Part 22

At this her face flamed and she stopped suddenly on the sidewalk, drawing herself away from him. "Don't," she pleaded, "don't, please, or I can't go with you--"

He saw now what was in her eyes and put his hand into her arm again. "Come along, little girl, I won't worry you," he said gently. And they walked on.

She recovered her spirits in a few moments, but the sparkling of her talk was like the waves on the surface of an invisible current sweeping her toward him. It was too evident for him, used as he was to women, not to notice it. She was a little embarrassed, and such self-consciousness sat strangely on her face. Behind that flashing smile and the quick glances of her eye something slumbered, an emotion alien to such debonair moods as was her wont to express, and as foreign to the deeper secret feelings she concealed. Her eyes had darkened to a deeper brown, the iris almost as dark as the pupils. Cayley did, as she had said, fascinate her. Whether the charm was most physical or mental it would be hard to say, but her demeanor showed that it partook of both elements. She gave herself up to it.

He began to play upon her. He took her arm affectionately, and the tips of his fingers rested upon the little, cool circle of her wrist above her gloves. She did not remove his hand. His eyes sought hers again and again, vanquishing them with his meaning glances. Her pulse beat faster. She talked excitedly. A soft wave of color swept up from her neck.

"Suppose we dine at the 'Poodle Dog'?" he suggested.

"I'm game," she replied; "I like a quiet place where there's no music."

"We can get a room up-stairs where we won't be interrupted."

"Anywhere for mine. I've got a blue bean and I'd like to be cheered up."

She was cheered up to an unwonted pitch by the time the dinner was over. As she sat, flushed, mettlesome with wine, thrilling to his advances, he plied her artfully, and she responded with less and less discretion. She could not conceal her impulse towards him.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked, her eyes burning.

"Indeed you are--you're beautiful!" he said, his hand resting on hers.

"But I don't want to be beautiful--that's what you are when you're queer and woozly--like the girls Maxim paints," she pouted. "They're awful frights--they're never pretty. I want to be just pretty, not handsome or good-looking or anything apologetic like that--that's what men call a girl when she can't make good with her profile. You've got to tell me I'm pretty, Blan, or I won't be satisfied."

"You certainly are pretty," he laughed, as he filled her glass.

"That makes me almost happy again," she mused. "Let's forget everything and everybody else in the world. It's funny how I've been thinking about you and wondering if I'd ever see you again. I had a good mind to put a personal in the _Chronicle_. It seemed to me as if I simply had to see you, all this week. Wasn't it funny at Carminetti's? I guess I was struck by lightning that time. You certainly did wireless me. It's fierce to own up to it, Blan, but I like you. I've stood men off ever since I was old enough to know what they wanted, but you've got me hypnotized. How did you do it?" She laughed restlessly.

"Why, if I hadn't thought you were a little too thick with Granthope, I would have looked you up before."

"I haven't been there for a week. The wide, wide world for mine, now."

"That's pretty tough, to fire you after you'd been with him for two years, isn't it?"

"I don't want to talk about that, really, Blan; it's all right."

He poured out another glass of champagne for her and she drank it excitedly. Cayley still caressed her free hand, but his eyes were not upon her; he was thinking intently. She took his head in her two hands and turned it gently in her direction.

"There! _That's_ where you want to look. Here is Fancy, Blan, right here."

"I see you. I was only thinking--do you know, you look like the pictures of Cleopatra?" he suggested. "Did you ever hear of Cleopatra, Fancy?"

She laughed. "I guess I ought to--I played Cleopatra once."

"Did you really--where?--comic opera or vaudeville?"

"Oh, never mind where--I made a hit all right." She leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands behind her head, smiling to herself. A tress of hair had fallen across her ear; it did not mar her beauty.

"I'll bet you got every hand in the house, too."

Fancy became suddenly convulsed with giggles. She sipped her glass and choked as she tried to swallow the wine.

Cayley passed this mysterious mirth without comment. "Granthope looks as if he had been an actor, too."

"Oh, yes, we played together--but only as amateurs." She smiled mischievously.

Cayley followed her up. "He has a fine presence; I should think he'd be good at it. He has lots of women running after him, hasn't he?"

"Oh, he did have--women to throw at the birds--women to warm up for supper--women to burn, and he burned 'em, too. But he won't stand for them now," said Fancy.

"What's the matter? Is he stung?" He filled her glass again.

"Yep. He's cut 'em all out--even me. That's why I'm here."

"But he works them, though?"

"Oh, no, Blan, Frank's straight, sure he is. He doesn't graft any more. He hasn't for--some time."

"I don't believe that," said Cayley.

"Oh, of course, he investigates cases sometimes, but he don't work with cappers the way he did. He's going in for high society now, and he doesn't need to do anything but wear a swallow-tail and get up on his hind legs and drink tea."

Blanchard took a chance shot. "I hear he's trying to marry a rich girl."

Fancy, for the first time, seemed to come to herself. She looked hard at Cayley.' "What are you driving at, Blan? What do you want to talk about that for? It's all off between me and Frank, but I'm not going to knock him. He's all right, Frank is. I'd rather talk about Me, please! Talk about Fancy, Blan, won't you? Fancy's so tired of talking shop."

Her elbow was upon the table and her little round chin in her palm, as she looked at him under drooping, languorous lids. "How pretty am I, Blan? Tell me! There's nothing quite so satisfactory, after a good dinner, as to hear how pretty you are."

He looked quizzically at her, and quoted: "'_Tout repas est exquis qui a un baiser pour dessert_.'"

"What does that mean, Blan? I don't understand Dago talk."

"It means that you're pretty enough to eat, and I'm going to eat you," he replied, making a motion toward her.

She put him off gaily, but only as if to delay the situation. "Oh, pshaw! haven't you had enough to eat yet? That won't go with me, Blan; I've got to have real eighteen carat flattery put on with a knife. I can stand any amount of it. I love it! Whether you mean it or not--I don't care, so long as it sounds nice, I'll believe it. I'll believe anything to-night. Now, how do you like my eyes, Blan?"

He took a long, close look at them, then with an amused smile he said: "Mountain lakes at sunset shot with refracted fires. Or, electric light on champagne--will that do?"

Fancy pouted. "I knew a fellow once who told me they were just like the color of stones in the bed of the brook ... When I was up at Piedra Pinta, I looked in a shallow part of the creek--where I could see my reflection and the bottom at the same time..." Her voice died off in a dreamy monotone; then she looked up at him again sleepily.

"How about my nose?"

"_Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus_," he quoted.

"Whatever does that mean?" She opened her eyes as wide as she could. "Is my poor old nose as big as that?" She felt of it solemnly.

"It is straight and strong and full of character. And _Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, ... thy teeth are like a flock of sheep ... which come up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins_."

"That's _very_ swell, indeed," said Fancy, "is it original?"

He laughed. "No. It's from one of the oldest poems in the world."

"I'd like to read that book." Fancy was getting drowsy. "Tell me some more."

"_Thine head upon thee is like Carmel..._"

"I'm glad we're getting into California at last."

"_And the hair of thine head like purple;--_"

She shook her head, "Oh, no, don't call it purple, please. Frank says it's Romanesque."

"_Thy neck is as a tower of ivory._"

"That's the _second_ tower," said Fancy, closing her eyes, "I guess that'll be about all for the towers. I think I'd rather have you make it up as you go along. It's more complimentary." She laid her head upon her arms on the table. "My ears are really something fierce, aren't they?"

Cayley touched them in investigation. "They're a bit too small, of course, and they're very pink, but they're like rosy sea-shells touched by the dawn."

Fancy murmured softly: "'She sells sea-shells. She shells sea-shells--She shells she shells'--say, I'm getting woozly."

She roused herself to laugh softly; her head drooped again.

"Then I'll let you kiss them--once!" she whispered.

"I'm afraid I talked too much last night," she said to him the next evening. "I hope I didn't say anything, did if I didn't quite know what I was doing. Funny how the red stuff throws you down!"

"Oh, no, you didn't give anything away. You're pretty safe, for a woman."

"Coffee's what makes _me_ talk," she said, "if you ever want to make me loosen up, try about four small blacks and I'll use up the dictionary."

He saw her nearly every day after that, but, even with the aid of coffee, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to make her more communicative. At the mention of Granthope's name she froze into silence or changed the subject.

A few days after the dinner he invited her across the bay to Tiburon where Sully Maxwell had given him the use of one of the dozen or more house-boats anchored in the little harbor. Fancy was delighted at the prospect of a day with him, and early on Sunday morning she was ready at the ferry. As she waited with her basket of provisions, saucily and picturesquely dressed in a cheap outing costume of linen, Dougal and Elsie came up to her.

"Hello, Queen," Dougal cried, and he shook both her hands heartily, his round gargoyle face illuminated with cordiality. "Where have you been all this time? We'll have to try you for desertion. You haven't abdicated, have you? We've been wanting to find you and have you go up to Piedra Pinta with us. The bunch is all up there now; Elsie and I were only just able to get off. Can't you come along with us?"

"Oh, do!" Elsie pleaded, putting her arm about Fancy's slender waist.

"No, I'm sorry, but I can't, really; I'm going to Tiburon with Blanchard Cayley."

Dougal's face clouded. "Say, what do you want to run with that lobster for? You're altogether too good for him."

"I guess I'm in love with him," said Fancy, still holding Dougal's hand and looking up into his face with a quaint expression.

"You _aren't_!" they chorused.

"Oh, I am, I am; I'm sure I am!" she repeated insistently. "I've liked him ever since the first time I saw him. What's the use of pretending? Don't say anything against him, please. I'm so happy--I'm _perfectly_ happy, Dougal." The tears came to her eyes.

"I know what'll happen," Dougal said, his pale eyebrows drawn together. "He'll play with you for a while, and then he'll throw you down hard as soon as he's through with you, or another girl comes along."

"Then I hope she won't show up for a good while," said Fancy cavalierly.

"And when it's over?" said Elsie.

Fancy dropped her eyes. "When it's over--I don't know." She looked up. "When it's over I suppose I'll sell apples on Market Street. What else will there be for me to do?"

"Oh, don't; you frighten me," Elsie cried; "we're all so fond of you, Fancy. Remember, we're your friends, and we'd do anything to help you."

Fancy stooped down and kissed her. "Don't worry. Elsie, I'm pretty lively yet. Only you know I don't do things by halves. I suppose I take it rather seriously."

Elsie stared at her. "You're so different."

"Oh, Fancy'll get over this. She got over Granthope all right, and she got over Gay Summer."

The tears surged into Fancy's eyes again. "Don't say that, Dougal. I'm no quitter. I don't get over things. I may bury them and cake-walk over their graves, but I don't forget my friends."

He grinned jovially and wrung her hand till she winced, then he slapped her on the back. "Well, you know where we are when you want us. We're with you for keeps; you can't lose us, Fancy, remember that."

Fancy squeezed his big hairy hand.

Elsie added, "But you'll be awfully talked about. Fancy, do be careful."

"Will I?" said Fancy. "I don't care. If I like Blan and he likes me, I don't care who knows it."

"Are you going to marry him?" Elsie ventured.

"He hasn't said anything about it--yet--but I'm not thinking of that. All I want is for somebody to love me. I'll be satisfied with that."

"You're all right, Fancy; only I hope you're not in for a broken heart," said Dougal.

"Just imagine Fancy with a broken heart!" Elsie laughed.

"Oh, you don't believe me, but you will sometime."

Fancy's eyes were not for them all this while. She was watching the passengers approaching the ferry, her glance darting from one to the other, scanning the cable-cars which drew up at the terminus, questing up toward Market Street, and along the sidewalks and crossings.

"Have you left Granthope?" Dougal inquired.

"Yep." Fancy, as usual, did not explain.

"Why didn't you let us know where you were, then?" he complained. "I was up to the place the other day looking for you, and no one seemed to know where you were."

Fancy, still watching for Cayley, did not answer.

"Have you got any money, Fancy?"

"Sure!" she answered eagerly. "I have two dollars here--do you want it?"

"Oh, no!" he laughed. "I was going to offer you some. If you're out of a job you must need it. I can let you have twenty or so easy." He put his hand into his pocket.

She hesitated for a moment, then she said:

"I don't know but I could use it, Dougal, if you can spare it as well as not."

"I'm flush this week." He handed her a gold double eagle.

"Granthope will lend me all I want, or I could get it from Blanchard, but somehow I hate to take it from them. Of course, it's all right, and they have plenty, but I'd feel better borrowing of you, you know."

"That's the best thing you've said yet," he said, beaming on her.

"Oh, Dougal, tell her about the seance," said Elsie, as Fancy put the money in her purse.

"Oh, yes! I wanted to see you about a materializing seance, Fancy. Do you know of a good one? We want to go some night and see the spooks. The bunch is going to have some fun with them."

"You want to look out for yourself, then. They always have two or three bouncers, and they'll throw you out if there's any row, you know."

Dougal grinned happily. "That's just what we want. I haven't had a good scrap for months. Maxim can handle three or four of them alone, while Benton, Starr and I raise a rough house. We're going to go early and get front seats."

It was Fancy's turn to laugh. "You can't do it, Dougal. You don't know the first rules of the game. They always have their own crowd on the first two rows, and they won't let you get near the spirits. They only want believers, anyway. If you aren't careful, they won't let you in at all; they'll say all the seats are taken. You'd better go separately and sit in different parts of the room, and spot the bouncers if you can."

"Oh, we'll handle them all right. Where's a good one?"

Fancy reflected a minute. "I think, perhaps, Flora Flint is the best. She's a clever actress, and she always has a crowd. It's fifty cents. Her place is on Van Ness Avenue--I think her seances are on Wednesday evenings--you'll find the notice in the papers. But they're pretty smooth; they've had people try to break up the show before. If you try to turn on the light or grab any ghost, look out you don't get beaten up."

"Oh, you can trust us; we've got a new game," he answered.

Then, as the Sausalito boat was about to leave, they bade Fancy a hurried farewell and ran for the entrance to the slip. A few minutes after this Blanchard Cayley appeared, put his arm through hers, and they went on board the ferry.

The harbor of Tiburon, in the northern part of San Francisco Bay, is sheltered on the west by the promontory of Belvedere, where pretty cottages climb the wooded slopes, and on the south by Angel Island, with its army barracks, hospital and prison. Here was huddled a little fleet of house-boats or "arks," the farthest outshore of which belonged to Sully Maxwell.

It was a queer collection of architectural amphibia, these nautical houses floating in the bay. They were of all sizes, some seemingly too small to stretch one's legs in without kicking down a wall, others more ambitious in size, with double decks and roof-gardens. There were all grades and quality as well; some even had electric lights and telephone wires laid to the shore. Here, free from rent, taxes or insurance, the little summer colony dwelt, and the rowboats of butcher, baker and grocer plied from one to another. It was late in the season now, however, and only a few were occupied. A little later, when the rains had set in, they would all be towed into their winter quarters to hibernate till spring.

Cayley conducted Fancy Gray down to the end of a wharf where the skiff was moored, in the care of a boatman, and after loading the provisions and supplies he had purchased at the little French restaurant by the station, he rowed her out to the _Edyth_.

The bay was cloudless and without fog. The September sun poured over the water and sparkled from every tiny wave-top, the breeze was a gentle, easterly zephyr. Cayley seemed younger in the open air, and all that was best in him came to the surface. He was almost enthusiastic. Fancy was in high feather. As she sat in the stern of the skiff and trailed her hand in the salt water, he watched her with almost as much pride as had Gay P. Summer.

She climbed rapturously aboard, unlocked the front room and filled it with her gleeful exclamations of delight. Then she popped into the tiny kitchen and gazed curiously at the neat, shining collection of cooking-utensils and the gasoline stove. She danced out again, to circle round the narrow railed deck. Finally she pulled a steamer chair to the front porch and flopped into it.

"I'm never going to leave this place," she cried. "It's just like having a deserted island all to yourself. I feel like a new-laid bride. Let's hoist a white flag."

Cayley, meanwhile, put the provisions on the kitchen table and came out to be deliciously idle with her--but she could not rest. She was up and about like a bee, humming a gay tune. She went into the square, white sitting-room to inspect everything that was there, commenting on each object. She sat in every chair and upon the table as well. She tried a little wheezy melodeon with a snatch of rag-time. She criticized every picture, she cleaned the mirror with her handkerchief, then went out to wash it in salt water and hang it on a line to dry. She read aloud the titles of all the books, she opened and shut drawers, and peeped into a little state-room with bunks and was lost there for five minutes. When she came out again, her copper hair was braided down her back and she had on a white ruffled apron.

"I'm going to cook dinner," she announced.

Cayley smiled at her enthusiasm. "I don't believe you can do it."

She insisted, and he followed her into the kitchen to watch her struggles. She succeeded in setting the table without breaking more than one plate, and then she filled the tea-kettle with fresh water from the demi-john. After that she looked helplessly at Cayley.

"How do you shell these tins?"

"With a can-opener."

She tried for a few moments, biting her lip and pinching her finger in the attempt. Then she turned to him coaxingly.

"You do it, Blan, please."

He had it open in a minute. She unwrapped the steak, put it into a frying-pan, unbuttered, and began to struggle with the stove. After she had lighted a match timidly, she said:

"I'm awfully afraid it'll explode."

He took her in his arms and lifted her to the table, where she sat swinging her legs, her hands in her apron pockets.

"Confess you don't know a blessed thing about housework or cooking!"

"Of course I don't. What do you take me for? I've lived in restaurants and boarding-houses all my life--how should I know? But I thought it was easier than it seems to be. I suppose you have to have a knack for it."

"I'll show you." He took the apron from her, tying it about his own waist. With the grace of a chef he set about the preparations for dinner. He lighted the stove, he put potatoes in the oven to roast, he heated a tin of soup, washed the lettuce, broiled the steak, cut the cranberry pie and made a pot full of coffee.

They sat down at the table with gusto and made short work of the refreshments. Fancy was a little disappointed that they couldn't drop a line over the side of the boat and fry fish while they were fresh and wriggling, but she ate her share, nevertheless. She drank cup after cup of coffee and took a cigarette or two, sitting in blissful content, listening to the _cluck-cluck_ of water plashing lazily against the sides of the boat. While they were there still lingering at the table, the ferry-boat passed them. The ark careened on the swell of the wake, rising and falling, till the water was spilled from the glasses, and the dishes lurched this way and that. Fancy screamed with delight at the motion. For some minutes the hanging lamp above their heads swung slowly to and fro.

All that sunny, breezy afternoon she sat happily, chattering on the front platform, watching the yachts that passed out into the lower bay, the heavily laden ferry-boat that rocked them deliciously in its heaving wake, and the rowboats full of Sunday excursionists, who hailed them with slangy banter. She watched the little red-tiled cottages at Belvedere. She watched the holiday couples walk the Tiburon beach, past the wreck of the _Tropic Bird_, now transformed into a summer home. She watched the mauve shadow deepen over Mount Tamalpais and the gray city of San Francisco looming to the south in a pearly haze. She was drenched by the salt air and burned by the sunshine; a permanent glow came to her cheeks, her brown eyes grew wistful. She talked incessantly.

Cayley amused her all day with his jests and stories. That he was too subtle for her did not matter. She listened as attentively to his explanations of the set forms of Japanese verse as she did to his mechanical love-making. Cayley was not of the impetuous, hot-blooded type--he preferred the snare to the arrow--his was the wile of the serpent that charms the bird and makes it approach, falteringly, step by step, to fall into his power; but his system, if mathematically accurate, was also artistic. Fancy's devotion to him was undisguised--he did not need his art. It was she who was spontaneous, frank and affectionate. He only added a few flourishes.

"Do you love me, Blan?" she asked, warming to him as the sun went down.

"Why, of course I do; haven't I been apodictically adoring you?"

She looked at him, bewildered. "I thought there was something queer about it; perhaps that's it. But you haven't called me 'dear' once."

"But I've called you 'Nepenthe' and 'Chloe'." He looked down at her patronizingly.

"'Darling' is good enough for me--I guess I like the old-fashioned words best, dear," she whispered shyly.

He quoted:

"Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hoodwinked,"

and laughed to himself at the appositeness of Cowper's lines.