"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.
Fernigan seized a small Turkish rug from the floor and hung it in front of him, like a chasuble. Standing before the company he intoned a sacrilegious parody, like everything he did, funny, like everything he did, atrocious:
"O, sanctissimus nabisco in colorado maduro domino te deum, e pluribus unum vice versa et circus hippocriticam, mephisto apollinaris nux vomica dolores intimidad mores; O rara avis per diem cum magnum vino et sappho modus vivendi felicitas," to the droned "A—men."
Keith then enlivened the company with what quaint parlor tricks he knew, or dared, from making of a napkin a ballet dancer pirouetting upon one toe, to limericks that were suppressed by Sully Maxwell, Mrs. Page laughed prodigiously, showing all her teeth, staring with her great eyes, vivid in her every expression, flamboyant, sleek and glossy, abounding in temperament. Frankie Dean smiled maliciously and plied the performers with her acrid wit. The girl from Santa Rosa listened, her cheeks burning.
At six they went outside for fresh air and promenaded the glazed veranda until the sun rose. In front of them was the broad Pacific, stretching out to the Farralones, even to Japan. To the north, across the bar, yellowed with alluvium from the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, a mountainous coast stretched to far, misty Bolinas. Southward ran the broad, wide beach exposed by the ebb tide. It was damp and cool; the last spasm of summer had given way to the brisk, stimulating weather that was San Francisco's usual habit. Granthope buttoned his light overcoat tightly over his rumpled evening dress and walked with the girl from Santa Rosa, enjoying the scene quietly, speaking in monosyllables. The others had a new burst of effervescence, still more desperate than ever; their hilarity was indefatigable. Keith walked along the tops of the tables, leading Mrs. Page. Frankie Dean and Fernigan two-stepped the length and breadth of the wide platform, joking incessantly.