The Readjustment Part 19

"Well, shouldn't I? Goodness knows, we don't lead a conventional life in this family, and I don't chaperone her. I reproach myself a little with that. When Mrs. Goodyear wanted to take her up and put her into the Fortnightly, it wasn't so much Eleanor's disinclination as my own laziness about getting up gowns and paddling about paying calls which kept me back--and that's G.o.d's truth."

"And these penitential exercises in detective work--what have they brought forth?"

"He's a little careless morally, I think. He's had too much conviviality about the Club. I'm afraid he's blossoming over young.

They can say all they want about wild oats, but in this city it's a mistake to sow them all at once. That's one reason why I've been so good to him. I flatter myself that a house like this is a moral influence on him."

"It's all a concern for his soul with you, then?"

"No. Frankly, I like him. Everyone likes him. He's a dear. But as to Eleanor--"

The Judge had risen and taken off his skull cap.

"Well, she has run a ranch and she's travelled alone to Europe and back, and she's saved the soul if not the body of a father. And I wonder whether a girl who's all that to her credit can't be trusted to deal with the problem of an undesirable though attractive young man--"

"If I were only sure he was undesirable!"

"It is according," responded the Judge, "to your definition of undesirability. If you mean worldly circ.u.mstances, you needn't fear for Bertram Chester. He resigns from my firm this month."

"What for?"

"Attwood brought me news of it. I don't know where he's going. I'm not supposed to know anything. But for to get rich, for one thing." He closed his book and restored it to its place on the shelves. "He took the left-hand road, you see. It was manifest destiny; and you and I and Eleanor cannot move one whit the career of that young man."

CHAPTER XII

When Kate called him up over the telephone, inviting him, second-hand, to join a Masters party at Sanguinetti's restaurant, Bertram interrupted his banter to ask if Eleanor were going.

"I'm sure I don't know what her plans are," said Kate. "Why don't you ask her?" The tone was a little cold.

Remembering his duty, Bertram did ask Eleanor over the telephone.

"I'm sorry," answered Eleanor, "but I had to decline."

"Oh, duck your engagement if you have any!" he said, pleading like a boy. "It'll do you good to jolly up!" But she was firm. He matched the cool tone of Kate with the equally cool tone of Eleanor, and wondered, as he hung up the telephone, whether anything had gone wrong between those girls. He remembered now that he had not seen Kate at the Tiffany's since the expedition into Chinatown. Had he but known it, he was perceiving late a thing of which others were making gossip already.

While Bertram freshened up his toilet in his room and thought hard on this, Kate Waddington, at home in the Mission, was making certain special preparations of her own. Mrs. Waddington could measure the importance of her daughter's engagements by the care she took with her toilet. Fresh lace indicated the first degree of importance, her latest pair of shoes the second degree, and perfectly fresh white gloves raised the engagement to the highest degree of all. To-night, all these omens served.

Further, Mrs. Waddington saw that Kate was rummaging through the unanswered letters in her writing desk, saw that she was comparing two of them. Kate picked up the larger one. She was wearing furs, since the April night was chilly. This letter she tucked carefully into her m.u.f.f.

"Why in the name of common sense are you taking that letter along to a dinner party?"

"Oh, something I want to show someone," answered Kate after a momentary pause. Mrs. Waddington knew from old times the hidden meaning of that pause. Just so, when at the age of seven they had caught her in the sugar-bowl, Kate had paused before starting her ready explanation. She had never overcome it; and her mother was the last person likely to acquaint her with that flaw of method.

"It's from Alice Johnstone, I judge by the handwriting," continued Mrs. Waddington.

"Oh, I guess so," responded Kate. She made rapidly for the door. "Good night, mother. I'll be home to-night, but rather late."

"Thank you for small favors--" but Kate was gone.

Sanguinetti's held a place in the old city no less definite than that of Zinkand's or the Poodle Dog. In the beginning a plain Italian restaurant, frequented by the Italian fishermen whose sashes made so bright the water front and whose lateen sails, shaped by the swelling wind like a horse's ear, gave delight to the bay, it had existed since the Neapolitans came to drag the Pacific with their nets. Painters and art students from the attics of the Quarter "discovered" it. When they made a kind of Bohemia about it, "the gang" of tawdry imitators and posing professional Bohemians followed as a matter of course. That invasion put it on the fair way toward failure. But Sanguinetti's saved itself by dropping one degree lower. "South of Market"

discovered it. That district is somewhat to San Francisco as the East Side to New York, though with an indescribable difference. Then came the milliner's apprentice who slaved all the week that she might brighten the "line" on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, with the small clerk, her companion or the butcher-boy her beau. There came also the little people of the race track, as jockies out of a job, touts, bookmakers'

apprentices--tawdry people mainly, but ever good-humored and ready to loosen restraint of custom after the second quart of Steve Sanguinetti's red wine. So this place came to have an air of loose, easy, half-drunken camaraderie, which seldom fell into roughness. It was the home of noise and song and easy flirtations which died at the door. When this transformation was fully accomplished, the painters and art students and seekers after "life" came back again. This time, they did not spoil its flavor. The fishermen had been shy folk who fled from the alien invasion; no shyness about South-of-Market people on a holiday!

This Sanguinetti dinner party of Sydney Masters's differed but slightly, after all, from other slumming parties in the hostelry of touch-and-go familiarities. Amused outsiders, they watched the growth of swift flirtations, pa.s.sed comments on the overdressed women, joined in the latest Orpheum songs which started when the cheap wine made music in the throat, chucked quarters into the banjoes of the two negro minstrels who came in at eight o'clock to stimulate merriment.

Bertram, in his position as jester to King Masters, went a little further than the others. It was he who bought out the stock of a small Italian flower-vendor, that he might present a bouquet "to every lady in the place." His attention brought from the ladies varying degrees of grat.i.tude, and from their escorts degrees of resentment which varied still more. Running out of flowers before he had gone clear around the room, he built up on toothpicks bouquets of celery and radishes, which he fastened to the corks of empty claret bottles and gave, with elaborate presentation speeches, to the merrier and prettier of the neglected ladies.

From this expedition, he returned leading a little, sad man, who had the look of a boy grown old by troubles. A bleached-blonde woman followed them half-way across, but centre room she turned back with a stamp of her foot and a flourish of her shoulders.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Bertram announced, "I desire the privilege of introducing Teddy Murphy, California's premier jockey, lately set down on an outrageously false charge of pulling a horse. He is here, ladies and gentlemen, to tell you his troubles!"

A moment of silent embarra.s.sment on both sides.

"Here--take my chair, Mr. Murphy!" spoke Kate from the foot of the table. The next table, set _a deux_, had just become vacant. Kate slipped into its nearest chair. Bertram's seat was back by the wall; to reach it, he must step over feet and so interrupt Mr. Murphy's tale of wrong. Nothing was more natural than that he should take the seat opposite Kate. And instantly--he having heard the story already--Bertram lost interest.

"Would you mind getting my m.u.f.f?" asked Kate. "I think my handkerchief is in it."

As Bertram handed over the m.u.f.f, she was smiling up at him. She did not look down until she had taken out her handkerchief, flirted out its folds. Then a little, disconcerted "oh!" escaped her.

"What is it?"

Kate was shaking out her skirt, was glancing rapidly to right and left. "Goodness!" she cried.

"What's the matter?"

"A letter. Have you seen it?"

Bertram looked under the table. There it lay, by his chair. He picked it up and pa.s.sed it over.

"Oh!" she cried again, this time in a tone balanced between relief and embarra.s.sment. She tucked it back into her m.u.f.f, and her eyes avoided his. He noted all this pantomime, and he was about to speak, when Mrs.

Masters touched Kate on the shoulder. "My dear, you're missing this!"

she whispered.

Kate put all her attention upon Mr. Murphy and his burning story about the pulling of Candlestick. Mr. Murphy grew a little too broad; Mrs.

Masters, as the easiest way rid of him, rose and asked for her wraps.

As Bertram a.s.sisted Kate, he saw her reach an anxious hand into her m.u.f.f.

Outside, she contrived a loose shoe lace, so that she and Bertram fell behind. She did not approach the subject of the letter; that came up later and, of course, quite incidentally.

"Anything to confide in me to-night?" she began.

"Oh, nothing much. Gee, you can't tell about her, can you? Say, are you sure about your system? She was with me last Tuesday when I punched the jaw off a man, and she hasn't treated me so well since I knew her as she did after that. I was blame near opening on her again.

Blame near. What's the answer?"

"A pa.s.sing mood, perhaps."

"Well, I'd like to get her in that mood often."