Part 20

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."

She lifted her brows. "Where is she?"

"I don't know, quite."

"You haven't seen her since she left?"

"No, not for two weeks."

Clytie frowned and bit her lip, then shook her head silently. Then she remarked, as if to herself, "I like her. I'm sure she's fine."

"She likes you, too."

"I wish I might see her," she went on, her eyes fixed on the mountains. "I'd like to do something for her. I might get her a position in my father's office, I'm sure, if she'd take it. I have a curious feeling, though, that it is she who will be more likely to do something for me."

"If she ever can, you may be sure she will. Fancy is true blue."

"You didn't--have any misunderstanding with her, did you?"

"Oh, no."

She seemed to notice his reluctance to explain, and did not pursue the subject.

She turned and her eyes fell upon his hand, which lay carelessly upon his knee. "Let me see your palm," she said impulsively. "I've never looked at it carefully. I suppose you've told your own fortune often enough."

He gave his left hand to her. She barely touched it, holding it lightly, but he felt the magnetism of the contact almost as a caress. "You'll find my line of fate shows that I'm to change my career," he remarked. "It's broken at the head line, you see, and begins over again."

"Now, let me look at your right hand."

She looked at it, and her expression changed subtly. It was as if she had found some secret satisfaction in his palm, some answer to her desires.

"What d'you see?"

"The heart line."

In his left hand it began near the root of the second finger, at the mount of Saturn, not, as he would have preferred, farther toward the index finger, at the mount of Jupiter. He wondered if that meant to her what it did, in his professional capacity, to him--an indication of more sensual tastes. Half its length was cobwebbed with tiny branches, and punctuated with islands; then it ran, deep and clear to the edge of the palm, almost straight. In his right palm the line was cleaner, simpler, undivided.

She had begun to color, faintly; she had turned her eyes from him. Into her loveliness had come a new element of charm. There was something special in it, something for him alone; it was as if she had been signaling to him, and he had not, till now, understood. Instantly every line in her body seemed to be imbued with a new grace, a new meaning, translating her spirit. He was too full of the inspiration to speak; he could only look at her, irradiated, as if he had never seen her before. To his admiration for her beauty, his respect for her character, his interest in her mind, there was added something more; the total was not to be accounted for by the sum of these. And the wonderful whole satisfied the divine fastidiousness of his nature. She was for him the supreme choice. Her mind worked like his. Her very size pleased him. He seemed to know her for the first time. He had desired her, before, for her beauty and her intelligence; he had thought calmly of love and marriage. But now he felt the supreme demand for possession, because----only because he _must_ have her--because nothing else in his life mattered.

A secret ray of thought seemed to carry the message back to her, for, apparently embarrassed by the intensity of his silence, she rose and walked a few paces, with her hands behind her back, gazing off at the harbor. It was not thought that he sent, however, for he could not think; it was a new function of his soul aroused, excited, thrilling him with the power of its vibration.

When that wave broke, he was at a loss for words. How could he say how much he wanted her? How could he ask if she, too, felt that same thrill, while he winced under this new, mortifying sense of the cheapness and falsity of his life? He could not yet bring himself to confess the miserable truths; it was not the larger, more obvious things he was afraid of, for she knew well enough of these--but one or two shameful details came into his mind and made him shrink from himself.

She turned to him again, composed, though still she showed elation.

"I'm sorry Fancy had to go," she said earnestly. Her eyes were steady, though her lips were still quivering.

"It was too bad. But it was necessary."

She gave him a swift, searching look.

"Oh! Then you are--finding out?"

"I'm being pushed on, somehow. It's really queer, as if the force came from outside of myself--"

"Oh, no! I'm sure not!"

"Something is working out in me--"

Clytie smiled rarely, her face illuminated. "Oh, fate deals the cards, but we have to play them ourselves. And--I think--you've taken several tricks already."

"You mean--about Fancy Gray?"

"No--that I can't judge--I never have judged. Your advertisement in the papers."

He was immensely surprised, pleased. "You have noticed that already? Why, this is only the very first day--"

"I have watched for it every day."

There was another pause. Her remark was revealing--yet he dared not hope too far. He felt so near to her, so intimate in that revelation that he feared to deceive himself. Oh, he was for her, now! His heart clamored for possession, yet he could not declare himself. They were upon different spiritual altitudes. Women, before, had come at his whistle. Now he was awkward, timid, excited with expectancy, his heart going hard.