The Readjustment Part 8

Kate Waddington spent that night with Eleanor Gray in the Tiffany House on Russian Hill. While they sat before the fireplace, in the half-hour of loosened hair and confidences, Eleanor broke a minute of silence with the inquiry:

"What did you think of him?" An instant after she let slip this impersonal inquiry, she would have given gold to recall it. And if she had any hope that Kate Waddington had missed the point, it died in her when Kate answered in an indifferent tone:

"He? Oh, he seems to me to be a little promiscuous."

CHAPTER VI

The Tiffany house--I spare you full description--rambled with many a balcony and addition over that hill which rose like a citadel above San Francisco. From its Southern windows, one looked clean over the city, lying outspread below. Even the Call building, highest eminence piled up by man in that vista, presented its roof to the eye. I can picture that site no better than by this; Over Judge Tiffany's front wall hung an apple tree, gnarled, convoluted, by the buffets of the sea wind. In autumn, when the fruit was ripe, stray apples from this tree had been seen to tumble from the wall and roll four blocks down into the Latin quarter.

From the rear, the house looked out on a hedged and sloping garden, quite old, as gardens go in that land, for a pioneer planted it; and from the rear gate of that garden it was only a step to the hill mount. Thence one came out suddenly to the panorama of the Bay, stretching on three sides; a panorama divided, as by the false panels of a mural landscape, into three equal marvels. To left, the narrow gate, a surge like the rush of a river always in its teeth and the bright ocean, colored like smelt-scales, beyond. In front the Roads, where all strange crafts from the mysterious Pacific anch.o.r.ed while they waited their turns at the docks. Both in foreground and background, this panel changed day by day. It might be whalers from the Arctic which lay there in the morning, their oils making noisome the breeze; it might be a fleet of beaten, battered tramp wind-jammers, panting after their fight about the Horn; it might be brigs from the South Seas; it might be Pacific steamers, Benicia scow-schooners, Italian fis.h.i.+ng smacks, Chinese junks--it might be any and all of these together. As for the background, that changed not every day but every hour what with the s.h.i.+fts of wind, tide and mists.

Now its tinge was a green-gold betraying pollution of those mountain placers which fed the San Joaquin and the mighty Sacramento. Now it was blue and ruffled, now black and calm, now slate-gray,--a mysterious shade this last, so that when the fog began to shoot lances across the waters, these fleets at anchor by Quarantine wharf seemed argosies of fairy adventure. Even Tamalpais, the gentle mountain which rose beyond everything, changed ever with the change in her veil of mist or fog or rain-rift. The third panel, lying far to the right, showed first dim mountain ranges and the mouths of mighty rivers, and then, nearer by, masts, stacks and s.h.i.+pping, fringing the city roofs.

North into this garden ran a small wing of the Tiffany house. Upon the death of Alice Gray, Mattie Tiffany had set it apart for Eleanor the baby. When, after her years with Billy Gray, Eleanor came back, Mattie had refurnished it for the grown baby. The upper story held her bedroom and her closets. Below was her own particular living-room.

This opened by a vine-bordered door into the garden, into that path which led up to the bay view.

Judge Tiffany, sitting within the front window to watch the s.h.i.+mmer of a pleasant Sunday afternoon on the city roofs below, perceived that his wife had walked three times to that garden wall which looked down along the drop of Broadway to the Spanish Church.

The second time that he perceived this phenomenon, his eyes showed interest; the third he smiled with inner satisfaction and rose to meet her return as though by accident. He was leaning upon a cane, getting ease of the sciatica which plagued him.

The Judge had aged during the two years since he opened these events.

He had settled now into the worldly state of a man who rests content with the warming sun and the bright air which feed life. But the inner soul, whose depth was his philosophy, whose surface his whimsical humor--that still burned in his dark blue eyes. Those eyes glistened a little as he went on to this, his daily sport.

He met her on the piazza. She had raked the rise of Broadway, which one mounted by two blocks of hen-coop sidewalks; and now she was inspecting the cross street.

"All the Sherlock Holmes in me," said Judge Tiffany, "tells me that Miss Eleanor Gray is going to have a caller, and that Mrs. Edward C.

Tiffany is in a state of vicarious perturbation.

"Further," continued Judge Tiffany, dropping his hand upon her arm with that affectionate gesture which drew all sting his words might have carried, "this is no common caller. For that young civil engineer and Mr. Perham the painter and Ned Greene, Mrs. Tiffany never blushes; but these new attentions to her niece--well, I hope my approach drew as much blood from her heart to her countenance twenty-five years ago!"

"I--I _am_ perturbed," said Mattie Tiffany. Running rose-bushes, just leafing out into their fall greenery, overgrew the pillars beside her.

These she fell to pruning with her hands, so that she turned away her face.

"I see that discipline is relaxing in this family," said Judge Tiffany. "Dear, dear, after managing a wife bravely and well for a quarter century, to fail in one's age! Mattie, he works in my office, this blush-compelling caller; and I told you when I gave him the position not to take him up socially for the present!"

"But what was I to do when he telephoned to Eleanor and asked her?"

Mrs. Tiffany turned her head with a turn of her thought. "Did you hear him telephone--was that how you knew?"

"I'd lose all hold on discipline if I revealed my methods."

Judge Tiffany settled himself in an armchair as one prepared to make it a long session. "Let's begin at the start. How came he to renew his acquaintance with Eleanor, and when, and where--and how much had Mattie Tiffany to do with bringing them together again?"

"Not a thing--truly Edward! Some of Eleanor's slumming with Kate Waddington and the Masters--they met by accident at a restaurant--Eleanor asked him. You remember he was taken with her that afternoon just before she went to Europe--the time he mortified me so dreadfully."

"And the time he attracted my attention," said Judge Tiffany. "And now behold that youth, who will always get what he wants by frontal attack, reading my California cases and wearing out my desk with his feet."

"Do you think he will make a good lawyer?" asked Mattie Tiffany. She turned full around at this, and the glance she threw into her husband's face showed more than a casual matchmaker's interest.

"He'll make a good something," said the Judge. "So far as anyone can judge the race from the start. But that isn't why I have him in the office. You know how little I care in these days for such practice as I have left. I tell myself, of course, that it is my lingering interest in life as a general proposition which made me do it--I am curious to see before I die how this find of yours is coming out. That is what I tell myself. Probably in my very inside heart I know that it's something else."

"What else?" asked Mattie.

"This is one of the hidden things which this experiment is to discover," said Judge Tiffany. "What made me notice him in the first place? What made you invite him to tea on the lawn? What has made you and me and Eleanor remember this chance meeting so long--let me see--how long was it?"

"A year ago last June," said Mattie. One of her functions in their partners.h.i.+p was to hold small details always ready to the hand of the wide-thinking Judge.

"Will he go back on me--that's the question," pursued the Judge.

"Success is probably at the end for him, but he has two ways of success open. He may go slowly and well, or fast and ill. Road number one: he stays with my moth-eaten old practice, he refurbishes it, he earns a partners.h.i.+p; and so to conservative clients and, probably, to genuine success." He hesitated.

"And the other road?" asked Mrs. Tiffany.

"Oh, that has many by-paths. He is trying one of them already. The stealthy, invaluable Attwood has told me about it. This Mr. Chester has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general direction, it will be a flashy success, a pretty worm-eaten crown of laurels."

"Like Northrup's," broke in Mrs. Tiffany. That name always jarred on their ears. Northrup, ex-congressman, flowery Western orator, all Christian love on the surface, all guile beneath--he had taken to himself that success which Judge Tiffany might have had but for his hesitations of conscience. Theirs was a secret resentment. Judge Tiffany's pride would never have let him show the world one glimmer of what he felt.

"Suppose he should follow that path--and take up with Northrup," went on Judge Tiffany. "Mine honorable opponent has use for such young men as our Mr. Chester will prove himself if he follows that path--magnetic young men to coax the rabble, young men not too nice on moral questions. Well, a boy isn't born with honor, any more than he's born with courage; he grows to it. And G.o.d only knows just when the boy strikes the divide which will turn his course one way or the other."

"But Edward, you ought to warn him!"

"In the first place, it would do no good to warn one of his age and temperament. In the second place, it would spoil the experiment--but I had commanded you to talk, and here I am doing it all. How looked she; what said he?"

"To-day--just before church--I was hooking up Kate and Eleanor, and he telephoned."

"Instinct, of course, informing you that it was none other than he at the other end of the wire?" On another tongue and in another fas.h.i.+on of speech, this sentence might have been offensive; between them, it was a part of his perpetual game with her amiable weaknesses.

"If I did listen, it was no more than right. It was what a mother would have done by Eleanor. I heard her say, 'Good morning Mr.

Chester,' not at all as though she were surprised to have him call up; and I was really quite disturbed. You had told me not to invite him here for the present; and I hadn't the slightest reason for knowing that Eleanor had seen him since she came back from abroad. Her speaking so familiarly--well, I wondered. But Kate--"

"Oh, she was listening too?"

"Well, I know that she hadn't the excuse for listening that I had; but I had stopped hooking her up, and it was only natural that she should listen too. Eleanor said, 'Certainly I shall be in,' and Kate said, 'That's the old friend we met with Mr. Masters last night in the Hotel Ma.r.s.eillaise. He is prompt!' Rather sharp in Kate, considering what Eleanor has been doing for her!

"You'd have thought Eleanor had eaten the canary bird when she came back. Of course, she knew we had been listening. I wish she hadn't.

I'd have liked to see whether she'd have told us then, or waited for him to surprise us. Kate was sharp again. I wonder if she isn't envious at bottom? After all Eleanor is so much more a lady! Kate said again, 'The young man is prompt!'"

Judge Tiffany laughed.

"Oh, that women could dwell together in peace and harmony! Can't you grant my playmate Miss Waddington a feminine jab or two?"

"Well, she _is_ nice to you!"

"Did it never occur to you as a virtue in her that she puts herself out to entertain--even, Madame, I flatter myself to fancy--a withered old codger like me!"