They went down the shabby streets toward the river, and even the dingy tenements and broken sidewalks of the Japanese quarter seemed to them to have a holiday air. They laughed about the queer little shops and the restaurant windows, where electric lights still burned in the clear daylight over pallid pies and strange-looking cakes. Helen must stop to speak to the straight-haired, flat-faced Japanese babies who sat stolidly on the curbs, looking at her with enigmatic, slant eyes, and she saw romance in the groups of tall Hindoo laborers, with their bearded, black faces and gaily colored turbans.
It was like going into a foreign land together, she said, and even Paul was momentarily caught by the enchantment she saw in it all, though he did not conceal his detestation of these foreigners. "We're going to see to it we don't have them in our town," he said, already with the air of a proprietor in Ripley.
"Now this is something like!" he exclaimed when he had helped Helen across the gang-plank and deposited her safely on the deck of the steamer. Helen, pressing his arm with her fingers, was too happy to speak. The boat was filling with people in holiday clothes; everywhere about her was the exciting stir of departure, calls, commands, the thump of boxes being loaded on the deck below. A whistle sounded hoarsely, the engines were starting, sending a thrill through the very planks beneath her feet.
"We'd better get a good place up in front," said Paul. He took her through the magnificence of a large room furnished with velvet chairs, past a glimpse of shining white tables and white-clad waiters, to a seat whence they could gaze down the yellow river. She was appalled by his ease and assurance. She looked at him with an admiration which she would not allow to lessen even when the boat edged out into the stream and, turning, revealed that he had led her to the stern deck.
Her enthusiastic suggestion that they explore the boat aided Paul's attempt to conceal his chagrin, and she listened enthralled to his explanations of all they saw. He estimated the price of the crates of vegetables and chickens piled on the lower deck, on their way to the city from the upper river farms. It was his elaborate description of the engines that caught the attention of a grimy engineer who had emerged from the noisy depths for a breath of air, and the engineer, turning on them a quizzically friendly gaze, was easily persuaded to take them into the engine-room.
Helen could not understand his explanations, but she was interested because Paul was, and found her own thrill in the discovery of a dim tank half filled with flopping fish, scooped from the river and flung there by the paddle wheel. "We take 'em home and eat 'em, miss," said the engineer, and she pictured their cool lives in the green river, and the city supper-tables at which they would be eaten. She was fascinated by the multitudinous intricacies of life, even on that one small boat.
It was a disappointment to find, when they returned again to the upper decks, that they could see nothing but green levee banks on each side of the river. But this led to an even more exciting discovery, for venturesomely climbing a slender iron ladder they saw beyond the western levee an astounding and incredible stretch of water where land should be. Their amazement emboldened Paul to tap on the glass wall of a small room beside them, in which they saw an old man peacefully smoking his pipe. He proved to be the pilot, who explained that it was flood water they saw, and who let them squeeze into his tiny quarters and stay while he told long tales of early days on the river, of floods in which whole settlements were swept away at night, of women and children rescued from floating roofs, of cows found drowned in tree-tops, and droves of hogs that cut their own throats with their hoofs while swimming. Listening to him while the boat slowly chugged down the curves of the sunlit river, Helen felt the romance of living, the color of all the millions of obscure lives in the world.
"Isn't everything interesting!" she cried, giving Paul's arm an excited little squeeze as they walked along the main deck again. "Oh, I'd like to live all the lives that ever were lived! Think of those women and the miners and people in cities and everything!"
"I expect you'd find it pretty inconvenient before you got through," Paul said. "Gee, but you're awfully pretty, Helen," he added irrelevantly, and they forgot everything except that they were together.
They had to get off at Lancaster in order to catch the afternoon boat back to Sacramento. There was just time to eat on board, Paul said, and overruling her flurried protests he led her into the white-painted dining-room. The smooth linen, the shining silver, and the imposing waiters confused her; she was able to see nothing but the prices on the elaborate menu-cards, and they were terrifying. Paul himself was startled by them, and she could see worried calculation in his eyes. She felt that she should pay her share; she was working, too, and earning money. The memory of the office, the advance she had drawn on her wages, her uncomfortable existence in Mrs. Campbell's house, passed through her mind like a shadow. But it was gone in an instant, and she sat happily at the white table, eating small delicious sandwiches and drinking milk, smiling across immaculate linen at Paul. For a moment she played with the fancy that it was a honeymoon trip, and a thrill ran along her nerves.