers know how straight that Crispi is.
Used to think, some of them, they could coax a drink
out of him. But they knew now.
Her record flagged. One cannot watch a road and
strip the vines swiftly, too. And all those tiresome voices
calling to her, every minute asking her something:	“You
goin’ to the dance Saturday night, Mdddalena?" or
“What you goin’ to wear, Maddalena?” or “Din’t you
hear what Matthias said about you, oh, don’ you wanna
hear, Maddalena?"
“Oh, sometime din’t she jes hate her name! Today
she hate it. If folks speak to her, and forget to say her
name, she kin go on thinking about the gran’ houses, and
the servants, and the clo’es she would some day have.
Thin, long, trailing things to wear in her bedroom, which
nobody else sleeps in. Not with three, four, five cots like
the tent! She could think of him coming into her room
in a long, silk-padded coat to tell her that he had jes’FOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
191
bought her a new automobile! Jes’ like real, those
thoughts are!”
But with “Maddalena, Maddalena” all the time cry-
ing, you have to remember who you are. Jes’ a poor
little grape-picker, las’ summer pickin’ peaches and ’cots,
and before that, cuttin’ asparagus stalks; on the way to
the tomato fields while the melons are getting ripe!
Din’t she hate it! It was better to be in school.
“Mebbe,” she reflected, “mebbe I could learn some-
thing there I don’ know. How to talk like a lady, how
to stop being Maddalena, the grape-picker.”
Carlotta was shrilling persistently:	“Maddalena!
Maddalena!”
She turned like a wildcat at bay in the direction of the
call.
“Maddalena, Maddalena, Maddalena! Don’ you
ever think anything, Carlotta, that you don’ say?”
“Why, no! Why should I?” demanded Carlotta, star-
ing wide-eyed at that queer Sicilian. She, Carlotta, was
a Genoese!
“Then begin! It’s gran’ thinkin’l Come in, the
water’s fine!” The spoiled beauty flounced away, car-
rying her orange-colored turban and bright blue skirt
and jade green smock to a new line of bushes where she
could still watch the road and wine cellar and be out
of teasing distance of the girls’ voices.
“Maddalena!” called Josefina.
“I’m dead. I was buried yesterday. Shut up!” cried
the Sicilian, grimacing like an ape.
Josefina, the simple one, stared after her confounded.
They stopped bothering her for a time. They chat-192
IF TODAY BE SWEET
tered about her, that crazy Maddalena, giggling at her,
looking.at her over their shoulders.
“Look at her all dressed up!” nodded Carlotta. “Her
bes’ clo’es! Bimeby her father wun’t give her no more
new clo’es if she wears them in the vines.”
The girl’s fingers were flying again among the bunches
of purple and ioftly tinted green fruit. From the corner
of her eye she could see if anyone came from the wine
cellar. The sound of a machine startled her, but it was
only the two brothers, going home from their work.
What was that Holt doing in there so long? He must
have an awful thirst! “Government men can always
tas’ what they wan’.” She knew.
It seemed a long time before Holt emerged, carrying a
bundle. He made for his car under the trees.
She fell to picking again, furiously. Not to make up
her record, but that she might be nearer the avenue when
he passed. Even she did not dare skip the vines. They
had to be stripped as they came.
He was getting into his machine. He was coming down
the road, no, there he was stopping! Someone was call-
ing him. Richard’s brother, the one with the smile like
the angels, the one that came back from the war.
She knew now what they wanted him to do. They
were begging him to come into the dark, cool rooms where
the ladies all wore dresses without any necks, and where
they were all drinking tea and laughing. Han’t she seen
it all in the pictures? Mebbe that funny old Chink was
bringing in cake all covered with frosting, while girls like
Maddalena have to stay in the sun, getting their backsFOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
193
all bent, and their hands rough and red, their nails all
black and torn!”
“Wun’t I get even, though, wun’t I mek the servants
jump when I get them, when I look at them with whips in
my eye!” But she did not feel any happier. The sun
was hot. The vines were still hard to strip.
She had nearly finished another box before she saw
Holt coming out of the house. Her heart gave a leap.
She told herself that she was going to be cool and stiff
with him, that she hoped he would not see her. Then
fear suffocated her. Suppose he shouldn’t see her picking
in the vines?
He was coming down the road, now slowly, stopping!
Stopping not far away from Maddalena! He was get-
ting out. Was he going to walk right up to her, brave,
noble, and tell her he was sorry?
Then she saw he was pretending not to see her. Un-
der her sweeping lashes, she watched him as he ap-
proached a group of older women who were hastening to
complete their boxes before surrendering them.
His voice was telling them that he wanted some of
the white grapes, ■ the big white grapes he had had one
day when he was here before. “Muscats? Eating
grapes.”
He was the smart one! He had seen she was working
near that kind! When he passed by he would speak to
her. He would say:	“I am sorry, Maddalena!”
The women were pointing in her direction. She saw
him turning, coming closer.
Could she refuse to forgive him? If she let him go194
IF TODAY BE SWEET
now, would she ever see him again? Her arms wanted
to forgive him, to be around his neck.
A flurry of fear caught her. She pretended to be in a
passion of haste to finish her box.
“Maddalena!”
She liked her name the way he said it!
“Maddalena, you know why I came? Why I asked
for the white grapes? Keep on picking while I talk with
you.”
Oh, she would go on picking, all right! She din’t
need her ears to pick with! She had to finish that box!
“I am going up the valley a way. I don’t want to go
alone. I want a sweet little girl to go with me.”
“Oh, that would be very nice for that little girl!” flung
back Maddalena. He hadn’t said anything about being
sorry!
“Will she go?” he whispered.
She shun’t listen! She shun’t go with him. But to be
with him, like that, again!
“But your blouse, your handkerchief!” expostulated
Holt.
“He didn’t like her clo’es, her tas’? I din’t buy them
for you, Mr. Holt!”
“1 mean everybody would see you, from a distance.
They are sweet. You look just like a paroquet, Mad-
dalena! Have you a dark coat? Could you meet me
across the road?”
She did not answer. She wanted to say no. She did
not dare to say no.
“I’ll be waiting there, smoking. You needn’t hurry.”
He strolled away, his hands full of the white grapes sheFOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
195
knew he would fling away as soon as he was out of sight
of the gaping women.
He hadn’t waited for her answer. He din’t say any-
thing about being sorry. Thought she can’t say “no” to
him. Well, he’d see. She wun’t go. Oh, she had to
go, that once! Jes’ that once!
There was that old blue sweater she hated. Dark and
plain. Mebbe some men like plain, dark things? A
paroquet he’d called her!
It wasn’t going to be easy getting away while it was
light, with everyone calling “Maddalena, Maddalena!”
Giving up her box before any of the chattering girls
could reach her, she ducked into the vines, where she
tore off the offending orange handkerchief, and tucked it
into the bosom of her smock. No one called to her as
she scuttled through the vines, dashed through the creek
willows. Like a road runner, she was up the bank and
through the camp, not listening to Maria who wanted help
with the potatoes. She pushed back the children who
swarmed around her feet. Calling to Maria that she
had a headache, she embellished the story as she ran.
She was going off to the orchard where there wasn’t any
noise!
The cracked glass over her trunk told her that her
hair was a sight. She had to stop to comb it. It took
time to find the sweater in the family trunk, and all the
time her heart in a flutter. The grape-pickers were strag-
gling back to camp. She could hear their voices coming
nearer. If they got back before she was out of that
tent, her wonderful adventure would be spoiled. She
had to take that hat, that beautiful new hat! No time196
IF TODAY BE SWEET
to wrap it up, and he would say it was too bright, that
people would see it, those lovely, glistening cherries,
jes’ like real!
She covered the hat with her sweater, and crawled out
of the slit in the rear of the tent as the heads of the
camp people appeared above the creek. She sped to-
wards the orchard. Nobody went there now. Once
there, she was safe.
She stopped running before she reached the county
road. She din’t want that Holt to think she was afraid
he might not wait!
He was lying on his back, his hat pulled over his face.
He had stopped smoking. His cigarette stub lay by his
relaxed hand. A little pathway of flame was burning
through the stubble.
“Funny a man can go to sleep while he is waiting for a
girl. No girl could go to sleep, waiting! She mus’ put
out that fire firs’. Fire at that time of year wasn’t any-
thing so funny!”
She was softly stamping out the blaze when he pushed
back his hat and smiled at her.
He jumped up, stretching out his arms, as though to
her, then raising them above his head, yawning.
“Now for our ride, Maddalena.” He moved towards
the machine.
She stood for an instant frowning after him. She said
she would not go, but so low that he did not hear. Then
she followed him to the roadster, and clambered in.
“Jes’ like one tame house cat!” she muttered.
For he never helped her in, like Richard Roedel did, or
even that Joe Ruiz. He din’t say:	“You firs’, Mad-FOLLOWERS OF THE FRUIT
197
dalena,” or “ ’Scuse me, please.” Let her stumble across
the field after him, never looking back. Because she
was a grape-picker, not a lady.
That’s why he treats her so. Jes’ a girl who follows the
fruit!CHAPTER XXVII
H
WILD ROSE
IS complete attention was demanded by the
task of getting the roadster out of the field of
chuck holes and rocks. It grieved Maddalena
that he did not look at her, did not notice the new hat
of yellow straw with wide, drooping brim over which the
wondrous wreath of shining cherries fell. The fruit,
she knew, was the same color as her lips. The camp
boys had told her so!
The hot wind racing down the valley tore at the hat,
threatening ruin to the beloved wreath. Reluctantly she
put it under her feet. It was always the way with every-
thing! “Nothing ever comes the way you plan!”
She did not know what enchanting tricks the sun was
playing with her glossy hair or fringing lashes until at
last Holt turned and looked at her. Then she knew from
the way his eyes glowed that it was all right. “He mus’
like me in that sweater! Mebbe it wun’t so bad!”
She saw his expression change when his glance fell on
her hands. Rough, red little hands with fruit-stained
nails! She tucked the offending members under her
friendly sweater.
He bent over her, coming so close that she could smell
the tobacco on lips and clothes. “What are you going
to do with me, Maddalena?”
“I don’ know what you mean, going to do!” she com-
198WILD ROSE
199
plained, pretending to move more than a half inch away
from his arm. She was aching to feel it around her.
But she could not be too easy, “too sof’ ”!
“Are you going to be sweet to me, Maddalena?”
“How beau’ful,” her spirit sang, “did her name sound
when he says it, like that! Like he was kissin’ it.”
“Oh, how I know?” she cried, tossing her head the way
the picture queens do on the screen.
“Oh, you know, all right!” he laughed. “You—Car-
men ! ”
Why did he call her Carmen? Making fun of her, of
Maddalena? One girl she knew named Carmen, Carmen
Martinelli, but she was the one ugly thing. Maddalena
did not like the name—Carmen!
She glanced up at him through her fringe of lashes.
Why did he always make her feel half sad, half happy?
As though he were laughing at her, except for a short
time that night, jus’ before he seen his frens’ upstairs.
Something inside of her was telling her to be careful.
Though she could make rich men, grand men like Rich
and Holt love her, make them tremble and turn pale,
just like the other men, Matthias and Joe, who answered
to every careless tug of hers, as though she were the
fisherman, they the poor fish who get on her hook, still
they did not stay on her hook. Richard had got away.
“Holt, too, mebbe?”
More than one quick pull it would take to land the one
who was that minute laughing at her. For he could al-
ways stop when he wanted to. Oh, she could sweep him
off his feet, if she had time. Hadn’t she worked it all
right on Richard until those proud people came and200
IF TODAY BE SWEET
caught her in her dirty, funny clothes? She knew how
to do it if she had time!
It hurt her to think of the city girls he could choose
from. Since the festival she wasn’t afraid of any girls
in the country. She knew now how deep jealousy burns;
she had always laughed when men had told her. She
could feel sorry now for poor Joe, who had always been
kind to her. Pain was torturing her, as she sent bewilder-
ing smiles up at him, remembering to let her long lashes
sweep her cheeks, pretending to believe him, and to be
sorry for him when he talked about his being lonely.
They all talk like that! That is the way they have,
the charm they try to use on little girls like Maddalena.
Lonely, all of them, when they want you to love them.
Lonely and unhappy. And then they run to the city
and play and dance, and who is then lonely and unhappy,
she wan’ to know! They don’ know what it is to be
lonely. Suppose they never have a home, for five years.
Suppose they have to keep going up and down the val-
leys, always going away from folks they like to folks
they don’ know, wun’t they be lonely, then, for sure?
“What are you going to do with me, Maddalena, little
flirt?” he asked again.
She decided to punish him. “I do nothing with you,
I guess. I don’ like city men. They’re too—” her
fiction stumbled. “Too fresh. I like Sicilian boys best.”
A lie, Maddalena! She had not intended to lie. She
hated the rough Sicilian boys. Today she would not
listen to the voice which told her it was a sin to lie. To-
morrow she would listen. Tomorrow she would be
good.WILD ROSE
201
“Why do you like Sicilian boys?” asked Holt, letting
himself drift. He had caught a strand of her dark,
waving hair and was twining it around his fingers, guid-
ing the wheel, meanwhile, with his left hand. She broke
off in a weak description of the superiority of the Sicili-
ans to ask:
“Where we goin?”
“Back into the hills somewhere. I don’t care, as long
as you are with me, Maddalena.”
Looking up at him, she wished that he would put as
much fire into his eyes as he had let come into his voice.
But his face stayed cool and smiling.
“Do you want to go into the hills with me, my little
wild rose?”
“I don’ like ‘wild rose,’ ” pouted the Sicilian. But it
filled her breast to the bursting point to be called, in that
tone:	“My little wild rose.”
“Do you like ‘darling’ better?” he asked, pressing
closer. “Or ‘sweetheart,’ or ‘dearest’? Which do you
like best, Maddalena?”
“I don’ know what they mean,” demanded his wild
rose, oversharply.
“What you are to me,” he parried. He caught one of
her hands, imprisoning it in his pocket. She had pulled
her lock of hair away from him. “Just what you are,
sweet, beautiful!”
A turn of the road brought them in sight of St. Helena.
When they reached the town, Maddalena begged Holt
to go slowly. She wanted to see all the exciting windows.
Holt was for taking the drowsy street at a gulp. Madda-
lena wanted to be recognized, to be seen riding in Holt’s202
IF TODAY BE SWEET
machine. She put on her hat. Holt had released her
hand.
She knew quite well why he raced past the shops, why
he did not give her time to see who were the boys and
girls sitting at the funny little tables drinking cool stuff
through the long straws. Because he was ashamed to be
seen with a girl who follows the fruit.
“I’ve something better than lemonade in here,” he told
her. “Something that comes in a corked bottle. Wait
till we reach the hills. How far are we now, Maddalena?
Where shall we turn off?”
An exciting idea came to her. She had been longing
to see just where Joe’s still was. She had ridden past
there once before she knew about the trail. With Rich-
ard. She had begged him to let her see the house where
the red-haired girl lived, but he had pretended to be in a
hurry.
“I know a fine place,” she trilled.
“All right. You show me.” Holt looked at his watch.
They flew like fugitives up the valley. The wind
caught at Maddalena’s hair, and blew it across Holt’s
lips. When he kissed it, the girl closed her eyes that he
might not see the wince of ecstasy. If he would kiss not
her hair, but her lips! And he was going to kiss her,
that day he was going to kiss her lips! She would be
willing to die if he would once look solemn, eager, kissing
her, kissing Maddalena.
“Remember you’re the pilot!” he reminded her. She
opened her eyes.
“It’s pretty soon. You better go slow now.” She cau-
tioned him. A few minutes later she caught his hand.WILD ROSE
203
The car swerved towards the ditch to the right of the
road.
“What in—what ever were you trying to do?” he ex-
claimed, wrathfully. “Trying to throw us into the
ditch?”
She pouted, refusing to answer him when he looked at
her like that.
“You mean here? Near that house? Anyone living
there?” he demurred.
“Back of it. It’s pretty up there,” she romanced.
No one had ever told her it was pretty. Ludovici had
said it was wild.
“I’ll run my machine into that clump of bushes. Go
on. I’ll follow you.”
She scrambled down into the road.
She saw with sudden recognition a machine which had
been following them. She knew that roadster! Better
even than she knew Holt’s. It belonged to Rich. It
was the one she used to ride in, last year, after the camp
was dark, before he got “mad ashamed” with her. “That
girl,” she supposed, was with him now. She was visiting
Frascati; Carlotta had told her.
She longed to have them see her riding with Holt. But
he would be angry. It would spoil her beautiful day.
So when Holt crossed the road, grabbing her hand, and
pulling her towards the bushes before the car could reach
them, she did not rebel.
He mocked her when she said that she was tired. “A
girl who can stand up all day in the vines, under the hot
sun, tired from a little climb like that!”
Her ruse had failed. She had wanted to have him204
IF TODAY BE SWEET
help her, to have him put his arm around her. Always
he remembered that she was a fruit-picking girl!
She ran away from him, crying that she was going to
get some ferns. Now it was Holt who was finding the
hill steep. He flung himself on the ground, lighting a
cigarette, his eyes on the girl when she took off her hat
and the obscuring sweater. Paroquet once again, she
thought, in her blue skirt and jade middy.
“These branches catch my hair!” Pulling the orange-
colored handkerchief from the breast of her smock, she
twined it around her glossy, black tresses.
Waving her hand at him, she ran off into the brush.
When she returned, her arms full of ferns, she wondered
if this time he were really sleeping. Jes’ like a boy, his
knees drawn up like that, flat on his back! What would
he do if she should perch on his knee? Cautiously,
she seated herself. His knees dropped at once, and she
fell into his arms, across his chest.
“Now I’ve got you, you little witch!”
He would not let her go. They could be seen from
those upper windows! Holt would not like that. He
would be mad again if he were caught hugging a fruit-
picking girl. She tightened her arms around his neck as
she whispered:	“Let’s go farther back.”
It’s late. Let’s stay here,” he whispered.
“But they can see us here.”
His grasp relaxed. “Who can see us?”
Unwillingly she answered him:	wRich. That red-
haired girl. They jes’ came home.”
He sat upright, glaring into the face he had almost
kissed. “Home? Whose home?”WILD ROSE
205
Maddalena nodded, fearfully watching his darkening
eyes. “She lives in there.” She had made a mistake
telling him. He thought she had brought him there to
tease, to punish him. And she couldn’t tell him about
Joe. She had promised Ludivici in the name of the Holy
Mother that she would tell no one what he had told her.
How could she make Mr. Holt believe her, and not tell
him about Joe?
Voices came from the garden. “Have we time for tea,
Rich?”
The low, vibrant voice sounded as though at their side.
Tighter clung Maddalena’s arms. She whispered in
his ear. “They can’t see us from the garden. If we
stay quiet.” Then desperately:	“Mebbe, mebbe, it is
somebody else.”
In despair at the gathering blackness in his eyes, she
placed her soft little lips on his. Oh, she knew then the
struggle within him, from the way his lips answered hers,
clinging to hers as his eyes upbraided her. He wanted
to get away from her; he wanted to stay. Just then
Richard’s voice came to them over the hedge.
“Let me go! Be good, Maddalena!” Holt whispered.
“Be good!” she echoed.
“I’ll be angry!” he warned her.
“I’ll be angry!” she mocked.
It was a thread of a whisper, but she saw its effect on
Holt. Her lips, again seeking his, met a rough hand.
This was a crisis. She must not let herself get angry.
She must be sweet to him. Again she raised her lips to
his—
His hand struck out. It caught her chin. She206
IF TODAY BE SWEET
clutched at his sleeve, but he pulled his arm away, and
she fell, just missing a jagged rock, into a bed of ferns.
He was standing staring down at her. “Scared, now,
that Holt!” He got down on his knees, and whispered:
“Forgive me, Maddalena!”
Forgive him? She would never forgive him now. Her
breast felt big with anger, her hands clenched in rage.
If she were strong enough, she would hurt him, as he had
tried to hurt her. He could hold out his arms to her!
He could keep on holding them out! She needed some-
one to help her, someone who really cared, like Joe—
She sat up among the ferns. Joe Ruiz always helped
her!
She got to her feet scornfully meeting the fear in the
eyes watching her. He thought she was going to scream?
He thought they would be found there together? Some-
one else was going to find him!
“I’ll be waiting for you, at the foot of the hill,” he
whispered, and started down.
Wait? He could wait, that man, until he dropped.
He could wait forever, she would not go to him!
She struck off into the brush. She could hear the
voices from the garden clearly now, Rich’s voice, and
that girl’s. And the clatter of cups and spoons.
“Some people are always happy!” It made the tears
come quick to think how uneven it all was, that girl on
the other side of the fence, all clean and laughing, and
she, Maddalena, creeping there through the brush! It
wasn’t fair! None of it was fair!
Holt was waiting at his machine for her. They would
see him, when they went, Rich and the girl. That wouldWILD ROSE
207
be funny! But no one must hear her laugh! And no
one must see her going towards those boulders, or she
would never see Joe Ruiz.
Her teeth pressed tight into her lips. Blood began to
flow from them, falling on her smock.
He’d hurt her hard! Wun’t Joe be angry! He’d go
after that Holt!
It was her teeth cutting her lips. But it was his fault
anyway. Everything was his fault.
The brush began to be so thick that she had to take
to her hands and knees. She put her handkerchief be-
tween her lips to keep the blood from ruining her new
smock.
She remembered what Ludovici had said about a gun.CHAPTER XXVIII
DRY CREEK
“TP T’S the last day of the crushing!” Emilie beamed
across the table at her guest.
1 They were at breakfast, in the sunny, pentag-
onal window of the dining room which served alternately
as breakfast nook and conservatory. Mrs. Roedel was
playing with her coffee; crumbling the hot biscuits.
“You’re glad!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
Her hostess wore a look of guilt. “Soon we can take
our trip. Papa, Mr. Roedel, will be satisfied that Ham-
ilton can run the business. For he has done well, and
it’s been a hard season, too. So much trouble with the
men! The boys have told you?”
“What sort of trouble?”
“We lost every one of our men but Crispi. Hamilton
had to break in new ones. And one has to be careful
nowadays about men who work around cellars. I’ve
been so anxious!” She broke off abruptly. “But it’s
all right now!”
Chow came in to tell his mistress that San Francisco
wanted her on the telephone. Saying:	<fOh, that
must be papa!” the little woman hurried from the
room.
“Where’s the rest of the family?” inquired Elizabeth.
“The boys have their blekfuss alleddy. Blekfuss sevenDRY CREEK
209
o’clock now, so hot. Mlister Lich, Mlister Hamilton
down at the cellar alleddy one hour.”
Mrs. Roedel came hastening back to her guest. “He
won’t be home until tomorrow, maybe late tonight.”
Elizabeth spoke of visiting the wine-cellar, but her
friend had another plan. They were holding some cur-
taining for her at Frazier’s. She would love to have
Elizabeth’s advice, for the boys both thought so highly
of her taste. In the stores, she complained, things looked
different from the way they did in the house! And she
had to redecorate Rich’s room. It looked very dingy,
now that the other rooms had been done. She had never
“played favorites,” as the boys themselves called it.
When she bought a new rug for one, there must be some-
thing new for the other.
“And you can see them crushing this afternoon,” she
added.
It was three o’clock, the hall clock stated, when they
returned. They had luncheon in an ice cream parlor,
when Mrs. Roedel discovered she was going to be a few
minutes late for Chow’s. And then it had seemed such
a wonderful opportunity to have counsel that she had
replenished her linen supply. “Things were so expen-
sive during the war, hers had been allowed to grow
shabby.” She confided to Elizabeth that she still used
her bride’s linen for great occasions.
Emilie had a wonderful time. She carried home a
bag bursting with samples. “In case Papa should take
it in his head to start in a hurry!”
Elizabeth went at once to her room to remove her
hat, which was binding her forehead. On her way to210
IF TODAY BE SWEET
the wine-cellar she met Emilie in the garden, snipping
off the drooping heads of her roses.
“Isn’t it too hot? I am afraid I made you walk too
much!” the little woman cried, self-reproachfully.
“Do I look broiled? I was just flattering myself,”
added Elizabeth, “that your blue parasol was making
my face look elegantly cool!”
She strolled slowly down the path which led down
into the dry bed of the creek, where the willows were
throwing deliciously inviting shadows. She found Rich
and Hamilton working like stokers. One of the new
men, a grumbling Rich had told her, had failed to turn
up that morning.
“It’s all right now,” Hamilton raised a hot face from
the grape boxes to say. “The government crushing is
about done.”
“It’s not all right,” retorted Rich. “It’s not all right
to have men agree to take your work, and walk off in
the middle of it. Wait till that last tramp sidles up for
his pay and see what dad’ll say to him!”
Hamilton, now the manager of the vineyard, smiled at
Elizabeth over Richard’s shoulder.
“Can you wait till five to get your ‘beauties’?” he in-
quired. “Before I stir from this place, this job is to be
done. Maybe, it will be earlier, if they catch up with
the grape-picking—”
“See here, do you think you’re going to take her?”
Rich exclaimed. “I want you to remember that I’m the
original Columbus that discovered Miss America!”
Elizabeth looked away. Hamilton took some time
about answering.DRY CREEK
211
“Finders aren’t always keepers. They don’t always
get their labels on! I’m willing to play the role of Amer-
icus Vespucci if Elizabeth will let me!”
Youth and tragedy grappled, and youth won, for
Richard’s reluctant grin, and his “Not half bad, old boy!
The race is on!” started the laughter.
Elizabeth picked her way up the open steps leading to
the crusher, finding a seat on a discarded grape box. It
was but a section of a platform, that on which she sat.
The rest of the building had no second floor. Midway
between arched roof and floor, where the vats and presses
stood, was a two-planked run-way paralleling the chutes
which carried the must to the vats below.
At her feet the thick, ruddy-hued current was bubbling
down the chutes. Behind her the crusher was separat-
ing fruit from stems, exploding the last into the air,
whence they fell to the open ground beneath. Beyond,
the escalator was endlessly moving, carrying its brilliant
burden.
A truck rumbled up to the platform. There was a
loud “Hooray! The last!” from Rich, and a minute’s
cessation of the escalator; but at once it began to move
again.
Starting back to the house, Elizabeth told Rich that
she would be ready for Columbus or Vespucci at any
time. Her blinking, sun-blinded smile was for Hamilton.
She had reached the creek and was about to descend
when a roadster stopped, near the house, and Holt got
out. Elizabeth, keeping her parasol back of her, turned
back to the wine-cellar.
Near the mound of sun-baking stems, the lower door,212
IF TODAY BE SWEET
which was always kept locked, was ajar. She peered
into the chill depths of the cavern-like building, and
in a low voice called:	“Crispi!” But no one answered
her.
She resumed her post near the crusher, her gaze fixed
on the parked roadster. Suddenly, a shadow fell across
the shaft of light from the open door below. Holt was
standing there.
All at once the noise of the crusher ceased. A mere
dribble of must was running through the flumes. An-
other “Hooray!” came from Rich, and then the truck
rumbled away from the platform.
Holt was making his way through the wine-cellar to
the dark western corner when a machine passed the
building. Elizabeth looked out through the open wall
space left for the exploding stems. Hamilton and Rich
were on their way to the house in the roadster, and com-
ing up from the creek was Crispi, moving briskly to-
wards the cellar.
Holt came hastening out of the shadows. He met
Crispi at the open door. “I’ve been looking for you, old
man! Is the government crushing done?”
Crispi’s answer was too low for Elizabeth to hear.
“Well, I’ll be off. I wanted to see Rich, too, but he
wasn’t at home. By the way, I never sampled your
wine. As a government official I suppose I’m entitled
to?”
Crispi, mumbling, moved away into the vaults where
the bottled wine was kept. Swiftly Holt dashed back
into the dark corner. It was several minutes before
Crispi’s footsteps were heard returning over the stoneDRY CREEK
213
floor. Holt was waiting for him by the lower door.
“Got a newspaper around it! That’s thoughtful. Per-
fectly legitimate, but people might misunderstand!”
When he was safely out of the building, an angry girl
fled in search of Crispi. She found him locking the
lower door, a stern, contemptuous Crispi.
“Even if he dared to ask you, how could you give
it to him?” she demanded.
The look of contempt did not pass. “They all do!
We’ ve not had a government official visit Frascati who’s
not taken a bottle away under his coat. They must all
have a sample!”
“You are as much to blame if you give it to them,” she
blazed. “I think it—wicked of you!”
Crispi shrugged. “Those are my orders.”
She turned away towards the stairs, and went out
slowly into the sunshine of the platform. Holt was mov-
ing towards his machine, over the shaded willow path of
the creek.
Taking the short cut over the bridge, Elizabeth ran
towards the house. She nearly stumbled over Chow,
who was gathering parsley and lettuce in the rear garden.
She ran on, into the rear hall. Hamilton- was coming
down the stairs.
“Call him back, Holt!” she gasped. “He’s getting
into his car! Keep him, billiards, anything, for ten
minutes!”
He smiled at her flurry, then flung open the window.
He whistled, then called: “Hey there, Holt!”
Holt was bending over the side of his machine. He
straightened up to wave to Hamilton.214
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“You’ll tell me about it afterwards.” Hamilton was
on his way to the front door when Rich, with bathing-
suit and towels over his arm, appeared at the top of the
stairs.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaimed, and told him
about the wine-bottle which was lying in Holt’s car.
A queer expression fell on his face as she poured forth
her story. It halted her. “You won’t let him take that
bottle away? With a Frascati label!” When he hesi-
tated, she added:	“Or you might fill it with water.
That would be one on him!”
Rich stared at her. “Why, that’s what it is filled with!
That’s what Crispi meant by his orders!”
“Won’t your brother laugh at me!” exclaimed the girl.
Richard marched sombrely towards the pool.
The billiard balls were clicking as Elizabeth climbed
the stairs. When she came down, fifteen minutes later,
Holt’s roadster was not to be seen. Richard, handsome
and cool and slim in white flannels was waiting, alone,
on the porch for her.
“Now Casa Blanca!” he said.CHAPTER XXIX
THE STILL
OTHER people had crept through those bushes be-
fore her. Broken twigs and trailing, twisted
branches covered the ground. Strange that
big men could get through there, Maddalena thought, for
the poison oak and wild ivy met in a tangle above her
head as she crawled. Not once could she stand to
stretch her aching back.
She kept thinking she was on the wrong track, for
rocks had a way of rising suddenly in front of her, block-
ing her way. Then Ludovici’s words would reassure
her; the outlaws had covered all their trails with those
boulders. And she would climb about the rock, or keep
on creeping till she picked up the thread of a trail
again.
Steeply it wound up the hillside through the flaming
poison oak and dense manzanita; past masses of ferns
whose saberlike fronds grouped themselves, against rocks
and trees. Every now and then the polished surface of a
madrone tree would set her heart pounding with terror.
The polished trunk looked to her, through shrubbery,
like swarthy arms blocking her way. The bark gleamed
like copper skin, like the skins of the Indians she had
seen in the desert valleys. Each time she expected to
see an angry, dark face rising above her, a lifted club, a
gun.
215216
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Boulders grew thicker. The manzanita and poison oak
grew denser. Like a cat, she slipped over and around
them, clinging, crawling, climbing; listening the while
for sounds from above, for angry eyes. Suddenly, the
mountain path lay clear before her.
She stood up straight, pressing the pain from her neck,
and stretching the muscles of her back. She took the
handkerchief from her mouth. It was covered with
blood.
She thought of Holt, waiting below for her. Though
it scared her to think of those men up yonder, she did
not want to go back. She never wanted to see Holt
again. She wanted Joe to punish him.
The open path was more terrifying than the brush.
Anyone could see her, easily, here. She wished she had
not left the dark sweater. She made a bright target.
Long before she reached the clearing, she could smell
the decaying mash. Ahead of her, in a group of trees,
lay a rude cabin. She forsook the path, and went back
into the bushes.
She reached the cabin on hands and knees. After
listening awhile, she raised herself to the level of' the win-
dow. The room was empty.
In one corner was a cot. Near by a table made of
boxwood. A cracked bit of glass was resting on a shelf
above the stand. Potato sacking made a curtain for
another corner of the cabin. From under the sacking
a pair of boots and the hems of old trousers protruded.
She left the window, dropping back into the brush.
After resting awhile, she kept on climbing. Soon she
reached the clearing. She could see other shacks like theTHE STILL
217
one she had passed. In the center of the clearing was
a camp fire laid, but not burning.
She squatted on the ground, waiting. Presently a man
came down the path from the hill, bearing some dead
rabbits over his shoulder. He put a match to the fire,
and buried a lot of potatoes in the ashes, which began
to show a dull glow. Then he fell to skinning the
rabbits.
She was afraid to breathe for fear he would hear
her. Even if Joe should come, how could she talk to
him without that other man seeing, hearing? “Mebbe
he wun’t come alone. Mebbe with lots of other men!”
She sat watching with terror the one who was skinning
the rabbits.
She tried to make herself believe that she was too an-
gry to be frightened, but she could not keep her heart
from pounding against her ribs. Funny that man over
there didn’t hear it pounding “jes’ like drums”!
No one else to tek care of her, only Joe. Matthias
was too big a coward. Her father would be angry, he
would beat her. Her brothers, too small, too hateful.
All brothers are hateful. Nobody loved her enough, only
Joe Ruiz, to mek Holt sorry, to mek him see that some-
body cared for her, Maddalena!
Back there if she had known how bad it was, how
scared she’d be of that man peeling the rabbits, she wun’t
have come. What would they do to her, if they found
her in the bushes? Joe wun’t be able to save her, mebbe,
for they would be angry with Joe. Think he’d told her
where the still was. She mustn’t sneeze, she mustn’t
breathe!218
IF TODAY BE SWEET
She crept farther back into the brush, where she could
still see the clearing, but where no one, she thought,
could see her. And waited. Lots of time to pray to the
Virgin Mother while she waited! Time to pray to all
of the saints!
Someone whistling up there on the hill! Mebbe the
man skinning the rabbits? But he, too, had looked up
the hill to see who it was. Sounded like Joe’s whistle.
Joe whistling “Santa Lucia.” Joe coming down that
trail!
Made her cry, hearing him sing that tune, ’cause he
knew she loved it. That meant he was still loving her.
“He din’t know why she loved it. He din’t know
about that man in Naples. She can’t tell no one about
that man. It belong to her only, that dream.” She
stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth so the man by
the camp fire would not hear her sobs.
She can’t cry. She mustn’t. She had to watch, to
listen. Mus’ rub the tears away, so she kin see the trail.
How angry Joe would be when he saw that handkerchief
all covered with blood! Maddalena’s blood. He was
coming close now. Now, she could see him. It was
Joe! It was Joe Ruiz!
He came swinging alone into the clearing, making
straight for the camp fire. The man who was skinning
the rabbits looked up at him and then went on with his
job.
When Joe moved behind the stranger, she rose, and
put her head above the bushes, waving the bloody hand-
kerchief.
The waving rag caught his eye. He turned so whiteTHE STILL
219
she thought he was going to call out. She dropped back
into the bushes, peering out between the branches. He
was signaling to her, trying to tell her to follow him,
carefully. He struck down the trail towards the cabin.
Fearfully she followed, shivering every time a twig
snapped.
When they were out of sight of the clearing, he looked
back to see if she were coming. She waved her hand-
kerchief bravely at him. “She wun’t afraid no more, now
that Joe was here to tek care of her!”
“What a fool I been! ” she kept saying. “What a fool
I been, running after those rich city fellars, and almost
losing Joe!”
For he was her kind. He was proud to be seen with
her; never ashamed. He would like the world to know
that she went out driving with him, that she liked him
enough to go with him, she herse’f, Maddalena Latta!
He was leaving the path. He pointed to the cabin.
He was going in.
When she reached the door, he grabbed her, pulling
her inside, and slamming the door with his foot. Fear
was on his face, fear and something else. Longing for
her, in his eyes, on his lips.
“God, Laina, why you come here?”
Can’t she say what he want her to say, that she came
because she was lonely, because she loved him? But
how kin she make him go after that Holt unless she told
him the truth?
She pointed to the bruise on her chin. She pulled the
blouse from her shoulder where Holt’s hand, glancing
past her chin, had landed. She was glad to see how220
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ugly it was. Joe mus’ know how he had hurt her, that
Holt! She pulled out the bloody handkerchief again.
She wun’t have hurt her lips if it han’t been for that Holt!
He was a long time getting it through his head; longer
getting angry. Always it teks Joe a long time to let go
of one thought and to tek hold of another! He was
still being sorry for himself, because she had not lied
to him. He wanted her to say:	“I waslonely for you,
Joe. I wanted you to come back with me.”
“Who done it, LainaPrJS
After she had told him it was Holt, he asked: “Which
one is Holt?”
Carefully, over and over again, she had to tell him
about Holt, what he was doing in the valley, and where
he was staying. Slow, Joe was!
Shouts reached them from the hill above the clearing.
Joe shook himself from his heavy thinking.
“They mustn’t fine you here. They mustn’t see you.
I orter be helpin’ get supper. I’ve gotter get back.
Where’ll you hide, Laina, till I get back?”
Oh, she would hide, all right! Out there, in the
bushes!
“Someone might come on to you. Better stay in here.”
He looked over to the curtain of sacking which stopped
short a foot or more from the floor. That wouldn’t hide
Laina.
She had to help him out. “Why can’t I hide under
the bed?”
“Kin you stay there? You wun’t run if you hear any-
thing? Even if you get frightened, you will stay?
Those men shoot at a shadder.”THE STILL
221
Oh, she would stay under that bed!
She was tired, all day picking grapes in the sun, and
then climbing up that hill. She wanted to lie still.
“Mebbe she kin sleep.”
He began to drag the dirty blankets from the bed for
her to lie on. He stood frowning. Someone might look
in and see her under it, those blankets gone.
Maddalena suggested the mattress. They could put it
under the bed and leave the blankets hanging over to
the floor, like a curtain. Nobody would see her then if
they came to the window or the door.
He would not let her help him. He pulled the mat-
tress off, to the floor, giving her a half blanket and a
lump of a pillow. He replaced the grimy covers on the
springs.
Joe loved to work for her. She wished that Holt could
see how men like Joe loved her. Joe would show him,
by and by!
“Are you hungry?” Ruiz whispered, though no one was
near the cabin.
He din’t need to whisper. It wun’t because he was
afraid. It’s when a man love a girl very much that he
speaks like he was in church.
Even after he left her, she wun’t be afraid. She
din’t mine crawlin’ under that dusty bed. One isn’t
afraid when there is a strong man to tek care of one, to
fight for one.
“But can’t she wine that Joe Ruiz aroun’ her little
finger? He shun’t let her know it! It don’ help a man
with a girl, lettin’ her know she kin do that. Joe don’
know much. Someone orter learn him things—■”222
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Her eyelids felt like stones, like those boulders! She
mus’ keep awake, mus’ listen to those noises, the shouts,
the crazy singing. Funny they could sing like that!
It was getting all mixed up, that day, why she was un-
happy. Because she loved someone, no, because she
hated someone. Love ain’ simple, like hatin’. Or was
any of it simple? Lovin’ that Holt she hated, lovin’
Joe for lovin’ her but thinkin’ all the time how slow his
head works, and how dirty he is. Hatin’ Holt, but ach-
ing to have him hole her in his arms, and whisper he is
sorry, Maddalena! Oh, he could kick her, beat her, if
he would tell her after he was sorry, and hole her tight
in his arms!
Joe smells like he drinks, too. Joe can’t drink. It
made him crazy, Matthias said, and Ludovici. Crazy
blood in him somewhere. Wasn’t that Josefina crazy,
too?
What was a poor girl to do? She mustn’t sleep, but
she wanted to. She wanted to forget it all—CHAPTER XXX
LOVING CUP
SHE was roused by the twitching of the mattress
on which she lay. Wide-awake at once, alert to
her surroundings, her danger. Joe’s voice,
harshly whispering, reassured her.
A candle was burning in its tin can on the boxwood
table. Outside the cabin, night had fallen. Newspapers
had been pinned over the window. Joe had thought
to do that before he had gone.
She crept from under the cot, watching him as he flung
the mattress back in place. As soon as he turned his
face to her, she wanted to run away from him, down that
terrible hill.
For he had been drinking. His eyes looked wild.
The odor of garlic clung to him, but stronger than the
garlic, when he stood close, was the smell of the terrible
stuff they were making up there. Never had she seen
Joe looking like that. She never thought she would be
afraid of Joe Ruiz!
His legs were steady, and his speech, though his eyes
wavered. He held out his arms to her.
"Come to me, Laina!”
She mus’ not make him angry! Crazy people mustn’t
get angry. He would talk loud, those other men would
hear. him. She mus’ make him smile. But Joe din’t
want to smile. He wanted her.
“Oh, she din’t care no more what happened to that
223224
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Holt. She din’t want him punished at all. All she want
was to get out of this place which made her heart to beat
like a drum. She want to be back in her tent, with
Carmelita and Teresa and Concepcion and the twins. If
the Holy Mother would tek care of her now she wun’t
never be a bad, res’less girl no more. She din’t like Joe
when he look at her so. Oh, he shun’t orter drink like
that. They had made Joe into a bad man up here!”
She tried to play with him. It was a poor little
trick which did not fool even the slow-witted Joe.
“It wasn’t only today he’d been drinkin’. Drinkin’
steady, Joe’d been. His face twitchin’, his chin, that
don’ happen in one hour.”
He came closer to her, his hands outspread. “You
can’ fool me no more, Laina.”
“Please don’ scare me, Joe. Tek me home, Joe. I’m
scared of this place. I’ll be good to you, if you tek me
home.”
She was measuring the distance to the door, wondering
if she got past Joe, if she could get down the hill with-
out being heard by those men. Not in a hurry. She
couldn’t make the trail in a hurry. With Joe after her.
Joe always listened to her before! Wine him aroun’
her little finger, before he came up to this awful place.
He was changed, Joe was. He looked fierce, like her
father. Mebbe he would kill her. Carlotta always tole
her some day a man would kill her if she kept on foolin’
them all.
She made a dash past his outstretched, maudlin arms.
But before she could reach the door, he was there, agile
as a rat, barring the way.LOVING CUP
225
He laughed at her. “I din’t need to run. You can’t
get away from me up here, Laina!”
She burst into tears. Oh, everybody mocked her,
everybody was cruel to her.
In an instant his arms were about her, his face was
bending over her, terrifying her. “She was drowning in
whiskey! Oh, she hated Joe Ruiz!”
Suddenly, he flung her away from him. She fell on
the bed, shuddering, wondering.
“God, I don’ wan’ you that way, hatin’ me. I’m not
that kine of fellar, Laina! And you fool me once more
this time. Not lovin’ me, lovin’ that other fellow all the
time.”
“No, I don’,” she panted, jumping to her feet. “I
swear I don’ Joe. I don’ love him.” She watched
him closely. “I don’ love any man who treats me
rough.”
Suspiciously he stood eyeing her.
She tried wheedling. “Laina’s so hungry, so cold.
Din’t you bring your Laina anything to eat, Joe?”
“They’d ’a’ seen me. Seen me bringin’ food to the
cabin. They’d ’a’ followed me here.”
“Not even a slice of bread in your pocket for me,
Joe?”
“Somethin’ better than bread.” Keeping his eye on
her, he moved towards the corner where two boxes cov-
ered with newspapers stood. He drew out a dark bottle
and a tin mug.
“I don’ like that stuff, Joe. I hate it. You’ve been
drinkin’ that. I don’ love nobody who drinks that
stuff.”226
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“You’ve gotta tek some. You’ll be sick if you don’
tek somethin’, Laina.”
She shook her head. “Not that stuff.”
“It won’t hurt you. Jes’ a little.” He came closer
to her.
“Don’ you think I mean what I say, I don’ wan’ you
like that? I ain’ goin’ to grab you. I don’ wan’ you
unless you come to me, like this!” He opened his arms
to her. “Lovin’ me, Laina. If you don’ wan’ to kiss
me, I don’ wan’ you to. I don’ wan’ to do nothin’ you
don’ wan’ me to.”
She began to whimper. “You are good, Joe. You are
kine. Holt ain’ kine like this. I like you when you are
this way, Joe.”
“Tek some, Laina.”
“Not that, Joe.”
“When did you get a scared of wine? This is jus’ like
wine.”
“It smells like whiskey.”
“Tas’ it. See if it don’ smell good.”
She felt faint and queer. She was afraid to feel that
empty way up on that hill. “Wun’t hurt to take a
drop!”
“One tas’ only.” She put the tin mug to her lips.
“She din’t know afore, Joe, how tired she was.”
“Sit down, Laina. Poor little Laina!”
She sat down, holding the mug.
“You tas’ it, and then I tas’ it. It ain’ strong, is it,
Laina? That’s a lovin’ cup. Lord, s’pose I ain’ come
when I did! What’d they ’a’ done to you? A fool
thing to do, Laina!”LOVING CUP
227
“You oughtenter stay with men like them, Joe. Come
home with me, now, Joe!”
Not stupid enough to be fooled like that!
“Would I ’a’ ben with them if it ain’ ben fer you?
Crazy the day I came here, the las’ time, the firs’ time,
too. When you sen’ me away from you. Can you fine
a man, easy, Laina, willin’ to do anything fer yer, lie
fer your, steal fer you?”
“I’m hungry and tired, Joe!”
“Ain’nothin’but this. Drink it this way!” He flung
off a mugful. “Don’t hurt you when you tek it like
that. I ain’ goin’ to hurt you! Why you look at me
that way? You ain’ afraid of me, Laina?”
Mebbe he was goin’ to be kine. He was refilling the
mug. “You mustn’t tek any more, Joe.”
“You tek a little.” His voice dropped to a low, rough
whisper.
“I’m tekking it, ain’ I, Joe?”
“A little more, an’ you won’ tek cold. No coat, no
hat, paper shoes on, you need someone to tek care of
you, sure, girl!”
She wanted to go home. She wanted to leave this
place. She wanted to leave Joe.
“What you goin’ to do, Laina?”
She was getting to her feet, slowly, heavily.
She din’t know. But she was goin’ somewhere.
Queer, her feet din’t want to go. Her head wan’ to
go, but her feet din’ wan’ to go!
“Come here, Laina.” He kept his eye on hers. Stand-
ing quite still and watching her.
She looked at him doubtfully. Was it the Joe she228
IF TODAY BE SWEET
liked, or the one she din’t like, the new Joe, the Joe she
was afraid of? How kin a girl tell? Funny to have two
Joes. Awful funny.
He held out his hands to her. Moving his lips. But
no sound. Jus’ looking at her. The kine Joe.
She wanted to look at the door, but it kept running
away from her. “I can’t fine it, Joe. Funny!”
“Can’t fine what?”
Her eyes were caught by his, and they felt steadier, he
held them so tight. “Not too tight, Joe,” she coaxed.
“Not so I can’ get them away.”
But if he din’t hole them, they, too, might run away.
Funny for eyes to wan’ to run away! She was shaking
with low laughter.
“Not scared any more, Joe!” This was the kine one,
who always helps her, brings her funny ribbins. Her
Joe.
“I’ve been lonely up here, Laina. Wantin’ my girl
to come to me, and to- set on my knee, to put her arms
aroun’ my neck, to wanna kiss me. I wan’ Laina to
say:	‘Please, Joe, kiss me!’ God, I ben wantin’ it
fierce! Hole the cup a minute, Laina!”
“I dassen’ tek any more, Joe!”
“I said jes’ hole it. Not jus’ one tas’? Gvcame some,
my girl!”
She held it to his lips. He steadied her, putting his
arm about her. With the other hand, he pulled the
bottle from the floor and filled the mug again.
“This is lovin’ cup, Laina. Can you say ‘lovin’
cup’?”
“Lovin’ cup, Joe.”LOVING CUP
229
She wun’t afraid now, for Joe was smiling. He was
goin’ to be kine. He was holdin’ her eyes for her.
“I’m goin’ to drink a promise to you, Laina, girl. I’m
goin’ always to do as you ask, always goin’ to tek care
of you, fight folks who ain’ kine to Laina. See?”
She watched him, frowning. Something she wanted
him to do, then. But what was it? Some place she
wan’ him to go. But where was it? Bimeby she would
think when she was not tired—
“Poor, tired little Laina.”
“They’re running away from me now. My lips, Joe!
They won’ stay still!”
He bent over her. “What you say, Laina?”
Oh, she din’t know what she wan’ to say!
“Not about missin’ me, Laina?”
She din’t know what she wan’ to say!
“Your turn. Lovin’ cup, Laina.”
“Lovin’ cup. Lovin’ cup.”
“That’s what you wanna say. Do you wan’ me to
give the lovin’ cup to another girl?”
She snatched it from him, holding it to her breast.
“Give it to me. My lovin’ cup!”
He watched her drain it. “What you wanna say,
Laina?”
“You’re kine, Joe.”
He was hol’ing her eyes tight for her. He wun’t let
them run away.
“Laina! ” He was watching her lips.
They were running away. Cun’t hole them still. They
wanted to go to Joe!
“Do you wan’ me to go to another girl, Laina?”230
IF TODAY BE SWEET
She gave a sharp cry. Always some other girl tekking
her man away from her! “Nobody else can have Joe.
He’s my Joe. Kiss me, Joe!”
Three hours later he stole from the cabin, leaving Mad-
dalena on the cot, asleep. The candle had long since
burned itself out.
Striking matches with his left hand, he had laboriously
scribbled a note to Laina:	“Mete me at end of trale.
Joe,” and had pinned it to her pillow. Then he put a
knife in his pocket, and all the money from the can in
the corner where his clothes hung.
Up there, among the trees, the stars were shining.
Below him, like a dull sea, lay the fog. He went noise-
lessly down the trail.CHAPTER XXXI
GRAPES OF WRATH
SEVERAL times on the way back to Frascati, Rich
complained that Elizabeth was not listening to
him. What was it that was so engrossing her?
All at once, he captured her attention.
“Say that again.”
“Deer-hunting, I said, isn’t the simple, or rather in-
nocent sport it used to be. With a still in every bunch
of hills.”
She was now all interest. “Stills! You don’t sup-
pose—”
“I’ll suppose anything! What is it?”
But she would not tell him. She made him pick up
his thread; about a hunt when he was a lad.
“You’ve not heard a word I said!” complained Rich
again.
“I’m worrying because we shall be late!” cried Eliza-
beth. “The machine is crawling, Richard Roedel!”
“The only time my car crawls is when you are in it!
I’ll get you home before they go into the dining room!”
and he let out his engine.
At the table, Hamilton told his mother that he had a
committee meeting, a powwow, he termed it, in Napa. It
might be late when he got in.
“That means dummy whist,” returned Emilie, looking
at Rich.
231232
IF TODAY BE SWEET
They had already begun to play, when Hamilton, ready
for his drive, reentered the room.
“Has Crispi gone to the city?” he asked, bending over
his mother’s chair. “Was his rheumatism bad again?”
She put down her cards. “He wouldn’t go without
asking me, without asking you,” she corrected. They
were all finding it hard to remember that Hamilton was
now the manager.
“He isn’t in the cellar nor in his room,” frowned Ham-
ilton, striving to catch his brother’s eye. “And the dogs
are gone.”
“He’ll be back,” Rich was studying his cards. “Prob-
ably taking a walk with the dogs.”
Hamilton went into the hall. He came back to say:
“I’ll try to be back early, Rich.” Both of the women
pretended to be oblivious to his uneasiness; Rich was
quite openly so.
“Mother’s boy!” he drawled, flinging down a trump.
Shortly after nine, he began to complain of being
sleepy. Yawn after yawn he stifled. “He could not
keep his eyes open,” he apologized.
His mother insisted that he go to bed, Elizabeth abet-
ting her. Finally, he allowed them to push him off.
“No company’s better than poor company, you’re both
thinking. Good night!”
“I’m going to wait up for Hamilton,” Emilie told the
girl, “but you must go to bed when you are tired.”
“I’ll teach you that new game.” Elizabeth got up to
add a log of wood to the fire.
She looked up from her hand to say:	“I’ve beenGRAPES OF WRATH
233
wondering all evening—something Rich said—if there
could be a still back of our house!”
“Casa Blanca?”
“I’m always seeing someone crawling into the brush,
or creeping out. From my window I can see them.
There’s no sign of a trail. I’ve searched.”
“Did you tell Rich?” anxiously asked his mother.
“I’m so glad you didn’t. That is just what would ap-
peal to him, a man hunt. Hamilton used to be like that,
too, but now he knows the danger. Having a cellar,
he says, is like having dynamite in the house.”
They made a pretense of the card game. Mrs. Roe-
del kept getting up to see if some door or window had
been overlooked. Every few minutes she thought she
heard strange noises.
After Hamilton returned, Emilie went into the dining
room to gather up the silver. It was a long and care-
ful process. Each piece of flat silver had to be tied
with its set, in its red flannel case.
“Did Rich say where he was going?” Hamilton asked
in a low voice.
“He’s not out. He went to bed. How do you know
he is out?” she circled, watching his expression.
“His machine is gone.” Hamilton looked severe.
“Queer he’d go when he knew there was no man, no
reliable man on the place!”
“Isn’t Crispi back yet?”
“No. I don’t want mother to be alarmed. I’m go-
ing to police for awhile. If you hear her prowling about,
call her into your room. She gets panicky some nights.”234
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“But you won’t be gone long? She will know you’ve
gone. She’ll go to your room!”
Mrs. Roedel moved towards the kitchen. It was Eliza-
beth’s first opportunity to tell Hamilton about the side
door of the cellar that had been open that afternoon.
But before he had finished telling her how he always
locked his door and took the key, and that his mother
had never yet thought to look through the keyhole, Mrs.
Roedel was back again.
Elizabeth turned out the lights in her room and sta-
tioned herself by the window, after calling out a last
good night to Mrs. Roedel, who was “prowling” about the
upper halls. It was fully a half hour before a man
slipped out of the kitchen door, a man whose clothes
looked like Crispi’s. He went in the direction of the
cellar.
When after an hour had passed, and he had not come
back, she slipped into a heavy coat, and went in search
for him. There was no sound from Mrs. Roedel’s room.
Chow’s light went out as she passed through the rear
garden, now dripping with fog. Chow then had come
home.
The door that had been open into the cellar that after-
noon was locked. Through the narrow slit above the
sill, a thin edge of light came. Inside the building there
were sounds as of shovels, of picks, and then voices.
She moved towards the escalator. The noise of picks
grew louder.
Not a pleasant or a safe journey, the climb up the mov-
ing ladder, not knowing whether it were secure, or if itGRAPES OF WRATH
235
might at any minute start revolving! When her head
reached the level of the upper platform, it was instantly
withdrawn. For she had seen the man she knew was
Hamilton lying on the groundBhands tied, and mouth
and eyes bandaged. And a man with a flashlight stand-
ing guard.
The escalator was not to be considered for a return
journey. There was but one way out now. Slowly, as
the flash passed towards the other end of the wine cel-
lar, she crept on hands and knees towards the crusher.
Once the flashlight focussed on her prostrate figure. She
lay motionless until it began to rove away from her.
Then she kept on creeping. Reaching the open window
space, she measured the distance to the mound of grape
stems.
Down the country road came the purr of a machine.
The men in the cellar had heard it, too. They were
dropping their picks.
She fell with a soft thud into the sticky mass. Pick-
ing herself up, she made a dash for the creek, taking the
long, covered way through the willows. In the back
garden she stopped to listen. There was no sound of
a machine. But a light from the lower floor spread out
into the garden. Rich was home!
She ran into the house, through the halls. In the
center of the room, pulling off his overcoat, stood George
Roedel.
“Hamilton!” she gasped. “The cellar. They’ve
bound him. Crispi is gone, and the dogs!”
A door opened upstairs.236
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Stay with Emilie,” directed Roedel. “I’ll get Chow.
Will you ring for the sheriff, if I can’t get him at once?
And keep her here, if you can.”
She took her station by the window, turning off the
switch lights. Roedel wakened Chow and then got the
sheriff on the telephone. Within five minutes Chow and
he were striking out through the fog for the cellar.
Mrs. Roedel, in slippers and padded gown, came pat-
tering down the stairs, a flashlight in her hand. She
turned it on Elizabeth as the girl cried out:	“Don’t be
frightened. It’s only I.”
“What has happened? Whom were you talking to?”
Swiftly she was told. “And you’re to stay here,” she
concluded.
“I’ve got a revolver. I can shoot. Are you afraid to
go with me?” was Emilie’s answer.
They crept out of the back door, and through the fog-
obscured garden. As they neared the hedge a shot rang
out, and then another. There was a crash, and the
sound of running feet. Another shot, and then silence.
“Quick!” cried Emilie, and started to run towards the
cellar.
When they reached the door on the lower floor, Roedel
was kneeling on the ground, bending over a silent form.
“My Hamilton!” whispered the mother.
Roedel got up when they came in, giving over the un-
binding of Hamilton to the two women. “He’s not hurt.
Give me that light, Chow. You lock that lower door
where we came in, and stay there. Elizabeth, cut those
cords. Here’s my knife. Mama, keep your gun and
your light trained on the steps from the platform. I’mGRAPES OF WRATH
237
going to see what they were doing, and where they got
out.”
The night birds had flown. Their tools lay on the
ground. The ditch was nearly completed. A gaping
hole in the wall showed the way they had fled.
Chow disobeyed orders. Let his master go into
that dark corner where thugs might be lurking alone?
He shadowed him until he had seen that there was no one
hiding, and went back to lock the lower door. Someone
was approaching the cellar. Chow turned his flash. A
man stood in the doorway.
Mrs. Roedel, at an anguished cry from Elizabeth,
leveled her gun. Hamilton it was who cried:	“Don’t
shoot! It’s Wintermute!”
From the dark corner came the voice of Roedel, con-
temptuous, scathing. “So! O’Ryan’s dirty work! Not
a Dago plot, after all! ”
Only Hamilton, still bound, saw Elizabeth move in
the half darkness towards the stairs. Only Hamilton
saw her creeping up the steps to the platform and out
into the fog.CHAPTER XXXII
ALIBI
WHERE the brush of the hill ends in open
field, Holt waited for Maddalena. Pa-
tiently at first; giving her time to work off
the froth of her passion. The distance from Frascati,
the dusty county road, and the falling darkness would
send her penitently seeking him.
The reddening masses of poison oak bushes made a
shelter for him when Richard and Elizabeth Wintermute
came down the path to the road where their machine
was waiting. Holt kept lighting cigarettes and throw-
ing them away. He looked repeatedly at his watch.
There was nothing in his pockets to read, only his note-
book, and soon no light to see that by. But he knew
the night’s program by heart.
A copy of his telegram to Wintermute, signed “Dolan,”
fell from the book into the poison oak tangle. It was
finally fished out by a pole made from a neighboring
manzanita bush. Several matches were burned while he
reread it.
When it was quite dark, he sought his roadster. Watch
in hand, occasionally striking a match, he waited, now
restlessly. Every crackling of the underbrush, every
noise larger than a nest-seeking bird would pull him to
his feet, to peer into the shrubbery. But there was no
Maddalena.
238ALIBI
239
Several machines passed him, going north and south.
One went by like a rocket, on its way to Calistoga. Be-
fore it reached Casa Blanca, a gibberish of many voices,
foreign voices, broke the evening stillness; Italian
voices, high-pitched and angry. Holt ran into the shrub-
bery. It might be Latta— But the Ford flashed past,
lurching, clipping off its fifty miles an hour. As though
it were chasing someone. When they had passed from
sight, Holt gave one more look into the impenetrable
underbrush, then, pointing the roadster’s nose south-
wards, he went like the wind down the valley.
He stopped for an instant at Pasquale’s new place on
Dry Creek. The wine-maker came hitching out to the
machine.
“Everything all right for tonight?” asked Holt.
“Dogs, Crispi, fixed, eh?”
“Sure.” The man’s teeth gleamed in the darkness.
“How long will it take you to run the pipe in?”
“If no one comes around, two hours,” said Pasquale.
“Did Roedel get back yet? No? Good!”
“And the oldest son, he’s gone, too. Jus’ now; mebbe
a half hour ago, mebbe an hour.”
“And I’ll have Rich!” cried Holt. “There’s no earthly
reason, Pasquale, why you shouldn’t be through by two
o’clock. Not before; it won’t be safe earlier. By the
way, the man who’s putting up the money for this may
be around, about then. Tall, stands very straight.
Straight as a ramrod, you’ll know him as soon as you see
him. Looks like an officer,” he added.
“Sure,” nodded Pasquale.
“Remember to keep one man with a flashlight watch-240
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ing. If you’re stopped, use your feet. No fighting.
Ropes and gags, if you have to. But remember, no fight-
ing. This is no murder game.”
He started his engine. “Say, wait a bit!” He halted
the Italian, who was already returning to his jug. “Do
you know Latta?”
“Sure, I know him.”
“What does he look like? I want to know him when
I see him.”
“Like Sicilian. Jus’ like Sicilian.”
Holt went on to Napa.
He no longer looked back for chasing lights. It was
as though a thread had been cut between himself and
Maddalena, as though he had passed out of her orbit.
He halted his machine in front of O’Ryan’s.
“Just ran in to tell you that everything’s going fine,”
he announced to the brewer. “We’ll pull it off tonight
for certain. Roedel’s away, the son Hamilton’s off some-
where, and I’ve got Richard fixed for an all-night poker
game, Rich and Dave Hartley, the judge’s son,” he
chuckled. “Crispi’s been quieted—”
“Nothing foul?” inquired O’Ryan.
“Drunk. Doped. The dogs have disappeared; going
to be another foggy night; no moon—”
“Got yourself well covered?” O’Ryan wanted to be
assured.
“Plastered with alibi. Rest easy! If the unexpected
should happen, it’ll look like a crude Dago steal. That’s
what Pasquale himself thinks he’s hired for, what the
other men think.”
“You’ll do,” commended the brewer.ALIBI
241
“He doesn’t even know my name!” boasted Holt.
“Not my real name. Told him it was Reed. And by
the way, I couldn’t reach you to ask you when the idea
came to me. Wasn’t^safe to talk over the phone. I
sent a telegram to old Winterhead. Nothing mute about
him except his name! He and that proud daughter of
his’ll be singing a different tune tomorrow! I told him
the Napa raid was ripe for tonight. At midnight.
Thought he should share the glory!”
“You mean share the risk. You didn’t have to ask
me about that.”
“He wouldn’t have come for me. I signed it ‘Dolan.’ ”
Holt was watching the white mask of the boss.
“If it—goes all right, I won’t—skin you. If it goes
all right. But get out before I call you—a skunk!”
The last word was muffled.
Holt moved swiftly towards his alibi.
The side door of the hotel was open as he passed on
to the garage. Taking the newspaper-covered bottle
from under the seat, he left his car and got to his room
by the side entrance, having met no one. He switched
on the lights. In his bag was a corkscrew which was
soon boring its way into the cork of Crispi’s bottle. At
the washstand he rinsed the glass which held his tooth-
brush. Then, slowly, he raised the bottle.
He stood staring. Frascati spring water. Hell!
“Damn that Crispi! He’d earned what was coming
to him. Damn him! Damn those sanctimonious Roe-
dels!”
The mocking bottle was put out of sight. Cursing,
Holt washed his face and hands, and then went down-242
IF TODAY BE SWEET
stairs. At the desk, he wrote a note for Rich which he
left in his box. “Keep those boys here if they come
before I get back,” he told the clerk. “I suppose there’s
a restaurant open?”
“Around the corner. The Fuchsia. Good beefsteaks
there.”
The Fuchsia offered to one in a hurry choice between
a hot ham or roast beef sandwich, a cup of coffee and
prune or lemon pie. Side orders, the friendly waitress
told him, would take at least fifteen minutes. The en-
trées had been gone for an hour.
He gave the girl a quarter. “If she’d cut the beef
where it wasn’t intended to be cut, and promised her
another one if she’d give the prune pie a swift grilling.
The coffee was excellent. The beef was neither stringy
nor black. And the pie came on sizzling. He gave the
waitress an extra quarter for her efficiency, and a smile
for her good looks. He sped back to the hotel, damning
Crispi.
Neither Rich nor Dave Hartley had arrived. “Send
them right up when they come,” he instructed the clerk,
and went up the stairs to his room. Five minutes later
a rap fell on his door.
Rich was carrying a suitcase.
“Perishable. It’s glass!” grinned Dave.
“Look here, I ought to run you in for this!” Holt shook
his head. “You’ll be getting into trouble, young man,
if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, don’t get virtuous, Holt!” mocked Rich. “That’s
not your long suit. Be human!”
“I wasn’t prepared for this sort of party. I’ve onlyALIBI
243
one glass. I can’t ring for more just after someone from
Frascati comes in with a suitcase. Too raw! Can we
drink out of bottles? Be clearing the table, will you,
Hartley? The cards are in the top drawer of the
dresser. Who brought the chips?”
Dave produced a brand new box.
Three “dead soldiers” were lying under the table, and
three half-empty bottles stood beside their chairs before
Holt began to play a man’s game of poker. At mid-
night both of the boys had made shame-faced attempts
to leave with their winnings. Holt had embarrassed
them by his mockery of “kid ethics.” In less than an
hour, their proud piles of colored chips had moved across
the table. By one they were borrowing, nervously. By
two they were deep in his debt. Dave’s face was purple
with suppressed excitement. Rich kept glancing at him,
as though to see how long he could keep it up.
A queer, gasping sound came suddenly from Hartley.
His face was suffused with blood. His hands waved for
help. He could not speak. “Give him air,” whispered
Holt, springing up. “Open the window, quick!”
Rich wavered towards the window. He was a long
time opening it.
When he turned Holt was loosening Hartley’s collar.
Suddenly Dave fell forward, his forehead hitting the
corner of the dresser. Crumpling up on the carpet, he
lay as though dead. His eyes were open, dull, sightless;
and his jaws were locked.
“Drunk! Lord!” ejaculated Holt.
“A fit!” mumbled Rich. “He used to have ’em. At
school.”244
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Good Lord!” repeated Holt, looking around the room,
at the bottles, the cards and counters, at Richard, sway-
ing and white, by the table.
“I’ll clear the room, and you get a doctor,” he told
him. He had to stop to ring out cloths for Hartley’s
head. “You do this,” he gave the towels to Richard.
Blood was running from Dave’s temple. “Don’t get
girlish, Rich. Here, give me that back. Be doing
something. Get those things out of sight.” But it was
he who swept the counters into their box, shoved the
bottles into the suitcase, and brought fresh towels for
Dave’s wound.
Rich was making feeble gestures, moving about the
room in a stupefied panic.
“You’ll have to stay here with Hartley. You’re in no
condition to be seen downstairs. Who are the doctors
in this town? Someone friendly, who’ll keep his mouth
shut. Sheppard, did y’ say?”
Richard’s tongue was functioning badly. He was star-
ing at Dave, at the sinister swelling on his temple.
“You stay here,” cautioned Holt as he opened the door.
Grotesque noises were coming over the transoms, soft
hisses and groans. The hall was dark except for the red
light at the farther end where the fire escape sign hung.
The steps were in darkness. Downstairs a shadowy
silence hung over the lobby. There was but one light;
a green-shaded bulb hung over the telephone switchboard
where the clerk sat softly snoring, his head leaning
against the wall, his lips parted.
Holt had to speak twice before he could rouse him to
make a connection. Then it was difficult to get theALIBI
245
number. Holt went to the telephone booth and waited.
He stood watching the clock. Once, he turned towards
the hearth, where the fire had become a bed of glowing
ashes. A man was lying back in an armchair, as though
asleep.
“Ready with your number, Mr. Holt! ” called the clerk.
The man in the arm chair moved, sat up.
Holt entered the booth.
He had a cool, plausible story for the doctor. Shep-
pard assured him he could be there in ten minutes. He
knew about “those fits of Dave’s. He thought he had
outgrown them.”
When Holt left the booth, the figure in the armchair
had gone. The clerk was again snoring.
He moved up the dark stairway. At the far end of
the upper hall the red light of the fire escape cast flicker-
ing shadows. Soft steps came behind him, but he did not
hear them at first. Something made him turn. The red
light stained an uplifted knife—
Reaching for his gun, Holt ran. His hand was on the
knob of his door when something caught him between the
shoulder blades. As the door fell open, his gun went off.
Rich, a girlish Rich, stood staring at him. Steps were
running away. And then noises. He began to fall. He
was a long time falling—
When Dr. Sheppard came, the groups of hastily clothed
men and women opened to let him in. Before his glance
reached Dave or Richard, it had discovered Holt’s blood-
stained figure lying on its face on the floor. He dropped
his bag, and knelt by the still form.
Richard was prattling. He hadn’t done it. He was246
IF TODAY BE SWEET
standing there when Holt fell in. Why didn’t anybody
believe him? He wasn’t drunk. Why did they look at
him that way? George Roedel’s son. It was a fit Dave
had. Holt went after a doctor. How’d he know who
did it? Holt just fell in the room, at his feet.
“Better hush up!” advised the clerk.
“But they don’t believe me! I tell you it’s true,” bab-
bled Rich.
Dr. Sheppard looked up. “Who is this man?”
The clerk told him. And added:	“He was the one
who telephoned for you.”
Richard was chattering a rope around his neck. Dr.
Sheppard held up his hand. “Stop talking, Rich. This
is bad for you. Holt is dead.”CHAPTER XXXIII
CROSSED WIRES
THE forwarded telegram signed “Dolan” caught
jWintermute as he was leaving Bakersfield for
Fresno. He changed his ticket for Richmond,
telephoned the garage in San Francisco to have his ma-
chine meet him there and he was registering at the
Palace Hotel in Napa, when the clock struck twelve.
The message had stated:	“Raid immaculate cellar mid-
night Wednesday. Oversee at distance.”.
Sending his bag to his room by the night clerk, who
was alone in the lobby, he returned to his machine and
went at once to O’Ryan’s. The square, ugly box in
which the brewer lived lay in darkness. Wintermute had
to ring three times before a light flared out from the
upper story. The lean, cautious figure of Dolan came
pattering down the inner steps. He touched the hall
switch, flooding the porch with light. His peaked face
peered out through the curtain.
Noiselessly the door was opened. Dolan laid his fin-
ger on his lips. In the colorless tones used in that house
except by O’Ryan himself, he confided: “He’s had a bad
night. His sciatica. I can’t wake him now.”
“You can tell me about this.” Wintermute pulled the
telegram from his pocket.
Dolan, comically attired in nightshirt and hastily
donned trousers which trailed his suspenders, screwed up
his face over the signature.
247248
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Who ‘made’ it?” demanded Wintermute. Then, as
Dolan’s answer hung:	“I mean, who got the line on
them? Who got the evidence?” As Dolan continued
dumb, he persisted:	“Didn’t you send this wire for
O’Ryan?”
Dolan was troubled. He reread the message. Then
stood painfully thinking, his head cocked like an antique
sparrow’s.
“I don’t remember. Yet, maybe I did, and again
maybe I didn’t. Perhaps if I wasn’t so sleepy, I’d be
able to remember.”
Wintermute turned away, throwing a curt good night
at Dolan, who was peering through the curtains after
him.
When he entered the hotel lobby a roughly dressed
man, a Portuguese laborer, was dickering with the clerk
for a room. His breath reeked with liquor.
The fellow was declaring that he would not pay a full
night’s rate for the remnant of the night. “I’m playing
no bunco game, even if I got no luggage. Got the money,
but it’s not worth it. If you think I got no money,
you’re fooled, that’s all!” He jingled coins in his pocket,
bringing out a handful of silver half dollars, which he
put back again.
“Fer tomorrow night, that’s different. I pay all night,
but not tonight,” persisted the Portuguese. “Most
morning already.”
“I’m sorry,” said the clerk. “How many nights will
you be here?”
“I dunno. Mebbe two, mebbe three, I can’ tell.”
“You pay in advance,” explained the hotel official smil-CROSSED WIRES
249
ing over the stupid fellow’s head at Wintermute, who was
waiting.
“How much?”
“I’ve told you two dollars.”
“You bet I don’. Two dollars tomorrow night, but not
tonight. One dollar for tonight.”
“There’s no room you can get in this house for a dollar-
You can find one farther down the street, maybe, but not
here.” The clerk was moving away from him, when the
man asked:	“How much you wan’, if I sit here till
morning? I’ll tek a room tomorrow morning. I’ll pay
two dollars tomorrow morning. Two dollars for tonight,
you bet no.”
“Oh, you can stay here all right. But you’ll have to be
quiet. What can I do for you, Mr. Wintermute?”
“Will you get my house, Casa Blanca? I think I
won’t stay here, after all, if I can raise the house. Don’t
want to scare them, getting in at this hour,” he added.
The Portuguese had been listening. He turned away
towards the hearth, taking the armchair in front of the
fire.
Casa Blanca was raised with difficulty. A half-awake
Tom at last answered the telephone. He said he was
alone in the house. Mrs. Wintermute had not yet come
back. And Miss Elizabeth was staying at Frascati.
Wintermute made him repeat what he had said. “You
are sure she is at the Roedels’? You are sure?” he kept
asking. “At Frascati?”
Mystified® he reread the telegram signed by Dolan.
A few minutes later he told the clerk he thought he
would keep his room after all. His family was away.250
IF TODAY BE SWEET
After a minute of musing, he went to the street, and
got into his machine. The thrifty Portuguese had looked
up sharply as Wintermute passed him in the lobby.
Through the window he could be seen settling himself
for the night, before the dying fire—
Ten minutes later the director parked his car near the
deserted shack by the railroad track. The place was
like a graveyard. No dogs yelped at him. Nothing
stirred.
Then suddenly lights,, flickering like fireflies, moved
through the orchard. Near the wine cellar. Ahead of
him, down the track, a light flashed, and went out. Then
flashed again.
Keeping in the shadow of the fence, he crept up the
road, his hand on his gun pocket, towards the place
where the flashlight had been. He reached the dark sta-
tion, its windows looking like sightless eyes staring into
the shrouded night.
The fruit camp lay asleep, but in the orchard beyond,
the odd lights were flickering. Keeping close to the
■shrubs, he moved slowly, watching, listening. Suddenly
the house, like a wraith in the fog, loomed up in front
<of him. A light was moving through the upper hall, then
coming slowly down the steps. Darkness again. What-
ever was going on at the cellar that night was known at
the house.
He stationed himself among Emilie’s lilac bushes where
he could watch the approach to the cellar. A door was
opening quietly behind him. Two forms crept out,
shrouded forms that looked like women’s figures, moving
swiftly towards the vault. They crossed the bridge andCROSSED WIRES
251
were nearing the cellar when he followed them. Sud-
denly they disappeared. He followed the wall of the
cellar, searching for a door. His hand touched a knob.
Then a blinding light, an anguished cry—and then
Roedel’s voice.
“We’ll stay here till the sheriff comes,” said Roedel.
“Hamilton, you and Chow take mama and Elizabeth to
the house.”
“So it was Lisa’s voice I heard!” miserably said Win-
termute. “Where is she?”
“She went back to the house.” Hamilton, unbound by
Chow, was getting to his feet.
Mrs. Roedel had something to say to the arrangement.
Hamilton was to stay at the cellar. Chow would take
care of her. The sheriff came in while they were dis-
cussing it.
“I want you to look around this place, and the or-
chard,” Roedel’s voice was hard and angry. “Seemed
like a Dago steal at first but I’m not so sure. Have
your men guard the place till morning when we can fill
up that hole. I’ll be back after a while. Come along,
Wintermute.”
In the hall he spoke again. “Now, mama, Chow, go
back to bed. Hamilton and I can attend to this.” He
led the way into the library, turning on the lights, and
closing the door after the two men.
“Now!” he said.
Hamilton began to laugh. “Each of you thinking the
other is a crook! Dad, this is my affair! And let’s
remember that we all love Elizabeth!” -252
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Wintermute was melted into humility. “It isn’t
what you think, but it’s not much better. I’ve been
straight in this job. But I’m shackled. I didn’t want
Lisa to know—”
“Perhaps she won’t have to know, even now!” Hamil-
ton’s voice was kind.
“She knows already, that is, she’ll have to know it
straight.”
“Suppose you tell us, from the beginning. Sit down,
Mr. Wintermute, father.”
“And that’s the end,” said Wintermute, as he finished
his story. “If it weren’t for Lisa, for Lisa’s being un-
happy, I’d be glad it was over. It’s been a rope around
my neck. I’d like to run up and say good night to her—”
“Don’t you think it best to tell her in the morning?”
Roedel was speaking, his voice cold and stern.
Humbly Wintermute said he would not disturb her.
“Better to let her sleep.”
He was staying at the hotel in Napa,” he told Hamil-
ton, who followed him into the hall, “in case she wanted
to speak to him.”
He was passing out of the door when Hamilton held
out his hand. “That’s why I am going into politics. We
are going to fight that kind, you and Ln.
“Do you believe me?” asked Lisa’s father. “Nothing
but my word?”
“Of course I do!” said Hamilton heartily.
“Your father doesn’t. It’ll crush my Lisa—but I’ll
ferret this thing out, I’ll get to the bottom of it—”
He stumbled down the avenue, his shoulders sagging,
his head bent, looking back every little while at the lightsCROSSED WIRES
253
in the upper story. As he approached his machine, his
feet sank in newly turned earth. He turned his flash on
it, then drove slowly back to Napa.
He left his machine at the garage. The car next to his
was a roadster of the same make as Holt’s. Wintermute
opened his methodical notebook which carried the license
numbers of his assistants. It was Holt’s machine.
The hotel was a dark and indistinguishable mass blan-
keted by the low, drifting fog. Wintermute was ap-
proaching it from the rear. A red light flared out of an
upper window.
“Fire!” he thought, and started running.
Above him rose the fire escape. Silhouetted against the
red light a man’s figure stood; an instant only, then be-
gan a swift descent.
“Thief!” muttered Wintermute, and crept closer to
the iron ladder.
Almost simultaneously the two men jumped. They
fell struggling on the sidewalk, Wintermute got his fin-
gers around the fellow’s throat. His left hand secured
his flashlight, which discovered the Portuguese of the
lobby.
“So that was your game. Loot!”
A strangling sound came from the foreigner. Winter-
mute loosened his hold.
“He mek me mad, that fellar,” gurgled the Portuguese.
“He mek me awful mad.”
“You’re going right back with me. We’ll see what
you’ve been up to.”
“He mek me awful mad,” babbled the man.
Half dragging, half pushing him, Wintermute got him254
IF TODAY BE SWEET
into the lobby. It was empty. From the upper story
came a babel of voices. His prisoner was making fran-
tic efforts to escape. “Hey, there! Help!” called Win-
termute. Steps came running.
Followed by a half dozen men, the clerk hurried down
the stairs. In dawning comprehension he stared at the
captive.
“He was coming down the fire escape when I nabbed
him,” Wintermute began when the clerk cut in:
“This’ll take a rope from Roedel’s neck all right.”
“Roedel?”
“Richard. A man was murdered upstairs. No one
saw it but Roedel. You’ve saved his life, all right.”
“My God!” breathed Wintermute. “My God!” The
tears ran down his cheeks.
“Lisa! They needn’t stoop— My little Lisa! My
little Lisa!”CHAPTER XXXIV
THE TEST
NrO one slept that night at Frascati.
Crispi was discovered, after Wintermute left,
in the shed back of the men’s eating-house;
drunk or drugged. George Roedel, with Hamilton, who
resigned his place when Emilie and Chow appeared, la-
bored over the faithful old servant, anger and grief merg-
ing into a confounding sense of responsibility and self-
reproach. Possibly death or blindness to be the reward
of impeccable, unflagging service for Frascati, for the
Roedels? for himself, George Roedel, who prided himself
on the benefits that followed such service?
Emilie was trying to get a doctor, to locate Dr. Shep-
pard, when Wintermute’s summons to Napa came. Roe-
del did not tell his wife that it concerned Rich*but he
could see that she knew, that she had been to the boy’s
empty room. Crispi’s mute face, his wife’s eyes, Winter-
mute’s mysterious message, made that dark morning ride
one of automatic motions, the confusion in his soul of a
piece with the fog which his headlights but dimly pene-
trated.
Hamilton, who had already ascertained that Elizabeth
was not in her room, that her bed was untouched, re-
mained with the prostrate Milanese until Dr. Sheppard
came. Then he threw himself into a machine and broke
every speed and traffic law on his way to Casa Blanca.
255256
IF TODAY BE SWEET
Sheppard had told him the night’s tragedy. Even now
his mother was waiting at home for her boy.
Dawn was beginning to spread a gray light through
the valley as he reached the Dolliver’s. The Korean de-
clared that his mistress was not home, that nobody was in
the house. Hamilton paid no heed to the fellow’s loyal
lying, and pushed him aside, taking three steps at a time
to the upper floor. He battered on the closed door until
at last it was slowly opened to him.
Even in that half light, her face showed the ravages of
bitter weeping. She had not been to bed. He took her,
resisting, tragic, into his arms.
“Disgrace! Stooping? What is she talking about?
She doesn’t know yet that it is the other way round!
That we’re on our knees to your father—why, if it
hadn’t been for him—darling, let me take you home and
tell you about it on the way! ”
But she would not look at him, would not hear of
going with him to Frascati— “Never again would she
see Frascati!”—until he told her about Rich. And then
she wanted to be at once with Emilie.
They talked little on the way back. Once she said
that she understood now many things which for a long
time had been confusing, troubling her. About O’Ryan,
about Holt. Why her father, hating those two men
as she knew he did, should be forced to work with
them.
Every time a little shuddering sigh escaped her, Ham-
ilton would reach for her hand and would press it until
she could smile at him again.THE TEST
257
The sun rose as they entered St. Helena. Its level
rays struck flatly against their eyes. Hamilton dropped
into a more sober pace.
Leaving the town, she said:	“It’s queer you didn’t
distrust me, ever, knowing what you must have known
all this time, about father, about O’Ryan. Didn’t you
ever think I was ferreting? Even last night, not once
didn’t you distrust me?”
His smile enveloped her. “You?” he exclaimed.
When he stopped in front of the house, she jumped out
ahead of him, and ran up the steps. She found mother
and son in the living room, before the dead fire, Emilie
holding Richard’s hands. She kissed Rich,||-it was the
first time she had kissed him, but neither his lips nor his
eyes would meet hers.
“How’s Crispi?” asked Hamilton, who had entered
behind her.
“He can hear us. He can’t see us,” whispered Emilie,
clinging to Elizabeth. “He may never see us again. Dr.
Sheppard thinks he will be blind. Not intentional
cruelty, maybe. Perhaps it was the only stuff those men
could get safely.”
“Where’s father?” asked Hamilton, a curious expres-
sion on his face as he watched his mother with the woman
who was to be his wife.
“In his study. He wants to be alone,” muttered Rich.
“He wanted to see Elizabeth when she came,” added
Emilie.
Elizabeth was the only one to whom George Roedel
showed tenderness that day. When Hamilton told him258
IF TODAY BE SWEET
that she was there, he called her into his library, and held
out his arms to her.
“My dear,” he said.
Like a child she went to him.
“Hamilton told me why you ran away. If it weren’t
for your father, there’d be a rope round my boy’s neck
this minute. Nothing could have saved him if that fel-
low had made his way into the hills. No one else had
seen him; even Rich and Dave lying there, drunk—”
He shut out the picture, deliberately. “Hamilton told
you about the telegram Holt sent your father, no? Of
the note-book that was found on Holt, the program—no
names, but, of course, O’Ryan’s at the bottom of it.”
He related the story of the night.
She raised tear-heavy eyes to him. “You are not try-
ing to comfort me?”
“My dear!” he said again.
When she left him, he locked himself once more in
his room. He refused to join them at the breakfast
table. Chow left a tray on the floor at his door. At
lunch time Emilie and Hamilton, and then Chow, and
last Elizabeth, tried vainly to make him come out. It
was four o’clock when he opened his door and called for
Hamilton.
Because of that locked door, the tensity of the night
did not abate. Hamilton had been occupied, finding new
men; having the opening in the wall of the cellar closed;
interviewing and being interviewed; talking to Crispi
and the oculist, who at last got there from San Francisco.
The strain was telling on Rich—a suddenly mature and
sober Richard—and on Emilie, who would not let iiimTHE TEST
259
I out of her sight. Once in a while Elizabeth would leave
them and slip out to see Crispi.
Once, her father telephoned. He was going back to the
city; he had telegraphed her mother to meet him there.
It was only just, he explained, that she should be the one
to decide whether he should go on struggling against odds
to make his position into a splendid, needed service, or
if he should give it up. Then he would come back to
see his Lisa. His voice sounded old and sad.
Hamilton had been with his father but a few minutes
when he opened the door and called to them. All were
to come in. Elizabeth hung back, but Emilie put her
arm around the girl’s waist, whispering:	“You are one
of us, Elizabeth!”
Rich took the hand she stretched out to him, and
simply, like two children, hand in hand, they went into
the library, where George Roedel still sat at his desk.
After Hamilton had closed the door, Roedel told them
of the challenge that had come to him in the night. For
some time he had been planning to have some such talk
with them, but he had been holding back, because of
Hamilton, because of his political ambitions. It had not
seemed fair to Hamilton. But now he could no longer
hesitate. He wanted to get rid of his wine. “Dyna-
mite!” He wanted to empty his cellar.
There was a little muffled cry from Emilie.
“It doesn’t mean that I have changed my opinion about
prohibition. I think the method’s wrong. Hamilton
thinks he has hit on a better one. But the law is here.
I have always believed, I have tried to te^ch the boys,
when they were young, that the test of a man’s citizen-260
IF TODAY BE SWEET
ship is the way he treats a law he does not like. Over-
night that belief has become, a challenge to me. I have
failed in my citizenship.”
“Oh, no, papa!” cried Emilie, watching him, her eyes
full of worship.
“All of us agree that it is wrong to break laws.” He
looked away from Rich, who was staring at his hands.
“But what if I make it easy for other people to break
them? Keeping a temptation in sight, helping other men,
younger, or weaker, to break the law. And the law is
here. While it is here, and the wine is here, Frascati
will always be such a temptation.”
All of them were now looking at him except Hamilton
who was watching Elizabeth’s face.
“I have talked it out with Hamilton,” went on Roe-
del. “He has a fair chance, men have told me, to make
the coming legislature. This is a wet county. It will
ruin his chance if we should take this stand, as it would
seem, for prohibition. He is willing to lose his chance.”
“I’m glad to do it! I’m not in a hurry. And I’m
already enough of a politician to know that this—
gesture, I might call it, of father’s will give me a wonder-
ful advertising! Anyway, I vote to empty the vats!”
Roedel turned his glance .on the little woman who was
still smiling beatifically up at him.
“Tell them your plan, dad,” said Hamilton, moving
over to the window seat where sat a sad, subdued Rich.
He took the seat next his brother.
“Someone gave me the idea in Sacramento, at the
legislature; it’s simple. The only' trouble is that it’sTHE TEST
261
spectacular, melodramatic. To turn the vats into the
creek—”
“Why, then, it could be done right off!” exclaimed his
Emilie. “We could sleep once more, papa!”
Suddenly, Elizabeth the reserved, the self-controlled,
sobbed aloud. Covering her face with her handkerchief,
she ran from the room. No one followed her.
The family soberly discussed the details of the plan.
Roedel was pleased that all of them wanted it done right
away. Hamilton got the sheriff, Lacey, on the tele-
phone, and reported that he would come out at once.
Before they sat down to dinner, it was arranged that
the vats were to be emptied the following night,Rafter
midnight. Lacey had promised to have his best men
watching the creek, assuring Roedel and Hamilton that
not one of those men would leak.
Before Chow’s gong sounded, Roedel had a few min-
utes again to himself. He had been watching his
younger son; watching, wondering. Could a man change
overnight? Could a great shock like that sober him?
The old Rich would have risen to the pageantry of the
last chapter of the grape, Dry Creek running red to the
sea! But the new Rich had talked of vats and of pipes
and precautions.
His poem, George Roedel’s, the German’s! This to be
a pledge as well as a test of his citizenship; leading the
way perhaps for younger men. A flag or tribute; the
red current of a life’s activity on its way to the blue, to
the white froth of the sea! George Roedel, the German!CHAPTER XXXV
TRAMPLED VINEYARDS
AT five o’clock the next afternoon, Lacey tele-
phoned to say that everything was “all set.”
That his best men were detailed to guard Dry
Creek that night, from Frascati to the river. They
would be at their stations at eleven o’clock. Any time
after that, the vats could be opened.
At Frascati the pipe already laid by Holt’s routed
men, connected the system of vats, and with the creek.
At midnight a sluggish trickle started on its way. A
little later into Dry Creek was running a current that
looked like blood.
In the house, the two women sat before the fire, hold-
ing each other’s hands. In a room upstairs lay Crispi,
his eyes bandaged. Roedel stood alone on the crusher
platform, and watched the work of a lifetime pass.
The secret was too big for one of Lacey’s trusted
squad. It was an opportunity which would never come
again, and “today is sweet!” During the day, he visited
several of the homes which bordered the creek; before
nightfall he had closed enough deals to make himself
independent of tomorrow.
His visit plunged each home into unusual activity,
involving empty casks, and bottles and cellars and caves.
The preparations were intense but incredulous. Few be-
262TRAMPLED VINEYARDS
263
lieved that at the last minute the stream would flow.
But the gamble was worth taking.
Pasquale was thrown into a fierce flurry. The friendly
visit sent him down at once to study his section of creek.
He chose the place which his boys wanted to turn into a
swimming pool; “next spring, when the creek begins to
flow.” At one point, the sides of the bank were steep
and high. It would not take long, he thought, to close
that neck of space. Unless he could dam the creek, he
could not save enough of the flowing wine to pay the
sheriff’s man his commission. He had no one he could
trust to help ,him. He had brought only a few casks and
bottles down from the mountain.
Feverishly throughout the day he labored, closing the
gap with stones and sandbags. His boys had to help
him. In the cabin, under the trees, the deserted baby
cried itself to sleep, waked, and cried itself to sleep again.
All morning, driven by Pasquale, the boys filled sacks and
dragged heavy rocks to the rising dam. Towards noon
they grew sleepy and begged to rest, but Pasquale raged
at them. He would flog the first boy who stopped.
Manuel, the eldest boy, heavy with sleep, began to
sing the song Miss Hathorn had taught him at school.
The younger boys had the tune but not the words.
Manuel recalled them. The happy coincidence reached
their dull minds. “Build it up with sticks and stones.”
For an hour longer the joke kept the drowsiness at bay.
For an hour a lusty chorus sang:	“Build it up with
sticks and stones, my fair lady.”
“Only there ain’ no fair lady,” said Domenichi, mean-
ing Miss Hathorn.264
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“Nobody but me to cook and wash dishes,” sadly
amended Manuel.
Relentlessly the sun shone on their tired backs, beat-
ing into their unshielded eyes. Swaying, nodding to-
wards sleep, they toiled and sang. Pasquale, his face
steaming, kept stern roll call. Every time a child wept,
or hurt himself, or talked of food, he would say:
“Bimeby. Bimeby we will have supper, with vino. But
not lazy boys. Lazy boys get nothing.”
At two o’clock, he gave them five minutes to get a
slice of bread and a cup of wine from the house, and to
give milk to the baby. To keep track and control of
them, he sent each boy alone. He himself would not
stop to go to the house. Manuel had to bring him his
thick slices of bread and cheese, and his jug of wine.
At five, Pietro fell down the bank. He bawled until
Pasquale in fury sent him home. A few minutes later,
Domenichi had a similar deliberate accident, and he
wailed louder than Pietro had done. Manuel began to
break down into tears, and, cursing, Pasquale sent them
all home, telling them to get the supper, and to tend the
baby who could now be heard, even at the creek.
An hour later, when he reached the shack, Manuel
was holding a screaming, convulsive baby. There was
no supper on the table. The other boys had fallen asleep
on their cots, their clothes still on.
“Jesus Christ, what a family I got!” stormed Pasquale.
He sat down alone to the supper he had to collect for him-
self. The baby kept on screaming. He hurried his
meal, glad to leave the hut, where the dishes were stand-
ing about dirty and the flies were swarming.TRAMPLED VINEYARDS
265
“What a family I got!”
When darkness came, he had to stop work on the dam.
He had other things to do. He was no longer sure of his
footing. The sides of the bank were slippery as well as
steep.
The little vineyard had once belonged to a dairyman
who had carved out of the rocky hillside a cave, a natural
refrigerator for his butter and milk. Through the cave
ran a cold water spring. The surplus water spread out
over the ground and down the bank of the creek. Out
of the crypt Pasquale dragged his casks and bottles.
He had brought down a rope from the house, and an
old windlass, salvage from the mountain, and had rigged
before the shadows fell, a sort of crude machinery, to
bring the filled casks from the creek to the cave. He
made several trips to the house, taking drinks to steady
him, to give him the strength to go on. He would then
lumber down to the creek.
Towards midnight, Manuel brought scared eyes down
to the dam. He thought the baby was having a fit. It
wouldn’t take its milk; it wouldn’t stop screaming. He
couldn’t hold it any longer. He was afraid he would
fall asleep and drop it. Or fall asleep and let it die.
“Die!” cursed the wine-maker, his face purpling.
“Whose fault’d it be if it died? Your mother don’t
care nothing. If she was any account she’d a be here
now, helping me. If my children were any good, they’d
be helping me. Not worth their salt. Leave a baby for
a man to look after! That ain’ man’s work! She
wasn’t any good. Always pulling the long face, and mak-
ing people sorry for her. Who labored to get the food.266
IF TODAY BE SWEET
they ate, he’d like to know? She’d made everybody
hate him. Was she who done that.”
“Come and look at the baby,” persisted Manuel.
“I won’t and I can’t!” bellowed Pasquale. “What’s
the world coming to when women run away from their
husbands?”
Manuel carried his heavy little legs back to the cabin.
The screams of the baby could be heard when he opened
the door.
“Jesus Christ, what a family!” cried Pasquale. His
work began to go wild.
Every few minutes he would clamber down the sides of
the bank to feel the creek’s surface. At last his fingers
came back wet; his lantern showed them red.
In a few minutes the stream was running steadily.
And all at once it came with a rush, threatening the
hastily made dam. Pasquale’s haste was making him
stumble. He stopped for a minute to look at the gal-
lons of good wine running over the brink.
He got down on his knees and fell to lapping up the
stuff with his hands. Then he got to work again, talk-
ing aloud to the darkness.
“Jesus Christ, what fools they were, up there! They
were crazy, the goats. Scared, that was what they were!
Scared for fear someone else might get hurt at the cel-
lar, one of theirselves. But half a million gallons of
Tvine! Jesus Christ!”
He had filled two of the casks. Three of his fingers
lad been badly crushed in the closing of the bungholes.
He was a long time getting the casks into the cave. AndTRAMPLED VINEYARDS	267
all the time, the bright red stream was running over the
dam, wasting itself in its run to the sea.
He was getting the third cask into the cave when his
foot slipped on a wet, crushed fern. His fingers clutched
at the weeds of the slippery slope, then wildly, blindly at
the rope over the windlass which began to unwind. He
started to roll, the cask pushing him, the rope entangling
his legs and his arms.
He was grasping frantically at wisps of grass, digging
his fingers into the slippery soil as he plunged. Sud-
denly the cask struck his arm. His right hand was help-
less in torture, his left was caught by the rope. Below
him the red current was running.
Down and down he fell, the cask pursuing him. Then
it struck him. It pinioned him to the creek bed.
They found him there the next day, his boys, as they
came singing down to the creek that was once again dry,
singing:	“Build it up with sticks and stones! Sticks
and stones!”CHAPTER XXXVI
FOREVER
WO months later, the two families were standing
on the deck of one of the Japanese liners, wait-
ing for the. signal which would send visiting
ashore. Mary Hathorn was also there, clinging
affectionately to the arm of Emilie Roedel.
George Roedel had just announced, going up the gang-
plank, that the party was properly coupled. “Ilka lassie
has her laddie!” A soft pressure of his Emilie’s hand
stopped him. Mary Hathorn’s pink cheeks were more
deeply colored than the roses she was carrying for Emilie.
His satisfaction with life deepened. “So,” he mur-
mured, relapsing towards the habit of his fatherland
which charges the word of two letters with interrogation,
exclamation, reminiscence and philosophy. “So!”
On deck, he flung his arm around his little wife’s shoul-
ders. Too small, Emilie, for a big man’s arm com-
fortably to span her waist! His fingers, passing Mary
Hathorn’s shoulder, patted her gently.
“Of course, everyone knows this is a bridal party,” he
'chuckled.* “But I wonder if they aren’t making a mis-
take in the bride? They are thinking that it is one of
these young things!”. He sent a mischievous glance to-
wards the blushing Mary. “Who would suspect mother
and me of being the honeymooners?”
Emilie smiled contentedly over her violets and roses
268
T
friendsFOREVER
269
at her beloved lord. Her books were packed carefully
in her trunk; her notebooks were in the suitcase Rich
was carrying. Her secret was for a short time longer
her own.
“Thirty years from now it will be your turn,” Roedel
told Hamilton and Elizabeth, who looked as though they
were still in church.
“Perhaps sooner 1” responded his son, his eyes not leav-
ing the face of the woman who but a few minutes before
had turned upon him that wonderful look of faith as she
promised to love him until death. “Elizabeth and I may
get tired of politics before then. We may want to shift
Frascati back to the giant’s shoulders. “He turned a
swift smile towards his father. “Who can tell?”
The gong sounded. Emilie lifted her face to Mary
Hathorn. “It’s not all happiness going,” she whispered,
“leaving my boy alone. Help him, Mary!”
“He loves his work. He likes the men on that paper.
Oh, I know it’s going to be all right!” she answered into
Emilie’s armful of flowers.
“Two years?” asked Wintermute as he said good-bye
to Roedel. Emilie had turned to say good-bye to Eliza-
beth’s mother, and then to Elizabeth. For her boys were
to come last, Hamilton whom she was leaving so serenely,
and then her baby, her beautiful Rich.
“No promises,” laughed Roedel. “When one starts
honeymooning after thirty years, who can tell where he
will go?”
His last word was to be for Elizabeth. He held both
her hands as he kissed her forehead. “Good-bye,
Beatrix.”270
IF TODAY BE SWEET
“You have never told me why!” she cried.
“That’s Hamilton’s secret,” replied Roedel.
“Hamilton’s?”
“All on shore!” Wintermute began to marshal them
towards the gangway.
“They’ll want to be by themselves, Elizabeth, Ham,”
whispered Rich to Mary. “Let’s us slip off. Lunch and
a show. I don’t have to show up at the paper till five
tonight.”
“Wait till the ship swings out,” she answered. “Your
mother will be looking for you.”
They waved until the liner was moving towards the end
of the piers, gliding into the outer arm of the bay. Then
four of them went in search of their parked car, aban-
doning the lost couple.
“We can take you home,” offered Hamilton as he
helped Mrs. Wintermute into the tonneau. From that
day on, the front seat by his side was always to be Eliza-
beth’s. “Or is there any other place you want to go to?”
“We will jump out at the foot of Market street. We’ll
take a car uptown. We haven’t decided what we will
do with the rest of this exciting day.” Wintermute was
striving to catch his wife’s eye.
“Won’t you take lunch with us?” she was beginning
before he could stop her. “Surely, we should give Eliza-
beth her wedding breakfast! You two haven’t yet
thought of food, or where you will get it!”
Elizabeth was answering, but Hamilton interrupted
her.
“I think we can catch that next boat if we hurry. So
if you don’t mind being dropped at the cars, Mrs. Winter-FOREVER
271
mute! We’ll have to speed to make it. Slam that door,
please, Mr. Wintermute.”
“We’ll go to the boat with you,” insisted Madge.
After they had made their place in the waiting line
of cars at the Napa boat, Wintermute held his daughter
in his arms for a long, last, solemn moment of belong-
ing. “My little Lisa!”
“Would he remember,” she whispered, “that he was to
be happy if he wanted to keep her so? And—what she
had told him, of his having succeeded, of her pride in
him? She would never have met Hamilton if it had
not been for him. She owed him even that!”
“We must start!” cried Hamilton. Wintermute stood
waving to her as the car moved on to the boat.
They sat in the machine on the automobile deck, for-
getting until they reached Vallejo that they had had no
lunch and an unconscious breakfast. But they voted
to wait for Chow’s collection of desserts.
“It’s been wonderful, discovering that we feel the same
about things,” said Elizabeth. “I was almost afraid to
tell you that I couldn’t have a wedding; how vulgar they
are to me. Suppose you had wanted a wedding trip!”
“W hat tremors people must hide who don’t know, who
are not sure!” he supplemented. “I looked at you, in
church, wondering at your courage! Promising to love
me, forever!”
“What about yourself, sir?” she returned.
“I’m going to answer that question, at Frascati. I’m
going to tell you, show you, why dad calls you Beatrix
She sat silent, every now and then touching his arm,272
IF TODAY BE SWEET
and looking up into his beloved face. Always the won-
derful smile ready for her!
Only one thing occurred to mar the happy journey.
On the outskirts of Napa county, they passed a stalled
machine in which sat a blind, helpless figure. Under the
car, in the dust of the road, struggling with a jack and
a spare tire, was Dolan. Hamilton was smiling over the
comic agony on the man’s face when he felt Elizabeth
shiver away from his side.
His fingers sought hers.
“We won’t let that cloud our day, darling?”
She sent a glance back towards the stranded car.
“Ought we to help them?” she asked.
“Help them to—Hades, where they belong!” exploded
Hamilton. “And that’s my job, but not today! Today,
yours and mine, Lisa!”
The winter sun met them at Vallejo with its benedic-
tion. It was still warm when they turned into the avenue
at Frascati.
Hamilton helped her out of the car. “Promise to wait
at the top for me?”
He gathered up their bags and followed her. She was
watching him as he dropped the suitcases and opened the
door for her. Then taking her up in his arms, he car-
ried her over the threshold, and into his father’s study.
THE END







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