“Who is Mrs. Gartz?” asked Craig; and the awe-stricken secretary replied, “Oh, my dear, she is the richest woman in Pasadena.”
Craig said, “Well, bring her here.”
The secretary, dismayed, responded, “She said for you to come to her.”
The secretary didn’t know Craig very well, but she learned about her right there. “If she wants to meet me,” said Craig, “she will come to me.” And that was that.
When the meeting was over, the secretary came back, and with her was a large, magnificent lady of the kind that Craig had known all through her girlhood. The lady was introduced; and, of course, she knew another lady when she met one. More especially, she knew a lovely Southern voice and manner; so she asked if she might come to see us, and Craig said that she might. Craig made no apology for her living room that had only three ragged chairs in it—the biggest one for the large rich lady and the other two for Craig and myself.
Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz was the elder daughter of Charles R. Crane, plumbing magnate of Chicago, dead then for several years. He had been a newspaper celebrity, not only because he was one of the richest men in America but because he differed from most rich men in being talkative and in voicing original opinions. He was particularly down on college education, insisting that it was all wasteful nonsense. He hadn’t had one himself, and look where he had got!
Mrs. Gartz was an elegant lady with a haughty manner and a tender heart. She had had many sorrows, which we learned about in the course of time. She had lost two of her children in a theater fire in Chicago. She still had a son and a daughter, both of whom she adored, but they gave her little happiness. She had a soft heart and an overfull purse, and she was preyed upon freely—all that we learned soon. But there was one person who would never prey upon her, and that was Mary Craig Sinclair.
III
This new friend was the most curiously frank person we had ever known. She looked around at our new establishment and said, “Why do you live like this?” “We have to,” said Craig, and no more. “Don’t your husband’s books sell?” demanded the visitor. “They have sold in the past,” said Craig, “but he has spent all his money on the socialist movement. He always does that, I’m sorry to say.”
Mrs. Gartz obtained our promise to come and see her, also permission to send her car for us. Then she got into a magnificent limousine and told the uniformed chauffeur to drive her downtown to a furniture store. Early the next morning came a van, and two men unloaded a set of parlor furniture upholstered in blue velvet.