Hard-Pan/Chapter 1
HARD-PAN
DINNER was coming to an end. The Chinaman, soft-footed in his immaculate white, had just finished his circuit of the table, leaving a tiny gold-rimmed coffee-cup at each of the four plates. Into hers Letitia was lowering a lump of sugar, when a thought occurred to her, and she dropped the sugar into the cup with a little splash, and looking across at her vis-à-vis, said:
"Oh, John, I 've been going to ask you half a dozen of times, and have always forgotten: did you know that Colonel Ramsay Reed had a daughter?"
To see the effect of her question, she stretched forward a plump white hand and tilted to one side one of the pink silk petticoats that veiled the candle-flames. The obstruction removed, she looked with vivacious interest at the person to whom she had addressed her query. He, too, had just dropped his sugar into his coffee, and was stirring it slowly, watching the little maelstrom in the cup.
"Colonel Ramsay Reed," he said, without looking up. "Yes, I think I 've heard something about his having a daughter. But why do you ask me? Is n't Maud a much better person? She knows everything about everybody."
He glanced at his sister-in-law, the dark, brown-eyed woman, very splendid in her white-and-yellow dress, who sat at the head of the small table. It was just a family party—Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Gault, Mrs. Mortimer's sister, Letitia Mason, and Mortimer's brother, John Gault. Mrs. Gault, who seemed to be quite oblivious to the impertinence of her brother-in-law's remark, answered smartly:
"I should n't be surprised to hear that Colonel Reed had daughters by the dozens. Who knows really anything about those old bonanza men who 've lost their bonanzas? They drop out of sight, and nobody ever hears of them again. Colonel Reed was in his glory before I was born."
This was a slight exaggeration. Mrs. Mortimer Gault had been born a full thirty-eight years ago, in a house which now has a bakery beneath and furnished rooms above, in the environs of North Beach. It was quite fitting and proper that she should have first seen the light there, as in that day North Beach was fashionable. But that this should have occurred thirty-eight years ago was a subject she quietly ignored. She was still so effective in her dark, quick-flashing style, so much admired and so fond of being admired, that she turned her back on and denied the thirty-eight years whenever she had the chance.
Her husband looked at her with indulgent and humorous appreciation of her quickness.
"I don't see, if Colonel Reed has a daughter," he said, "what he keeps her on. She can't live on the memory of his bonanza glories. The old fellow has n't got a cent in the world. White Pine scooped the last dollar he had. When did his wife die?"
Letitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating birthdays, answered:
"Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed 's always been a widower ever since I can remember."
"I remember hearing about his wife when I was a boy," said Mortimer." She was a young actress, and married the colonel when everything was going his way. Then she died in a year or two of consumption. I did n't know there was a child."
"She must be quite young, then," said Maud Gault. "What did you hear about her, Letitia?"
"Nothing much; only that she was pretty, and lived in an old ramshackle house somewhere across town, and that nobody knows anything about her. One of the girls was talking about it the other day at Mamie Murray's lunch, and I thought it was so funny, everybody knowing about Colonel Reed, that he should have had a daughter that none of us had ever heard of. That 's why I asked John. He knows more of those queer, left-over people than anybody else."
She again tilted the candle-shade and looked at John Gault. For the first time since the conversation had turned on Colonel Reed's daughter, he met her eyes. His were brown and deep-set, and being near-sighted, he generally wore a pince-nez. He had taken this off, and looked at Letitia with his eyes narrowed to mere slits, after the manner of short-sighted people. Having finished his coffee, he was leaning back, the candle-light striking a smooth gleam from his broad expanse of shirt-bosom. The restless fire of diamonds broke the glossy surface, for John Gault, like many rich Californians of a passing era, clung to the splendid habits of the bonanza days. Sitting thus, he looked a spare, muscular man verging on forty, with dark hair and an iron-gray mustache.
"I don't know whether that's meant to be a compliment," he said, with the lazy smile with which he generally treated Letitia's sallies. "Have I got a larger collection of freaks than most people?"
"What did you hear about Colonel Reed's daughter?" asked Maud Gault.
"Really, I don't recollect anything in particular," he said; "probably just what Letitia heard—that she was pretty and lived somewhere across town."
"If a man 's going to remember everything he hears about girls that are pretty and live somewhere across town, he 'd have to get Professor What's-his-name's Memory System down by heart," said Mortimer, pushing back his chair. "Come, Maud, you don't want to sit here all night, do you?"
They rose, and together, the rustling ladies first, passed through the intervening hall into the drawing-room beyond. It was a warm, glossy, much-upholstered room, with an appearance of overcrowded cheeriness. Lamps casting halos of mellow light through beruffled silk shades like huge primeval flowers, glowed from the corners and sent glistening rays along the leaves of tropical plants. The ornaments disposed upon the tables and mantel-shelves were numerous and interesting enough to have claimed an afternoon's careful attention. There were mounds of cushions on the divans, and sudden prolongations of the surroundings in unexpected mirrors. Framed in the folds of the portières was the bright, distant picture of the deserted dining-table, with its bloom of candles and glint of glass and silver.
The small family party all knew one another so well, and so constantly met for these little informal dinners, that when John Gault excused himself on the ground of an evening engagement, no one criticized his defection or urged him to stay. Letitia, who had put on her new pink gauze dinner-dress that evening, was more hurt by the fact that he did not comment upon its splendors than that he left so early. She was used to his unceremonious inclusion of herself in the family party, whom he called by their Christian names and treated with brotherly informality.
This evening, as usual, she went into the hall with him for a last word or two while he put on his coat. Secretly she was hoping that he would notice her dress; for if Letitia had a weakness, it was for rich apparel. Fortunately she could indulge it. She had a fair fortune in her own right, and being an orphan who made her home with her married sister, her income was hers to spend as she pleased.
Standing under the hall light, she regarded Gault with grave attention as he attempted, alone and unaided, to put on his coat. Then, seeing the unequal nature of the struggle, she said suddenly, "Let me help you, John," and taking the garment from him, shook it and held it out to him by the collar.
He laughed, and thrusting an arm into the sleeve, said over his shoulder:
"You 're not only the most ornamental but the most useful person I know, Letitia."
"Thanks," she responded sedately; "but I would n't have supposed you thought I was so ornamental."
"Why not?" he answered, affecting as dramatic a surprise as was possible in his position, with his second arm just thrust into the sleeve.
"Because you never noticed me to-night at all," said Letitia, giving the collar a settling jerk.
"Never noticed you?" He was able to turn round on her now, and regarded her with exaggerated astonishment. "What do you mean? I noticed you more than I did any one else."
"I did n't mean myself, exactly; I meant my gown."
"That shows how a feeling silence is thrown away on a woman. I noticed it a dozen times; but just because I did n't say so you suppose I was blind to it. How could I be?"
He stepped back and looked critically at Letitia standing where the light of the hall lamp fell softly over her.
"But you know," he said, "it would n't be strange for a man not to notice the dress, because the person who has it on is so much better worth looking at than any dress."
Letitia's delight at this compliment could not be disguised. She blushed and tried not to smile, and looked as childishly pleased as a woman can who is five feet nine inches high, and has the massive proportions and noble outlines of a Greek goddess.
She was, in truth, a fine creature, large, statuesque, and handsome, as Californian women are handsome, with the beauty of form and color. Viewed critically, her features were not without defects; but her figure was superb in its type, her skin was flawless, and her naturally rich coloring was still further intensified by the reddish hue that had been imparted to her hair by some artificial means. In the full panoply of evening dress there was something magnificently vivid, almost startling, about her. One could imagine a stranger, who had come suddenly upon her in a doorway or on a staircase, standing mute, with caught breath, staring.
To-night, touched into higher brilliancy by the new pink dress, her beauty even struck Gault's accustomed eye, and his compliment had more sincerity in it than is usually found in those administered to relations. Then, amused at her girlishly naïve pleasure, he bade her a laughing good night, and without waiting for her response, opened the door and let himself out.
The Mortimer Gaults lived in the newest and most fashionable part of San Francisco. Two years before they had leased one of the houses that have sprung up, alone or in groups of three or four, throughout that quarter of the city where Pacific Avenue runs out along the edges of the sand-hills. Here the undulating lines of the great dunes, dreaming under the ceaseless hush, hush, hush of the wind sweeping through the rank sea-grass, have been hidden under the march of progress. Large new houses, shining with paint and bright with window-boxes, have settled on the slopes, and now hold the sand down. A layer of earth and a hose have transformed the haggard face of the dunes into gardens which would be a mass of vegetation but for the French gardeners' restraining shears.
The house rented by the Gaults, a solid, pale-hued building of the colonial form of architecture, was large, new, and imposing. Flowers drooped over its façade from many window-boxes. Its porch was verdurous with great leafy plants growing in tubs and earthenware pots. In the front there was a close-clipped strip of lawn, with neat borders and a filamentosa palm, and the lower part of the bulging bay-window was hidden by the close, fine foliage of an ivy geranium.
Faring down the street with a quick step, John Gault passed many such dwellings, the homes of the city's well-to-do and wealthy. Here and there an undrawn blind afforded him a glimpse of a glowing interior, where the tall, shrouded lamp cast its light over a room as gaily brilliant as the one he had just left. But his eye traveled over the illuminated pane with unseeing preoccupation. He walked rapidly, and with the undeviating glance of inward reflection. Once he stopped at a corner lamp and looked at his watch. Then he hastened his steps, and a few blocks farther on boarded a cross-town car.
The part of the city toward which he was going was of a very different aspect and period. His car passed from the quiet gentility of the West Side toward the hum and glare of the business quarter. It swept him through streets full of the rank and ugly sidewalk life of a great city after dark to where Market Street, the town's main artery, throbbed and roared with the traffic of the night.
The line he had taken reached its terminus here, and he alighted, made his way through the crowd and clangor of the wide thoroughfare, and plunged into the streets beyond.
Here at once the wayfarer feels himself in a locality whence prosperity and fashion have withdrawn themselves. The ill-lit streets, the small and squalid shops, the sordid faces of the passers-by, tell their own tale of a region fallen from grace. John Gault had too often passed this way for the ruinous aspect of the surroundings to possess any interest for him. With a thin thread of cigarette smoke streaming out above his upturned collar, he passed on rapidly through the patches of shadow and garish light from show-windows. People turned and looked at him sharply, his noticeable figure being an unusual one in that locality. To one watching it might have seemed that this curiosity annoyed him, for he quickened his pace, and at the first side street turned off to the left.
There were fewer wayfarers here; the lamps were far apart, and on either hand the dark forms of huge houses, their façades showing only an occasional light in an upper window, loomed vague and forbidding. The dreariness of desertion seemed to hold them in a spell, as they rose, brooding and black, from the dimness of overgrown gardens. This had been one of the great streets in San Francisco's splendid heyday. Here millionairedom had built its palaces and held its revels. John Gault remembered some of them, and now his eye passed blankly over the lines of darkened windows and the wide porticos where years before, on his vacations from college, he had entered as a guest.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
How strange that the conversation should have taken that turn at dinner! Could Letitia have heard anything? Impossible! Even if she had, she was too simple-minded and direct to be so manœuvering. This was the seventh time he had been to see Viola Reed—the seventh time in less than three months. What did he go for? He laughed a little to himself at the question, and throwing his head back, blew a film of cigarette smoke into the night. What did he go for? To pass the evenings, that otherwise would have been idly passed in his own rooms, or dully passed in society, or drearily passed in the pursuit of amusements he had long wearied of, in the society of a girl who pleased his critical taste, beguiled him of his boredom, and piqued his interest and curiosity.
Yes, that was the secret of her attraction for him. She was not like any one he had ever known before. She piqued his curiosity.
A picture of her rose before his mental vision, and with a shamefaced laugh at his own sentiment, he threw his cigarette away. Letitia had said she was pretty. Undoubtedly she was, but she was something more than pretty. Refined, delicate, poetic—there was no word that described it. If Letitia went about talking of her, other people would want to see her. He resented the idea violently, and felt his anger rising at the thought of the coarse curiosity and comment that would suddenly surround her. Some one ought to stop Letitia from talking that way.
"For," thought John Gault, as he turned a corner and came within view of Colonel Reed's abode, "I am the prince who has found the Sleeping Beauty."
The house, like many in that quarter of the city, was detached, and had once been a dwelling with pretensions to gentility. Time and weather had worked their will of it, and even under the kindly veil of night its haggard dilapidation was visible. It sat back a few feet from the street in a square of garden, where a tall dracæna shook its rustling foliage to every breeze. There was a large flowering jasmine-tree by the gate, that spread a sweet scent through the noisome airs of that old and ill-drained quarter. The visitor softly opened the gate and entered up a pathway flagged with squares of black and white stone that were broken and uneven. From the front window—a wide bay shrouded in vines—the light squeezed in narrow slits. John Gault pulled the old-fashioned bell and stood listening to its jingling note.
There was a step in the passage within, and the light shone through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the front door on either side. A key turned and the door was opened. In the aperture Viola Reed stood with a kerosene lamp flickering in her hand. She held a piece of light-colored material in the other hand. As her glance fell on the visitor she made an instinctive movement as if to hide this.
"Oh, is it you?" she said. "Come in. I 'm glad you've come!"
She uttered the sentences quickly, and was evidently embarrassed. Even by the light of the smoky lamp Gault could see that she had flushed.
"I never thought of your coming to-night," she said, as she turned to open the parlor door. "It 's a great surprise. My father will be delighted."
She held the lamp up while the visitor divested himself of his coat and hung it on the chair that did duty as a hat-rack. In the dim hallway, with its walls from which the paper had peeled in long strips, and the stairway beyond, with the twine showing through the ragged carpet, the man of the world in his well-groomed, well-dressed, complacent perfection of finish, presented a curiously incongruous appearance.
The girl opened the door, and he followed her into the parlor. It was a long room, divided in the middle by an archway, its lower end now veiled in shadow. On a large table another lamp glowed, a bunch of paper flowers hanging on one side of the globe to subdue the light. The room gave an impression of lofty emptiness. The footsteps of the visitor seemed to be flung back from its high, bare walls. The lamp struck gleams of light from the gilded frame of a large mirror over the chimney-piece, and here and there caught the running gold arabesques which covered the wall-paper. There were a few wicker chairs drawn up to the table, which was covered with the litter of amateur dressmaking. In the single upholstered chair that the room boasted sat Colonel Ramsay Reed.
With a loud exclamation of pleasure the colonel rose and greeted his guest. He was a remarkable-looking man of sixty-five or seventy, fully six feet in height, erect, alert, with a striking air of distinction in his narrow, hawk-featured face, and a gaunt, angular figure. His white hair flowed nearly to his shoulders, and his white mustache was in singular contrast to the brown and leathery surface of his thin cheeks. He wore a long wrapper of indeterminate hue, patched with materials of different colors and patterns, and a pair of old leather slippers that slipped off his heels when he walked. In his suave and urbane courtesy he seemed to be serenely indifferent to the deficiencies of his costume, folding his dressing-gown round his legs as he subsided into his chair with the deliberate ease that a Roman senator might have displayed in the arrangement of his toga of ceremony.
His daughter did not appear to share his composure; she was nervous and embarrassed. She swept off the evidences of her dressmaking with a few rapid movements, and took them away to the shadows of the far end of the room, hung another paper flower over the blinding glare of the second lamp, and, sitting by the table, let her glance stray furtively about for further details that needed correcting. John Gault, who appeared to be awarding a polite attention to the colonel's conversational amenities, was conscious of her every movement.
Viola Reed was one of those women that nature seems to have intended to make completely and satisfyingly beautiful, the intention having been changed only at the last moment. The upper half of her head was without a fault—the low forehead, the wonderful hair, thick and wavy, and so instinct with life that every separate filament seemed to stand out from its fellows, in color a warm, bright blond, and with shorter hairs about the ears and temples which curled up in golden threads. In strange contrast with this brilliant hair were level, dark-brown eyebrows, that were low over large gray eyes. She had the same dark-brown lashes, which grew wide apart and turned back, a rare beauty, and one which imparts an expression of soft, wistful tenderness to the eyes thus encircled.
Here Viola's beauty ended. Her other features were, at least, inoffensive. She was tall and beautifully formed, but in the slenderest mold. To the Californian ideal she was thin. But her movements were distinguished by a supple grace denied to women of a more stately build and proportion. To-night she wore a shirt-waist, washed out from its original pink to a wan flesh-color, and a scanty black stuff skirt, belted with a black ribbon. Gault, with his eyes fixed on the colonel, was aware of the stealthy rearrangement she made of the ribbon round her neck, and the movements of the investigating hand with which she pushed back her loosened hair-pins.
As was her custom, she made little attempt to join in the conversation. The evening settled down into a replica of its predecessors. The fact that Gault was becoming a familiar figure in the bare front parlor did not seem to abate the colonel's buoyant appreciation of him as a good listener.
The younger man, with his glance on the floor and an expression of polite attention on his face, found himself wondering, with inward amusement, what his friends would say if they could have had a glimpse of him, listening, silently and submissively, to the reminiscences of Colonel Ramsay Reed. The conjecture called up such a picture of incredulous astonishment and disbelief that a smile broke out on his lips. Aware of its incongruity, he stole a quick, apprehensive look at Viola. She was watching him with a surprise evidently tempered by pain at the thought that his amusement might be evoked by her father's garrulity. Gault's gravity became intense, and the colonel, who was too engrossed in the joy of having secured a victim to notice anything, went gaily on. He was launched on his favorite subject—the men he had assisted to affluence in the early days.
"There 's Jerry McCormick. You know where he is now? No need to ask any one that; has been a member of Congress, can draw his check for a million, his wife a leader of society, and his daughters marrying English lords. You know them, of course?"
The visitor made an affirmative sign, and the colonel continued:
"Well, I made that man. When I first ran against McCormick he was working in the mines up in Tuolumne, with the water squelching in his boots. In those days a dollar to Jerry looked about as big as a cart-wheel. His wife was glad enough to do a little washing, and his daughter—the youngest ones were n't born then, but the eldest, the one that married the English lord, was—used to run round bare-foot, and bring her father his dinner in a tin pail."
"I 'm sure she does n't know what a tin pail is now," said Gault, a mental picture rising in his mind of the magnificent Lady Courtley as he had seen her on her last visit to her parents.
"No," said the old man; "I hear she 's one of the Vere de Veres. And I can remember her, a little freckled-faced kid with her hair in her eyes, hanging round the tunnel of the Little Bertha, waiting to give her father his dinner."
"Do you know the younger McCormick girls, Miss Reed? Lady Courtley was before your time," said Gault, in an attempt to draw Viola into the conversation.
She looked surprised, and then gave a little laugh and shook her head.
"I 've never even seen them," she answered.
"Oh, they don't know Viola," said the colonel—not with bitterness, but as one who states a simple and natural fact; "the old woman 's educated them out of all that. But, as I was saying, I made their father. He'd managed to scrape together a little pile, put it all in a small prospect, and lost every nickel. He was just about dead broke, and came to me crying—yes, crying—and said, 'Colonel Reed, there 's only one man in California whose advice I 'd follow and whose opinion I 'd trust.' 'Who's that?' said I, intending to help the poor devil to the best of my ability. 'It 's Ramsay Reed,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'if you 'll just put yourself in my hands, and do what I tell you, I 'll set you on your feet.' 'Colonel,' said he, 'say the word, and whatever it is, it goes. You've got more financial ability in your little finger than all the rest of 'em have in their whole bodies.' So I took him in hand."
The colonel paused, a reflective smile wrinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes.
"You certainly seem to have made a success of his case," said Gault, feeling that some comment was expected of him.
"Yes, yes," said the colonel; "I may say a great success. The poor fellow's confidence in me made me determined to do my best. I used to give him points—those were the days when I could give points. Told him if he would follow the lead west of the Little Bertha—people had hardly heard of the Little Bertha then—he 'd strike it. He was broke, and I gave him the money. Three months later he 'd struck pay dirt. That was the beginning of the Alcade Mine, but he did n't have sense enough to hold on to it, and sold out for a few thousands. I saw then that I 'd have to do more than give him an occasional boost, and stood behind him, off and on, for years. Even when we ran into the Virginia City boom he never bought without my advice. He had n't any discrimination. I 'd just say to him, 'Save your money and buy five feet next to the Best and Belcher,' and he 'd do what I said every time. Without me he 'd have been working in the mines in Tuolumne yet."
In the absorption of his recollections the colonel crossed his knees, bringing one foot, with a torn slipper dropping from the heel, into a position of prominence.
"Oh, those were days worth living in!" he said, running a long, spare hand through his hair—"great days! Men that were n't grown then don't know what life is. I meet Jerry sometimes, but we don't talk much about old times. He knows that he owes everything to me, and it goes against the grain for him to acknowledge it. I hear his daughters are handsome girls."
"Perhaps—I don't know," said Gault, recalling the occasions when he had sat next to the Miss McCormicks at dinners, and suffered exceedingly in the effort known as "making conversation."
"I heard that they were fine, handsome girls, large, and with black hair like their mother. She was a beauty in her day—a hot-tempered Irish girl that Jerry married from the wash-tub. The youngest daughter is about Viola's age—twenty-three."
John Gault turned and looked at Viola with some surprise.
"You thought I was younger, did n't you?" she said, smiling. "Everybody does."
He was about to answer when the colonel once more took up the thread of his reminiscences.
"Maroney was down then—'way down; not even on the lowest rung of the ladder—he was n't on the ladder at all. I gave him the first lift he had. No one would look at Maroney in those days. He was a thin, consumptive-looking fellow, full of crazy schemes, forever coming to you and borrowing money for some wild-cat stock that was n't worth the paper it was printed on. I took a fancy to him, and every dollar he made was through my help and advice. It was when I had my offices on Montgomery Street, and he 'd have a way of dropping in about lunch-time and hanging round looking poor and sick. I used to take him out to lunch, and give him a square meal and a few points that he 'd sense enough to follow. He was n't like Jerry; he was smart. Why, I almost fed that man for years. When he 'd get down on his luck—and he was always doing that—I 'd say, 'You know, when you want, my check-book 's at your disposal.' And it was, more times than I can remember."
The colonel paused, smiling at his thoughts. The visitor, who had been looking idly on the ground, raised his eyes and let them dwell in curious scrutiny upon the old man's profile, cut like a cameo against the dim walls with their fine gold traceries. John Gault, like all Californians, knew every vicissitude in the life of Adolphus Maroney, one of the great bonanza kings, a man whose career was quoted as an example of what could be done by brains and energy in the California of the Comstock era.
Wondering, as he had done many times before, what Viola thought of her father's vainglorious imaginings, he turned now and suddenly looked at her. She was sitting with her elbow on the table and her chin resting in the palm of her hand. Her eyes were on the colonel, and her expression was one of appreciative interest. It was possible that she believed in him, absolutely and unquestionably. Yet her face, in its placid, restful gravity, gave no clue to the thoughts within. She was not to be read by every casual comer. Even the practised eye of the man of much worldly experience was baffled by the quiet reserve of this young girl who was nearly half his age.
"I have n't seen Maroney for nearly eight or nine years," continued the colonel. "The last time it was in the lobby of the Palace. He was with some capitalists from England, with a millionaire or two from New York thrown in. He saw me and looked uncomfortable, but he shook hands and introduced me. I got away as quickly as I could. I did n't want to embarrass him."
"Why should you embarrass him?" asked Viola.
The colonel looked at Gault, and gave the forbearing laugh of the man who treats with good-humored tolerance the ignorance of the woman.
"Why, he was always uneasy for fear I 'd give away the fact that it was I who made his money for him. But, God bless my soul!" said the old man, throwing back his head and going off into a sonorous laugh, "he need n't be afraid. I would n't rob him of any of his glory. Only I took it pretty hard, when Mrs. Maroney was here last winter, that she did n't go out of her way to be kind to you."
Viola gave a little exclamation, Gault could not make out whether of annoyance or protest. That the colonel should have expected his daughter to be the object of Mrs. Maroney's attention and patronage was only another evidence of his painful self-delusion. Mrs. Maroney was a lady who aspired to storm the fashionable citadels of New York and London, and troubled herself little with those of whom she could make no practical use in the campaign.
"You 're unjust to Mrs. Maroney," Viola said gently, and rather weariedly, the visitor thought; "she was only here for two months, and she had quantities of friends to see and people to entertain."
"Oh, my dear, my dear," answered the old man, "that's just your amiable way of looking at it. She was like her husband—she wanted to forget."
He turned his eyes, still bright under their thick white brows, upon the younger man, and looking at him with an expression of mingled pride and patience, said:
"That is the way with the Californians. Once fall, and the procession passes you, and the men that were beside you don't wait to turn and see where you dropped. You stay where you fall and you watch the others sweep on. That 's what I have done."
"Don't talk that way, father," said Viola; "Mr. Gault will think you feel unhappy about it."
The old man smiled, and leaning forward, clasped her hand and held it.
"Mr. Gault," he said, with quite a grand air, "knows better than that. The opinions of other people don't affect our happiness. I don't resent the prosperity of my old mates, nor feel any discouragement at our present—er—temporary embarrassments."
Viola stirred uneasily, and said quickly:
"No—no; of course not. Why should you?"
John Gault rose here, and she rose, too. Her embarrassment, which had vanished during the evening's conversation, now returned, and she plucked nervously at the paper flower on the lamp-globe. It seemed to him that she was anxious for him to go.
With the colonel it was otherwise. Rising and standing upright in the patched limpness of his dressing-gown, he affected incredulity at the thought that his guest contemplated such an early departure. Then, being politely assured that this was unavoidable, and that, for the matter of that, it was now close upon eleven, he urged him to repeat the visit at an early date.
"We are always here, Viola and I," he said. "We have not many engagements, as you see—just a friend here and there. But we value our friends more highly than the people do who count them by dozens."
He had followed John Gault out into the hall, and from here his voice called:
"The lamp, Viola. Mr. Gault can't put on his overcoat in the dark."
She came out quickly, carrying the smaller of the two lamps, divested once more of its paper-flower shade. To give a better light she held it up and looked at him, smiling a little from under the halo made by her hair. In answer to his good night she gave him her hand, which he pressed with a warm, strong grip.
As he went down the few steps from the porch the colonel stood in the doorway, his figure in sharp silhouette against the light within.
"Don't be a month finding your way down here again," he said. "People say it 's out of the beaten tracks, but we prefer it to any other locality in the city. Viola and I like the old associations, and I 've struck my roots here too deep to have them pulled up. Well, good night! So long!"
The door closed, and as John Gault opened the gate, the light vanished from the two long panes of glass that edged it on both sides, and gleamed out through the cracks and crevices between the blinds of the bay-window.
It was a warm night, soft and still, and Gault decided to walk. With his head bent down he walked slowly, striking the cracks in the pavement with the tip of his cane. From small gardens still tended and watered in this unkempt wilderness of brick and stucco, whiffs of delicate fragrance drifted out across the pavements, only to be stifled by the sickly odors that rose from the open sewer-mouths.
When he turned into the wide avenues where the old mansions stood, the air was fresher and the silence heavier. Desertion and darkness seemed to claim as their own this relic of a life that had already passed away. The dim, bulky shapes of the great houses stood back from the street, sullen, black, and morose, like the visions in a dream. Vines shrouded their solemn forms, and here and there clung to the support of an iron balcony rail, hanging down in the darkness like a veil that swayed and whispered in the breeze. In one porch a hall lamp was lit, and cast a pale and faltering light over an entrance that looked as full of menace and evil mystery as the opening to some bandit's cavern.
But Gault passed their iron gates, high between supporting pillars, without looking up. A man's dreams held him in a trance-like reverie. A man's perplexities destroyed the content of many serenely selfish years. He had come to what seemed to him the fateful moment of his destiny. Had he been a younger man he would have said with a rush of reckless ecstasy, "I love her!" Now, walking slowly home under the solemn stars, he queried to himself:
"Shall I let myself love her? Do I dare?"