The Readjustment Part 7

"And I should call it about my four hundred and first," he said. "It's back to the old scenes for the night. I haven't tasted real cabbage soup since the last time--it has been a canned imitation. For goodness' sake join us and tell us the news!"

"Do!" said Miss Waddington with animation, and "Please," said those two escorts who do not figure in this story. Eleanor said nothing, but her expression was an invitation.

"Sure!" responded Bertram.

The Hotel Ma.r.s.eillaise had familiar customs of its own. For one thing, guests bothered the waiters as little as possible. Masters smiled when the two unconscious youths went back to their table, picked up the big soup tureen, their knives and forks, their plates, and transported them to the larger table.

They were dragging the lees of a rather squalid Bohemia, these two boys; a Bohemia the more real because they were unconscious in it. Its components were a cheap furnished room, restaurants like this, adventurous companions.h.i.+p in the underworld which thrust itself to the surface here and there in that master-port of the Saxon advance. Not for months had either of them been in the society of such women as these--women who preferred cleanliness to display, women who were nice about their nails and hair. A kind of pleasant shyness crept over Mark Heath; the spirit came into the face of Bertram Chester. Masters, tactician that he was, put the conversation into their hands.

Presently, they were telling freely about the fare at Coffee John's, about their familiars and companions in the little Eddy-Street lodging house, about the drifters of the Latin quarter. They quite eclipsed the pale youth who was playing escort to Eleanor, and the substantial person in the insurance business who seemed to be responsible for Kate Waddington. Heath, speaking with a little diffidence and lack of a.s.surance, had twice the wit, twice the eye for things, twice the illumination of Bertram Chester; yet it was the latter who brought laughter and attention. His personality, which surrounded him like an aroma, his smile, his trick of the eyes--one listened to Bertram Chester.

When the son of Louis brought in the little sweet oranges and arranged the goblets for black coffee, talk s.h.i.+fted from monologue to dialogue.

Eleanor found herself talking to Bertram. A kind of pride had been rising in her all the evening; a pride born in recoil from her latest recollection of him. The episode of that night under the bay tree had gone with her clear across the Atlantic. Even the influence of the wholly new environment, in which she had grown from a girl recluse to a woman, had not served for a long time to erase that ugly stain on her memory. Here and now was the man who served so to perturb her once--and she could look on him, with her more mature eyes, as an attractive, unlicked young cub. She surprised herself taking revenge upon the past by a hidden patronage. At once, then, she fell to talking of Europe and the splendors she had lived there.

"This reminds me of the places one slips into abroad," she said, "Mr.

and Mrs. Wark--Lars Wark you know--took me to just such an old ruin in Paris. We dined for thirty centimes, I remember, but it was no better than this. I've had to go away to know my native city. That is the thing which strikes you when you come back--San Francisco is so like the Latin cities of Europe, and yet so unlike!"

Kate leaned across her insurance man.

"The Society for the Narration of European Travel is in session, Mr.

Chester," she said. "I know the joy that Eleanor is having. It was the pa.s.sion of my life after I first got back from abroad."

"Oh, I eat it alive," said Bertram. "I'm strong for seeing Paris." He turned back to Eleanor; and her double embarra.s.sment drove her on.

"Such a good time as I had with the Warks--their studio in Munich, where I met all the German long-haired artists--a run to Paris in the season--the dearest little village on the Coast of Brittany last summer--and three weeks in incomparable London at the end. I haven't thought of the ranch for a year and a half--Uncle Edward pays me the compliment of saying that my profits fell off twenty per cent. under Olsen's management--oh, isn't she a dear!"

For Madame Loisel, wearing a beaming and affable manner, had come through the door and approached their table. Madame made it a point of business honor to promote personal relations with her regular guests, asking Jean how he liked the fish, a.s.suring Jacques that the soup would be better to-morrow. This visit of hers to the slumming party came after a storm in the kitchen, whose French thunders had reached the dining room now and then. Louis, the conservative, hated slummers and dreaded being "discovered." He ran a restaurant as a social inst.i.tution as well as a business venture. Madame Loisel, with her eye on the cash register, longed ardently for slummers who would give large tips to Louis the younger, order expensive wines, and put the Ma.r.s.eillaise on the way to a twenty-five cent table d'hote dinner.

From that kitchen squabble, recurrent whenever slummers visited them, Madame Loisel swept in haughty determination, leaving Louis to take it out on the pots. As she approached the table, all the charm of France illuminated her smile.

She invariably paid slummers the compliment of addressing them in French.

"_Bonsoir--le souper, plait-il vous_?" she asked.

Eleanor took her up in fluent French, and the talk sparkled back and forth between them--reminiscences of this or that restaurant on the boulevards which Madame Loisel had known in her youth and which Eleanor had visited. Bertram, his mouth open, followed that talk as though summoning all his Soph.o.m.ore French to match a word here and there. Kate Waddington, leaning again across her insurance man, was the first to break in.

"I myself used to be keen on French when I came back from Europe, but I'm out of practice. Please excuse me, Madame, if I speak English. How can you do it at this price?"

"It is kind of you to say so, Mademoiselle--economy and honesty."

Masters patted Mark Heath on the knee.

"We can't let you fellows go away from us now. One doesn't get guides to the Latin quarter for nothing. Take us somewhere, Mr. Heath--unless you're working to-night."

"No, virtue has been rewarded," said Mr. Heath. "I'm off to-night as a testimonial of esteem from the City Editor. What shall it be?"

Bertram Chester, taking up the talk again, laid out Kearney Street like a bill of fare. Mrs. Masters, casting her vote as chaperone, chose the Marionette Theatre tucked away under the shadow of the Broadway Jail.

As Eleanor stepped out into California Street, gathering her coat about her against a night which had come up windy and raw, Bertram took her side with a proprietary air. She turned toward her appointed escort. It happened that he was walking ahead with Heath just then, holding an argument about the drift of Montgomery Street when it was the water front. For several blocks, then, Bertram had her alone. It seemed to her that he began just where he left off two years or more ago.

"You're even prettier than you used to be," he said caressingly; "you've bully eyes. I think I told you that before."

This time, she looked him full in the face and smiled easily.

"Have I? Well I hope you don't mind my saying that they're resting on a bonny sight!"

Somewhat taken aback by the directness of this answer, so different from the artificial coyness of the girls he knew best in that period of his life, Bertram turned in his course.

"You're jos.h.i.+ng me," he said.

"Truly I'm not. You are good to look at--eyes and all."

Although balked of his opening, Bertram tried again.

"Well your mouth is just as good as your eyes."

The same quick look into his face, and the same smile, as she answered:

"Yours is a little better if anything. It is not only well formed, but it becomes delicious when you smile, and it has most attractive shadows in the corners."

"Suppose we talk sense," grumbled Bertram.

"Suppose we do; I know you can." They both laughed at this, and all the way up Kearney Street she continued her chatter of Europe. Lars Wark, who had known her mother, had done everything for her. It had been very different from the regular tour; she came back ignorant of all the show places from Cologne Cathedral to the Tower. But it had been her privilege to see and meet wonderful people. They would not do for regular companions.h.i.+p, such people. They struck one, in the end, as goblins and trolls; but it had been an experience of a lifetime--while it lasted. The Warks had taken her to places which the tourist never sees--lost villages in the Black Forest, undiscovered corners of London, even.

After a little of this, she drew him on to speak of himself. She had heard news of him, she said, from her uncle, who said that he was doing well and gave promise of a future in the law. How long had he remained on the ranch that summer? This reference put him back into his presumptive mood.

"You went away without giving me a chance to say good-bye," he complained. "I never saw you again after the party on the lawn."

Her tongue ran away with her.

"I saw you, though," she said.

"Where?"

"Oh, at a distance." He caught nothing from her tone, yet a slight change did come into her manner, as though something had been drawn between them. Then her escort fell in on the other side of Eleanor, appropriating her by right and by consent of her att.i.tude.

Now they were in Broadway, skirting the small bake-shops, the dark alleys, all the picture scenes of the Latin quarter. At that very moment, Miss Waddington drew a little apart from the group cl.u.s.tering about Masters and Mark Heath. An Italian baby of three, too late out of bed, stood by a cellar rail surveying them with the liquid fire which was his eyes. Kate Waddington stooped to pat his head. As she raised herself, she was beside Bertram. Nothing more natural than that she should fall in, step by step, beside him. He caught step with her, but he still looked toward Eleanor.

"Wonderful girl, isn't she?" asked Kate.

"She sure is."

"Her mother," said Kate, "had more wit than any other woman in San Francisco--and the men she had!"

"I think Eleanor has inherited _that_ at any rate," she added after a pause.

They had reached the door of the Marionette Theatre now. Afterward they drank beer at Norman's; and when they broke up, Bertram Chester found himself with three invitations to call.