“Lord, hasn’t it! Crawl Hill used to be one of those big places”—he enlarged a little upon the circumstances, adding: “Since we’re both headed for the same auction, we might walk on together, and I’ll ask the way.”
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure!” she told him, her manner more than ever gracious.
So the stroll was thus resumed, and Mr. Curry was struck with the peculiar ease he felt from the very beginning in his new companion’s company. Their talk, as they proceeded, widened gradually to embrace a considerable range of subjects: cheerful commonplaces—just, as a contemporary puts it, “the talk which goes up the chimney with the spark of the wood fire.” Discreet, polite side-glances revealed, for him, an undoubtedly romantic lady nearly as tall as himself, vaguely lavish, just faintly overpowering in her enthusiasms, who walked along with free, hopeful stride and lifted her arching brows in an unbroken expression of communicative pleasantness. She wore a cloak made from an Arabian gondura—a fabric of rusty plum with intricate embellishment of bright green braid. There were wide flowing sleeves; and underneath the cloak one now and then caught sight of confusing details; a bit of Paisley, blue serge, large decorated brass buttons. Her hat was an oddly shaped straw with an ample feather falling off behind.
The lady, for her part, quickly noted his air of bustling optimism and seemed responding to it with unconscious warmth; at first, it is true, she had eyed his rings and general air of the exotic with some slight twinges of doubt: but after she had received one or two of his radiant smiles it was only too plain she felt it would be unhandsome to hold so small a matter against him. Indeed, he seemed to perceive in her at once an element of happy tolerance, at the same time that he was very sure he caught a genuine passion for the artistic. Above all he couldn’t but be impressed with the uplifting and flowing quality in her rich voice. “I learned about the auction from some friends who have been spending months in Morocco, where they heard about Mr. Hoadley’s death and immediately thought about the lovely ‘things’ every one remembers having seen in his house here in San Francisco!” Her sentences, inclined to be “Germanic,” moved with the liquid fluency of a wide, well-mannered river. And there were words she stressed saliently or perhaps rather lingered over; it was a little quaint. One came to listen for them. Other words, too, which, by the most marvellous yet wholly artless subtlety in shading, she managed to slip within quotation marks—although, as a matter of fact, there was seldom any real reason for their being quoted. “I don’t expect to find a thing that I’ll really buy, for everything’s sure to be quite dear, you know, considering how immensely rich Mr. Hoadley was when he did his collecting, although it’s always pleasant to just visit these ‘sales’ and look around and perhaps pick up some little trifles that catch one’s fancy—as trifles have such an irresistible way of doing!”
II
Crawl Hill, when at last they reached it, proved to be a tall frowning old house, whose once considerable grounds had shrunk to a mere wisp of withered lawn. Within they breathed a heavy mustiness. It was a bit ghostly, too—decidedly a place to be visited by daylight.
And as for the little adventure—well, it didn’t, after all, lapse at the door. Mr. Curry, as they moved on together through the crowd, told himself there was nothing so very unusual in their having met like this. He was always meeting people—was a Bohemian—freely admitted it. But was this lady a Bohemian also? And who was she? He was on the verge of learning, and the method was rather happy.
It chanced that somewhat apart from the throng stood a satin-wood console of the French Renaissance period, on which reposed an ornate silver card tray. She liked the tray—“not that one would really want it, you know, for of course it is a little ‘overdone’; but it reminds one of the Victorians—doesn’t it?—and I think there was much to admire in them, although it has become the fashion to sneer at their dust-catching ‘ideas.’”
And the tray gave Mr. Curry an unexpected cue. He smiled and drew out his wallet, then, selecting one of his cards, tossed it humorously down. Her eyes lighted quickly, and, without a word, she brought out one of her own, too, and placed it beside his on the tray. Then they stood there side by side, like two absurd children, reading each other’s cards. Hers was very modest and simple: Flora Utterbourne, with no address. But his, being so ambitious, not to say overwhelming an affair, naturally called for a small smiling effusion on her part.
“I know you by ‘reputation,’ though I’ve never had the pleasure of attending one of your performances. It’s always sounded so interesting!”