_ CHAPTER VII
The Ferry, doorway to San Francisco, wore its holiday Sunday aspect as Bertram Chester approached it. A Schuetzen Park picnic was gathering itself under the arches, to the syncopated tune of a brass band. The crowd blazed with bright color. The young men, in white caps, yellow sashes of their mysterious fraternity, and tinted neckties like the flowers of spring, lolled and larked and smoked about the pillars. Fat mothers and stodgy fathers fussed over baskets and progeny. Young girls, in white dresses and much trimming of ribbons, coquetted in groups as yet unbroken by the larking young men. Over these ceremonial white dresses of the Sunday picnic, they wore coats and even furs against the damp, penetrating morning--rather late in the season it was for picnics. In the rests of the ragtime, rose the aggressive crackle of that flat, hard accent, with its curious stress on the "r," which would denote to a Californian in Tibet the native of South of Market, San Francisco.
Bertram Chester, had he been accustomed to spare any of his powers for introspective imagination, might have beheld his crossroads, his turning point, in this passage through the South of Market picnic to the little group waiting, by the Sausalito Ferry, to take him to the Masters ranch. But a month ago, he himself had whistled up that infatuated little milliner's apprentice who was his temporary light of love, and had taken her over to Schuetzen Park of a Sunday. He had drunk his beer and shaken for his round of drinks with the boys, had taken the girl away from a young butcher, had fought and conquered the bookmaker's clerk who tried to take away the milliner's apprentice from him, and had gone home, when the day was done, with his head buried on that soft curve of the feminine shoulder which was made to receive tired male heads.
Now, without a backward look, he was walking toward Sydney Masters, Mrs. Masters, the sprightly and dainty Kate Waddington, and those others, grouped about them, who might be guides and companions on his new way.
Kate Waddington had acquainted him in advance with the party, so that the introductions brought no surprises. That young-old man with the sharp little face was Harry Banks, mine owner, millionaire, and figure about town--every one in San Francisco knew him or knew about him. That tall, swaying girl with the repressed mouth, the abundant hair coiled about her head, the rather dull expression, was Marion Slater--"she paints miniatures and hammers brass and does all kinds of art stunts," Kate had said. That tall young man, who radiated good manners, was Dr. Norman French; that little woman, all girl, was Alice Needham, his fiancee. "They play juvenile lead in this crowd," had been Kate's phrase for them.
Kate, taking possession of Bertram at once, gave him her bag to carry, and, as the gates opened and the whistle blew, she walked beside him. From the upper deck, this Masters party watched that city panorama, spread on the hills for all to see, roll away from them, the wheeling flocks of gulls trailing the craft in the roads, the surge of golden waters rolling in from the Gate. A morning mood blew in upon the winds; the party became gay.
Bertram, in the rise of his morning spirits, performed certain cub-like gambols for the benefit of Kate Waddington. The company failed not to notice that he had assisted her up the gangway by slipping his hand under her elbow. On the deck, he cut her out immediately from the rest, insisted on tucking her veil into his pocket, made a pretence of trying to take her hand. Even Kate found it hard to parry these advances. Banks, slouching back on a bench in his easy, indolent attitude, looked over toward them, and his mouth tightened and set. So much had he been courted for his wealth and personality, this Harry Banks, that among his familiars he assumed the privilege of falling into moods without reason or preliminary notice. His present mood was a perverse one; and he took it out on its reason for being--this presumptuous outsider.
"Me Gawd, Jimmie, but me belt hurts!" he called out suddenly in his richest imitation of the South of Market dialect. With his light step of a dancer, he skipped over to Kate Waddington, whirled her to her feet, and began to waltz about the forward deck, imitating the awkward, contorted, cheek-to-cheek style of the Schuetzen Park picnic. Kate, who fell in at once with every invitation, had laughed as he began to whirl her, but she flushed too. The whole upper deck was craning necks to stare. Mrs. Masters caught her breath and whispered, "Oh, don't!" Dr. French and Alice Needham fell to talking apart, as though repudiating, in their embarrassment, such company. Marion Slater, sitting at ease on her bench, cast one glance at Harry Banks as he whirled to face her. His eyes fell; on the next turn, he waltzed Kate back to her seat. The relationship between these two was a puzzle to their familiars. He, the uncaught bachelor, the flaneur, the epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she, the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the frivolous and unconventional rich--people had wondered for years how there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved her hand, and the motion translated itself to speech in his mind. That glance of her had made his mind say, "I am making them all ridiculous."
And, like the spoiled child that he was, he ceased from one naughtiness only to plunge into another and worse one. As Kate dropped to the bench, he looked at Bertram and said:
"You try it; I am a little rusty." One of his rare embarrassments flamed into the face of Bertram Chester. The shot had gone more truly than Harry Banks could have known.
"No, thank you," Bertram said simply, and flushed again.
Masters spoke up from his corner:
"Well, Chester, you ought to be a good dancer if build counts--though I shouldn't like to have you showing off your accomplishment right here--you might lack the public finish of the Banks style. You big football fellows always have the call on the little men in dancing. It is a matter of bulk and base, I think." The ferry boat was passing Alcatraz now, and the populace had turned its attention away from Harry Banks and his party. The spoiled child kept straight ahead.
"They make real, ball-room gents," he said. He turned toward Marion on this; turned as though he could not keep his look away. She lifted her eyebrow again, and he fell into a sulky silence.
The others rushed to the first refuge of tact--personalities. After a moment, Banks joined the talk; and then appeared another aspect of his perverse mood. He took the conversation into his own hands, and he talked of nothing which could by any chance include Bertram Chester, the callow newcomer, the outsider. It was all designed to show, it did show, how intimate they were, how many old things they had in common--never a passage in which Bertram could join by any excuse. Even so did Banks direct it as to draw Kate Waddington into the talk. Bertram sat apart, then, his face showing all his displeasure. His straight brows set themselves in a frown, which he bent sometimes at the group volleying personalities at Harry Banks, and sometimes on the terraced hills of Sausalito.
When they trooped off with the crowd, Kate fell in beside Bertram again. Lagging deliberately, she let a group of picnickers come in between them and the rest of their party. He was still frowning.
"I'd like to soak that man," he said. "Maybe I will."
"No you won't!" said she.
"Won't I?" he replied.
"Oh, don't think I haven't seen it all. He was horrid. You see, we've got used to him. You're meeting him new, and you don't quite understand him yet."
"Well, I'm going to spend no sleepless nights trying!"
"He's really very clever and kind, at bottom. You'll come to like him as we all do. And he's a man that it's good for you to know."
Bertram seemed to be considering this.
"Well, what did he mean, anyway?" he snapped.
"Nothing. It's just his foolery. We all had to take it from him at first--and then we came to appreciate him."
Bertram answered with an impatient gesture. Kate caught his arm, held it for just a second.
"Now, you wouldn't spoil my day, would you?" she asked softly. "You know I'm responsible for you--"
His frown melted into his smile.
"Sure, if you put it like that!"
"Now, you're a sensible, accommodating, self-restrained lad, and every other adjective in Samuel Smiles. You could charm the buttons off a policeman--and you'll see how really nice he can be."
"You'll take out time until I get over my grouch?"
"Of course." They were approaching Masters and Dr. French, who stood waiting by the train platform. "Late and happy!" she called.
Harry Banks, walking ahead beside Marion Slater, had taken his own wordless rebuke from her. During the train passage, he made the concession of keeping away from Bertram, and grouped himself off in the other double seat. Bertram, sitting with Kate and the engaged couple, spoke but seldom and then languidly. He did not come face to face with Harry Banks again until the buckboards had delivered them at the Masters ranch.
This estate bore the title of "ranch" only by courtesy. Masters himself said that he raised nothing but mild Hell on his forty acres. He did have an olive orchard, a small orange grove flourishing by luck of a warm gorge in the hills, and a little fancy stock. Kate and Masters took possession of the new guest at the gate, and carried him over the estate for inspection. Mainly, Bertram took this entertainment sullenly. He warmed a little at the sight of the cattle. The house, built by Masters's own design, drew only the comment, "pretty nice." After that, Bertram was free to go to his room and dispose his belongings. Returning in a marvelously short time, he came out upon the house-party, grouped all in the big, redwood ceiled living-room.
A fire of driftwood snapped with metallic crackling on the hearth. Alice Needham sat with Dr. French beside it; Mrs. Masters, pausing in a flight of supervision, had stopped to speak with them; Alice was looking up at her, presenting her fresh, full-faced view to the gaze of the man on the staircase. Marion Slater stood with Masters by one of the Dutch windows, criticizing the design with a painter's half-arm gestures. Banks, by another window, sat dividing his time between a book and the valley below.
It happened then, as Bertram stood there, that Alice Needham looked in his direction. It happened, also, that she was smiling. He caught her smile and smiled back.
That smile was half the secret of his physical charm. In the first place, it broke with wholly unexpected force. His face, what with its heaviness of feature, was a little forbidding and severe. As he bent his unillumined gaze, he appeared stern--even angry. Then, with the sudden preliminary vibration of an earthquake, that smile would begin to quiver about his mouth, to start wrinkles about his eyes. Next, as he bent his head forward toward the target of his charms, it drew back the corners of his mouth to show his white teeth, it pulled eyelids and eyebrows into a tiny slit, through which his pupils twinkled like electric sparks. These movements--wholly muscular at that--spiritualized and transformed his face.
Mrs. Masters, looking up at the interruption, was caught in this flood of charm and good will. Harry Banks, feeling a psychic current running about the room, looked up also; and that smile caught him. It carried away the last trace of his perverse mood. And Bertram heaved himself down the stairs and crossed at once to seat himself beside Alice Needham.
"I see at a glance I'm going to like this party," he said. On other lips there would have been nothing to laugh at in this; but they all did laugh. In a minute more, Harry Banks had dropped his book and crossed over to the fireplace. Bertram, leading the talk now, took him in without a trace of apparent resentment. Kate, emerging from the room, dropped down beside Harry Banks on the floor and joined her cheerful pipe to the symphony of good fellowship. Before luncheon, this find of hers was the centre of the party; events were revolving about him.
In the lazy hour after meat, the engaged couple found chance to slip out into the orange grove. Masters, summoned by his foreman, went to look after a sick cow, Harry Banks went back to his reading, and Alice Needham to a design for a window seat which she was building for the Masters dining-room. These pairings left Bertram and Kate to each other; and presently they were out-of-doors, drawing on into the woods. Masters, from the barn, watched them and noted what a goodly couple, what a faun and dryad in clothes, they were. Kate Waddington was turning over her shoulder her slow and rather lazy smile, which began at her lips and lit her green-grey eyes last of all. That was her best attitude of head. Bertram swung up the trail, making progress by main force--not walking so much as lifting himself on those sturdy, saddle-sprung legs of his. He was making wide, sweeping gestures; and Kate, as he talked, leaned a little toward him now and then, like a woman absorbed.
Momentarily, she had him on the subject of football. He was touching upon the subject of one Bill Graham, Stanford tackle and opponent in two varsity games, whom she knew and whom he was teaching her to know better. Bertram stooped and gathered a handful of pebbles from the trail to show how Bill Graham used to throw sand in his eyes; he thrust his open hand against an alder, bordering the trail, to show how he contravened these tactics by slamming Bill Graham in the face. Even so far did loosen his tongue and spirit that he boasted of his victories and excused his defeats. He went further; he touched upon the most frightful disappointment of his career.
"It was in the ten to nothing game," said he. "You remember, don't you, how they had us down on our ten yard line early in the second half? We got the ball away. Nobody had scored yet. Well, Stuffy Halpin he gave the signal for a delayed pass on end. That was a freak play we were trying out that year--delayed pass first and then the back passed to me. I jogged Bill Graham and he stumbled down the field just bull-headed--he never did have much football sense. I looked down toward the goal"--(Bertram had been gesticulating wildly; now he gave the outstretched fingers of his right hand a sudden fillip to show the changed direction of his glance) "and I saw a clear field right straight to the fullback or glory--"
"Gracious! What happened?" asked Kate. She was capable, wit and social strategist that she was, of assuming all this interest by way of leading an inept youth to make a fool and a braggart of himself for her amusement. But she showed not a glimmer of irony, neither in her mouth nor in her green-grey eyes. She spoke with the straight, sincere interest of a dairymaid listening to the self-told heroisms of a stable boy.
"Stuffy tumbled all over himself and dropped the ball!"
Bertram's answer conveyed all the tragedy in the world.
They were come now to a place where the trail ran steep and the redwoods thickened to make a Californian hillside. It was November, but the season was late. The earth was washed bright by the early rains and not yet sodden with the later ones. The black, shaded loam, bare of grass, oozed the moisture it was saving for its evergreen redwoods against a rainless summer. In the dark clefts grew scentless things of a delicate, gnome aspect--gold-back fern, maiden-hair overlying dank, cold pools, sorrel, six-foot brake. No blossoms blew among all this greenery; only by that sign and by the wet, perspiring earth might one know that it was autumn on those hills.
The clean ooze and dew started a little stream which ran, choked with maiden-hair, to the trail, and formed a pool. Some philanthropic camper had driven a nail into the rock and hung there a tin cup. Kate (Bertram still talking and gesticulating at her left) threw a perceptive glance.
"How good the water looks!" she said. "I believe I am thirsty!"
While he filled the cup, she seated herself on the rock, disposed herself into a composition; and after they had both drunk, she showed no disposition to move from her perch. In fact, she loosened her brown student beri, shook her hair free, and sat there, a wood-nymph framed by the ruddy brown and dark green of redwood and laurel. He crouched his big frame down beside her, so that she leaned back against the rock. A long silence, and:
"Nature is mighty nice!" he said.
Then, perceiving her as a part of the picture, he added:
"And you're the nicest thing about it."
At this frontal attack, Kate waited to see whether it meant further attack, skirmish, or retreat. His general softness of expression, showed that it meant attack.
Bertram, in fact, was in the mood for attack on rose citadels. A year of life on twelve dollars a week--cheap, crowded lodgings, meals at the Hotel Marseillaise, the landlady's daughter and those of her kind for companionship--and now, in a week, the refinements of the Tiffany house, the refinement plus entertainment of the Masters villa, and these two lovely, fragrant women. It seemed all to roll up in him as he sat there, the woods about him and this golden creature at his side; and it found half-unconscious expression on his lips.
"I'm going to be rich some day," he said.
"I hope so."
"I am, sure. When I get rich I'm going to have a place like this--I'll have a long pull by that time and be able to invite anybody I want--this is the only way to live." His voice fell away.
Then he looked up and bent upon her that smile.
"It's great to have a girl like you to confide in," he said.
"Thank you; but you haven't confided much as yet," responded Kate.
"I don't suppose there is a whole lot to confide. At least, things you'd want to tell a girl like you. Only one thing. I'm in love!"
The arrest of all motion in Kate which followed this declaration was like one of those sudden calms which fall over a field at the approach of evening. It descended upon her in the mid-course of a gesture; it wrapped her about in such a stillness that neither breath nor blood stirred. Then, though only her lips moved, her vocal cords responded to her will.
"And she is to be mistress of the villa when you get rich?"
"If she'll take me," said Bertram. "You see, it is a brand new case. I've just got it--just realized it. She's up and I'm still down, so it wouldn't be square to say anything about it, now would it?"
"No," answered Kate softly, "though we women like bold lovers too."
"Yes, that's so. And I suppose if I keep too still about it, somebody else will come riding onto the ranch and carry her off. It's my game, I guess, to stay around and watch. And if I find any gazebo getting too thick with her, then up speaks little Bertie for the word that makes her his.
"If she'll have me," he added. "But she's a good many pegs above me just now and I've got more than a living to make. Of course, that'll come all right if I have fair luck. If it was easy money plugging my way through college, it will be easy plugging it through the world. Don't you size it up about that way?"
Kate clasped her hands and leaned forward.
"If you're playing the long game, I suppose so. But wouldn't you do better at least to hint to the girl?"
"I guess you can advise me about that," said he. "Better than anybody I know. Suppose I tell you all about it?" A little panic ran through the nerves of Kate.
"Now?" she said, "are--are you ready?"
"Now-time is good-time," he said. "Well, I guess you've savveyed just who it is and what's the matter. It's--it's Miss Gray--Eleanor Gray."
To the end of her days, Kate Waddington remembered to be thankful for a certain cotton-tail rabbit. At that moment precisely, this fearling of the woods streaked down the trail, pursued by a dog whose heavy crashing sounded in the distance; came out upon them, whirled with a loud roaring of fern and leaves, screamed the heart-rending scream of a frightened rabbit, and dashed off into the wood. The sound, coming in this tender moment, betrayed Bert Chester into a guilty start. So, when he looked back, her face was as smoothly beautiful as ever and she was even smiling.
"You lucky boy!" she said. And then, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't blame any man." Bertram fairly glowed.
"I knew you'd agree with me," he said. "Say, what chance do I stand--honest, what do you believe she thinks of me?"
"Honest, I never heard her say. It is likely she hasn't begun to think of it at all. Women are slower than men about such things. How long have you been--in love with her?"
"Of course, I've been that way ever since I saw her first--ever since I was a student, picking prunes for her uncle, and went down and helped her run a bull off her place. I thought then that I never saw nicer eyes or a more ladylike girl. She's always given me the glassy eye. I think she hates me--no, it isn't that, either. She just feels superior to me."
"Oh, perhaps not that!"
"Well, anyhow, I was in college and any one girl looked about the same to me as any other--" Bertram wrinkled his brows in contempt for his utter, undeveloped youngness of two years before--"but I remembered her always. When I saw her sitting in the Hotel Marseillaise that evening, I felt queer; and after I called on her I just knew I had it. Funny, you coming in that afternoon. You and I have hit it off so well, and here I'm confiding in you! It was a regular luck sign, I think."
Kate's voice, when she spoke, fell to its deeper, richer tones.
"And I'm sure I feel flattered--any girl would. I really thank you--you don't know how much."
"And you'll help me, won't you?"
"With my advice--yes."
"Well, that's all I want. If I win this game, I want to win it square.
"Say, you are sure the goods. You're as pretty--it wouldn't be natural for a man to say you're as pretty as she is, but a man can just look at you and wonder--" and here he dropped one of his hands gently upon hers. She let it rest there a moment before she drew away.
"We'd better be going back," she said. "They'll think it's I and not Eleanor, if we stay so long."
As they started, he stooped to get her another drink. Standing above him, her hand lifted toward her student beri, she bent her gaze on his back. A peculiar look it was, as though an effort against pain. It faded into an expression like hunger. _