Letitia's surprise at the discovery that Colonel Reed had an unknown
daughter was an unconscious compliment to the prominence and
conspicuousness still enjoyed by that gentleman.
Hundreds of men who had made their fortunes in the great days of the
Comstock, and lost them in the depression that followed, had daughters
and sons that the friends of their prosperity neither knew nor cared
about. The Californian is shy of all sad, unsuccessful things. Failures
in the race in which so many won a prize were quickly forgotten, and
crept away to hide their chagrin in distant quarters of the city or in
the smaller towns. The procession had passed them by, and men who had
been underlings when they were kings reigned in their stead. Even their
names were no longer heard, and their children grew up separated by the
chasm of poverty and obscurity from the children of their old mates.
That Colonel Reed had not been overlooked was partly accidental
and partly owing to his inability to realize that such a state of
affairs could be anything but a public misfortune. The colonel had
the distinction of having collapsed in a most tremendous and complete
manner, and he was proud of it. His case was quoted to inquiring
tourist and ambitious native as a star example of money-getting and
money-losing in the State of California. His passage from affluence to
poverty was still a story worth telling and hearing. It was all in the
superlative degree, for the colonel had never done anything by halves.
His prosperity had been as extravagantly splendid as his adversity was
characteristically complete.
He had made the bulk of his fortune in those years of the fat kine
from 1870 to 1875. Before that he had been well-to-do, as every man
could be in the San Francisco that developed between the days when
"the water came up to Montgomery Street" and the inauguration of the
Comstock boom. He had been a figure in the city from the earliest
times, had known San Francisco when it was a straggling line of houses
edging the muddy shores of the bay, with a trail winding through the
chaparral over the dunes to the Mission Dolores. He had climbed the
lupine-covered slopes of what is now California Street, and looked down
on the hundreds of deserted ships that lay rotting in the cove. He had
seen the city of tents swept by fire, and the city of wood follow it in
a few months. He had been one of those who had held a ticket for the
Jenny Lind Theater on the night it was burned down. He had witnessed
the trial of Jansen's assailants, and had served on the two great
Vigilance Committees, and from the windows of Fort Gunnybags had seen
Casey and Cora go to their last accounts.
Of his journey across the isthmus in '49 he could tell thrilling
stories. Only those of iron physique and reckless courage had the
hardihood to accomplish the trip. The weak in health and feeble in
spirit were left behind at the Chágres or turned back at Panama. The
fittest survived to become those giants of the far West, the California
pioneers. Of these the colonel had been a leading figure. Blood ran
red in the veins in those days, and ginger was hot in the mouth. The
present was too full and tumultuous to allow of even the briefest
glimpse of the future. He became a part of the seething life of the
city, felt its heart-beats as his own, lived greatly as it lived,
loved, hated, sinned, and rejoiced with it.
He often said afterward that at this period of his life money was his
last consideration. There was too much outside to make the question of
sordid gain an engrossing one. The pecuniary side of things was never
one that had bothered the colonel much. And, true to the old adage,
Fortune knocked at the door of him who seemed most indifferent to
her. His riches came suddenly. It was toward the seventies, when the
Comstock was pouring its streams of wealth into hundreds of purses. The
colonel held his open and it was filled. It was dazzling, wonderful,
bewildering. His fortune rose by bounds that he could hardly follow.
The figures of it seemed to grow overnight. In the wild exhilaration
of the period he pressed his luck with unvarying success. He became
intoxicated, the fever of money-getting seized him, and he believed
equally in his star as a man of destiny and his genius as a financier.
Such a sudden and unexpected rise to opulence might have dazed another
man, but the colonel rose to it like a race-horse to the spur. He was
born with a natural instinct for luxury. Formerly he had been merely
one of a thousand good fellows. Now he became a prince. Nothing was too
whimsically extravagant for the pioneer who had crossed the isthmus in
1849. He could be traced by the trail of squandered money. He bought a
country place near San Mateo, raised a palace on it, and entertained
such celebrities as then drifted to California in a way that made them
tell astonishing stories of the "Arabian Nights" existence of the
bonanza kings. In the heyday of his prosperity he had married a young
actress, who had enjoyed the splendors of her sudden elevation for
three years, and had then died, leaving her husband but one legacy--a
baby daughter.
Very shortly after her death the colonel's fortunes began to decline.
He put on a bold front and was more lavish in his expenditures than
ever, for his belief in himself was unshakable. Then stories of his
reverses got abroad, and people said the whole brief span of his glory
had been a piece of pure and unmerited luck; as a financier he had
no ability. The misfortune which attended all his later investments
seemed to prove this assertion. His money melted like wax before fire.
He bought largely of land about South Park and Rincon Hill when it was
at its highest, refused to sell out, and saw the tide of popularity
move to the other side of the city, leaving him overweighted with real
estate upon which he could not pay the taxes. He mortgaged it to its
full value, speculated with the money, and lost it. Ten years after his
wife's death he was ruined. Twenty years after saw him living in the
house near South Park, the sole possession left him.
The colonel took his defeat bravely. He held his head as high as ever
and accepted patronage from no man. When some one suggested that he
should apply for aid to the Society of Pioneers he looked as haughtily
amazed as though they had told him to stand and beg on the corner
of Kearney and Sutter streets. Fate had forced him into the little
house on the far side of town, but that was no reason why he should
remain hidden there. Nearly every day he could be seen striding down
Montgomery Street and mingling with the world of men where he had
once been a leading figure. He seemed to feel no shame on the score
of his old clothes turning green about the shoulders, and greeted his
comrades, now lords of the street, with a cheery word and a wave of his
hand to his hat-brim.
He always had a busy air as of the man of affairs. Men who did not
know him well wondered what scheme he had on hand that caused him so
much hurry and preoccupation. But there was no scheme. It was only
the colonel's way of defying destiny and satisfying the thirst and
longing for the old excitement that carried him back to the scenes of
his triumphs. He hung round Pine Street a good deal, telling those who
would listen to him stories of the early days--of the men he had made,
and of the women who had been the reigning beauties. Sometimes he was
accorded an amused attention, for he could be excellent company when he
chose, and many of his stories of the ups and downs of 1868 and 1870
had become classics.
There was just one subject upon which, in his Montgomery Street
peregrinations, he preserved silence. This was his daughter. He said to
himself, with a sudden squaring of his gaunt shoulders, that he only
mentioned her to his intimates, and as his intimates existed mainly in
his own imagination, Viola Reed's name was almost unknown.
John Gault, who belonged to a later era of California's prosperity than
the colonel, had heard that there was such a person, but had never
seen her. He did not fraternize with the old man, whom he regarded as
a painful landmark in the city's record of blighted hopes and ruined
careers. Like many of his kind, he had an intense, selfish dislike for
all that played upon his sympathies or moved him to an uncomfortable
and discomposing pity.
One afternoon in the past winter he had gone across town to South Park
to see some houses left him by his father, for which he had received
a reasonable offer. On the way home, passing through one of the small
cross-streets that connect the larger thoroughfares, he had encountered
Colonel Reed and a lady. He would have passed them with the ordinary
salutation, had not the lady, who had been gazing into the wayside
gardens, turned her head as he approached and looked indifferently at
him with what he thought were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
He stopped and greeted the colonel with the polite friendliness to
be expected of wayfarers who encounter one another in such distant
localities. The colonel, who was always childishly flattered by the
notice of well-known men, was expansive, and, after a few moments of
casual talk, introduced the younger man to his daughter. Then they
walked together to the old man's house, which was some little distance
away. The colonel, stopping at the gate, invited the stranger in. John
Gault noticed that the girl did not second the invitation, and excused
himself on the ground of pressing business. But the colonel, who had
never got over the hospitable habits of his _beaux jours_, urged him to
come some evening.
"Viola," said the old man, smiling proudly on his daughter, "will be
glad to see you, too. She's the housewife--runs everything, myself
included."
Thus appealed to, she added her invitation to her father's, and Gault
said he would come.
As he walked away, he wondered if she wanted him to come. It had seemed
to him as if she had spoken under pressure and reluctantly, though she
had been perfectly polite. But it was impossible to tell what a woman
thought, or when she was pleased or displeased, and the next week he
went.
Three months had passed since then. The visit had been repeated many
times, each time under almost exactly similar circumstances. Evening
after evening Gault had listened to the colonel, wondering why he came,
why he subjected himself to this absurd imposition, why he sat meek and
generally mute under the conversational assaults of the garrulous old
man. And yet, the day after his seventh visit, he sat in his private
office wondering how soon he could go again to the little house near
South Park without causing surprise to its inmates or breaking the
rules of conventionality and deliberation that governed his life.
In the midst of his cogitations the door was opened by one of his
clerks, who acquainted him with the fact that Colonel Reed was without
and wanted to see him.
The announcement came upon him so unexpectedly that his color rose, and
it was with an effort that he composed his face to greet the visitor. A
disturbing presentiment of something unpleasant seized upon him. Never
before had Colonel Reed entered or suggested entering his office. "What
does the old man want?" he thought testily, as he bade the clerk show
him in.
A moment later the colonel entered. He was suave and smiling. There
was nothing of the broken financier, the ruined millionaire, in his
buoyant and almost patronizing manner. His old black coat, faded and
many years behind the mode, but well brushed and carefully mended, was
buttoned up closely, and still sat upon his thin but sinewy figure with
something of its old-time elegance. In one hand he carried a little
black lacquer cane.
Sitting down opposite John Gault, where the light of the long window
fell full upon his face, he had all the assurance of manner of a man
whose bonanza has not become a memory and a dream.
"I was going by, and I thought I'd drop in and pass the time of day,"
he said. "Things aren't as lively with me just now as they have been.
It's an off season."
"It's that with most of us," said the other, regarding him intently and
wondering what he had come for.
"All in the same coffin, are we?" said the colonel, airily. "I'm
generally on the full jump down here of a morning; but lately--"
He shrugged his shoulders and flung out his hands with a gesture of
hopeless acquiescence in unmerited bad luck.
"You're fortunate," said Gault, "to have something to be on the full
jump about. We find things pretty slow."
"Oh, of course, in comparison with the past," assented the old man.
"Slow? Slow is not the word. Dead, my dear friend! San Francisco is a
dead city--dead as Pompeii."
"Well, not quite as bad as that," said Gault, laughing in spite of
himself.
"How should you be able to judge?" retorted the colonel. "You weren't
thought of when we old fellows were laying out the town. There was more
life here in a minute then than there is now in a week. Then Portsmouth
Square was the plaza and the center of the city, with a line of French
boot-blacks along the lower side. We used to try our French on 'em
every time we got a shine. And Lord! what smart fellows they were, and
how much money they made!"
"So I've heard," murmured Gault.
"And when I think of this street later on, this street alone, in, say,
'70--how it boiled and bubbled and sizzled with life! Those were the
days to live in!"
"Undoubtedly," acquiesced the listener. He was afraid the colonel had
only come to continue the reminiscences on the historic ground of his
early gains and losses, and he ran over in his mind the excuses he
could use to politely and speedily get rid of the old man.
But the colonel, it appeared, had another end in view.
"I don't find, however," he continued, "that my full-jumping pays very
well. I've got the energy and the savvy, but the luck isn't with me.
And I'm too old a Californian not to know there's no good bucking
against bad luck."
He paused and tapped with the tip of his cane against the side of the
desk, evidently expecting his companion to speak. This time, however,
Gault vouchsafed no reply, but sat looking at him with a steady and
somewhat frowning intentness.
The colonel continued, nothing abashed:
"I've run into bad luck belts before, but never as wide a one as this.
It's about the biggest I've struck yet, and I've had some experience.
Not that it's knocked me out," he said, looking up and speaking with
quick, genuine earnestness--"don't imagine that."
"Nothing is farther from my mind," said Gault; for the old man's look
demanded an answer.
"For an old-timer like me, privations, misfortunes, poverty, don't
matter. We pioneers who came round the isthmus and across the plains
aren't afraid of a little more roughing it to finish up on. A day
without dinner don't frighten us, and we don't put our fingers in
our mouths and cry because we haven't got sheets to our beds or
fires in our stoves. But when you've women in your corral it's
different--especially women that haven't always seen the rough side of
things."
"Of course it makes a difference," the other said, to fill up the
colonel's second and more persistent pause.
"Well, that's how it is with me. If it was only myself I'd not think
twice of it. But I have to consider my daughter. It's not the same with
her. During her childhood she had every luxury, but lately I've not
been able to give her all that I'd like to, though, of course, she's
never really suffered. And just now my affairs are in such a devil of
a tangle that--well, I was going to ask you if you could oblige me
with a temporary loan--just a trifle to tide us over this spell of bad
weather--say fifty dollars."
The colonel looked into the younger man's face quite unembarrassed,
his old countenance still preserving its expression of debonair
self-satisfaction. The money in his hand, he gave it a slight clink,
and then dropped it into a worn leather purse with a clasp that
snapped, and said gaily:
"This is the best medicine for low spirits. Not that mine are low--no,
sir; it takes more than a temporary shortness of funds to knock out a
pioneer of '49. Whether it's champagne or beer or water, there's no
difference when it comes to quenching your thirst, and at my age that's
all you want to drink for."
"You're a better philosopher than most of the pioneers," said Gault,
feeling the embarrassment that the old man seemed so complacently free
from.
"Philosopher!" said the other, rising. "Why, my dear boy, I could
found a school of philosophy--only where would the pupils come from?
No, no; philosophy wouldn't pay in California; too much blue sky and
sunshine here. Well, when are we going to see you again? Soon--don't
forget that. Viola and I haven't many friends--just an odd one, like
yourself, here and there. Viola doesn't go much on society, and so we
let the old crowd drop; and we're not sorry, not sorry--too many tares
in the wheat. What old Solomon said about a dinner of herbs and good
company being better than a stalled ox in a wide house with a brawling
woman--wasn't that it?--was right. He was a great old chap, Solomon!
Brains and experience--that's a combination that's hard to beat."
They moved toward the door together, and here the colonel turned on his
friend for a last good-by.
"Well, so long," he said, extending his hand and smiling on the
younger man with a bland benignity of aspect that had in it something
paternally patronizing. "Don't forget that we expect you soon. We're
always at home in the evenings, and always glad to see our friends--our
real friends."
When he had gone, Gault went to the window of the outer office and
stood there watching him. The faded old hat, shadowing the fringe of
white hair, towered over the heads of the hurrying men who passed in
two streams up and down the street.
Gault stood gazing till the tall figure passed out of sight. When he
turned back from the window his clerks noticed that he looked moodily
preoccupied.
Five days after this the colonel appeared again. He was urbane,
affable, and easy as an old shoe, and, with the air of a king honoring
a faithful servant, borrowed thirty dollars more.
This was on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Gault, who had passed a
restless night, resolved to escape from the irritation of his own
thoughts and seek amusement in the society of Letitia. For this purpose
he took an early lunch at his club, and by two o'clock was wending his
way up the sunlit streets that run between large houses and blooming
gardens through what is known as the Western Addition.
For the past six years it had been an open secret in that small family
circle that Mortimer Gault and his wife wished to make a marriage
between John and Letitia. Certainly it was a neat combination of
the family relationships and properties that might have suggested
itself to any one. The ambition had originated with Maud Gault,
who, like most managing, clever women, was a match-maker, and who,
with her social successes and pecuniary ambitions, would naturally
select as the husband of her only sister this rich, agreeable, and
presentable gentleman who was so constantly in their society, and who
stood upon that footing of a semi-romantic intimacy which distant
relationship gives. But it was difficult to force the two objects of
this matrimonial plot into sentimental relations. Letitia was reserved
upon the subject of her own feelings. Mrs. Gault, who was not reserved
upon any subject except her age, could get nothing out of the girl,
either as to what she herself felt for John or as to what she thought
he felt for her. Sometimes Letitia laughed a little when the persistent
questions of her sister were hard to avoid; sometimes she blushed; and
once or twice she had grown angry and rebelled against this intrusive
catechizing. It was difficult even for so keen a woman as Maud Gault to
read the girl's heart.
John Gault, who was sincerely fond of Letitia, in a steady-going,
brotherly way, watched the manoeuvers of his sister-in-law with a good
deal of inward amusement. He was confident that Letitia entertained the
same sort of regard for him that he did for her, and he took an honest
and simple pleasure in the frank good-fellowship that existed between
them. Now and then, it is true, he had vaguely thought of the young
girl as his wife, and had wondered, in an idle way, whether he could
win her affection. He thought that no man could ever find a better wife
than she would make. But these were aimless speculations, and no one
knew of them. Even Maud Gault sometimes felt discouraged--he was so
exasperatingly pleased when she told him of Letitia's admirers!
Though it was so early, Gault found one of these rivals already before
him. Tod McCormick, the only son of Jerry McCormick, who had been
"made" by Colonel Reed, was sitting with Letitia in the drawing-room,
to which the umbrella-plants and palms gave an overheated and tropical
appearance. The sunlight poured into the room, and, shining through
the green of all this juicy and outspreading foliage over the lustrous
silks on piled-up cushions and upholstered chairs, gave an impression
of radiance and color even more brilliant than that imparted by the
lamplight.
In the midst of the rainbow brightness Letitia sat among the cushions.
She was very upright, for she was not of the long, lithe order of women
who lounge gracefully, but in her tight-drawn silks and pendulating
laces she found her habitual attitude of square-shouldered erectness
more comfortable.
Her guest, who rose to meet the newcomer, looked as if he must be a
changeling in the blooming and lusty brood of Jerry McCormick. While
his sisters were women of that richness of coloring and contour
peculiar to California, Tod was not five feet and a half high, and
was thin, meager, sallow-skinned, and weak-eyed. A thatch of lifeless
hair covered his narrow head, and a small and sickly mustache had been
coaxed into existence on his upper lip. He was in reality twenty-seven
years old, but he looked hardly twenty. Even his clothes, of the
most fashionable make and texture, could not impart to him an air
of elegance or style. Their very splendor seemed to heighten his
insignificance.
"Howdy, Gault," he said, his small and weazened countenance lightened
by a fleeting and evidently perfunctory smile. "You're early, but I'm
earlier."
"I came to see my brother," said the older man, rather stiffly, for
though he knew Tod to be good-natured and harmless, he did not like him.
"What a pity!" said Letitia. "Maud and Mortimer are both out. They're
lunching at the Murrays'. But they'll be back soon now. Won't you sit
here with us?"
Though Tod's annoyance at this proposition did not find vent in words,
it was plain to be seen in the dejected and sullen expression that
settled on his face. With his hands in his pockets, he stood looking
down on his feet in pointed patent-leather shoes, balancing absently on
his toes and heels.
"No, thanks," said Gault, whose dislike of the young man did not go far
enough to blight his afternoon. "I'll go into the library. I've got
some letters to read over and answer, and I'll do it now, while I am
waiting."
He turned away and passed through the wide hall-space to the library,
a room at the back of the house, where two large windows commanded a
view of the Golden Gate and the bay. He had picked up a magazine from
a table in the hall, and now, seating himself, prepared to look at it.
But he presently threw it aside, and abandoned himself to a dreamy
survey of the view.
The magnificent panorama of hills and water lay still and enormous
under the afternoon sun. It was not late enough for the summer's
drought to have burned the hills, and the nearer ones were a faint,
mellow green. Their hollows were filled with clear, amethyst shadows,
and the sea lay at their bases, motionless and level like a blue floor.
The extraordinary vividness which marks the Californian landscape was
softened by the almost imperceptible haze which overlay the scene. The
watcher clasped his hands behind his head, and looked with troubled
eyes at this splendid prospect. From the room beyond came the murmur
of conversation, every now and then interrupted by the high, cackling
laugh of Tod McCormick. Presently there was a break in the voices,
they grew louder and decreased, the hall door banged, and Letitia came
rustling into the room.
"It's too bad Maud and Mortimer are not back yet," she said. "You'll
have to talk to me."
Gault yawned, flung out his arms in a stretch, and looked at her
smiling.
"I told a little story in there. It was out of consideration for the
feelings of your young man. I didn't come to see Mortimer. I came to
see you."
There was no denying the fact that Letitia looked pleased. She tried to
hide her satisfaction under an air of curiosity.
"What did you come to see me for?" she asked.
"To take a walk. It's too fine to stay indoors talking to Tod
McCormick. Go up-stairs and put on your hat, and let's take a _pasear_."
Letitia needed no urging. She rarely went out alone with Gault, and the
prospect of a walk in his society was very attractive.
She was absent some time. When she reappeared the cause of her delay
was evident. She had changed her dress, and now, in a checked silk of
black and white, and trimmed with a wonderful arrangement of black
gauze and ribbon, she looked her best. A large black hat with a brim
shaded the upper part of her face. In the back it was trimmed with some
green flowers which made a delightful harmony with her copper-colored
hair. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and as she entered the room,
conscious, perhaps, of her beauty and her vanity in thus decking it,
her eyes sought his, asking for admiration.
Unfortunately he was not looking at her, but was turning over the pages
in the magazine he had formerly discarded.
"Are you ready?" he said, without looking up, but hearing from the
rustle of her dress that she was beside him. "I thought you were never
coming."
Outside the house, they turned to the right and walked slowly up the
avenue, conversing with the desultory indifference of old friends. In
the bright afternoon sunlight the broad street stretched before them,
almost deserted in its Sunday calm. On either side the gardens blazed
with color, enameled with blooms of an astonishing richness of tint.
Over the tops of fences nasturtiums poured blossoms that danced in the
air like tongues of fire. Scarlet geraniums, topping long stalks,
clothed with a royal robe the summit of hedges. Against sunny stretches
of wall, heliotrope broke in a purple foam. Climbing roses hung in
heavy clusters from vines that were drooping under the weight of such
a prodigal over-production. The wide, sumptuous flowers of the purple
clematis clung round the balcony posts, completely concealing the dry,
thread-like vine that gave them birth.
Between the houses, each one detached in its own square of ground, with
that suggestion of space which is peculiar to San Francisco, glimpses
of the bay came and went--bits of the gaunt hills, lengths of turquoise
sea touched here and there with a patch of white sail, and sudden views
of Alcatraz queening it alone on its red-brown rock.
Letitia and Gault walked on, now and then according the customary
phrase to the beauty of the landscape. Letitia, who was not an admirer
of nature, was much more interested in the occasional couples they met,
smart and smiling in their Sunday attire; but, with the complaisance
of her amiable spirit, she was always quick to echo her companion's
enthusiasm. Presently, after walking in silence for a few minutes, he
asked her:
"How would you like to earn your own living, Letitia?"
This was rather an unexpected problem to solve, but Letitia had no
doubts on the subject, and answered promptly:
"I wouldn't like it at all."
"But there are lots of women who have to--women like you, who have had
everything they wanted, and been well taken care of, and then their
parents--relations--guardians lose their money, and they have to work."
"I think it would be better for them to marry," said Letitia, sagely.
"It's much better for a woman to marry, and have some one to take care
of her, than to have to take care of herself."
"Well, suppose she doesn't want to marry, or doesn't want to marry the
kind of man that asks her, isn't it better for her to work for her
living? Wouldn't a proud, self-respecting woman rather work for her
living than--than--than not? You see, Letitia," he said, turning to her
with a smile, "how much I think of your opinion."
"Of course, any woman would rather work than go without things. She'd
have to. Why do you want my opinion? Whom do you know that has to work
for her living?"
"Oh, no one in especial," he said, with a careless shrug. "It was just
a supposititious case. I was reading a novel about something like
that, and I thought I'd get your opinion as an intelligent, modern,
up-to-date young person." He looked at her again with his indulgent and
somewhat quizzical smile. "Aren't you all that, Tishy?" he asked, using
the family diminutive of her name.
"I don't know," she answered, "whether I'm all that. I may be some of
it. But it's so awfully hard for a woman to support herself. They have
such a hard time, and get so badly paid, and there are so few things
that you make money by soon, you know, without studying for years."
"Why, it seems to me there are lots of things: dressmaking, and
type-writing, and--er--trimming hats, and making jam, and reciting
poems, and teaching children."
Letitia laughed.
"Why, how could a girl type-write, or trim hats, or even make jam,
without knowing how? You've got to learn those things. I've tried to
trim hats a dozen times, and always spoiled them; and one summer Maud
undertook to make some jam, and it was perfectly awful--I don't mean
the jam: I mean the house while the jam was getting made. Maud and the
Chinaman and Mortimer were all in such a bad temper!"
They walked on for a few moments in silence. Then Letitia continued:
"Why, even the girls who have fairly good positions in stores don't
get enough to live on. The girl who shampoos my hair has a sister
in Abram's, and she gets seven dollars a week, and has to be nicely
dressed. Just fancy that!" said Letitia; and then, in a burst of
candor: "Why, I never in this world could dress on that alone, even if
I gave up silk stockings and always wore alpaca petticoats like the
woman who teaches Maud German."
"Nevertheless," said Gault, "it seems to me that a woman who was
high-minded and proud and independent would be a shop-girl and live on
seven dollars a week rather than--"
He stopped. Letitia looked at him interestedly, struck by something in
his tone.
"Rather than what?" she asked.
"Rather than--well, in this story the people who were so poor had
friends that were well off, and all that sort of thing, and they
borrowed from them, and--I think it's going to turn out that they lived
that way."
"Did the girl borrow? Wouldn't work and lived on the borrowed money?
Oh, that's--!"
Letitia raised both hands in the air and let them drop with a gesture
that expressed complete finality of interest and approval.
"What do you mean by 'oh,' Letitia?" he said, rather sharply. "I never
said the girl knew anything about it."
"Well, she must have had some curiosity to know where the money came
from. When her father or mother came in and said, 'Here's ten dollars
to pay the butcher, and here's twenty dollars to pay the grocer,'
don't you suppose she wanted to know where it came from? Really, John,
considering you're supposed to be so clever, you don't know much about
women."
He made no answer, and she went on:
"Of course she knew all about it. She would have been an idiot if she
hadn't. And she doesn't sound at all like an idiot. It's just the other
way. She was clever--altogether too clever. I don't like that kind of
person at all. I wouldn't trust her from here to the corner. She must
have been one of those soft, clinging, gentle creatures who are always
turning aside to hide their tears. Was she?"
"I dare say. You seem to know more about her than I do."
"But it sounds very interesting," said Letitia, coming closer to him.
"I'd like to read it. What is the name of the book?"
"Oh, I don't remember. It's nonsense, anyway--some stuff not worth
talking about."
Letitia continued to look at him silently for a moment; then she said
slowly:
"It's not a book at all. It's a real person. You've been trying to make
a fool of me."
He looked at her quickly, his eyes, behind the shield of his glasses,
narrowed to mere lines. For a moment, as their cold gleam met hers, she
shrank, for she thought he was angry, and, like other people, Letitia
was afraid of John Gault's anger. Then he smiled at her, and said:
"If you ever have to earn _your_ living, Tishy, there'll be no trouble
about your vocation. You'd make a fortune as a female detective. I
never saw such wonderful ability. Why, Sherlock Holmes isn't in it with
you."
"You can laugh as much as you like," said Letitia, flushing under his
sarcasms, "but I know I'm right."
"What!" he said, coming to a standstill, and staring into her face with
a frown of exaggerated intensity, "you actually don't believe me?"
"No, I don't," she retorted, doggedly combative.
"After all these years, has my noble example of truth and probity made
no deeper impression on you? Oh, Letitia, I couldn't have believed it
of you!"
"I don't care what you say," she repeated, "or how you try to turn it
off. It's a real person, and I'm certain she's simply horrid. And if
you take _my_ advice, the less you have to do with her the better."
This was apparently too much for the sobriety of John Gault. In the
loneliness of the street his laughter resounded deep and loud. Letitia
looked at him with moody disfavor as he stood, his face flushed, his
eyes suffused with moisture, and fairly roared. Letitia's eyes were
threatened with a moisture of a different kind.
"Oh, dear Tishy," he said, when his paroxysm was over, taking one of
her hands and holding it tightly, "what a sage you are! How good of you
to warn me! With you to take care of me, I ought never to come to any
harm."
"I guess you never would," said Letitia, with a little sigh. "Certainly
I know enough to know that that woman is not a good person to trust--or
even to know," added the mentor, with an accent of warning, and staring
at him with large, cautioning eyes from under her hat-brim.
Her companion was threatened with another outburst.
"Oh, Letitia, don't be so _funny_," he said. "I haven't laughed as much
as this for a month."
He took her hand and, drawing it inside his arm, pressed it against his
heart; then, looking down at her with eyes still full of laughter, but
touched with tenderness, he said:
"To think of Letitia Mason taking the trouble to give me good advice!"
Letitia was mollified, less by his words than by his manner, which had
in it that kindly camaraderie which made her feel happy and at ease.
She withdrew her hand, laughing, and said, with a sort of shyness that
was very charming:
"I'll always give you good advice, if you'll promise not to laugh at
me."
Then they walked on, talking of other things, until the girl's spirits
were restored to their normal attitude of a sedate, candid cheeriness.
She grew quite talkative, discoursing to him of various small
happenings in the house, and not noticing, in her recovered good humor,
that his answers were short and his manner grave and distrait.
As they retraced their steps the broad, yellow glow of the sunset
deepened behind them, and before them burned on the windows of houses
that climbed the hillsides still farther on. The water and its
low-lying shores--flat lands where silver creeks lay embedded like
the metal wires in cloisonné ware--were already veiled in a soft,
purplish twilight which exhaled a creeping chilliness. At a high point,
unobstructed by buildings, they turned to watch the sun drop into the
sea. For a moment it seemed to hesitate, resting on the horizon like a
spinning copper disk; then it slipped out of sight, and the darkness
rushed up from unexpected places and swept over the prospect, blotting
out all distinctions of color. Only in the west there was a great gold
radiance, against which little red clouds floated like bits of raveled
silk.
John Gault, as was his Sunday custom, dined with his brother's
family. After dinner he left early, before the usual callers
appeared--generally young men come to bow the knee at Letitia's shrine.
For a space he walked down the street with a quick, decided step. Then,
of a sudden, he stopped, and stood looking at the pavement, uncertain
and irresolute. The car which had borne him to the other side of town
on the last evening that he had dined with the Mortimer Gaults glided
across the avenue some blocks farther down. He heard its bell and saw
the long funnel of light from its lantern pierce the darkness before it.
He stood for a moment watching it, then turned in the opposite
direction and stopped. As he hesitated, he heard in the distance the
bell of the next car. With a smothered ejaculation, he wheeled about
and ran for it. He caught the car and swung himself to a front seat.
"Kismet!" he said to himself, as he sank down panting.