Kate's plump and inert mother, who always regarded this daughter of
hers somewhat as a cuckoo in the nest, was in a complaining mood this
morning. She sat in her dressing-gown embroidering peonies on a
lambrequin and aired her grievances. Kate, writing notes at the
old-fashioned black walnut writing desk, looked up at the climaxes of
her mother's address, bit her pen and frowned over her shoulder. For
the greater part of the time, however, Mrs. Waddington spoke to empty
air.
"I never did see such a daughter," said Mrs. Waddington, jabbing with
her scissors at a loose end of pink silk. "As if it isn't enough,
gallivanting around the way you do, fairly living in other people's
houses, never bringing any company home, but you can't even be
decently civil when you _are_ at home. We might just as well be a
hotel for all the respect you pay us. What are you doing when you're
away, I'd like to know? It's all well enough, the stories you tell--"
Kate, resting between notes, saw fit to parry this last thrust.
"I've always supposed I was capable of taking care of myself," she
said. "At any rate, you've let me proceed on that theory."
It needed only the slightest flutter of an opponent's rapier to throw
Mrs. Waddington on the defensive.
"You never let me," she mourned. "Goodness knows, I gave you every
chance to take me along. When first you began going with those painter
people, you might have counted me in."
"You didn't seem eager, perceptibly, until I had made my own way,"
Kate vouchsafed. At that moment the telephone rang.
While Kate was in the house, no one else thought of answering the
telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the
prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system
over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this
irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had
her mental lists of Kate's telephonic friends. She imagined that she
could tell, by the tone of her daughter's voice, just who was on the
other end of the line.
"Oh, Bert Chester!" came Kate's voice from the hall. Mrs. Waddington
made note number one. This mention of the name was significant. The
discreet Kate, who knew her mother's habits, hardly ever called names
over the wire.
A pause for a very short reply, and then:
"Certainly. Zinkand at one. I'm beginning to think it's time I worked
at my job as confidant. What is the use of a confidant if you don't
confide?"
Mrs. Waddington leaned forward while Kate got her reply. The mother in
her, unsensitized though as it was, noted the sparkle in Kate's voice.
But for the intervening door, she might have seen a great deal more
sparkle in Kate's face, down-turned to listen.
"Oh yes, I was aware of that!" Kate's voice went on. "Dolt! Did I
catch it? You're a poor dissembler. You're too honest. You might tell
the verdict before I tell you--"
Mrs. Waddington could stand it no longer. It was so uncommon for her
daughter to speak thus freely and emotionally at the telephone, that
she must have a look. She rose, therefore, and crossed past the open
hall door. She noticed a certain tension in her daughter's face as she
bent her head to await the reply.
"You poor, perplexed boy!" went on Kate's purring, caressing voice,
"Then you need a confidant. Zinkand's at one--and I'll look my
prettiest to draw you out!"
Mrs. Waddington, when her daughter was come back into the room,
renewed her plaint:
"I wish you'd save for your parents a little of the graciousness you
give your friends," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if you were
getting somewhere. But here you are, nearly twenty-four years old and
goodness knows if you've had a young man, I don't hear about it. How
can a respectable young man want to marry a girl like you, I'd like to
know? Those they play with, they don't marry."
Kate's mood had changed completely. She advanced now with the
prettiest caressing gesture in the world, threw one arm across the
wrinkled skin and old lace of her mother's throat. Mrs. Waddington
resisted for a moment, her head turned away; then, gradually, she let
her being lap itself in this quieter air. Her head settled down on
Kate's shoulder.
"Perhaps," said Kate, "I may."
"Well I wish you'd hurry up about it," said Mrs. Waddington. "Girls
will be girls, I suppose, and they've got to learn for themselves.
There, there--you're mussing my work."
Kate dropped a kiss on her mother's forehead and vanished up the
stairs.
Bert Chester, waiting before Zinkand's an hour later, picked her a
block away from the nooning crowd. Before he recognized the
olive-green tailor suit which he had come to know, he noticed the firm
yet gracile move of her. As she came nearer, he was aware of two
loungers waiting, like himself, to keep appointments. He caught this
exchange from them:
"Who? The girl in a kind of brownish green?"
"Yes. Isn't she a peach?"
Just then, it seemed to him, did the purely physical charm of her
burst upon him for the first time. Supple and swaying, yet plump and
round; her head set square with some of a man's strength, on
exquisitely sloping shoulders: and the taste--he would have called it
so--of her dress! A discriminating woman might have noticed that her
costume bordered on ostentatious unostentation. For it was designed
in every detail to frame the picture, to set off not only that figure
but also the cream of her skin, the tawny hair, even those firm, plump
hands.
He found himself remembering that he had just proposed to another
girl. The thought flashed in, and flashed out as quickly.
* * * * *
The Café Zinkand formed, at the time, a social nodule in the
metropolitan parish that San Francisco was. As the Palace Hotel was
its Rialto, gathering-place for prosperous adventure, so the Zinkand
was its bourne. In this mahoganied and mirrored restaurant with its
generous fare, its atmosphere of comfortable extravagance, those who
made the city go, who gave its peculiar Saxon-Latin move and glitter,
were accustomed to gather and gossip. It blazed with special splendor
on the nights when this or that "Eastern attraction" showed at the
Columbia Theatre. To stand on such evenings at the Powell Street
terminus, to watch those tripping, gaily-dressed, laughing Californian
women thronging the belt of city light from the theatre canopy to the
restaurant canopy--ah, that was San Francisco! Not Paris, not Buenos
Ayres--they say who have travelled far--could show such a procession
of Dianaides, such a Greek festival of joy in the smooth, vigorous
body and the things which feed and clothe it. With that absence of
public conventionality which was another ear-mark of the old city, all
sorts and conditions of men and women sat side by side at the tables.
Harlots, or those who might well pass as such, beside the best morale
there is in women; daughters of washerwomen beside daughters of such
proud blood as we have; bookmakers' wives, blazing with the jewels
which will be pawned to-morrow, beside German housewives on a Saturday
night revel; jockies and touts from the race tracks beside roistering
students from Stanford and Berkeley; soldiers of fortune blown in by
the Pacific winds, taking their first intoxicating taste of
civilization after their play with death and wealth, beside stodgy
burghers grown rich in real estate; clerks beside magnates--all united
in the worship of the body.
At noon, however, its workaday aspect was on; it was no more than a
lunching place. Chester and Kate found seats in a retired corner.
She looked him over with cool mischief while she drew off her gloves
and let one white hand, still creased in pink with the pressure of the
seams, drop toward him on the table.
"I am not exactly to congratulate you," she said, "but for a man who
was turned down last night you don't seem exactly unhappy."
Bertram let several expressions chase themselves over his face before
he blurted out:
"What's the matter with me?"
"Not a great deal. Has she so refused you as to make you conscious of
sin?"
"It wasn't a cold turn-down. I'd like it better if it was. I'd have
something to go on. It's--it's like trying to bite into a billiard
ball. I--you know what I mean."
"You mean that she holds herself above you--that she feels superior to
you?"
Bertram arrested all motion on that word, sat with the menu card,
which he had been twirling, immovable between his hands.
"Yes. If you want to jolt it to me good and hard that way. I guess
that is what it does mean."
"I suppose then that the crisis--last night--came about from your
little passage with the Chinese waiter? It happened while you were
out on the balcony didn't it?"
Bertram stared and glowed.
"Say, you're a wonder. You reach out and get things before they come
to you at all. That's just what did happen."
"And then? Or pardon me, I don't want you to tell me any more than
it's right for you to tell--any more than you feel like telling."
"Oh that's all right. Well, when we got outside it was the same old
song. She didn't care enough even to call me down. And like a fool I
came out with it. What's the use of telling what she said or what I
said? It was just the same way. She kept me dancing. She wouldn't say
yes and she wouldn't say no. She seemed anxious about only one thing.
She wanted to know if she'd been fair to me."
"I suppose she has--!" Kate brought this out as though he had put a
question to her. "And you want to know what I think?"
"I sure do."
"I think she cares--at least a little--shall I tell you all?"
Bertram, even in the hottest of this conversation, did not forget the
needs of his body. The waiter stood at his elbow. He rushed through
the order, and continued:
"I want to know everything."
"Well, to begin with--Bert Chester, you're a man."
"I didn't ask for hot air."
"That's all of that. You're an unfinished man. You--haven't had the
chance to get all the refinements which people like Eleanor Gray have
acquired. Do you see now? You've made it--you've been making it--all
for yourself. You had no fortune. It's splendid the way you worked to
get all these things. I know the story of how you got through college.
Everyone who knows you is proud of that. But--well Eleanor's mother
was rich and proud before she married, and her grandparents were
richer and prouder. Then she's lived a great deal alone; and she never
really blossomed out until she went abroad. So she learned her social
ways from Europeans. She's got a lot of British and Continental
ideas.
"With the rest of us, you know, it doesn't make any difference. You
could perceive that by the way we've taken you in. Why, it's really a
part of you. You're only two years out of college, hardly that; and
you're still studying law; but think how people have taken you up! It
is simply that Eleanor looks at it in a different way. It's a pretty
peculiarity in one of the sweetest girls I know."
Kate paused. Bert made no move to answer. She went on:
"Now about the thing you can't grasp in Eleanor. It's this way. You
can't see her nature as another _girl_ can. She's just as sweet and
tender and delicate as she can be, and she has high ideals--that's one
result of her living away from the world. If she were a little warmer
in temperament, it might be different, but--" Kate paused here as
though pondering whether to reveal or to conceal the thought of her
mind.
"But of course it is the coldness of a diamond or a sapphire or
something else very pure and precious."
Bertram Chester pulled himself up at this point and plucked at a place
away back in the conversation.
"What are these things that I don't know? Where is it that I fall
down?"
"They are some of the finer points."
"Well tell me." Kate noticed that the color had risen in his cheeks
and that his eyes drooped from hers.
"They must be corrected as we go on--provided you'll let me correct
them."
"That's what I am asking for--but I'd blame well like an example."
"Well, now, we'll take that waiter episode. The kind of people she'd
like to know treat servants impersonally. Servants are just
conveniences to them, like dumb waiters. So of course,--even if it was
only a Chinaman--she didn't like your noticing him and she came out of
her shell for just a moment to say so. Do you see now?"
Bertram's dark complexion reddened with the rush of his shame.
"Oh, that's the idea is it? I thought from something she said that she
was afraid I'd hurt his feelings. She wants me to put more front on
before 'em, does she?"
"Just about that. She doesn't like to see you put yourself on a level
with them."
"All right, that was straight over the plate and I got it."
Again Kate reached over to pat his hand.
"Now don't take it seriously; I know--she herself must know--how
splendid and able and promising you are--how much of a man!"
Bert spoke in some irritation.
"I always knew I wasn't a gentleman," he said, "but this is the first
time it was ever shot straight at me that way."
"Bert Chester, as long as I'm a friend of yours don't you ever dare
say to me that you're not a gentleman. You're one of the biggest and
strongest gentlemen I ever knew. Anyone need only see you for five
minutes to know you're that. But some people have certain things which
they attribute to a gentleman--notions, as I've said. And Eleanor from
her European experiences has some of these notions. Don't you see?"
The smile, which always broke so suddenly, came back to Bert Chester's
face.
"Well, of course that's why I broke loose from the ranch and went to
college in the first place. I wanted to be as good, every way, as the
best there is!"
"And you are already!"
He shook his head.
"No, or this wouldn't have happened. I want to be good enough to marry
any girl, no matter who. I'm going to amount to something. I'm going
to be rich, too--and a darn sight quicker than most people know. I
don't know that we came here to talk about that, though."
"Please go on. We came here to talk about you--anything about
yourself."
"That part of it has something to do with the main issue. I'm going to
pull out from Judge Tiffany as soon as I go up against the bar
examinations next month. At least, I want to pull out, and I'm only
wondering how the Judge will take it and how she will take it. You
see, I might just as well get admitted, and then it is good-bye to law
for me afterwards unless I use it in politics. Law--" Bertram rammed
his finger on the table with each word that followed "law is too blame
slow. Anyone could see that I couldn't be chasing about as I'm doing
if I had to depend on what Judge Tiffany is paying me as a clerk. Why,
I've made twice as much already whirling at business. I'll always have
my admission to the bar, too. If I want to settle down on a law
practice after I get rich, I can do it."
"That seems very promising to me."
"But here's the question. Is the Judge going to take it for a
throw-down, and how is Eleanor going to like the program?"
Kate appeared to be considering. In fact, she was considering a great
many more things than Bertram knew.
"I'm pretty sure Eleanor wouldn't care," she said at length. "Hers
isn't a very practical mind. It's impossible to say about Judge
Tiffany. He's crotchety. The right's on your side, for a man has a
right to change his employment, hasn't he? And I'm sure you have more
than returned your little salary. On the whole, I don't know but it
would be better for you with Eleanor if the Judge did get angry with
you. A girl with ideals like hers rather likes to have a man
persecuted. And you can't let it stand in the way of your career."
"But--"
"Oh, it isn't as though it were a choice between the girl and the
career. It isn't at all. The best way to win her is to build yourself
up to the big, splendid man she'd like you to be. If you stay a little
law clerk for five years or so, you won't have much inducement to
offer her! When you consider marriage, you have to remember that a
girl like Eleanor can't live on a trifle. I'd follow my own career. It
isn't, you see, as though there were anyone else in the field. Other
men come to the house, of course--men she's met at the Masters, old
friends of the family--but I don't consider any of them as rivals. I
did think for a time that Ned Greene was attracted, but he's crazy now
over Katherine Herbert. So it isn't a case for immediate action."
"Do you think--have you ever heard her speak of me?"
Kate's answer came readily.
"She has spoken to me of you--the way women do, so that you see under
what they say. We women are devils"--she smiled--"no, I can't tell you
what she said. I'm in a peculiar position about it. You see, her talk,
as it happens, is all twisted up in a confidence she made to
me--something else in her life--nothing to do with you--and I can't
break it. But I can do something without breaking any confidence. I
can tell you what I think you ought to do."
"Well, I guess that's what I want--" with the air of one who would
have liked a great deal more.
"The man who gets Eleanor Gray--and especially if Bertram Chester is
the man--cannot take her by assault. If you reach out to grasp
her--you who are so strong--it will only break something in that
delicate nature of hers. Don't woo. Serve. Don't even see her too
often. Don't renew that scene on the balcony--never make that mistake
again. When you are with her, show by your attitude how you feel, and
show her--well, that you're learning the things you've asked me to
teach you--the things I'm going to teach you."
"It's sure a pink tea program," said Bertram. Kate laughed.
"Bert Chester, when you make your dying speech from the scaffold
you're going to say something original and funny. You can't help it.
Now can you?"
The smile broke again on Bertram's face.
"Well, it has its funny side," he admitted. "All right. If
refinement's the game, me to it." His smile had caught Kate's laugh,
and there came between them a kind of mental click. Soft gratitude
sprang into his heart and quivered on his lips.
"You're a bully girl! I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you to
talk it over with. And you really do understand lots about women and
those things--where did you learn it?"
The smile went out of Kate. She drooped her eyes and let her pink
nails flutter on the tablecloth.
"Suffering and experience, I suppose."
"Could I--would you tell me about it?"
She looked up with an air of sweet sincerity.
"I should like very much to tell you. You could help me as much as you
say I'm helping you. Some other time, we'll have that all out
together. You see, when one has held a thing in her heart for a long
time--well, it's a struggle at first to get it out. But sometime when
I'm in the mood!"
And then he discovered that an appointment at the office was overdue.
While they went through the formalities of checks and wraps, she
talked foolish nothings. He parted with her hurriedly to run after a
Market Street cable car.
"We're going to be the best chums in the world," he said as he shook
hands.
"Indeed we are!"
She watched him as he ran after the car, swung on the platform with
the easy economy of motion which belongs to the athlete. But just
before he set his foot on the platform and looked back at her, she
herself whirled and started down the street, so that he saw only her
trim back-figure, the glint of her bronze hair, the easy grace of her
walk.