The Ferry, doorway to San Francisco, wore its holiday Sunday aspect as Bertram Chester approached it. A Schuetzen Park picnic was gathering itself under the arches, to the syncopated tune of a brass band. The crowd blazed with bright color. The young men, in white caps, yellow sashes of their mysterious fraternity, and tinted neckties like the flowers of spring, lolled and larked and smoked about the pillars. Fat mothers and stodgy fathers fussed over baskets and progeny. Young girls, in white dresses and much trimming of ribbons, coquetted in groups as yet unbroken by the larking young men. Over these ceremonial white dresses of the Sunday picnic, they wore coats and even furs against the damp, penetrating morning—rather late in the season it was for picnics. In the rests of the ragtime, rose the aggressive crackle of that flat, hard accent, with its curious stress on the “r,” which would 124 denote to a Californian in Tibet the native of South of Market, San Francisco.
Bertram Chester, had he been accustomed to spare any of his powers for introspective imagination, might have beheld his crossroads, his turning point, in this passage through the South of Market picnic to the little group waiting, by the Sausalito Ferry, to take him to the Masters ranch. But a month ago, he himself had whistled up that infatuated little milliner’s apprentice who was his temporary light of love, and had taken her over to Schuetzen Park of a Sunday. He had drunk his beer and shaken for his round of drinks with the boys, had taken the girl away from a young butcher, had fought and conquered the bookmaker’s clerk who tried to take away the milliner’s apprentice from him, and had gone home, when the day was done, with his head buried on that soft curve of the feminine shoulder which was made to receive tired male heads.
Now, without a backward look, he was walking toward Sydney Masters, Mrs. Masters, the sprightly and dainty Kate Waddington, and those others, grouped about them, 125 who might be guides and companions on his new way.
Kate Waddington had acquainted him in advance with the party, so that the introductions brought no surprises. That young-old man with the sharp little face was Harry Banks, mine owner, millionaire, and figure about town—every one in San Francisco knew him or knew about him. That tall, swaying girl with the repressed mouth, the abundant hair coiled about her head, the rather dull expression, was Marion Slater—“she paints miniatures and hammers brass and does all kinds of art stunts,” Kate had said. That tall young man, who radiated good manners, was Dr. Norman French; that little woman, all girl, was Alice Needham, his fiancée. “They play juvenile lead in this crowd,” had been Kate’s phrase for them.
Kate, taking possession of Bertram at once, gave him her bag to carry, and, as the gates opened and the whistle blew, she walked beside him. From the upper deck, this Masters party watched that city panorama, spread on the hills for all to see, roll away from them, the wheeling flocks of gulls trailing the 126 craft in the roads, the surge of golden waters rolling in from the Gate. A morning mood blew in upon the winds; the party became gay.
Bertram, in the rise of his morning spirits, performed certain cub-like gambols for the benefit of Kate Waddington. The company failed not to notice that he had assisted her up the gangway by slipping his hand under her elbow. On the deck, he cut her out immediately from the rest, insisted on tucking her veil into his pocket, made a pretence of trying to take her hand. Even Kate found it hard to parry these advances. Banks, slouching back on a bench in his easy, indolent attitude, looked over toward them, and his mouth tightened and set. So much had he been courted for his wealth and personality, this Harry Banks, that among his familiars he assumed the privilege of falling into moods without reason or preliminary notice. His present mood was a perverse one; and he took it out on its reason for being—this presumptuous outsider.
“Me Gawd, Jimmie, but me belt hurts!” he called out suddenly in his richest imitation of the South of Market dialect. With his 127 light step of a dancer, he skipped over to Kate Waddington, whirled her to her feet, and began to waltz about the forward deck, imitating the awkward, contorted, cheek-to-cheek style of the Schuetzen Park picnic. Kate, who fell in at once with every invitation, had laughed as he began to whirl her, but she flushed too. The whole upper deck was craning necks to stare. Mrs. Masters caught her breath and whispered, “Oh, don’t!” Dr. French and Alice Needham fell to talking apart, as though repudiating, in their embarrassment, such company. Marion Slater, sitting at ease on her bench, cast one glance at Harry Banks as he whirled to face her. His eyes fell; on the next turn, he waltzed Kate back to her seat. The relationship between these two was a puzzle to their familiars. He, the uncaught bachelor, the flaneur, the epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she, the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the frivolous and unconventional rich—people had wondered for years how 128 there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved her hand, and the motion translated itself to speech in his mind. That glance of her had made his mind say, “I am making them all ridiculous.”
And, like the spoiled child that he was, he ceased from one naughtiness only to plunge into another and worse one. As Kate dropped to the bench, he looked at Bertram and said:
“You try it; I am a little rusty.” One of his rare embarrassments flamed into the face of Bertram Chester. The shot had gone more truly than Harry Banks could have known.
“No, thank you,” Bertram said simply, and flushed again.