NEW PLANETS
The year after the Crown Point collapse was a sad and chastened one.
Money was tight on all sides. Large houses were closed, servants
discharged, dressmakers’ bills cut down. Many families hitherto
prominent dropped out of sight, preferring to hide their poverty in
remote corners of the city, whence, in some cases, they never again
emerged. The winter, shorn of its accustomed gaieties, was dull and
quiet.
With the spring there came a revival of life and energy. The volatile
spirit of the Californians began to rise. One of the chief causes of
this was a new series of disturbing rumors from Virginia City. In
February a strike was reported in the recently consolidated group of
claims known as the California and Consolidated Virginia. A vein of
ore seven feet wide and assaying sixty dollars to the ton had been
uncovered. Talk of the Nevada camp was in the air. The San Franciscans
were incredulous, as fearful of mining stock as the singed cat of the
fire, but they listened and watched, feeling the first faint unrest of
hope and temptation.
Socially too, the city showed signs of returning cheerfulness. This
was due not only to the natural rebound after a period of depression,
but to two new arrivals of the sort which those small segregated groups
known as “society” delight to welcome and entertain.
The first of these was Mercedes Gracey. Glamour of many sorts clung
about the name of this favorite of fortune. To her natural attractions
were added those supposed to be acquired by a sojourn in older and
more sophisticated localities. Mercedes had passed from her New York
boarding-school to the finishing influences of a year “abroad.” She
had traveled in Europe with a chaperone and taken on the polish of
accomplishment under the guidance of experienced teachers. Such news of
her as had drifted back to San Francisco was eagerly seized upon by the
less fortunate home dwellers. From time to time the newspapers printed
items about Miss Gracey’s triumphant career. Before her arrival San
Francisco had already developed a possessive pride in her as a native
daughter who would add to the glory of the Golden State.
Mercedes would not, probably, have been the object of such interest
had not the fortunes of her father and uncle been for the past three
years steadily ascending. The Gracey boys had of late risen from
the position of a pair of well-known and capable mining men to that
of two of the most prominent figures in the state. Their means were
reported large. They had been among the few who had got out of the
Crown Point excitement at the right moment, selling their stock at
the top price. They were now developing their Cresta Plata property.
Should this pan out as they expected there was no knowing where the
Gracey boys’ successes would end. Mercedes was the only woman relative
they possessed. It was no wonder that she was regarded with an almost
reverential interest, and her return evoked as much curiosity as though
it were that of an errant princess.
Black Dan, who had gone to New York to meet her, brought her back in
triumph. His idolatrous love had known no abatement in the two years’
separation. To have her finally restored to him, in an even completer
state of perfection, was a bewildering happiness to him. His primitive
nature strove to show its gratitude and tenderness in extravagant
ways. He showered presents on her, ordered the finest suite in the
newly-completed Lick House to be prepared for her, offered to rent
any country place she might choose. That she should accompany him to
the rough life of Virginia, where he spent most of his time, he never
expected. It would be enough for him to see her on his frequent visits
to the coast.
The other notable visitor who arrived in the city almost simultaneously
was a young Englishman, Lionel Harrower. He, too, took up his residence
in the Lick House, and it was but natural that some of the interest
evoked by the appearance of Black Dan’s daughter should be deflected
toward him.
Young Harrower was a nephew of that Englishman who fifteen years before
had married Mrs. Newbury’s sister, Carmen Romero. He was finishing his
education by a trip around the world, and had decided to make a stop of
some length in California, then a _terra incognita_ to the traveling
Briton. From his Spanish-Californian aunt he had brought letters to the
Newburys, Mrs. Davenport, and other prominent San Franciscans.
The Englishman of Harrower’s class was at that time a rarity in the far
West. Bonanza heiresses had not yet arisen to be the bait for well-born
foreigners of all nations. California, outside its own borders, still
enjoyed its original reputation as a land of picturesque gold-diggers
and romantic gamblers, and the wandering noble of Anglo-Saxon or Gallic
extraction avoided it as an unsafe place, where men were still free
with the revolver and the bowie knife.
Harrower was an even more engrossing object of local curiosity than
Mercedes. He was a good-looking young man of five and twenty, quiet in
manner, non-committal and brief of speech, deeply interested in all
he saw, and very shy. He was the heir to a baronetcy and fine country
place in Warwickshire. His grandfather, the present baronet, was in his
eighty-first year, and, though a hale old man, could not be expected
to live much longer. When he died Lionel Harrower would inherit the
title and lands, thereby coming into possession of one of the oldest
and most beautiful estates in the county. The young man neither looked
nor hinted any of these matters. But they were all carefully set down
in the letters that Carmen Romero wrote to her sister and her friends,
and they passed from mouth to mouth, accumulating material as they
progressed. San Francisco had not had enough experience in the visiting
patrician to be familiar with all the delicate gradations of rank, and
Harrower was regarded as of hardly less distinction than a reigning
Grand Duke.
With the appearance of these two interesting strangers the city emerged
from its apathy of depression. A desire to impress the new-comers
hospitably took possession of it. Both Mercedes and Harrower were
caught in the whirl of a round of entertainments, during which
they constantly encountered each other. Thrown thus together their
acquaintance rapidly grew. Harrower had not been a month in San
Francisco when the little world about him was speculating on his
interest in the daughter of Black Dan Gracey.
Mercedes was now nearly nineteen years of age. With her Spanish blood
to round and ripen her, that corresponded to the Anglo-Saxon woman’s
twenty-five. For all her American birth and education she was at heart
a Latin, subtile, complex, and revengeful. There was little of her
father in her. She had none of his simple largeness of temperament,
but was made up of feline intricacies of caprice, vanity, and passion.
At the present stage in her life her strongest instinct was love of
admiration. She had early comprehended the power of her beauty, and to
exercise this power was to her a delight which never lost its zest.
To throw a spell over men was the thing Mercedes loved best to do,
and could do with remarkable proficiency, considering her years and
inexperience.
So far she had had few opportunities. Mrs. Campbell, the chaperone to
whom her father had intrusted her, was a capable New England woman who
had early recognized the responsibilities of her position. Mercedes,
rich and beautiful, was a prize for which princes might have sued. But
Mrs. Campbell had received instructions from Black Dan that he did
not want his daughter taken from him by marriage with a foreigner,
and Mercedes, during her year in Europe, was guarded like a princess
traveling incognito. When she returned to San Francisco she had never
yet received an offer of marriage, and even her admirers had been
restricted in number and kept sternly at bay.
To Mercedes, Lionel Harrower represented all that was most choice in
position and rank. Through her travels she knew more of the class he
stood for than the admiring San Franciscans, and it was a class in
which she ardently desired to install herself. She questioned the young
man of his country and his people, prevailed upon him to show her a
photograph of the stately Elizabethan manor house which was his home,
and to talk to her of the life he led upon his ancestral acres. It was
like an English novel, and Mercedes saw herself moving through it,
lovely, proud and desired, as its conquering heroine.
In June she left the Lick House for the country place in the Santa
Clara Valley that Black Dan had taken for her. This was the estate of
Tres Pinos, one of the show places of the great valley, recently thrown
upon the market by the death of its owner.
Tres Pinos soon became the focusing point of the region’s summer life.
The wide balconies were constantly filled with visitors, the velvet
turf of the croquet grounds was swept by the crisp flounces of women’s
dresses, the bedrooms in the big house were always occupied. Mrs.
Campbell, precise, darkly clad, and primly well-bred, presided with an
all-seeing eye, astonishing the Californians by her rigid observance of
the smaller conventionalities. Through all Mercedes flitted, clad in
French dresses, more ornate and elegant than any ever seen before in
California, a smilingly gracious and finished person, evoking fear and
jealousy in her own sex, and eliciting a rather awed admiration from
the other.
That Lionel Narrower was a constant visitor at Tres Pinos the gossips
were quick to note. When the young man announced his intention of
spending the summer in California it seemed to them that there was no
more doubt as to the state of his feelings. What they did not know was
that his presence at Tres Pinos was evoked by a constant flutter of
scented notes from the chatelaine. There were many times when he had
refused the invitations with which Miss Gracey showered him. He had
found California, its scenery and people, of so much interest, that a
single segregated interest in one particular human being had had no
time to develop in him. But Mercedes did not think this. She felt quite
sure that Lionel Harrower was remaining in California because of an
engrossing and unconquerable sentiment for her.
One Sunday, late in June, he made one of the party which was spending
the week-end at Tres Pinos. In the warm middle of the Sabbath
afternoon, her visitors scattered over the croquet ground or enjoying
the siesta in the shuttered gloom of their bed chambers, Mercedes
started out to find him. She slipped down the wide staircase, peeped
into the dim drawing-room, cooled by closed blinds and filled with the
scent of cut flowers, and then slipped out on to the balcony.
A spiral of cigarette smoke rising from a steamer chair betrayed his
presence. He was comfortably outstretched in loose-jointed ease, a
novel raised before a pair of eyes which looked suspiciously sleepy,
his cigarette caught between his lips. At the sound of her voice he
sprang up, but she motioned him back into his chair, and sitting down
opposite began to rally him on his laziness. He looked at her with
drowsy good humor, his lids drooping. Her figure in its pale colored
muslin dress was thrown out against a background of velvety lawns and
the massed, juicy greens of summer shrubbery. It was the middle of
the afternoon, hot and still. From the croquet ground came the soft,
occasional striking of balls.
“Just listen to them,” said the young man, “they’re actually playing
croquet!”
“Lots of people play croquet on Sunday,” said Mercedes with some
haste, as she disliked to have it thought that she was ignorant of any
intricacy of etiquette. “I don’t see anything wrong in it.”
“It’s not the Sunday part of it. It’s the energy. Fancy standing out in
that sun of your own free will!”
“You’re horribly lazy,” said the young girl. “It’s your worst fault.
You do nothing all day but lie about on the balcony and drink lemonade.”
“I _could_ drink beer,” said Harrower dreamily, “but I’ve never seen
anything but lemonade.”
“Well, I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to insist on your being
more energetic. I want you to take me for a drive.”
“A drive! Now? But, my dear Miss Gracey, the sun’s simply scorching.”
Mercedes flushed slightly. Her cavalier’s manner of accepting the
suggestion did not please her.
“If you’re afraid of your complexion,” she said, “you can hold my
parasol over your head. I’ll drive.”
Harrower laughed. When she said things of this kind he thought her what
he would have called “great fun.” Still he would have much preferred
remaining on the balcony with his novel and his cigarette, to braving
the heat of the afternoon, even in Miss Gracey’s smart new pony
phaeton, with Miss Gracey in the driver’s seat. He sat up, rubbing his
eyes into a more wakeful brightness and smothering a yawn.
“Where are we to drive to? Menlo Park again?”
“No, I’m going to take you back in the hills to the De Soto place. It
was originally an old Spanish grant and part of the place is just the
way it used to be. The Allens live there. They moved down early this
year, so I don’t think you met them in town. Some people think the
girls are very pretty.”
“Pretty girls!” said Harrower, pricking up his ears. “By all means
let’s go.”
He looked at her laughing, for he thought she would enjoy the humor of
his sudden enthusiasm. Instead, for a fleeting second, her face was
clouded with annoyance. Then she recovered herself and rose to her
feet, moving away from him.
“The horses are ready now,” she said. “I’ll go up for my hat and
parasol and I’ll expect to find you at the steps when I come down.”
The heat was waning, the live-oak shadows lying dark and irregular
over the drive, when the phaeton approached the Allens’ balcony. The
light dresses of the Allen girls were thrown up by the darker gown of
dignified middle age. Mrs. Barclay was sitting in a wicker arm-chair
near the balustrade fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan. Mercedes
muttered annoyance to her companion, and then her glance was charged
with a sudden infusion of interest as it fell on a graceful masculine
back bending over a table set with plates and glasses, behind which
June Allen was standing.
“That must be Jerry Barclay,” she murmured to Harrower, as, with
dexterous exactness she brought up the phaeton wheels against the
mounting block. “I’ve not met him yet. He’s been in Virginia City, like
everybody else.”
“Ah--aw! Yes, of course,” Harrower murmured vaguely, not knowing
or caring in the least about Jerry Barclay, but filled with sudden
admiration for the fresh-faced, blonde girl who rose at their approach
and came to the top of the steps. Though she had never seen him before
she included him in the sweet frank smile and friendly glance with
which she greeted Mercedes.
“Rosamund,” said Mercedes, throwing the reins around the whip with the
easy flourish of the expert, “I’ve brought over Mr. Harrower. He’s
making a collection of Californian specimens, and I thought perhaps
he’d like to see you. He’ll put you down under the head of vertebrate
fauna, I suppose.”
The stranger, whose face had grown exceedingly red, did not know
whether in the free, untrammeled West this constituted an introduction.
The young woman, however, solved the difficulty by coming down a step
or two and extending a welcoming hand. He looked into a pair of gray
eyes, unusually honest and direct, and heard her saying in a voice, not
low-keyed, but clear and full,
“I’m glad you came, Mr. Harrower. It was very kind of Mercedes to bring
you.”
On the balcony above Mrs. Barclay had risen and was looking at the
new-comers with avid curiosity. She had already talked them threadbare
in every drawing-room from Millbrae to Menlo Park. Her personal
acquaintance with both was very slight and this was a good opportunity
to improve it and arrive at conclusions, to air which she could once
again make a tour of the country houses and be sure of eager attention.
Behind her, at a table laden with a silver pitcher, glasses and plates,
June was standing. She was pouring out a glass of lemonade, which Jerry
was waiting to take to his mother, when the phaeton drove up. The glass
was filled and the pitcher set down, before either of them looked at
the new arrivals. Then Jerry turned and his eyes fell on them. He
stopped short, the glass in his hand. Mercedes, a smile of greeting on
her lips, was just mounting the steps.
“Heavens, what a girl!” he said in a whisper, turning to June.
“Yes,” she answered in an equally low voice, “she’s very pretty.”
“Pretty! pretty!” he ejaculated, mechanically setting the glass down.
“Why she’s a dream!”
He turned again and looked at Mercedes, who was speaking to his mother.
His face was staring with admiration, a slight fixed smile on his lips.
It was the look of the male suddenly stricken by the physical charm
of the female. June dropped her eyes to the table with a sensation of
feeling cold, insignificant and small.
“Your mother’s lemonade,” she said, pushing the glass toward him. “You
were going to take it to her.”
He did not appear to hear her. His eyes were fastened on Mercedes, the
slight smile still on his lips. Forgetful of the glass with which June
had touched his hand, he slowly walked across the balcony to where Mrs.
Barclay stood and said gaily,
“Mother, won’t you introduce me to Miss Gracey? We came very near
meeting at Foleys three years ago and just missed it. I don’t want that
to happen again.”
When June had welcomed her guests she went back to her seat behind the
table. Presently Mrs. Barclay drew her chair nearer to her, for Mrs.
Barclay began to feel that to be a fifth among four young people so
well pleased with one another was not entertaining. So she moved up
toward June and talked to her about the dishonesty of the new butcher
at San Mateo as compared with that of the old butcher at Menlo Park.
June listened and now and then spoke. She did not seem to know much
about either butcher, and Mrs. Barclay made a mental note of the fact
that she must be a poor housekeeper. Once or twice she looked at the
elder woman with eyes that were disconcertingly empty of attention.
When that lady rose to go she remarked that the girl looked pale and
tired. She said this to Jerry on the way home.
“Did she?” he answered absently. “Poor little June! She’s just the
dearest little woman in the world. But isn’t that Gracey girl a wonder?
I never saw a more beautiful face.”