CHAPTER XCI

CONCLUSION

For years thereafter Frank was haunted by the wraiths of vain conjecture--morbid questionings of what might have occurred if he had caught the train for Monterey that afternoon. For he was not to seek Aleta at Carmel. An official of the Exposition Company met Frank on the street. They talked a shade too long. Frank missed the train by half a minute. He shrugged his shoulders petulantly, found his father at the club. That evening they attended a comedy.

He was not yet out of bed when the office telephoned him the next morning. "Didn't he know Norah France rather well?" the City Editor inquired. Frank admitted it sleepily.

Had he a picture of her?

Frank denied this. No. He didn't know where one might be obtained. Had Norah printed a poem or something? W-h-a-a-t!

The voice at the telephone repeated its message. "Norah France was found dead in her room at Carmel this morning. Suicide probably. Empty vial and a letter.... The Carmel authorities haven't come through yet."

Frank began to dress hurriedly. Again the telephone rang. Wire for him. Should they send it up? No, he would be down in a minute.

The telegram was from Aleta. It read: "Am returning noon train. See you at my apartment six P.M."

Stanley did not see his father in the dining room. He gulped a cup of coffee and went down to the office. He had planned an editorial for today. But his mind was full of Norah France just now.

Poor child! How she had loved life in her strangely vivid moods! And how she had brooded upon its injustice in her alternating tempers of depression! He remembered now Aleta's mention of a love affair that turned out badly. Aleta had gone down to hearten her friend from these dolors. And he recalled, with a desperate, tearing remorse, a casual-enough remark of Norah's: "You always cheer me up, Frank, when you come to see me."

He recalled, as well, her comment, months before, that she would awake from her dream in one way or another. Well, she had fulfilled her promise. God grant, he thought passionately, that the awakening had been in a happier world.

At six o'clock he went to Aleta's apartment. She had not yet arrived but presently she came. He saw that she had been crying. She could scarcely speak.

"Frank, let us walk somewhere," she said. "I can't go upstairs; it's too full of memories. And I can't sit still. I've got to keep moving--fast."

They strode off together, taking a favorite walk through the Presidio toward the Beach. From a hill-top they saw the Exposition buildings rising from what once had been a slough.

Aleta paused and looked down.

"It's easier to bear--up here," she spoke in an odd, weary monotone, as if she were thinking aloud. "This morning ... I think, if Norah had left anything in the bottle ... I'd have taken it, too."

"Why did she do it?" Frank asked quickly.

Aleta faced him. "Norah loved a man ... he wasn't worthy. She could see no hope. I wished, Frank, that you might have been there yesterday. You used to cheer her so!"

"Don't!" he cried out sharply.

The Exposition progressed marvelously. Often Frank and Aleta climbed the winding Presidio ascent and gazed upon its growing wonders.

"Beauty will come out of it all," she said one day. "Out of our travail and sorrow and sin. I wish that Norah was here. She loved beauty so!"

"Perhaps she is here.... Who knows?"

She looked at him startled. He was staring off across the Exposition site, toward the Golden Gate, where a great ship, all its sails spread, swam mysteriously luminous with the sunset.

"It's beautiful," he said, a catch in his voice. "It's like life ... coming home in the end ... after long strivings with tempest and wave. I wonder--" he turned to her slowly, "Aleta, will it be like that with us?"

"Home!" she spoke the word tenderly. "I wonder what it's like ... I've never known."

He drew his breath sharply. "Aleta--will you marry me?"

Her eyes filled but she did not answer. Presently she shook her head.

He looked at her dumbly, questioning. "You don't love me, Frank," she said at last.

He could not answer her. His eyes were on the ground. A hundred thoughts came to his mind; thoughts of an almost overwhelming tenderness; thoughts of reverence for her; of affection, comradeship. But they were not the right thoughts. They were not what she wanted.

Presently they turned and went toward the town together.

* * * * *

A Fairyland of gardens and lagoons sprung into existence. Great artists labored with a kind of beauty-madness in its making. Nine years after San Francisco lay in ashes its doors opened to the world. From Ruins had grown a Great Dream, one so beautiful and strong, it seemed unreal.

Aleta and Frank went often. To them the Exposition was a rhapsody of silent music and they seldom broke its harmonies with speech.

Frank had not recurred to the question he had asked on Presidio Hill. But out of it had come an unspoken compact, a comradeship of spirit that was very sweet.

They stood one day on the margin of Fine Arts Lagoon, gazing down at the marvelous reflections of the great dome and its pillared colonnade. "Frank," the girl said almost in a whisper, "I believe that Love is God's heart, beating, beating ... through the Whole of Life." He turned and saw that her eyes were radiant. "And I think that when we feel its rhythm in us, it's like a call. A call to--"

"What?" he asked abashed.

"Service.... Frank," she faced him questioningly, half fearful. "You'll forgive me, won't you? I--I'm going away."

She expected protest, exclamation. Instead he asked her, very quietly: "To Europe, Aleta? The Red Cross?"

"Yes," she said, surprised. "How did you know?"

"I--I'm going, myself. As a stretcher bearer."

"Then--" her eyes were stars, "you've felt it, too?"

He nodded.

* * * * *

On the deck of an outbound steamer stood two figures. The sky was gray. Drifts of fog hung plume-like over Alcatraz, veiled the Exposition domes and turrets in a mystic glory. Sometimes it was like a great white nothingness; then, as if by magic, Color, Forms and Beauty leaped forth like some startling vision from a Land of Make Believe.

The woman at the stern-rail stretched forth her arms. "Goodbye," her words were like a song, a song of heartbreak, mixed with exultation. "Goodbye, Oh my City of Dreams!"

"We will come back," said the man shakily. "We will come with new peace in our hearts."

"Perhaps," she replied, "but it will not matter. San Francisco will go on, big, generous, unafraid in its sins and virtues. Oh, Frank, I love it, don't you? I want it to be the greatest city in the world!"

He made no answer but he caught her hand and pressed it. The fog came down about them like a mantle and shut them in.