When Clive awoke and looked at his watch it was a quarter to three in
the afternoon. He sprang out of bed in dismay. He was an ideal lover!
If Mary Gordon sent him about his business he could not question the
justice of the act. After a hurried tub and toilet he went in search of
his landlord.
“Why in thunder didn’t you call me at eight?” he asked savagely.
“Miss Gordon was up at seven, mister, and she gave strict orders that
you was not to be disturbed. I’m to take you over to her cottage the
minute you show up and to send a broiled chicken after you.”
“She’s an angel,” thought Clive, “and will certainly make an ideal
wife.”
He followed his host out of the hotel and up the hill. The summer girl
in pink and blue, sailor hat and shirt-waist, dotted the greenery; in
rare instances attended by a swain. On the piazzas of the hotel and
cottages older women knitted or read novels.
The day was very warm. The sun shone down into the forest above and
about the cottages, where the trees were not so densely planted as
in the depths. The under-forest looked very green and fresh. A creek
murmured somewhere. Bees hummed drowsily.
Clive’s head still ached and he was hungry; but at this moment he was
conscious of nothing but a paramount wish to see Mary Gordon.
Mr. Gordon, a pink-faced man with white side-whiskers, was standing on
the piazza of a tiny cottage which looked as if it had been built in a
night. He winked at Clive as he came down and shook him heartily by the
hand. He had loved his wife and been kind to her, but had always done
exactly as he pleased.
“She’s inside,” he whispered, “and I don’t think she’ll row you. Sorry
it happened, just vow it never will again and she’ll forget it. They
always do, bless them!”
Clive went hastily into the little parlor. Mary Gordon was standing
in the middle of the room, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes very
bright, her upper lip caught between her teeth. Clive saw in a glance
that she had more style and grace of carriage than when she had left
England. Her hair was more fashionably arranged, and altogether she was
a handsomer girl. He took her in his arms and kissed her many times,
and she cried softly on his shoulder. He humbled himself to the dust
and was told that he must always do exactly what he wanted; and he felt
a distinct thrill of pleasureable domestic anticipation. He had been
spoiled all his life, and would have taken to matrimonial discipline
very unkindly.
When he had eaten of the broiled chicken and several other substantial
delicacies, and was at peace with himself and the world once more, he
went for a long walk in the forest with Mary. After a time they sat
down on a log, and he lit his pipe and tried to imagine an environment
of English oaks and beeches. Again and more forcibly he felt the
discordance between the English girl, simplified by generations of
discipline and homogeneous traditions, and this green light, this
strange brooding silence, this vast solitude suggesting a new world, a
new race, an unimaginable future, this hot electric sensuous air.
They talked of the past two years and of their future together.
“I have not told anyone yet that we are engaged,” said Mary. “People
here don’t seem to take things as seriously as we do, and I could not
stand being chaffed about it. I have merely said that we expected an
old and dear friend of the family.”
“I am glad. It’s a bore to be chaffed.”
“Of course, I have written to all our friends in England that we are to
be married on the twelfth. But as the wedding is to be so quiet it is
not necessary to tell anyone here.”
“How do you like this country?” he asked curiously. “I mean how does
it suit you personally? Of course, I know you would make up your mind
to like any place where duty happened to take you, but you must have
a private little idea on the subject, and it is your duty to tell me
everything.”
She smiled happily. “‘Well!’ as they say here, now that I am sure that
Edith will make papa comfortable, I shall be glad enough to go back to
England. California doesn’t suit me at all. It rubs me the wrong way. I
think I should develop nerves if I stayed here much longer. Americans
don’t seem to me to be half human. Helena Belmont says that America
will be the greatest nation on earth when it gets a soul, but that it
is nothing but a kicking squalling, precocious infant at present; and
that if some one were clever enough to stick his finger in the soft
spot on the top of its head, it would transform it into an idiot or
a corpse; but that America will pull though all right because she has
so many weak points that her enemies forget which is the weakest. Miss
Belmont is so clever. You will meet her on Sunday. You don’t mind my
having accepted an invitation for you to dine there?”
“Not at all. It was very kind of you, I am sure. I have heard of this
Miss Belmont; I don’t imagine you find much in common with her.”
“She horrifies me, but she fascinates me more than any person I have
met here. I am sure she is a good woman in spite of the reckless things
she does. Your friend Mr. Rollins, says that she is the concentrated
essence of California, and I always excuse her on that ground. You
never know what she is going do or say next; and she is the most
desperate flirt I ever heard of. I suppose she is so beautiful she
can’t help it. Her eyes always seem to be looking at you through tears,
even when they are laughing or flirting, although I don’t believe she
sheds many. I cannot imagine her crying, although I know her to be
kind-hearted, and generous, and impulsive.”
“Do you call it kind-hearted to throw fifteen men over?”
“I told her once that I thought it was morally wrong for her to lure
men on to such a terrible awakening, and she said that there was just
one thing that man didn’t know, which was woman; and that it was
her duty to her sex to addle their brains on the subject as much as
possible. But I want you to know me, Owin.”
“The better I know you the better I shall love you.”
“When your eyes laugh like that I never know whether you are chaffing
me or not. It will not take long, for I am not clever;” she smiled a
little sadly; “you are so clever that I know you will often want to go
and talk to women who know more than I do; but none of them will ever
love you so well.”
“I know it,” he said tenderly, and he believed what he said.
“I am glad that I have been in California, though,” pursued Mary.
“It has broadened me. At home we take it for granted that all the
unconventional people are bad, and all the conventional ones good. Here
it is so different; although I must say that I never heard so much
petty gossip and scandal in my life as there is in the smart set in
San Francisco. All visitors remark that; I suppose it is because they
have so little to do and think about. It is very slow here socially;
and I suppose that is what makes some of the women do such outlandish
things--that and the country, for even the quiet ones are not exactly
like other people. One can judge for oneself. I have often pinned the
tattlers down when they were abusing Helena Belmont, for instance, and
they could not verify a single statement.”
“Women know each other very little,” said Clive.