WHEN Clive awoke and looked at his watch it was a quarter to three in the afternoon. He sprang out of bed in dismay. He was an ideal lover! If Mary Gordon sent him about his business he could not question the justice of the act. After a hurried tub and toilet he went in search of his landlord.
“Why in thunder didn’t you call me at eight?” he asked savagely.
“Miss Gordon was up at seven, mister, and she gave strict orders that you was not to be disturbed. I’m to take you over to her cottage the minute you show up and to send a broiled chicken after you.”
“She’s an angel,” thought Clive, “and will certainly make an ideal wife.”
He followed his host out of the hotel and up the hill. The summer girl in pink and blue, sailor hat and shirt-waist, dotted the greenery; in rare instances attended by a swain. On the piazzas of the hotel and cottages older women knitted or read novels.
The day was very warm. The sun shone down into the forest above and about the cottages, where the trees were not so densely planted as in the depths. The under-forest looked very green and fresh. A creek murmured somewhere. Bees hummed drowsily.
Clive’s head still ached and he was hungry; but at this moment he was conscious of nothing but a paramount wish to see Mary Gordon.
Mr. Gordon, a pink-faced man with white side-whiskers, was standing on the piazza of a tiny cottage which looked as if it had been built in a night. He winked at Clive as he came down and shook him heartily by the hand. He had loved his wife and been kind to her, but had always done exactly as he pleased.
“She’s inside,” he whispered, “and I don’t think she’ll row you. Sorry it happened, just vow it never will again and she’ll forget it. They always do, bless them!”
Clive went hastily into the little parlor. Mary Gordon was standing in the middle of the room, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes very bright, her upper lip caught between her teeth. Clive saw in a glance that she had more style and grace of carriage than when she had left England. Her hair was more fashionably arranged, and altogether she was a handsomer girl. He took her in his arms and kissed her many times, and she cried softly on his shoulder. He humbled himself to the dust and was told that he must always do exactly what he wanted; and he felt a distinct thrill of pleasureable domestic anticipation. He had been spoiled all his life, and would have taken to matrimonial discipline very unkindly.
When he had eaten of the broiled chicken and several other substantial delicacies, and was at peace with himself and the world once more, he went for a long walk in the forest with Mary. After a time they sat down on a log, and he lit his pipe and tried to imagine an environment of English oaks and beeches. Again and more forcibly he felt the discordance between the English girl, simplified by generations of discipline and homogeneous traditions, and this green light, this strange brooding silence, this vast solitude suggesting a new world, a new race, an unimaginable future, this hot electric sensuous air.
They talked of the past two years and of their future together.
“I have not told anyone yet that we are engaged,” said Mary. “People here don’t seem to take things as seriously as we do, and I could not stand being chaffed about it. I have merely said that we expected an old and dear friend of the family.”
“I am glad. It’s a bore to be chaffed.”
“Of course, I have written to all our friends in England that we are to be married on the twelfth. But as the wedding is to be so quiet it is not necessary to tell anyone here.”
“How do you like this country?” he asked curiously. “I mean how does it suit you personally? Of course, I know you would make up your mind to like any place where duty happened to take you, but you must have a private little idea on the subject, and it is your duty to tell me everything.”
She smiled happily. “‘Well!’ as they say here, now that I am sure that Edith will make papa comfortable, I shall be glad enough to go back to England. California doesn’t suit me at all. It rubs me the wrong way. I think I should develop nerves if I stayed here much longer. Americans don’t seem to me to be half human. Helena Belmont says that America will be the greatest nation on earth when it gets a soul, but that it is nothing but a kicking squalling, precocious infant at present; and that if some one were clever enough to stick his finger in the soft spot on the top of its head, it would transform it into an idiot or a corpse; but that America will pull though all right because she has so many weak points that her enemies forget which is the weakest. Miss Belmont is so clever. You will meet her on Sunday. You don’t mind my having accepted an invitation for you to dine there?”
“Not at all. It was very kind of you, I am sure. I have heard of this Miss Belmont; I don’t imagine you find much in common with her.”
“She horrifies me, but she fascinates me more than any person I have met here. I am sure she is a good woman in spite of the reckless things she does. Your friend Mr. Rollins, says that she is the concentrated essence of California, and I always excuse her on that ground. You never know what she is going do or say next; and she is the most desperate flirt I ever heard of. I suppose she is so beautiful she can’t help it. Her eyes always seem to be looking at you through tears, even when they are laughing or flirting, although I don’t believe she sheds many. I cannot imagine her crying, although I know her to be kind-hearted, and generous, and impulsive.”
“Do you call it kind-hearted to throw fifteen men over?”
“I told her once that I thought it was morally wrong for her to lure men on to such a terrible awakening, and she said that there was just one thing that man didn’t know, which was woman; and that it was her duty to her sex to addle their brains on the subject as much as possible. But I want you to know me, Owin.”
“The better I know you the better I shall love you.”
“When your eyes laugh like that I never know whether you are chaffing me or not. It will not take long, for I am not clever;” she smiled a little sadly; “you are so clever that I know you will often want to go and talk to women who know more than I do; but none of them will ever love you so well.”
“I know it,” he said tenderly, and he believed what he said.
“I am glad that I have been in California, though,” pursued Mary. “It has broadened me. At home we take it for granted that all the unconventional people are bad, and all the conventional ones good. Here it is so different; although I must say that I never heard so much petty gossip and scandal in my life as there is in the smart set in San Francisco. All visitors remark that; I suppose it is because they have so little to do and think about. It is very slow here socially; and I suppose that is what makes some of the women do such outlandish things—that and the country, for even the quiet ones are not exactly like other people. One can judge for oneself. I have often pinned the tattlers down when they were abusing Helena Belmont, for instance, and they could not verify a single statement.”
“Women know each other very little,” said Clive.