VI
Nor were the members of my father’s family content to remain upon a diet of cold bread and dried herring. My father’s older sister had lovely daughters, and one of them married a landed estate in Maryland. In 1906, in the days of The Jungle, when I went to Washington to see Theodore Roosevelt, I visited this cousin, who was now a charming widow and was being unsuccessfully wooed by Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana. Later she became the wife of General George Barnett, who commanded the United States Marine Corps in France. This marriage gave rise much later to a comic sequence, which required no change to be fitted into one of my novels. I will tell it here—even though it requires skipping thirty years ahead of my story.
It was at the height of the White Terror, after World War I, and one of the cities of which the American Legion had assumed control was Santa Barbara, California. I was so unwise as to accept an invitation to address some kind of public-ownership convention in that city, and my wife and I motored up with several friends, and learned upon our arrival that the Legion chiefs had decreed that I was not to be heard in Santa Barbara.
In the effort to protect ourselves as far as possible, we registered at the most fashionable hotel, the Arlington—shortly afterward destroyed by an earthquake. Upon entering the lobby, the first spectacle that met our anxious eyes was a military gentleman in full regalia: shiny leather boots, Sam Browne belt, shoulder straps and decorations—I don’t know the technical names for these things, but there was everything to impress and terrify. “He is watching you!” whispered my wife, and so he was; there could be no doubt of it, the stern military eye was riveted upon my shrinking figure. There has always been a dispute in the family as to whether I did actually try to hide behind one of the big pillars of the hotel lobby. My wife said it was so, and I was never permitted to spoil her marital stories.
The military gentleman disappeared, and a few minutes later came a bellboy. “Are you Mr. Sinclair?” I pleaded guilty, and was told: “There is a lady who wishes to speak to you in the reception room.” “Is it an ambush?” I thought. I had been warned not to go anywhere alone; there were rumors that the Ku Klux Klan was after me, as well as the Legion. (This proved not to be true; I was shortly afterward invited to join the Klan!)
In the reception room sat a lady, none other than my cousin Lelia, somewhat plump, but as lovely as any lady can be with the help of both nature and art. How glad we were to see each other! And how much gossip we had to exchange after sixteen years! “You must meet my hubby,” she said, and led me into the lobby—and who should “hubby” be but the stern-eyed general! Whatever displeasure he may have felt at having a revolutionary cousin-in-law he politely concealed, and we discussed the weather of southern California in the most correct booster spirit.
Presently the general reminded his wife that the military machine of the United States Government was awaiting his arrival in San Francisco; they had some three hundred and fifty miles to drive that night. But the Southern beauty shook her proud head (you see I know the language of chivalry) and said, “I haven’t seen my cousin for sixteen years.” So the general paced the lobby in fierce impatience for two hours, while Lelia chatted with my wife and my socialist bodyguard—a millionaire woman friend of my wife, about whom I shall have much to tell later on. Did I remember the time when I was romping with Kate, and put a pillow on Kate’s head and sat on it, and when they pulled me off she was black in the face? Yes, I remembered it Kate was married to a civil engineer, Walter was ill—and so on.
At last I saw my childhood playmate off in a high-powered military car, with a chauffeur in khaki and a guard to ride at his side, both with holsters at their belts; most imposing. It was fine local color for a novelist—and incidentally it was a knockout for the American Legion chiefs of Santa Barbara. Since I was cousin-in-law to the commander in chief of this military district, it was impossible to prevent my speaking in favor of the public ownership of water power in California!