The Ferry, doorway to San Francisco, wore its holiday Sunday aspect as
Bertram Chester approached it. A Schuetzen Park picnic was gathering
itself under the arches, to the syncopated tune of a brass band. The
crowd blazed with bright color. The young men, in white caps, yellow
sashes of their mysterious fraternity, and tinted neckties like the
flowers of spring, lolled and larked and smoked about the pillars. Fat
mothers and stodgy fathers fussed over baskets and progeny. Young
girls, in white dresses and much trimming of ribbons, coquetted in
groups as yet unbroken by the larking young men. Over these ceremonial
white dresses of the Sunday picnic, they wore coats and even furs
against the damp, penetrating morning--rather late in the season it
was for picnics. In the rests of the ragtime, rose the aggressive
crackle of that flat, hard accent, with its curious stress on the "r,"
which would denote to a Californian in Tibet the native of South of
Market, San Francisco.
Bertram Chester, had he been accustomed to spare any of his powers for
introspective imagination, might have beheld his crossroads, his
turning point, in this passage through the South of Market picnic to
the little group waiting, by the Sausalito Ferry, to take him to the
Masters ranch. But a month ago, he himself had whistled up that
infatuated little milliner's apprentice who was his temporary light of
love, and had taken her over to Schuetzen Park of a Sunday. He had
drunk his beer and shaken for his round of drinks with the boys, had
taken the girl away from a young butcher, had fought and conquered the
bookmaker's clerk who tried to take away the milliner's apprentice
from him, and had gone home, when the day was done, with his head
buried on that soft curve of the feminine shoulder which was made to
receive tired male heads.
Now, without a backward look, he was walking toward Sydney Masters,
Mrs. Masters, the sprightly and dainty Kate Waddington, and those
others, grouped about them, who might be guides and companions on his
new way.
Kate Waddington had acquainted him in advance with the party, so that
the introductions brought no surprises. That young-old man with the
sharp little face was Harry Banks, mine owner, millionaire, and figure
about town--every one in San Francisco knew him or knew about him.
That tall, swaying girl with the repressed mouth, the abundant hair
coiled about her head, the rather dull expression, was Marion
Slater--"she paints miniatures and hammers brass and does all kinds of
art stunts," Kate had said. That tall young man, who radiated good
manners, was Dr. Norman French; that little woman, all girl, was Alice
Needham, his fiancée. "They play juvenile lead in this crowd," had
been Kate's phrase for them.
Kate, taking possession of Bertram at once, gave him her bag to carry,
and, as the gates opened and the whistle blew, she walked beside him.
From the upper deck, this Masters party watched that city panorama,
spread on the hills for all to see, roll away from them, the wheeling
flocks of gulls trailing the craft in the roads, the surge of golden
waters rolling in from the Gate. A morning mood blew in upon the
winds; the party became gay.
Bertram, in the rise of his morning spirits, performed certain
cub-like gambols for the benefit of Kate Waddington. The company
failed not to notice that he had assisted her up the gangway by
slipping his hand under her elbow. On the deck, he cut her out
immediately from the rest, insisted on tucking her veil into his
pocket, made a pretence of trying to take her hand. Even Kate found it
hard to parry these advances. Banks, slouching back on a bench in his
easy, indolent attitude, looked over toward them, and his mouth
tightened and set. So much had he been courted for his wealth and
personality, this Harry Banks, that among his familiars he assumed the
privilege of falling into moods without reason or preliminary notice.
His present mood was a perverse one; and he took it out on its reason
for being--this presumptuous outsider.
"Me Gawd, Jimmie, but me belt hurts!" he called out suddenly in his
richest imitation of the South of Market dialect. With his light step
of a dancer, he skipped over to Kate Waddington, whirled her to her
feet, and began to waltz about the forward deck, imitating the
awkward, contorted, cheek-to-cheek style of the Schuetzen Park picnic.
Kate, who fell in at once with every invitation, had laughed as he
began to whirl her, but she flushed too. The whole upper deck was
craning necks to stare. Mrs. Masters caught her breath and whispered,
"Oh, don't!" Dr. French and Alice Needham fell to talking apart, as
though repudiating, in their embarrassment, such company. Marion
Slater, sitting at ease on her bench, cast one glance at Harry Banks
as he whirled to face her. His eyes fell; on the next turn, he waltzed
Kate back to her seat. The relationship between these two was a puzzle
to their familiars. He, the uncaught bachelor, the flaneur, the
epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a
calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she,
the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed
always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the
frivolous and unconventional rich--people had wondered for years how
there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that
the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but
thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved
her hand, and the motion translated itself to speech in his mind. That
glance of her had made his mind say, "I am making them all
ridiculous."
And, like the spoiled child that he was, he ceased from one
naughtiness only to plunge into another and worse one. As Kate dropped
to the bench, he looked at Bertram and said:
"You try it; I am a little rusty." One of his rare embarrassments
flamed into the face of Bertram Chester. The shot had gone more truly
than Harry Banks could have known.
"No, thank you," Bertram said simply, and flushed again.
Masters spoke up from his corner:
"Well, Chester, you ought to be a good dancer if build counts--though
I shouldn't like to have you showing off your accomplishment right
here--you might lack the public finish of the Banks style. You big
football fellows always have the call on the little men in dancing.
It is a matter of bulk and base, I think." The ferry boat was passing
Alcatraz now, and the populace had turned its attention away from
Harry Banks and his party. The spoiled child kept straight ahead.
"They make real, ball-room gents," he said. He turned toward Marion on
this; turned as though he could not keep his look away. She lifted her
eyebrow again, and he fell into a sulky silence.
The others rushed to the first refuge of tact--personalities. After a
moment, Banks joined the talk; and then appeared another aspect of his
perverse mood. He took the conversation into his own hands, and he
talked of nothing which could by any chance include Bertram Chester,
the callow newcomer, the outsider. It was all designed to show, it did
show, how intimate they were, how many old things they had in
common--never a passage in which Bertram could join by any excuse.
Even so did Banks direct it as to draw Kate Waddington into the talk.
Bertram sat apart, then, his face showing all his displeasure. His
straight brows set themselves in a frown, which he bent sometimes at
the group volleying personalities at Harry Banks, and sometimes on
the terraced hills of Sausalito.
When they trooped off with the crowd, Kate fell in beside Bertram
again. Lagging deliberately, she let a group of picnickers come in
between them and the rest of their party. He was still frowning.
"I'd like to soak that man," he said. "Maybe I will."
"No you won't!" said she.
"Won't I?" he replied.
"Oh, don't think I haven't seen it all. He was horrid. You see, we've
got used to him. You're meeting him new, and you don't quite
understand him yet."
"Well, I'm going to spend no sleepless nights trying!"
"He's really very clever and kind, at bottom. You'll come to like him
as we all do. And he's a man that it's good for you to know."
Bertram seemed to be considering this.
"Well, what did he mean, anyway?" he snapped.
"Nothing. It's just his foolery. We all had to take it from him at
first--and then we came to appreciate him."
Bertram answered with an impatient gesture. Kate caught his arm, held
it for just a second.
"Now, you wouldn't spoil my day, would you?" she asked softly. "You
know I'm responsible for you--"
His frown melted into his smile.
"Sure, if you put it like that!"
"Now, you're a sensible, accommodating, self-restrained lad, and every
other adjective in Samuel Smiles. You could charm the buttons off a
policeman--and you'll see how really nice he can be."
"You'll take out time until I get over my grouch?"
"Of course." They were approaching Masters and Dr. French, who stood
waiting by the train platform. "Late and happy!" she called.
Harry Banks, walking ahead beside Marion Slater, had taken his own
wordless rebuke from her. During the train passage, he made the
concession of keeping away from Bertram, and grouped himself off in
the other double seat. Bertram, sitting with Kate and the engaged
couple, spoke but seldom and then languidly. He did not come face to
face with Harry Banks again until the buckboards had delivered them
at the Masters ranch.
This estate bore the title of "ranch" only by courtesy. Masters
himself said that he raised nothing but mild Hell on his forty acres.
He did have an olive orchard, a small orange grove flourishing by luck
of a warm gorge in the hills, and a little fancy stock. Kate and
Masters took possession of the new guest at the gate, and carried him
over the estate for inspection. Mainly, Bertram took this
entertainment sullenly. He warmed a little at the sight of the cattle.
The house, built by Masters's own design, drew only the comment,
"pretty nice." After that, Bertram was free to go to his room and
dispose his belongings. Returning in a marvelously short time, he came
out upon the house-party, grouped all in the big, redwood ceiled
living-room.
A fire of driftwood snapped with metallic crackling on the hearth.
Alice Needham sat with Dr. French beside it; Mrs. Masters, pausing in
a flight of supervision, had stopped to speak with them; Alice was
looking up at her, presenting her fresh, full-faced view to the gaze
of the man on the staircase. Marion Slater stood with Masters by one
of the Dutch windows, criticizing the design with a painter's half-arm
gestures. Banks, by another window, sat dividing his time between a
book and the valley below.
It happened then, as Bertram stood there, that Alice Needham looked in
his direction. It happened, also, that she was smiling. He caught her
smile and smiled back.
That smile was half the secret of his physical charm. In the first
place, it broke with wholly unexpected force. His face, what with
its heaviness of feature, was a little forbidding and severe. As he
bent his unillumined gaze, he appeared stern--even angry. Then, with
the sudden preliminary vibration of an earthquake, that smile
would begin to quiver about his mouth, to start wrinkles about his
eyes. Next, as he bent his head forward toward the target of his
charms, it drew back the corners of his mouth to show his white teeth,
it pulled eyelids and eyebrows into a tiny slit, through which his
pupils twinkled like electric sparks. These movements--wholly
muscular at that--spiritualized and transformed his face.
Mrs. Masters, looking up at the interruption, was caught in this
flood of charm and good will. Harry Banks, feeling a psychic current
running about the room, looked up also; and that smile caught him. It
carried away the last trace of his perverse mood. And Bertram heaved
himself down the stairs and crossed at once to seat himself beside
Alice Needham.
"I see at a glance I'm going to like this party," he said. On other
lips there would have been nothing to laugh at in this; but they all
did laugh. In a minute more, Harry Banks had dropped his book and
crossed over to the fireplace. Bertram, leading the talk now, took him
in without a trace of apparent resentment. Kate, emerging from the
room, dropped down beside Harry Banks on the floor and joined her
cheerful pipe to the symphony of good fellowship. Before luncheon,
this find of hers was the centre of the party; events were revolving
about him.
In the lazy hour after meat, the engaged couple found chance to slip
out into the orange grove. Masters, summoned by his foreman, went to
look after a sick cow, Harry Banks went back to his reading, and Alice
Needham to a design for a window seat which she was building for the
Masters dining-room. These pairings left Bertram and Kate to each
other; and presently they were out-of-doors, drawing on into the
woods. Masters, from the barn, watched them and noted what a goodly
couple, what a faun and dryad in clothes, they were. Kate Waddington
was turning over her shoulder her slow and rather lazy smile, which
began at her lips and lit her green-grey eyes last of all. That was
her best attitude of head. Bertram swung up the trail, making progress
by main force--not walking so much as lifting himself on those sturdy,
saddle-sprung legs of his. He was making wide, sweeping gestures; and
Kate, as he talked, leaned a little toward him now and then, like a
woman absorbed.
Momentarily, she had him on the subject of football. He was touching
upon the subject of one Bill Graham, Stanford tackle and opponent in
two varsity games, whom she knew and whom he was teaching her to know
better. Bertram stooped and gathered a handful of pebbles from the
trail to show how Bill Graham used to throw sand in his eyes; he
thrust his open hand against an alder, bordering the trail, to show
how he contravened these tactics by slamming Bill Graham in the face.
Even so far did loosen his tongue and spirit that he boasted of his
victories and excused his defeats. He went further; he touched upon
the most frightful disappointment of his career.
"It was in the ten to nothing game," said he. "You remember, don't
you, how they had us down on our ten yard line early in the second
half? We got the ball away. Nobody had scored yet. Well, Stuffy Halpin
he gave the signal for a delayed pass on end. That was a freak play we
were trying out that year--delayed pass first and then the back passed
to me. I jogged Bill Graham and he stumbled down the field just
bull-headed--he never did have much football sense. I looked down
toward the goal"--(Bertram had been gesticulating wildly; now he gave
the outstretched fingers of his right hand a sudden fillip to show the
changed direction of his glance) "and I saw a clear field right
straight to the fullback or glory--"
"Gracious! What happened?" asked Kate. She was capable, wit and social
strategist that she was, of assuming all this interest by way of
leading an inept youth to make a fool and a braggart of himself for
her amusement. But she showed not a glimmer of irony, neither in her
mouth nor in her green-grey eyes. She spoke with the straight, sincere
interest of a dairymaid listening to the self-told heroisms of a
stable boy.
"Stuffy tumbled all over himself and dropped the ball!"
Bertram's answer conveyed all the tragedy in the world.
They were come now to a place where the trail ran steep and the
redwoods thickened to make a Californian hillside. It was November,
but the season was late. The earth was washed bright by the early
rains and not yet sodden with the later ones. The black, shaded loam,
bare of grass, oozed the moisture it was saving for its evergreen
redwoods against a rainless summer. In the dark clefts grew scentless
things of a delicate, gnome aspect--gold-back fern, maiden-hair
overlying dank, cold pools, sorrel, six-foot brake. No blossoms blew
among all this greenery; only by that sign and by the wet, perspiring
earth might one know that it was autumn on those hills.
The clean ooze and dew started a little stream which ran, choked with
maiden-hair, to the trail, and formed a pool. Some philanthropic
camper had driven a nail into the rock and hung there a tin cup. Kate
(Bertram still talking and gesticulating at her left) threw a
perceptive glance.
"How good the water looks!" she said. "I believe I am thirsty!"
While he filled the cup, she seated herself on the rock, disposed
herself into a composition; and after they had both drunk, she showed
no disposition to move from her perch. In fact, she loosened her brown
student beri, shook her hair free, and sat there, a wood-nymph framed
by the ruddy brown and dark green of redwood and laurel. He crouched
his big frame down beside her, so that she leaned back against the
rock. A long silence, and:
"Nature is mighty nice!" he said.
Then, perceiving her as a part of the picture, he added:
"And you're the nicest thing about it."
At this frontal attack, Kate waited to see whether it meant further
attack, skirmish, or retreat. His general softness of expression,
showed that it meant attack.
Bertram, in fact, was in the mood for attack on rose citadels. A year
of life on twelve dollars a week--cheap, crowded lodgings, meals at
the Hotel Marseillaise, the landlady's daughter and those of her kind
for companionship--and now, in a week, the refinements of the Tiffany
house, the refinement plus entertainment of the Masters villa, and
these two lovely, fragrant women. It seemed all to roll up in him as
he sat there, the woods about him and this golden creature at his
side; and it found half-unconscious expression on his lips.
"I'm going to be rich some day," he said.
"I hope so."
"I am, sure. When I get rich I'm going to have a place like this--I'll
have a long pull by that time and be able to invite anybody I
want--this is the only way to live." His voice fell away.
Then he looked up and bent upon her that smile.
"It's great to have a girl like you to confide in," he said.
"Thank you; but you haven't confided much as yet," responded Kate.
"I don't suppose there is a whole lot to confide. At least, things
you'd want to tell a girl like you. Only one thing. I'm in love!"
The arrest of all motion in Kate which followed this declaration was
like one of those sudden calms which fall over a field at the approach
of evening. It descended upon her in the mid-course of a gesture; it
wrapped her about in such a stillness that neither breath nor blood
stirred. Then, though only her lips moved, her vocal cords responded
to her will.
"And she is to be mistress of the villa when you get rich?"
"If she'll take me," said Bertram. "You see, it is a brand new case.
I've just got it--just realized it. She's up and I'm still down, so it
wouldn't be square to say anything about it, now would it?"
"No," answered Kate softly, "though we women like bold lovers too."
"Yes, that's so. And I suppose if I keep too still about it, somebody
else will come riding onto the ranch and carry her off. It's my game,
I guess, to stay around and watch. And if I find any gazebo getting
too thick with her, then up speaks little Bertie for the word that
makes her his.
"If she'll have me," he added. "But she's a good many pegs above me
just now and I've got more than a living to make. Of course, that'll
come all right if I have fair luck. If it was easy money plugging my
way through college, it will be easy plugging it through the world.
Don't you size it up about that way?"
Kate clasped her hands and leaned forward.
"If you're playing the long game, I suppose so. But wouldn't you do
better at least to hint to the girl?"
"I guess you can advise me about that," said he. "Better than anybody
I know. Suppose I tell you all about it?" A little panic ran through
the nerves of Kate.
"Now?" she said, "are--are you ready?"
"Now-time is good-time," he said. "Well, I guess you've savveyed just
who it is and what's the matter. It's--it's Miss Gray--Eleanor Gray."
To the end of her days, Kate Waddington remembered to be thankful for
a certain cotton-tail rabbit. At that moment precisely, this fearling
of the woods streaked down the trail, pursued by a dog whose heavy
crashing sounded in the distance; came out upon them, whirled with a
loud roaring of fern and leaves, screamed the heart-rending scream of
a frightened rabbit, and dashed off into the wood. The sound, coming
in this tender moment, betrayed Bert Chester into a guilty start. So,
when he looked back, her face was as smoothly beautiful as ever and
she was even smiling.
"You lucky boy!" she said. And then, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't
blame any man." Bertram fairly glowed.
"I knew you'd agree with me," he said. "Say, what chance do I
stand--honest, what do you believe she thinks of me?"
"Honest, I never heard her say. It is likely she hasn't begun to think
of it at all. Women are slower than men about such things. How long
have you been--in love with her?"
"Of course, I've been that way ever since I saw her first--ever since
I was a student, picking prunes for her uncle, and went down and
helped her run a bull off her place. I thought then that I never saw
nicer eyes or a more ladylike girl. She's always given me the glassy
eye. I think she hates me--no, it isn't that, either. She just feels
superior to me."
"Oh, perhaps not that!"
"Well, anyhow, I was in college and any one girl looked about the same
to me as any other--" Bertram wrinkled his brows in contempt for his
utter, undeveloped youngness of two years before--"but I remembered
her always. When I saw her sitting in the Hotel Marseillaise that
evening, I felt queer; and after I called on her I just knew I had it.
Funny, you coming in that afternoon. You and I have hit it off so
well, and here I'm confiding in you! It was a regular luck sign, I
think."
Kate's voice, when she spoke, fell to its deeper, richer tones.
"And I'm sure I feel flattered--any girl would. I really thank
you--you don't know how much."
"And you'll help me, won't you?"
"With my advice--yes."
"Well, that's all I want. If I win this game, I want to win it
square.
"Say, you are sure the goods. You're as pretty--it wouldn't be natural
for a man to say you're as pretty as she is, but a man can just look
at you and wonder--" and here he dropped one of his hands gently upon
hers. She let it rest there a moment before she drew away.
"We'd better be going back," she said. "They'll think it's I and not
Eleanor, if we stay so long."
As they started, he stooped to get her another drink. Standing above
him, her hand lifted toward her student beri, she bent her gaze on his
back. A peculiar look it was, as though an effort against pain. It
faded into an expression like hunger.