The Heart Line 48

The Heart Line 48

He was introduced to the girl from Santa Rosa, who looked up at him

timidly but with evident curiosity, as at a celebrity, and sat down

between her and Mrs. Page. Sully Maxwell took advantage of the new

arrival to order another round of drinks—club sandwiches, golden

bucks—till he was stopped by Frankie Dean. Keith and Fernigan

recommenced their wit. Mrs. Page looked at him with all kinds of

messages in her eyes, as if she were quite sure that he could interpret

them. The girl from Santa Rosa said nothing, but, from time to time,

gave him a shy, curious glance from her big brown eyes. Granthope’s

spirits rose steadily, but his excitement had in it something hectic.

In a sudden pause he seemed to remember that he had been speaking rather

too loudly.

 

After the party had refused, unanimously, further refreshment, Sully

proposed that they should all drive out to the Cliff House, and they

left the restaurant forthwith to set out on this absurd expedition. It

was already long past midnight; the adventure was a characteristic San

Francisco pastime for the giddier spirits of the town.

 

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.