"Tell her I can't see her."
Granthope turned away, and the boy left.
The room was as quiet as a padded cell, full of a soft, velvety
blackness, except where the single drop-lamp lighted up the couch.
Ordinarily the place was, in its strange dark emptiness, a restful,
comforting retreat. Now it imprisoned him. Above his head the great
ring of embroidered zodiacal signs shone with a golden luster. They
were the symbols of the mysterious dignity of the past, of the dark ages
of thought, of priestcraft and secret wisdom of the blind centuries that
had gone. But, a modern, incongruously set about with such medieval
relics, he felt for the first time, undignified. In their time these
emblems had represented all that existed of knowledge. Now, to him they
stood for all that was left of ignorance and superstition; and it was
upon such instruments he played.
He read palms perfunctorily that Saturday. He seemed to hear his own
voice all the while, and some dissociated function of his mind scoffed
continually at his chicanery. It was the same old formula: "You are not
understood by those about you. You crave sympathy, and it is refused.
You are extraordinarily sensitive, but when you are most hurt you often
say nothing. You have an intuitive knowledge of people. You have a
wonderful power of appreciation and criticism. People confide in you.
You are impulsive, but your instinct is usually sure"--the same
professional, easy rigamarole, colored with what hints his quick eyes
gave him or his flagging imagination suggested.
Women listened avidly, drinking in every word. How could he help telling
them what they loved so to hear? They asked questions so suggestive
that a child might have answered. They prolonged the discussion of
themselves, obviously enjoying his apparent interest. He caught himself
again and again playing with their credulity, their susceptibility, and
hated himself for it. They lingered, smiling self-consciously, and he
delayed them with a look. In very perversity, he began deliberately to
flatter their vanity in order to see to what inordinate pitch of conceit
their minds would rise. He affected indifference, and even scorn--they
followed after him still more eagerly. He grew, at last, almost
savagely critical, an instinct of cruelty aroused by such complacent,
egregious egoism. They fawned on him, like spaniels under the lash.
After a solitary dinner he returned to his rooms. For an hour or two he
tried to lose himself in the study of a medical book. Medicine had long
been his passion and his library was well equipped. Had he been reading
to prepare himself for practice he could not have been more thorough.
To-night, however, he found it hard to fix his attention, and in despair
he took up a volume of Casanova's _Memoirs_. There was an indefatigable
charlatan! The fascinating Chevalier had never wearied in ill-doing; he
kept his zest to the last. He skipped to another volume to follow the
pursuit of Henriette, of "C.V.," of Therese. The perusal amused him, and
he got back something of his cynical indifference.
It was after eleven o'clock when he laid down the book and rose to look,
abstractedly, out of the office window. He longed for an adventure that
should reinstate him as his old careless self.
He left his rooms, went up to Powell Street and finally wandered into
the noisy gaiety of the Techau Tavern. The place was running full with
after-theater gatherings, and he had hard work to find a table. All
about him was a confusion of excited talk, the clatter of dishes, the
riotous music of an insistent orchestra. Parties were entering all the
while, beckoned to places by the head waiter. The place was garish with
lights and mirrors.
Granthope had sat there ten minutes or so, sipping his glass, noticing,
here and there, clients whom he had served, when, between the heads of
two women, far across the room, he recognized Mrs. Page. It was not
long before she saw him, caught his eye, and signaled with vivacity.
The diversion was agreeable; he rose and went over. A glance at her
table showed him a company most of whose members he had met before, but
with whom, only a few months since, he would have counted it a social
success to be considered intimate. While not being quite of the elect,
they held the key of admission to many high places in virtue of their
wit and ingenious powers to please. They were such as insured
amusement. Granthope himself was this evening desirous of being amused.
With Mrs. Page was Frankie Dean, the irrepressible, voluble, sarcastic,
a devil in her black, snapping eyes, as cold-blooded as a snake. It was
she who had so nearly embarrassed him at the Chinese supper at the
Maxwells'. She eyed him now, dark, feline, whimsically watching her
chance to make sport of him. With them was a young girl from Santa Rosa,
newly come to San Francisco, an alien in such a company. She was slight
and dewy, vivid with sudden color, with soft, fervent eyes that had not
yet learned to face such audacity as her companions practised. Keith
and Fernigan were there, also, like a vaudeville team, rollicking with
fun, playing into each other's hands, charging the company with abandon.
Lastly, "Sully" Maxwell sat, silent, happy, indulgent, with his pockets
filled with twenty dollar gold-pieces, which he got rid of at every
opportunity. He spoke about once every fifteen minutes, and then
usually to the waiter. "A good spender" was Sully--that quality and his
unfailing good-nature carried him into the gayest circles and kept him
there unnoticed, until the bills were to be paid.
To Granthope, tired with his day's work, in conflict with himself,
morbidly self-conscious, the scene was stimulating. There was an
atmosphere of inconsequent mirth in the group, which dissolved his mood
immediately. The women, smartly dressed, bubbling with spirit, quick
with repartee--Keith and Fernigan, their sparkling dialogue interrupted,
waiting for another auditor--even Sully, prosperous, good-natured,
hospitably making him welcome--the group attracted him, rejuvenated him,
enveloped him with their frivolity. The party was in the first
effervescence of its enthusiasm. Mrs. Page was at her sprightly best,
impellent, a gorgeous animal. Even Frankie Dean, whom he did not like,
was temptingly piquant and brisk. The little girl had a novelty and
virginal charm. He had been out of his element all day. Here, he could
be himself. He could take things easily and jocosely, and have no
thought of consequences. His mood disappeared like a shattered
soap-bubble, and he was caught into their jubilant atmosphere.
He was introduced to the girl from Santa Rosa, who looked up at him
timidly but with evident curiosity, as at a celebrity, and sat down
between her and Mrs. Page. Sully Maxwell took advantage of the new
arrival to order another round of drinks--club sandwiches, golden
bucks--till he was stopped by Frankie Dean. Keith and Fernigan
recommenced their wit. Mrs. Page looked at him with all kinds of
messages in her eyes, as if she were quite sure that he could interpret
them. The girl from Santa Rosa said nothing, but, from time to time,
gave him a shy, curious glance from her big brown eyes. Granthope's
spirits rose steadily, but his excitement had in it something hectic.
In a sudden pause he seemed to remember that he had been speaking rather
too loudly.
After the party had refused, unanimously, further refreshment, Sully
proposed that they should all drive out to the Cliff House, and they
left the restaurant forthwith to set out on this absurd expedition. It
was already long past midnight; the adventure was a characteristic San
Francisco pastime for the giddier spirits of the town.
Sully was for hiring two hacks; Mrs. Page, giggling, vetoed the
proposition, and Frankie Dean supported her. Decidedly that would be
commonplace; why break up the party? The girl from Santa Rosa looked
alarmed at the prospect. Granthope smiled at her ingenuousness, and
liked her for it. The result of the sidewalk discussion was that Sully
obligingly mounted beside the driver, and the six others squeezed into
the carriage, the door banged, and they proceeded on their hilarious way
toward the "Panhandle" of the Park. On the rear seat Granthope sat with
Mrs. Page and Frankie Dean on either hand, protesting that they were
perfectly comfortable. Opposite him the girl from Santa Rosa leaned
forward on the edge of the cushion, shrinking away from the two men
beside her.
Mrs. Page made an ineffectual search in the dark for Granthope's hand.
Not finding it, she began to sing, under her breath:
"It was not like this in the olden time,
It was not like this, at all!"
and Frankie Dean, quick-witted enough to understand the situation,
remarked, "Oh, Mr. Granthope doesn't read palms free, Violet; you ought
to know that!" She darted a look at him.
So it went on frothily, with chattering, laughter, snatches of song,
jests and stories, punctuated occasionally by the rapping of Sully's
cane on the window of the carriage, as he leaned over in a jovial
attempt to participate in the fun. Granthope, for a while, led the
spirit of gaiety that prevailed, told a story or two, "jollied" Mrs.
Page, laughed at Keith's inconsequence, accepted Frankie Dean's
challenges. But the frank, bewildered eyes of the little girl from Santa
Rosa, fixed upon him, disconcerted him more than once.
The carriage soon entered Golden Gate Park. The night was warm and
still, the dusk pervaded with perfumes. Under the slope of Strawberry
Hill Maxwell stopped the carriage and ordered them all out to invade the
shadowy stillness with revelry. The night air was that of belated
summer, full of a languor that comes seldom to San Francisco which has
neither real summer nor real winter, and the wildness of the place,
remote, unvisited, was exhilarating. A mock minuet was started, races
run, even trees climbed by Frankie Dean the audacious, with shrieks and
laughter, all childishly with the sheer joy of living. Granthope and
the girl from Santa Rosa, after watching the sport with amusement for a
while, left the rest and walked on past a turn of the road, to stand
there, discussing the stars, while the cries of the two women came
softened along the sluggish breeze. The girl took off her hat and
breathed deeply of the night air. They walked on farther through the
gloom, till only an occasional faint shout reached them from the party.
Granthope put the girl at her ease, pointed out the planets and the
constellations and explained the principles of ancient astrology. They
had begun to forget the rest when they were overtaken and captured again
and the crowded carriage took its way towards the sea.
Upon a high ledge of rock jutting out into the Pacific, at the very
entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, stands the Cliff House, a white,
wooden, many-windowed monstrosity with glazed verandas, cupolas,
frivolous dormers, cheap, garish, bulky, gay, seemingly almost toppling
into the water. Here come not only such innocently holidaying folk as
Fancy Gray and Gay P. Summer, not only jaded tourists and the
Sunday-outing citizens who lie upon the warm beach below and doze away a
morning in the sun and wind. It was patronized of old by the
buggy-riding fraternity, the smokers, the spenders, with their
lights-o'-love, as the most popular of road-houses. The cable-cars and
the two "dummy" railroad lines have changed its character somewhat, but
it is still a show-place of the town. There is good eating, a gorgeous
view of the Pacific, and the sea-lions on the rocks below.
Here Mrs. Page's party alighted, near three o'clock in the morning. The
bar only was open, its white-frocked attendant sleeping behind the
counter. This they entered, yawning from their ride. The barkeeper was
awakened, peremptorily, and was ordered to prepare what he had for
refreshment. With hot beans from the heater, tamales, potato salad,
cold cuts, crackers and cheese, he laid a table in a small dining-room.
Sully Maxwell undertook all the arrangements, fraternized with the
barkeeper, selected beverages, not forgetting ginger ale for the girl
from Santa Rosa. Mrs. Page and Frankie Dean, somewhat disheveled,
retired, to appear trig and trim and glossy in the gaslight, ready for
more gaiety. Granthope, meanwhile, had wandered out upon the veranda to
watch the surf dashing on the rocks, to note the yellow gleam from the
Point Bonita light, and smell the salt air; to get his courage up, in
short, for another round of animation. The instant he returned Mrs. Page
went at him.
"Now, Frank," she said, "it won't do to sulk or to flirt with Santa
Rosa. What's got into you, anyway? You must positively do something to
amuse us."
"Office hours from ten till four," Keith murmured audibly.
Frankie Dean turned on him: "They never let you out of your cage at
all!"
Fernigan, thereat, began an absurd pantomime that half terrified the
girl from Santa Rosa. He pretended to be a monkey behind the bars of a
cage, eating peanuts--and worse. It was shockingly funny. The company
roared, all but Granthope. He was at the point of impatience, but
replied with what sounded like ennui:
"I'm a bit stale, Violet; you'll have to excuse me if I'm stupid
to-night. I came to be entertained."
Frankie Dean looked at him mischievously. "Never mind, Mr. Granthope,
she'll come back."
It was obviously no more than a cant phrase, intended for a witticism.
Mrs. Page, however, took it up with mock seriousness.
"Who's '_she_', now? _I'm_ back in the chorus again! There _was_ a
time, Frank--" Her voice was sentimental; she tilted her head and
looked at him, under half-closed eyelids, across the table.
"I say, Granthope, you ought to publish an illustrated catalogue of 'em.
There's nothing doing for amateurs, nowadays. When women pay five
dollars to have their hands held what chance is there for us?" This
from Keith, with burlesque emphasis.
Mrs. Page would not be diverted. "No, but really, Frank; who _is_ she?
I've quite lost track of your conquests."
"Oh, you know I'm wedded to my art," he said lightly.
"Yes, and it's the art of making love, isn't it?"
"'No further seek his merits to disclose,'" said Keith, and Fernigan
added, "'Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.'"
The girl from Santa Rosa looked suddenly bursting with intelligence,
recognizing the quotation. She started to finish it, then stopped; her
lips moved silently. Granthope smiled.
Frankie Dean had been watching her chance for another at his expense.
Now she asked, with apparent frankness: "Mr. Granthope, can you tell
character by the lines on the soles of the feet?"
"Science of Solistry," murmured Keith to the Santa Rosa girl.
"Let's try it!" Mrs. Page exclaimed. "I will, for one! Do you know my
second toe's longer than my great toe? I'm awfully proud of it. I can
prove it, too!"
"Go on!" Frankie Dean dared her.
The girl from Santa Rosa stared, her lips apart. "Why, every one's is,
aren't they?"
"No such thing!" Mrs. Page stopped and almost blushed. A chorus of
laughter.
"Oh, there are a good many better ways of telling character than that,"
said Granthope.
"Yes," Keith put in. "Indiscreet remarks, for instance."
Mrs. Page bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, if I were going
in for indiscreet remarks I might make a few about _you_!"
Here Sully interposed. "Isn't this conversation getting rather
personal? I move we discard all these low cards. This is no woman's
club. The quiet life for mine."
The hint was taken by Keith, who began an English music-hall song, to
the effect that "John was a nice good 'usband, 'e never cared to roam,
'e only wanted a quiet life, 'e only wanted a quiet wife; there 'e would
sit by the fireside, such a chilly man was John--" where he was joined
in the chorus by Fernigan--"Oh, I 'opes and trusts there's a nice 'ot
fire, where my old man's gone!" Maxwell pounded in time upon the table.
The girl from Santa Rosa hazarded a laugh.
Granthope looked on listlessly, ever more detached and introspective.
This was what he had been used to, since he could remember, but now, in
the stuffy little room, with its ghastly yellow gas-light, the smell of
eatables and wine, the pallor of the women's faces, the flush of
Maxwell's, the desperate frivolity, the artificiality of it all bored
him. He wondered, whimsically, why he had ever looked forward to being
the companion of such a society as this. It was all harmless enough,
unconventional as it was, but he tasted the ashes in his mouth.
Perhaps, after all, he was only not in the mood for it. He tried to
smile again.
Fernigan seized a small Turkish rug from the floor and hung it in front
of him, like a chasuble. Standing before the company he intoned a
sacrilegious parody, like everything he did, funny, like everything he
did, atrocious:
"_O, sanctissimus nabisco in colorado maduro domino te deum, e pluribus
unum vice versa et circus hippocriticam, mephisto apollinaris nux vomica
dolores intimidad mores; O rara avis per diem cum magnum vino et sappho
modus vivendi felicitas,_" to the droned "_A--men_."
Keith then enlivened the company with what quaint parlor tricks he knew,
or dared, from making of a napkin a ballet dancer pirouetting upon one
toe, to limericks that were suppressed by Sully Maxwell, Mrs. Page
laughed prodigiously, showing all her teeth, staring with her great
eyes, vivid in her every expression, flamboyant, sleek and glossy,
abounding in temperament. Frankie Dean smiled maliciously and plied the
performers with her acrid wit. The girl from Santa Rosa listened, her
cheeks burning.
At six they went outside for fresh air and promenaded the glazed veranda
until the sun rose. In front of them was the broad Pacific, stretching
out to the Farralones, even to Japan. To the north, across the bar,
yellowed with alluvium from the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, a
mountainous coast stretched to far, misty Bolinas. Southward ran the
broad, wide beach exposed by the ebb tide. It was damp and cool; the
last spasm of summer had given way to the brisk, stimulating weather
that was San Francisco's usual habit. Granthope buttoned his light
overcoat tightly over his rumpled evening dress and walked with the girl
from Santa Rosa, enjoying the scene quietly, speaking in monosyllables.
The others had a new burst of effervescence, still more desperate than
ever; their hilarity was indefatigable. Keith walked along the tops of
the tables, leading Mrs. Page. Frankie Dean and Fernigan two-stepped
the length and breadth of the wide platform, joking incessantly.
A walk up the beach was then suggested, and, after a preliminary
furbishing of faces and hair, they went down the steep rocky road to the
wide strand, and proceeded along the shore.
Granthope, falling behind, saw that the girl from Santa Rosa alone had
waited for him. She gazed at him steadily with grave eyes.
"Well," he said kindly, "what d'you think of San Francisco?"
She looked down at the sand and drew a circle with her toe before she
answered.
"It's pretty gay here, isn't it?"
"Oh, well, if you call this sort of thing gay!"
The girl looked immensely relieved, gave him a quick, searching glance,
and said shyly: "Do you know, Mr. Granthope, I have an idea that you
didn't enjoy it any more than I did!"
He smiled at her, then silently grasped her hand. She blushed and turned
away.
"I thought it was going to be great fun," she said, as they walked on.
"I never was up all night before. It's awfully exciting. But people do
look awful in the morning, don't they?"
She herself was like a blossom wet with dew, but Granthope knew what she
meant, well enough. He had watched the lines come into Mrs. Page's face
and her mouth droop at the corners; he had noticed the glitter fade from
Frankie Dean's black eyes, and her lids grow heavy.
"You ought never to have come," he said. "I think you'd better go home
and get to bed. Suppose we leave them and walk across to the almshouse
and take the Haight Street cars?"
"Oh, d'you think they'd mind, if we did?"
"They'd never notice that we were gone, I'm sure."
"I'm afraid you'll find me awfully stupid. Miss Dean is very witty,
isn't she?"
"I'd rather be stupid."
"You're sure I won't bore you?"
"I don't feel much like talking, myself. I have plenty to think about.
Suppose we don't say anything, unless we have something to say."
"Oh, I didn't know you could do that--in San Francisco!"
He laughed sincerely for the first time that night.
As they came to the place where the beach road turned off for Ingleside,
the rest of the party was some distance ahead. They were sitting upon
some rocks, and, as Granthope looked, he saw Mrs. Page rise, lift her
skirts and walk barefooted across the sands, down to the water's edge.
She turned and waved her hand to him. He took off his hat to her and
pointed inland in reply. Then he climbed the low sand-hills with his
companion and struck off southward, along the road. The girl had colored
again.
Her confidence in him was soothing. She was so serious and innocent, so
quick with a country girl's delicate observation of nature, that he fell
into a more placid state of mind. She became more friendly all the
while, till, despite her confession of shyness, she fairly prattled. He
let her run on, scarcely listening, busy with his own thoughts. And so,
up the long road to the almshouse, resting in the pale sunshine
occasionally, through the Park to the end of the Haight Street
cable-line they walked, and talked ingenuously.
She lived in "The Mission," and there, having nothing better to do, he
escorted her, and at last, in that jumble of wooden buildings so
multitudinously prosaic, between the Twin Peaks and the Old Mission, he
left her. She bade him good-by apparently with regret. Widely
different as they were in mind and temperament, they had, for their
hour, come closely together. Now they were to recede, never again,
perhaps, to meet.
He walked in town along Valencia Street, through that curious "hot belt"
which defies the town's normal state of weather, turned up Van Ness
Avenue, still too busy with his reflections to shut himself up in his
studio. It was Sunday morning--he had almost forgotten the day--and he
turned up his collar, to conceal what he could of his evening attire and
its wilted, rumpled linen, somewhat uncomfortable in the presence of the
church-going throngs which pervaded the avenue.
He had reached the top of the long slope leading to the Black Point
military reservation, and was pausing upon the corner of Lombard Street,
when, looking up the hill, he saw Clytie Payson coming down the steep,
irregular pathway that did service for a sidewalk. He stepped behind a
lamp-post and watched her, uncertain whether or not to let her see him.
She came tripping down, picking her way along the cleated double plank,
too intent upon her footsteps to look far ahead. The sight of her made
him a little trepid with excitement; it focused his dissatisfaction with
himself. He knew, now, what had disturbed him. It was the thought of
her. She had forced him to look at himself from a new point of view,
with a new, critical vision. He longed for her approval. Her gentle
coercion was drawing him into new channels of life, and he felt a sudden
need for her help. He was losing his whilom comrades, his old familiar
associations repelled him. He had nothing to sustain him now, but the
thought of her friendship.
But, in his present state, he had not the courage to address her. As a
child plays with circumstances and makes his own omens, he left the
decision to chance. If she turned and saw him, he would greet her and
throw himself on her grace. If not, he would pass on without speaking,
much as he longed to speak.
She came down to the corner diagonally opposite and paused for a moment,
looking off at the mountains and the waters of the Golden Gate. He saw
her make a sudden movement, as if waking from her abstraction, then she
walked over in his direction. He came out from his cover and went to
meet her.
"Good morning, Mr. Granthope!" She was smiling, holding out her hand.
"I thought I recognized you! Something told me to stop a moment, and
wait. Then suddenly I saw you. You see, you can't escape me!"
He was visibly embarrassed, conscious of his significantly unkempt
appearance. She, however, did not show that she noticed it.
"How is your ankle?" was her first inquiry. He assured her that it had
given him no trouble for a week, and he expressed his thanks to her for
her help.
"I've been hoping I might see you," she said, "to apologize for the
reception you received the last time you called. I can't tell you how
unhappy it made me, nor how I regret it."
"Mayn't I see you a while now?" He felt at such a disadvantage in his
present condition that it was embarrassing to be with her, and yet he
longed for another hour of companionship.
"Let's walk down to the Point," she said. "I can get in the
reservation, and it will be beautiful."
As they walked down across the empty space at the foot of the avenue and
along the board-walk over the sand, she talked inconsequently of the day
and the scene, evidently attempting to put him at his ease. The little
girl from Santa Rosa had given him a passive comfort. Clytie's
companionship was an active and inspiring joy. His depression ceased; a
sane, wholesome content filled him. He watched her graceful,
leopard-like swing and the evidences of vitality that impelled her
movements.
They passed the sentry who nodded to her at the gate, went past the
officers' quarters, down a little path lined with piled cannon-balls,
out to a small promontory that overlooked the harbor. Here there was an
old Spanish brass cannon in its wooden mortar-carriage, and a seat on
the very edge of the bluff. The harbor extended wide to the southeast.
Inshore was a covey of white-sailed yachts in regatta, just tacking, to
beat across to Lime Point, opposite.
As they sat down, Clytie said, "Now do tell me about Miss Gray. How is
she?"
"She's not with me any more."