I
Dinner was coming to an end. The Chinaman, soft-footed in his
immaculate white, had just finished his circuit of the table, leaving
a tiny gold-rimmed coffee-cup at each of the four plates. Into hers
Letitia was lowering a lump of sugar, when a thought occurred to her,
and she dropped the sugar into the cup with a little splash, and
looking across at her vis-à-vis, said:
"Oh, John, I've been going to ask you half a dozen of times, and have
always forgotten: did you know that Colonel Ramsay Reed had a daughter?"
To see the effect of her question, she stretched forward a plump white
hand and tilted to one side one of the pink silk petticoats that veiled
the candle-flames. The obstruction removed, she looked with vivacious
interest at the person to whom she had addressed her query. He, too,
had just dropped his sugar into his coffee, and was stirring it
slowly, watching the little maelstrom in the cup.
"Colonel Ramsay Reed," he said, without looking up. "Yes, I think I've
heard something about his having a daughter. But why do you ask me?
Isn't Maud a much better person? She knows everything about everybody."
He glanced at his sister-in-law, the dark, brown-eyed woman, very
splendid in her white-and-yellow dress, who sat at the head of the
small table. It was just a family party--Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Gault,
Mrs. Mortimer's sister, Letitia Mason, and Mortimer's brother, John
Gault. Mrs. Gault, who seemed to be quite oblivious to the impertinence
of her brother-in-law's remark, answered smartly:
"I shouldn't be surprised to hear that Colonel Reed had daughters by
the dozens. Who knows really anything about those old bonanza men
who've lost their bonanzas? They drop out of sight, and nobody ever
hears of them again. Colonel Reed was in his glory before I was born."
This was a slight exaggeration. Mrs. Mortimer Gault had been born a
full thirty-eight years ago, in a house which now has a bakery beneath
and furnished rooms above, in the environs of North Beach. It was quite
fitting and proper that she should have first seen the light there,
as in that day North Beach was fashionable. But that this should have
occurred thirty-eight years ago was a subject she quietly ignored.
She was still so effective in her dark, quick-flashing style, so much
admired and so fond of being admired, that she turned her back on and
denied the thirty-eight years whenever she had the chance.
Her husband looked at her with indulgent and humorous appreciation of
her quickness.
"I don't see, if Colonel Reed has a daughter," he said, "what he keeps
her on. She can't live on the memory of his bonanza glories. The old
fellow hasn't got a cent in the world. White Pine scooped the last
dollar he had. When did his wife die?"
Letitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she
had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating
birthdays, answered:
"Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed's always been a widower ever since I can
remember."
"I remember hearing about his wife when I was a boy," said Mortimer.
"She was a young actress, and married the colonel when everything was
going his way. Then she died in a year or two of consumption. I didn't
know there was a child."
"She must be quite young, then," said Maud Gault. "What did you hear
about her, Letitia?"
"Nothing much; only that she was pretty, and lived in an old ramshackle
house somewhere across town, and that nobody knows anything about her.
One of the girls was talking about it the other day at Mamie Murray's
lunch, and I thought it was so funny, everybody knowing about Colonel
Reed, that he should have had a daughter that none of us had ever heard
of. That's why I asked John. He knows more of those queer, left-over
people than anybody else."
She again tilted the candle-shade and looked at John Gault. For
the first time since the conversation had turned on Colonel Reed's
daughter, he met her eyes. His were brown and deep-set, and being
near-sighted, he generally wore a pince-nez. He had taken this off,
and looked at Letitia with his eyes narrowed to mere slits, after the
manner of short-sighted people. Having finished his coffee, he was
leaning back, the candle-light striking a smooth gleam from his broad
expanse of shirt-bosom. The restless fire of diamonds broke the glossy
surface, for John Gault, like many rich Californians of a passing era,
clung to the splendid habits of the bonanza days. Sitting thus, he
looked a spare, muscular man verging on forty, with dark hair and an
iron-gray mustache.
"I don't know whether that's meant to be a compliment," he said, with
the lazy smile with which he generally treated Letitia's sallies. "Have
I got a larger collection of freaks than most people?"
"What did _you_ hear about Colonel Reed's daughter?" asked Maud Gault.
"Really, I don't recollect anything in particular," he said; "probably
just what Letitia heard--that she was pretty and lived somewhere across
town."
"If a man's going to remember everything he hears about girls that
are pretty and live somewhere across town, he'd have to get Professor
What's-his-name's Memory System down by heart," said Mortimer, pushing
back his chair. "Come, Maud, you don't want to sit here all night, do
you?"
They rose, and together, the rustling ladies first, passed through the
intervening hall into the drawing-room beyond. It was a warm, glossy,
much-upholstered room, with an appearance of overcrowded cheeriness.
Lamps casting halos of mellow light through beruffled silk shades like
huge primeval flowers, glowed from the corners and sent glistening
rays along the leaves of tropical plants. The ornaments disposed upon
the tables and mantel-shelves were numerous and interesting enough to
have claimed an afternoon's careful attention. There were mounds of
cushions on the divans, and sudden prolongations of the surroundings
in unexpected mirrors. Framed in the folds of the portières was the
bright, distant picture of the deserted dining-table, with its bloom of
candles and glint of glass and silver.
The small family party all knew one another so well, and so constantly
met for these little informal dinners, that when John Gault excused
himself on the ground of an evening engagement, no one criticized his
defection or urged him to stay. Letitia, who had put on her new pink
gauze dinner-dress that evening, was more hurt by the fact that he did
not comment upon its splendors than that he left so early. She was used
to his unceremonious inclusion of herself in the family party, whom he
called by their Christian names and treated with brotherly informality.
This evening, as usual, she went into the hall with him for a last
word or two while he put on his coat. Secretly she was hoping that he
would notice her dress; for if Letitia had a weakness, it was for rich
apparel. Fortunately she could indulge it. She had a fair fortune in
her own right, and being an orphan who made her home with her married
sister, her income was hers to spend as she pleased.
Standing under the hall light, she regarded Gault with grave attention
as he attempted, alone and unaided, to put on his coat. Then, seeing
the unequal nature of the struggle, she said suddenly, "Let me help
you, John," and taking the garment from him, shook it and held it out
to him by the collar.
He laughed, and thrusting an arm into the sleeve, said over his
shoulder:
"You're not only the most ornamental but the most useful person I know,
Letitia."
"Thanks," she responded sedately; "but I wouldn't have supposed you
thought I was so ornamental."
"Why not?" he answered, affecting as dramatic a surprise as was
possible in his position, with his second arm just thrust into the
sleeve.
"Because you never noticed me to-night at all," said Letitia, giving
the collar a settling jerk.
"Never noticed you?" He was able to turn round on her now, and regarded
her with exaggerated astonishment. "What do you mean? I noticed you
more than I did any one else."
"I didn't mean myself, exactly; I meant my gown."
"That shows how a feeling silence is thrown away on a woman. I noticed
it a dozen times; but just because I didn't say so you suppose I was
blind to it. How could I be?"
He stepped back and looked critically at Letitia standing where the
light of the hall lamp fell softly over her.
"But you know," he said, "it wouldn't be strange for a man not to
notice the dress, because the person who has it on is so much better
worth looking at than any dress."
Letitia's delight at this compliment could not be disguised. She
blushed and tried not to smile, and looked as childishly pleased as
a woman can who is five feet nine inches high, and has the massive
proportions and noble outlines of a Greek goddess.
She was, in truth, a fine creature, large, statuesque, and handsome,
as Californian women are handsome, with the beauty of form and color.
Viewed critically, her features were not without defects; but her
figure was superb in its type, her skin was flawless, and her naturally
rich coloring was still further intensified by the reddish hue that
had been imparted to her hair by some artificial means. In the full
panoply of evening dress there was something magnificently vivid,
almost startling, about her. One could imagine a stranger, who had come
suddenly upon her in a doorway or on a staircase, standing mute, with
caught breath, staring.
To-night, touched into higher brilliancy by the new pink dress, her
beauty even struck Gault's accustomed eye, and his compliment had
more sincerity in it than is usually found in those administered to
relations. Then, amused at her girlishly naïve pleasure, he bade her a
laughing good night, and without waiting for her response, opened the
door and let himself out.
The Mortimer Gaults lived in the newest and most fashionable part of
San Francisco. Two years before they had leased one of the houses that
have sprung up, alone or in groups of three or four, throughout that
quarter of the city where Pacific Avenue runs out along the edges of
the sand-hills. Here the undulating lines of the great dunes, dreaming
under the ceaseless hush, hush, hush of the wind sweeping through the
rank sea-grass, have been hidden under the march of progress. Large new
houses, shining with paint and bright with window-boxes, have settled
on the slopes, and now hold the sand down. A layer of earth and a hose
have transformed the haggard face of the dunes into gardens which would
be a mass of vegetation but for the French gardeners' restraining
shears.
The house rented by the Gaults, a solid, pale-hued building of the
colonial form of architecture, was large, new, and imposing. Flowers
drooped over its façade from many window-boxes. Its porch was verdurous
with great leafy plants growing in tubs and earthenware pots. In the
front there was a close-clipped strip of lawn, with neat borders and
a filamentosa palm, and the lower part of the bulging bay-window was
hidden by the close, fine foliage of an ivy geranium.
Faring down the street with a quick step, John Gault passed many such
dwellings, the homes of the city's well-to-do and wealthy. Here and
there an undrawn blind afforded him a glimpse of a glowing interior,
where the tall, shrouded lamp cast its light over a room as gaily
brilliant as the one he had just left. But his eye traveled over the
illuminated pane with unseeing preoccupation. He walked rapidly, and
with the undeviating glance of inward reflection. Once he stopped at a
corner lamp and looked at his watch. Then he hastened his steps, and a
few blocks farther on boarded a cross-town car.
The part of the city toward which he was going was of a very different
aspect and period. His car passed from the quiet gentility of the West
Side toward the hum and glare of the business quarter. It swept him
through streets full of the rank and ugly sidewalk life of a great city
after dark to where Market Street, the town's main artery, throbbed and
roared with the traffic of the night.
The line he had taken reached its terminus here, and he alighted, made
his way through the crowd and clangor of the wide thoroughfare, and
plunged into the streets beyond.
Here at once the wayfarer feels himself in a locality whence prosperity
and fashion have withdrawn themselves. The ill-lit streets, the small
and squalid shops, the sordid faces of the passers-by, tell their own
tale of a region fallen from grace. John Gault had too often passed
this way for the ruinous aspect of the surroundings to possess any
interest for him. With a thin thread of cigarette smoke streaming out
above his upturned collar, he passed on rapidly through the patches of
shadow and garish light from show-windows. People turned and looked
at him sharply, his noticeable figure being an unusual one in that
locality. To one watching it might have seemed that this curiosity
annoyed him, for he quickened his pace, and at the first side street
turned off to the left.
There were fewer wayfarers here; the lamps were far apart, and on
either hand the dark forms of huge houses, their façades showing only
an occasional light in an upper window, loomed vague and forbidding.
The dreariness of desertion seemed to hold them in a spell, as they
rose, brooding and black, from the dimness of overgrown gardens. This
had been one of the great streets in San Francisco's splendid heyday.
Here millionairedom had built its palaces and held its revels. John
Gault remembered some of them, and now his eye passed blankly over the
lines of darkened windows and the wide porticos where years before, on
his vacations from college, he had entered as a guest.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
How strange that the conversation should have taken that turn at
dinner! Could Letitia have heard anything? Impossible! Even if she
had, she was too simple-minded and direct to be so manoeuvering. This
was the seventh time he had been to see Viola Reed--the seventh time
in less than three months. What did he go for? He laughed a little
to himself at the question, and throwing his head back, blew a film
of cigarette smoke into the night. What did he go for? To pass the
evenings, that otherwise would have been idly passed in his own
rooms, or dully passed in society, or drearily passed in the pursuit
of amusements he had long wearied of, in the society of a girl who
pleased his critical taste, beguiled him of his boredom, and piqued his
interest and curiosity.
Yes, that was the secret of her attraction for him. She was not like
any one he had ever known before. She piqued his curiosity.
A picture of her rose before his mental vision, and with a shamefaced
laugh at his own sentiment, he threw his cigarette away. Letitia
had said she was pretty. Undoubtedly she was, but she was something
more than pretty. Refined, delicate, poetic--there was no word that
described it. If Letitia went about talking of her, other people would
want to see her. He resented the idea violently, and felt his anger
rising at the thought of the coarse curiosity and comment that would
suddenly surround her. Some one ought to stop Letitia from talking that
way.
"For," thought John Gault, as he turned a corner and came within view
of Colonel Reed's abode, "I am the prince who has found the Sleeping
Beauty."
The house, like many in that quarter of the city, was detached, and had
once been a dwelling with pretensions to gentility. Time and weather
had worked their will of it, and even under the kindly veil of night
its haggard dilapidation was visible. It sat back a few feet from the
street in a square of garden, where a tall dracæna shook its rustling
foliage to every breeze. There was a large flowering jasmine-tree by
the gate, that spread a sweet scent through the noisome airs of that
old and ill-drained quarter. The visitor softly opened the gate and
entered up a pathway flagged with squares of black-and-white stone that
were broken and uneven. From the front window--a wide bay shrouded
in vines--the light squeezed in narrow slits. John Gault pulled the
old-fashioned bell and stood listening to its jingling note.
There was a step in the passage within, and the light shone through
the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the front door on either
side. A key turned and the door was opened. In the aperture Viola Reed
stood with a kerosene lamp flickering in her hand. She held a piece of
light-colored material in the other hand. As her glance fell on the
visitor she made an instinctive movement as if to hide this.
"Oh, is it you?" she said. "Come in. I'm glad you've come!"
She uttered the sentences quickly, and was evidently embarrassed. Even
by the light of the smoky lamp Gault could see that she had flushed.
"I never thought of your coming to-night," she said, as she turned
to open the parlor door. "It's a great surprise. My father will be
delighted."
She held the lamp up while the visitor divested himself of his coat and
hung it on the chair that did duty as a hat-rack. In the dim hallway,
with its walls from which the paper had peeled in long strips, and the
stairway beyond, with the twine showing through the ragged carpet,
the man of the world in his well-groomed, well-dressed, complacent
perfection of finish, presented a curiously incongruous appearance.
The girl opened the door, and he followed her into the parlor. It was
a long room, divided in the middle by an archway, its lower end now
veiled in shadow. On a large table another lamp glowed, a bunch of
paper flowers hanging on one side of the globe to subdue the light.
The room gave an impression of lofty emptiness. The footsteps of the
visitor seemed to be flung back from its high, bare walls. The lamp
struck gleams of light from the gilded frame of a large mirror over the
chimney-piece, and here and there caught the running gold arabesques
which covered the wall-paper. There were a few wicker chairs drawn up
to the table, which was covered with the litter of amateur dressmaking.
In the single upholstered chair that the room boasted sat Colonel
Ramsay Reed.
With a loud exclamation of pleasure the colonel rose and greeted his
guest. He was a remarkable-looking man of sixty-five or seventy, fully
six feet in height, erect, alert, with a striking air of distinction in
his narrow, hawk-featured face, and a gaunt, angular figure. His white
hair flowed nearly to his shoulders, and his white mustache was in
singular contrast to the brown and leathery surface of his thin cheeks.
He wore a long wrapper of indeterminate hue, patched with materials
of different colors and patterns, and a pair of old leather slippers
that slipped off his heels when he walked. In his suave and urbane
courtesy he seemed to be serenely indifferent to the deficiencies of
his costume, folding his dressing-gown round his legs as he subsided
into his chair with the deliberate ease that a Roman senator might have
displayed in the arrangement of his toga of ceremony.
His daughter did not appear to share his composure; she was nervous
and embarrassed. She swept off the evidences of her dressmaking with
a few rapid movements, and took them away to the shadows of the far
end of the room, hung another paper flower over the blinding glare
of the second lamp, and, sitting by the table, let her glance stray
furtively about for further details that needed correcting. John
Gault, who appeared to be awarding a polite attention to the colonel's
conversational amenities, was conscious of her every movement.
Viola Reed was one of those women that nature seems to have intended
to make completely and satisfyingly beautiful, the intention having
been changed only at the last moment. The upper half of her head was
without a fault--the low forehead, the wonderful hair, thick and wavy,
and so instinct with life that every separate filament seemed to
stand out from its fellows, in color a warm, bright blond, and with
shorter hairs about the ears and temples which curled up in golden
threads. In strange contrast with this brilliant hair were level,
dark-brown eyebrows, that were low over large gray eyes. She had the
same dark-brown lashes, which grew wide apart and turned back, a rare
beauty, and one which imparts an expression of soft, wistful tenderness
to the eyes thus encircled.
Here Viola's beauty ended. Her other features were, at least,
inoffensive. She was tall and beautifully formed, but in the slenderest
mold. To the Californian ideal she was thin. But her movements were
distinguished by a supple grace denied to women of a more stately build
and proportion. To-night she wore a shirt-waist, washed out from its
original pink to a wan flesh-color, and a scanty black stuff skirt,
belted with a black ribbon. Gault, with his eyes fixed on the colonel,
was aware of the stealthy rearrangement she made of the ribbon round
her neck, and the movements of the investigating hand with which she
pushed back her loosened hair-pins.
As was her custom, she made little attempt to join in the conversation.
The evening settled down into a replica of its predecessors. The fact
that Gault was becoming a familiar figure in the bare front parlor did
not seem to abate the colonel's buoyant appreciation of him as a good
listener.
The younger man, with his glance on the floor and an expression of
polite attention on his face, found himself wondering, with inward
amusement, what his friends would say if they could have had a glimpse
of him, listening, silently and submissively, to the reminiscences
of Colonel Ramsay Reed. The conjecture called up such a picture of
incredulous astonishment and disbelief that a smile broke out on his
lips. Aware of its incongruity, he stole a quick, apprehensive look
at Viola. She was watching him with a surprise evidently tempered by
pain at the thought that his amusement might be evoked by her father's
garrulity. Gault's gravity became intense, and the colonel, who was too
engrossed in the joy of having secured a victim to notice anything,
went gaily on. He was launched on his favorite subject--the men he had
assisted to affluence in the early days.
"There's Jerry McCormick. You know where he is now? No need to ask
any one that; has been a member of Congress, can draw his check for
a million, his wife a leader of society, and his daughters marrying
English lords. You know them, of course?"
The visitor made an affirmative sign, and the colonel continued:
"Well, I made that man. When I first ran against McCormick he was
working in the mines up in Tuolumne, with the water squelching in
his boots. In those days a dollar to Jerry looked about as big as a
cart-wheel. His wife was glad enough to do a little washing, and his
daughter--the youngest ones weren't born then, but the eldest, the one
that married the English lord, was--used to run round barefoot, and
bring her father his dinner in a tin pail."
"I'm sure she doesn't know what a tin pail is now," said Gault, a
mental picture rising in his mind of the magnificent Lady Courtley as
he had seen her on her last visit to her parents.
"No," said the old man; "I hear she's one of the Vere de Veres. And
I can remember her, a little freckled-faced kid with her hair in her
eyes, hanging round the tunnel of the Little Bertha, waiting to give
her father his dinner."
"Do you know the younger McCormick girls, Miss Reed? Lady Courtley was
before your time," said Gault, in an attempt to draw Viola into the
conversation.
She looked surprised, and then gave a little laugh and shook her head.
"I've never even seen them," she answered.
"Oh, they don't know Viola," said the colonel--not with bitterness, but
as one who states a simple and natural fact; "the old woman's educated
them out of all that. But, as I was saying, I made their father.
He'd managed to scrape together a little pile, put it all in a small
prospect, and lost every nickel. He was just about dead broke, and came
to me crying--yes, crying--and said, 'Colonel Reed, there's only one
man in California whose advice I'd follow and whose opinion I'd trust.'
'Who's that?' said I, intending to help the poor devil to the best of
my ability. 'It's Ramsay Reed,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'if you'll
just put yourself in my hands, and do what I tell you, I'll set you on
your feet.' 'Colonel,' said he, 'say the word, and whatever it is, it
goes. You've got more financial ability in your little finger than all
the rest of 'em have in their whole bodies.' So I took him in hand."
The colonel paused, a reflective smile wrinkling the skin at the
corners of his eyes.
"You certainly seem to have made a success of his case," said Gault,
feeling that some comment was expected of him.
"Yes, yes," said the colonel; "I may say a great success. The poor
fellow's confidence in me made me determined to do my best. I used to
give him points--those were the days when I could give points. Told
him if he would follow the lead west of the Little Bertha--people had
hardly heard of the Little Bertha then--he'd strike it. He was broke,
and I gave him the money. Three months later he'd struck pay dirt. That
was the beginning of the Alcade Mine, but he didn't have sense enough
to hold on to it, and sold out for a few thousands. I saw then that I'd
have to do more than give him an occasional boost, and stood behind
him, off and on, for years. Even when we ran into the Virginia City
boom he never bought without my advice. He hadn't any discrimination.
I'd just say to him, 'Save your money and buy five feet next to the
Best and Belcher,' and he'd do what I said every time. Without me he'd
have been working in the mines in Tuolumne yet."
In the absorption of his recollections the colonel crossed his knees,
bringing one foot, with a torn slipper dropping from the heel, into a
position of prominence.
"Oh, those were days worth living in!" he said, running a long, spare
hand through his hair--"great days! Men that weren't grown then don't
know what life is. I meet Jerry sometimes, but we don't talk much about
old times. He knows that he owes everything to me, and it goes against
the grain for him to acknowledge it. I hear his daughters are handsome
girls."
"Perhaps--I don't know," said Gault, recalling the occasions when
he had sat next to the Miss McCormicks at dinners, and suffered
exceedingly in the effort known as "making conversation."
"I heard that they were fine, handsome girls, large, and with black
hair like their mother. She was a beauty in her day--a hot-tempered
Irish girl that Jerry married from the wash-tub. The youngest daughter
is about Viola's age--twenty-three."
John Gault turned and looked at Viola with some surprise.
"You thought I was younger, didn't you?" she said, smiling. "Everybody
does."
He was about to answer when the colonel once more took up the thread of
his reminiscences.
"Maroney was down then--'way down; not even on the lowest rung of the
ladder--he wasn't on the ladder at all. I gave him the first lift
he had. No one would look at Maroney in those days. He was a thin,
consumptive-looking fellow, full of crazy schemes, forever coming to
you and borrowing money for some wild-cat stock that wasn't worth the
paper it was printed on. I took a fancy to him, and every dollar he
made was through my help and advice. It was when I had my offices on
Montgomery Street, and he'd have a way of dropping in about lunch-time
and hanging round looking poor and sick. I used to take him out to
lunch, and give him a square meal and a few points that he'd sense
enough to follow. He wasn't like Jerry; he was smart. Why, I almost fed
that man for years. When he'd get down on his luck--and he was always
doing that--I'd say, 'You know, when you want, my check-book's at your
disposal.' And it was, more times than I can remember."
The colonel paused, smiling at his thoughts. The visitor, who had been
looking idly on the ground, raised his eyes and let them dwell in
curious scrutiny upon the old man's profile, cut like a cameo against
the dim walls with their fine gold traceries. John Gault, like all
Californians, knew every vicissitude in the life of Adolphus Maroney,
one of the great bonanza kings, a man whose career was quoted as an
example of what could be done by brains and energy in the California of
the Comstock era.
Wondering, as he had done many times before, what Viola thought of her
father's vainglorious imaginings, he turned now and suddenly looked
at her. She was sitting with her elbow on the table and her chin
resting in the palm of her hand. Her eyes were on the colonel, and her
expression was one of appreciative interest. It was possible that she
believed in him, absolutely and unquestionably. Yet her face, in its
placid, restful gravity, gave no clue to the thoughts within. She was
not to be read by every casual comer. Even the practised eye of the
man of much worldly experience was baffled by the quiet reserve of this
young girl who was nearly half his age.
"I haven't seen Maroney for nearly eight or nine years," continued
the colonel. "The last time it was in the lobby of the Palace. He was
with some capitalists from England, with a millionaire or two from New
York thrown in. He saw me and looked uncomfortable, but he shook hands
and introduced me. I got away as quickly as I could. I didn't want to
embarrass him."
"Why should you embarrass him?" asked Viola.
The colonel looked at Gault, and gave the forbearing laugh of the man
who treats with good-humored tolerance the ignorance of the woman.
"Why, he was always uneasy for fear I'd give away the fact that it was
I who made his money for him. But, God bless my soul!" said the old
man, throwing back his head and going off into a sonorous laugh, "he
needn't be afraid. I wouldn't rob him of any of his glory. Only I took
it pretty hard, when Mrs. Maroney was here last winter, that she didn't
go out of her way to be kind to you."
Viola gave a little exclamation, Gault could not make out whether
of annoyance or protest. That the colonel should have expected his
daughter to be the object of Mrs. Maroney's attention and patronage was
only another evidence of his painful self-delusion. Mrs. Maroney was
a lady who aspired to storm the fashionable citadels of New York and
London, and troubled herself little with those of whom she could make
no practical use in the campaign.
"You're unjust to Mrs. Maroney," Viola said gently, and rather
weariedly, the visitor thought; "she was only here for two months, and
she had quantities of friends to see and people to entertain."
"Oh, my dear, my dear," answered the old man, "that's just your amiable
way of looking at it. She was like her husband--she wanted to forget."
He turned his eyes, still bright under their thick white brows, upon
the younger man, and looking at him with an expression of mingled pride
and patience, said:
"That is the way with the Californians. Once fall, and the procession
passes you, and the men that were beside you don't wait to turn and see
where you dropped. You stay where you fall and you watch the others
sweep on. That's what I have done."
"Don't talk that way, father," said Viola; "Mr. Gault will think you
feel unhappy about it."
The old man smiled, and leaning forward, clasped her hand and held it.
"Mr. Gault," he said, with quite a grand air, "knows better than that.
The opinions of other people don't affect our happiness. I don't resent
the prosperity of my old mates, nor feel any discouragement at our
present--er--temporary embarrassments."
Viola stirred uneasily, and said quickly:
"No--no; of course not. Why should you?"
John Gault rose here, and she rose, too. Her embarrassment, which had
vanished during the evening's conversation, now returned, and she
plucked nervously at the paper flower on the lamp-globe. It seemed to
him that she was anxious for him to go.
With the colonel it was otherwise. Rising and standing upright in the
patched limpness of his dressing-gown, he affected incredulity at the
thought that his guest contemplated such an early departure. Then,
being politely assured that this was unavoidable, and that, for the
matter of that, it was now close upon eleven, he urged him to repeat
the visit at an early date.
"We are always here, Viola and I," he said. "We have not many
engagements, as you see--just a friend here and there. But we value
our friends more highly than the people do who count them by dozens."
He had followed John Gault out into the hall, and from here his voice
called:
"The lamp, Viola. Mr. Gault can't put on his overcoat in the dark."
She came out quickly, carrying the smaller of the two lamps, divested
once more of its paper flower shade. To give a better light she held
it up and looked at him, smiling a little from under the halo made by
her hair. In answer to his good night she gave him her hand, which he
pressed with a warm, strong grip.
As he went down the few steps from the porch the colonel stood in the
doorway, his figure in sharp silhouette against the light within.
"Don't be a month finding your way down here again," he said. "People
say it's out of the beaten tracks, but we prefer it to any other
locality in the city. Viola and I like the old associations, and I've
struck my roots here too deep to have them pulled up. Well, good night!
So long!"
The door closed, and as John Gault opened the gate, the light vanished
from the two long panes of glass that edged it on both sides, and
gleamed out through the cracks and crevices between the blinds of the
bay-window.
It was a warm night, soft and still, and Gault decided to walk.
With his head bent down he walked slowly, striking the cracks in the
pavement with the tip of his cane. From small gardens still tended
and watered in this unkempt wilderness of brick and stucco, whiffs of
delicate fragrance drifted out across the pavements, only to be stifled
by the sickly odors that rose from the open sewer-mouths.
When he turned into the wide avenues where the old mansions stood, the
air was fresher and the silence heavier. Desertion and darkness seemed
to claim as their own this relic of a life that had already passed
away. The dim, bulky shapes of the great houses stood back from the
street, sullen, black, and morose, like the visions in a dream. Vines
shrouded their solemn forms, and here and there clung to the support
of an iron balcony-rail, hanging down in the darkness like a veil that
swayed and whispered in the breeze. In one porch a hall lamp was lit,
and cast a pale and faltering light over an entrance that looked as
full of menace and evil mystery as the opening to some bandit's cavern.
But Gault passed their iron gates, high between supporting pillars,
without looking up. A man's dreams held him in a trance-like reverie.
A man's perplexities destroyed the content of many serenely selfish
years. He had come to what seemed to him the fateful moment of his
destiny. Had he been a younger man he would have said with a rush of
reckless ecstasy, "I love her!" Now, walking slowly home under the
solemn stars, he queried to himself:
"Shall I let myself love her? Do I dare?"