The Readjustment Part 10

"Oh, I've forgotten most about her long ago. And I've something else to remember now, I hope. I'd like to talk about myself, though. I'd like some girl to hear about my ambitions. I really think it would do me good."

He stopped, as though expecting an answer. None came. He bent his eyes closer on her and repeated:

"It would!"

And at that moment, a pair of high heels tapped in the doorway, a cheerful voice called for admission through the portieres, and enter Kate Waddington. Mr. Chester, Eleanor saw, rose to her entrance as one who has not always risen for women; there was something premeditated about the movement.

"Mrs. Tiffany said you two were in here," she began in her full, rich contralto, "and I made so bold, Nell--Mrs. Masters is taking a party over to their ranch next Sunday. One of her men has disappointed her and she's just telephoned to give me the commission to fill his place.

Mr. Chester, you are an inspiration sent straight from Heaven. Any other man, positively any other, would be a second choice--but she didn't know you when she made up the party, so how could she have invited you?"

She paused and threw an arch look past Eleanor.

"Sure I'll come!" said Bertram, jarred into the vernacular by his internal emotion of pleasant surprise. "Sure--I'd be delighted."

"I told Mrs. Masters you'd be the ready accepter," said Kate.

"You're going too, aren't you?" asked Bertram of Eleanor.

"No; I had to decline, I'm sorry to say."

"And I'm sorry; blame sorry." He turned back toward Kate Waddington, and she, the lightning-minded, read his expression. He had made a great _faux pas_; he had seemed more eager toward Eleanor, to whom he owed no grat.i.tude for the invitation, than toward her.

"Would you care to drop in on Mrs. Masters as you go down town to let her know that you are coming? Or if you wish I'll tell them--I'm going now--that way." Her tone gave the very slightest hint of pique; her att.i.tude put a suggestion. The game, plain as day to Eleanor, raised up in her only a film of resentment. Mainly, she was enjoying the humor of it.

Bertram rose promptly.

"It is time I was going," he said. "I've enjoyed myself very much, Miss Gray. If you don't mind, I'd like to come to see you again."

"And I'll get into my things," said Kate.

They all moved toward the door.

Kate pa.s.sed first; then Eleanor. There hung beside the door-casing a hook, designed to hold the portiere cord. Eleanor brushed too close; it caught in the lace at her throat. She pulled up with a jerk, gave a little cry; the lace held fast. She turned--in the wrong direction.

Bertram saw this tiny accident; he sprang forward, caught the lace, disentangled her. And to do so, he must reach about her so that his arms, never quite touching her, yet surrounded her as a circle surrounds its centre. She turned and looked up to thank him, surprised him, surprised herself, in that position.

And a wave which was fear and loathing and longing and agitation ran over her with the speed of an electric current, and left her weak.

Her face, with its own sweet inscrutability, showed little change of expression; but he caught a dullness and then a glitter of her eye, a heave of her bosom, a catch of her breath. As he stood there, his great frame towering above her, something which she feared might be comprehension came into his eyes. And--

"You make a picture--you two there!" called Kate Waddington from without. The transitory expression in his eyes--Eleanor saw it now with triumph--was that of one who has thrown a pearl away. But he followed.

Dining with Mark Heath in the Hotel Ma.r.s.eillaise that night, Bertram fell into a spell of musing, a visible melancholy uncommon in him; for his ill-humors, like his laughters, burned short and violent. Mark Heath--by this time he was growing into a point of view on his chum and room mate--remarked it with some amus.e.m.e.nt and more curiosity.

Mark was casting about for an opening, when Bertram antic.i.p.ated him.

Staring into the dingy wall of the Hotel Ma.r.s.eillaise, past the laborers, the outcasts, the French cabmen purring over their cabbage soup, he said in a tone of musings:

"When Bert Chester grows up and gets rich, he'll take unto himself a wife. We'll live in a big house in the Western Addition with a bay frontage. It will be furnished with d.i.n.ky old dull stuff, and those swell j.a.panese prints and paintings. And I'll have two autos and a toy ranch in the country to play with. We'll give little dances in the big hall downstairs. I'll lead the opening dance with the missus, and then I'll just take a dance or so with the best looking girls--the ones I take a special cotton to. I'll have my home sweet home dance with the missus--" he fell again to musing.

"A man up a tree," said Mark Heath, "would say you were in love."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned--I wonder if that ain't the matter?" said Bertram Chester.

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 bra.s.s 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.sage 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 bra.s.s 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 a.s.sisted 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 att.i.tude, 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 a.s.sumed 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 embarra.s.sments 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sage 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.