THE HIGH HAT
John Quincy Winterslip walked aboard the ferry at Oakland feeling rather
limp and weary. For more than six days he had been marooned on
sleepers--his pause at Chicago had been but a flitting from one train to
another--and he was fed up. Seeing America first--that was what he had
been doing. And what an appalling lot of it there was! He felt that for
an eternity he had been staring at endless plains, dotted here and there
by unesthetic houses the inmates of which had unquestionably never heard
a symphony concert.
Ahead of him ambled a porter, bearing his two suit-cases, his golf clubs
and his hat-box. One of the man's hands was gone--chewed off, no doubt,
in some amiable frontier scuffle. In its place he wore a steel hook.
Well, no one could question the value of a steel hook to a man in the
porter's profession. But how quaint--and western!
The boy indicated a spot by the rail on the forward deck, and the porter
began to unload. Carefully selecting the man's good hand, John Quincy
dropped into it a tip so generous as to result in a touching of hook to
cap in a weird salute. The object of this attention sank down amid his
elaborate trappings, removed the straw hat from his perspiring head, and
tried to figure out just what had happened to him.
Three thousand miles from Beacon Street, and two thousand miles still to
go! Why, he inquired sourly of his usually pleasant self, had he ever
agreed to make this absurd expedition into heathen country? Here it was
late June, Boston was at its best. Tennis at Longwood, long mild
evenings in a single shell on the Charles, week-ends and golf with
Agatha Parker at Magnolia. And if one must travel, there was Paris. He
hadn't seen Paris in two years and had been rather planning a quick run
over, when his mother had put this preposterous notion into his head.
Preposterous--it was all of that. Traveling five thousand miles just as
a gentle hint to Aunt Minerva to return to her calm, well-ordered life
behind purple window-panes on Beacon Street. And was there any chance
that his strong-minded relative would take the hint? Not one in a
thousand. Aunt Minerva was accustomed to do as she pleased--he had an
uncomfortable, shocked recollection of one occasion when she had said
she would do as she damn well pleased.
John Quincy wished he was back. He wished he was crossing Boston Common
to his office on State Street, there to put out a new issue of bonds. He
was not yet a member of the firm--that was an honor accorded only to
Winterslips who were bald and a little stooped--but his heart was in his
work. He put out a bond issue with loving apprehension, waiting for the
verdict as a play-wright waits behind the scenes on a first night. Would
those First Mortgage Sixes go over big, or would they flop at his feet?
The hoarse boom of a ferry whistle recalled John Quincy to his present
unbelievable location on the map. The boat began to move. He was dimly
conscious of a young person of feminine gender who came and sat at his
side. Away from the slip and out into the harbor the ferry carried John
Quincy, and he suddenly sat up and took notice, for he was never blind
to beauty, no matter where he encountered it.
And he was encountering beauty now. The morning air was keen and dry and
bright. Spread out before him was that harbor which is like a tired
navigator's dream come true. They passed Goat Island, and he heard the
faint echo of a bugle, he saw Tamalpais lifting its proud head toward
the sparkling sky, he turned, and there was San Francisco scattered
blithely over its many hills.
The ferry plowed on, and John Quincy sat very still. A forest of masts
and steam funnels--here was the water front that had supplied the
atmosphere for those romantic tales that held him spellbound when he was
a boy at school--a quiet young Winterslip whom the gypsy strain had
missed. Now he could distinguish a bark from Antwerp, a great liner from
the Orient, a five-masted schooner that was reminiscent of those
supposedly forgotten stories. Ships from the Treaty Ports, ships from
cocoanut islands in southern seas. A picture as intriguing and colorful
as a back drop in a theater--but far more real.
Suddenly John Quincy stood up. A puzzled look had come into his calm
gray eyes. "I--I don't understand," he murmured.
He was startled by the sound of his own voice. He hadn't intended to
speak aloud. In order not to appear too utterly silly, he looked around
for some one to whom he might pretend he had addressed that remark.
There was no one about--except the young person who was obviously
feminine and therefore not to be informally accosted.
John Quincy looked down at her. Spanish or something like that,
blue-black hair, dark eyes that were alight now with the amusement she
was striving to hide, a delicate oval face tanned a deep brown. He
looked again at the harbor--beauty all about the boat, and beauty on it,
Much better than traveling on trains!
The girl looked up at John Quincy. She saw a big, broad-shouldered young
man with a face as innocent as a child's. A bit of friendliness, she
decided instantly, would not be misunderstood.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
"Oh--I--I'm sorry," he stammered. "I didn't mean--I spoke without
intending--I said I didn't understand--"
"You didn't understand what?"
"A most amazing thing has happened," he continued. He sat down, and
waved his hand toward the harbor. "I've been here before."
She looked perplexed. "Lots of people have," she admitted.
"But--you see--I mean--I've never been here before."
She moved away from him. "Lots of people haven't." She admitted that,
too.
John Quincy took a deep breath. What was this discussion he had got
into, anyhow? He had a quick impulse to lift his hat gallantly and walk
away, letting the whole matter drop. But no, he came of a race that sees
things through.
"I'm from Boston," he said.
"Oh," said the girl. That explained everything.
"And what I'm trying to make clear--although of course there's no reason
why I should have dragged you into it--"
"None whatever," she smiled. "But go on."
"Until a few days ago I was never west of New York, never in my whole
life, you understand. Been about New England a bit, and abroad a few
times, but the West--"
"I know. It didn't interest you."
"I wouldn't say that," protested John Quincy with careful politeness.
"But there was such a lot of it--exploring it seemed a hopeless
undertaking. And then--the family thought I ought to go, you see--so I
rode and rode on trains and was--you'll pardon me--a bit bored. Now--I
come into this harbor, I look around me, and I get the oddest feeling. I
feel that I've been here before."
The girl's face was sympathetic. "Other people have had that
experience," she told him. "Choice souls, they are. You've been a long
time coming, but you're home at last." She held out a slim brown hand.
"Welcome to your city," she said.
John Quincy solemnly shook hands. "Oh, no," he corrected gently.
"Boston's my city. I belong there, naturally. But this--this is
familiar." He glanced northward at the low hills sheltering the Valley
of the Moon, then back at San Francisco. "Yes, I seem to have known my
way about here once. Astonishing, isn't it?"
"Perhaps--some of your ancestors--"
"That's true. My grandfather came out here when he was a young man. He
went home again--but his brothers stayed. It's the son of one of them
I'm going to visit in Honolulu."
"Oh--you're going on to Honolulu?"
"To-morrow morning. Have you ever been there?"
"Ye--es." Her dark eyes were serious. "See--there are the docks--that's
where the East begins. The real East. And Telegraph Hill--" she pointed;
no one in Boston ever points, but she was so lovely John Quincy
overlooked it--"and Russian Hill, and the Fairmont on Nob Hill."
"Life must be full of ups and downs," he ventured lightly. "Tell me
about Honolulu. Sort of a wild place, I imagine?"
She laughed. "I'll let you discover for yourself how wild it is," she
told him. "Practically all the leading families came originally from
your beloved New England. 'Puritans with a touch of sun,' my father
calls them. He's clever, my father," she added, in an odd childish tone
that was wistful and at the same time challenging.
"I'm sure of it," said John Quincy heartily. They were approaching the
Ferry Building and other passengers crowded about them. "I'd help you
with that suit-case of yours, but I've got all this truck. If we could
find a porter--"
"Don't bother," she answered. "I can manage very well." She was staring
down at John Quincy's hat box. "I--I suppose there's a silk hat in
there?" she inquired.
"Naturally," replied John Quincy.
She laughed--a rich, deep-throated laugh. John Quincy stiffened
slightly. "Oh, forgive me," she cried. "But--a silk hat in Hawaii!"
John Quincy stood erect. The girl had laughed at a Winterslip. He filled
his lungs with the air sweeping in from the open spaces, the broad open
spaces where men are men. A weird reckless feeling came over him. He
stooped, picked up the hat box, and tossed it calmly over the rail. It
bobbed indignantly away. The crowd closed in, not wishing to miss any
further exhibition of madness.
"That's that," said John Quincy quietly.
"Oh," gasped the girl, "you shouldn't have done it."
And indeed, he shouldn't. The box was an expensive one, the gift of his
admiring mother at Christmas. And the topper inside, worn in the
gloaming along the water side of Beacon Street, had been known to add a
touch of distinction even to that distinguished scene.
"Why not?" asked John Quincy. "The confounded thing's been a nuisance
ever since I left home. And besides--we do look ridiculous at times,
don't we? We easterners? A silk hat in the tropics! I might have been
mistaken for a missionary." He began to gather up his luggage. "Shan't
need a porter any more," he announced gaily. "I say--it was awfully kind
of you--letting me talk to you like that."
"It was fun," she told him. "I hope you're going to like us out here.
We're so eager to be liked, you know. It's almost pathetic."
"Well," smiled John Quincy, "I've met only one Californian to date.
But--"
"Yes?"
"So far, so good!"
"Oh, thank you." She moved away.
"Please--just a moment," called John Quincy. "I hope--I mean, I wish--"
But the crowd surged between them. He saw her dark eyes smiling at him
and then, irrevocably as the hat, she drifted from his sight.