“Good evening, Parrish,” he said. “The girls will be down in a minute. I’m going to beg off. Can’t drag me away from a good cigar and comfortable chair on such a damned cold night.”
His face was flushed; he had evidently been drinking more than was consistent with a strictly temperate standard, a condition which often marked him after dinner. But the old tendency toward an open and unabashed inebriety had been conquered. Well-dressed, his beard trimmed, the sense of degradation and failure lifted from him, he looked a stalwart, personable man, in whom the joy of life was still buoyantly and coarsely alive.
The Colonel, leaning against the door frame, was about to launch into the desultory conversation that fills gaps, when the rustle of skirts on the stairs caught his ear. June and Rosamund were descending, their cloaks on their arms that they might show themselves in their new finery. Their mourning for their mother took the form of transparent black gauze, through which the delicate whiteness of their youthful arms and shoulders gleamed. They laughed as they met the Colonel’s eye, both slightly abashed by the unwonted splendor of their attire.
Their sudden rise from poverty, their translation to the city, and their short stay in its sophisticated atmosphere, had already worked a marked change in them. Their air of naïvely blushing rusticity was gone. They looked finer, more mondaine, than they had only six weeks before. Rosamund, who was of an ample, gracious build, had already, by the aid of the admirable dressmaker who had fashioned her gown, achieved a figure of small-waisted, full-busted elegance, which, combined with her naturally fine carriage, gave her an appearance of metropolitan poise and distinction. She had that bounteous and blooming type of looks which is peculiar to the women of California, and which (as is the case with the character that accompanies it) is curiously lacking in feminine subtility and romantic suggestion. By far the handsomer of the two sisters she was not destined to cast the spell over the hearts of men which was the prerogative of June.
She too had improved, but neither skilful dressmakers nor luxurious surroundings would ever make her a radiantly good-looking or particularly noticeable person. Her hair, which had been so unsightly six months before, was now her one beauty. It hung round her head in a drooping mass of brown curls, the longest just brushing the nape of her neck. Through them was wound a ribbon of black velvet in the manner of adornment sometimes seen in eighteenth century miniatures.
The girls grumbled a little at their father’s defection, but the truth was that they were so excited by the evening’s prospect that their regrets had a perfunctory tone. In the carriage they plied the Colonel with questions as to the nature of the entertainment and the people they were likely to meet. It amused and somewhat puzzled him to see that the anticipation of what he had supposed would be a beguiling and cheerful amusement was throwing them into nervous tremors. As the large outline of the Davenport house rose before them, all attempt at conversation died, and they sat, stiff and speechless, on the seat opposite him.
The Davenport house, as all old Californians know, was at that time and had been for ten years, the focus of the city’s social life. Mrs. Davenport was a Southerner and had been a beauty, facts which had weighed with the San Franciscans since the days when “the water came up to Montgomery Street.” The Southern tradition still retained much of its original power. The war had not broken it, and the overwhelming eruption of money, which the Comstock was to disgorge, had not yet submerged the once dominant “set.” At its head Mrs. Davenport ruled with tact and determination. She appeared to the Allens as a graciously cordial lady of more than middle age, whose sweeping robe of gray satin matched the hair she wore parted on her forehead and drawn primly down over the tips of her ears.
To the sisters it was the entrance into a new world, the world their parents had strayed from and often described to them. Seated in arm-chairs of yellow brocade they surveyed the length of the parlor, a spacious, high-ceilinged apartment, of a prevailing paleness of tint and overhung by crystal chandeliers. The black shoulders of men were thrown out against the white walls delicately touched with a design in gilding. Long mirrors reproduced the figures of women rising from the curving sweep of bright-colored, beruffled trains. A Chinaman, carrying a wide tray of plates and glasses, moved from group to group.
Soon several of the black coats had gathered round the chairs of June and Rosamund. The Colonel had to give up his seat, and June could see him talking to men in the doorways or dropping into vacant places beside older women. He kept his eye on them, however. It delighted him to see that their charm was so quickly recognized. Round about him their name buzzed from a knot in a corner, or a group on a sofa. Many of those present had known Beauregard Allen in his short heyday. Almost everybody in the room had heard of his strike near Foleys and sudden translation from poverty to riches.
When at length the Colonel saw the chair beside June vacant he crossed the room and dropped into it. He was anxious to hear from her how she was enjoying herself.