CHAPTER XXVI
HE returned three days later, clad in immaculate grey, a trunk in his wake containing much smart linen and four suits of clothes, which had been ordered at the best house in San Francisco by a stockbroker who had retired from business and his country the day before Cecil, with similar measurements and similar needs, was presented to the tailor by Randolph.
Mrs. Montgomery had done the one thing possible under the circumstances—she had asked Cecil to make her house his home so long as he remained in that part of California. Her eyes were very red on the morning after his first appearance, but she made no comment to Lee, who spent the greater part of those three days by herself, but appeared quite normal when with the family. Cecil had gone at once to see and consult Randolph, who remarked, when he came home that night, that the Englishman seemed a very good sort, but that he should prefer not to walk down Kearney Street with him again until he was properly rigged out. He really didn’t know why they hadn’t been mobbed, and two imps of newsboys had made audible remarks about “blarsted Britishers.”
“I don’t see why you can always tell an Englishman,” he added, with some impatience. “To say nothing of his get-up to-day, look at the difference between his figure and Coe’s. The clothes will fit Maundrell to perfection, but his figure is no more like Coe’s than it’s like mine. He’s a lean athletic Englishman, every inch of him; Coe was thin and angular. It’s quite remarkable.”
“Is he very handsome?” asked Mrs. Montgomery faintly.
“I really couldn’t say. He looks like an Englishman—that’s all.”
Lee darted a swift side-glance; he was eating with his usual nervous haste. She knew him better than in the old days, but could detect no sign of agitation in him. In a moment he began to talk about a new pair of carriage horses he had bought his mother; and during the evening he asked Lee to play for him in the dark, as usual. Once she turned her head suddenly and caught a fixed steely gleam from the depths of his chair. She averted her eyes hastily, and gazed thoughtfully at the keys, playing mechanically, with nothing of her usual expression.
She always wore white in summer, in accordance with an unwritten law of Menlo Park, and for the evening of Cecil’s second appearance she selected her softest and airiest, one, moreover, that was cut several inches below her throat, and one or two above her elbows. Full-dress, except at the rare dinner-parties in honour of some-one-with-letters, was tabooed in that exclusive borough. As Cecil came from town with Randolph she left the honours of introduction to the host, and did not make her appearance until a few minutes before dinner. She found Mrs. Montgomery and Cecil amiably discussing California, and Randolph gently jeering at them for their lack of originality.
“Several volumes have been written on the ‘Resources of California,’ but the one to which she shall owe her permanent fame has never had so much as a paragraph. It awaits its special biographer.”
“But there can be originality even on an exhausted theme,” said Lee, who had shaken hands with Cecil, and was anxious to keep the conversation light. “Captain Twining’s remark two days after his arrival in California is already quite famous.” She glanced at Cecil, and lifted her chin with defiant coquetry. “He said that he had only heard of two things Californian before he came—Miss Tarleton and the climate.”