“Is that by way of another introduction?” asked Judge Tiffany. His eyes looked at her severely, but his beard showed that he was smiling gently again. Half his joy in a welded marriage lay in his appreciation of her humors, as though one should laugh at himself.
“Oh, there’s no doubt that he’s a gentleman. He is less loud, somehow, than Mr. Chester, though he hasn’t his charm. It seems there is the most wonderful boy friendship between them.”
“Where did you get all this insight into the social life of our employees?” asked Judge 23 Tiffany; and then, “Mattie, you’ve been exposing yourself to the night air again.”
“Over at their camp last evening,” said Mrs. Tiffany. “Well, and isn’t it my business to look after—after that side of the ranch?” she added.
The Judge had dropped the book now; his senses were alert to the game which never grew old to him—“Mattie-baiting” he had named it.
“Mattie,” he said, “with a pretty and marriageable, dowered and maiden niece on your hands, a new era is opening in your life of passionate self-sacrifice. It used to be orphan children and neglected wives of farm hands. Now it is presentable but neglected bachelors. Your darling match for Eleanor, I suppose, would be some young soul snatched from evil courses, pruned, trimmed, and delivered at the altar with ‘Made by Mattie Tiffany’ branded on his wings. Spare, O spare your innocent niece!”
“Edward, I never thought of it in that light!” cried Mrs. Tiffany; and she bent herself to furious crocheting. After a time, and when the Judge had resumed his book, she looked up and added: 24
“It might be worse, though, than a young man who had made it all himself.”
Judge Tiffany burst into laughter. Then, seeing her bend closer over her pink yarns, he grew grave, reached for the hand which held the needles, and kissed it.
That was her reward of childless matrimony, as the appreciation of her humors was his.
While they sat thus, in one of their comfortable hours, the guests were come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant, hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one of those mosaic names with which the mixed race has sprinkled California—Teresa del Vinal Morse. A pretty, delicate tea-rose thing, she stood at an age of divided appreciations. 25 In the informal society of the Santa Lucia colony, she was listening half the time to her elders, taking a shadowy interest in their sayings and opinions; for the rest, she was turning on Theodore, that childish brother, an illuminated understanding.
The Goodyears arrived with a little flourish. Their trap, which she drove herself and which was perhaps a little too English to be useful or appropriate on a Californian road, the straight, tailor lines of her suit—all displayed that kind of quiet, refined ostentation which, very possibly, shrieks as loud to God as the diamond rings on a soiled finger. Mrs. Tiffany, who had met the Morses on the lawn, tripped clear across the rose-border to meet the Goodyears; did it with entire unconsciousness of drawing any distinction. As by right, Mrs. Goodyear appropriated the great green arm-chair under the oak tree, from which throne she radiated a delicate patronage upon the company.
The others followed by twos and threes. Montgomery Lee, fresh-faced English University man, raising prunes on his patrimony of a younger son; the Roach girls, plump Californian old maids, and their pleasant 26 little Yankee mother; the Ruggleses, a young married couple. Careless farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles; but they had the good nature which is the virtue of that defect. This, and the common interest in their three plump, mischievous babies, gave them general popularity in the colony.
Within five minutes, the company had followed the law of such middle-aged groups of familiars, and separated by sexes. The men drifted over to the piazza, lit cigars, hoisted their knees, and talked, first, of the prune picking, their trouble with help, the rather bootless effort of a group in San Jose to form a Growers’ Association; then of that city where lay their more vital interests.
Goodyear had just been to San Francisco on a flying trip; he brought back fresh gossip: The Bohemian Club had the “Jinks” in rehearsal; a new-discovered poet had written the book; it was to be (so the Sire declared) the greatest in club history.
“As usual,” smiled Judge Tiffany.
They were saying about the Pacific Union Club that the Southern Pacific had raised its rates to Southern points. One might have sensed that shadow which hangs always over 27 commercial California in the sombreness which froze the group at this news. From five minutes of pessimistic discussion, Goodyear led them by a scattered fire of personalities. Billy Darnton was going to give a bull’s head breakfast at San Jacinto. Al Hemphill was coming to it all the way from New York. Charlie Bates had pulled out for the new gold diggings in the Mojave desert, rich again in anticipation, although he had to leave San Francisco secretly to escape the process servers.
“Tea, gentlemen!” called Mrs. Tiffany, from her nasturtium bower in the shadow of the great oak.
“Just when we are getting comfortable,” her husband growled pleasantly; and he made no move to rise. The women sat at ease about the tea-table. Their talk, beginning with the marvelous Ruggles babies, had run lightly past clothes and help, and fallen into the hands of Mrs. Goodyear. She, too, was full of San Francisco. Apart, under the grape arbor, Teresa Morse and her brother were snaring lizards—playing like two well-behaved babies miraculously grown tall.
“There’s Eleanor,” suddenly spoke Teresa. 28 At the word, she dropped her lizard, started forward; and stopped as she came out into full view of the road.
Eleanor, in fresh white, bareheaded under her parasol, was approaching between two young men. The slighter of the two men moved a little apart; the heavier, in whom Mrs. Tiffany recognized with some apprehension the new protegé, Mr. Bertram Chester, walked very close up. He was peering under the parasol, which Eleanor dropped in his direction from time to time without visibly effecting his removal. It seemed from his wide gestures, from the smile which became apparent as he drew nearer, that he was talking ardently.
In the other man, Mrs. Tiffany recognized that Mr. Heath who had the boy friendship with Bertram Chester. He was putting in a word now and then, it appeared. When he spoke, Eleanor turned polite attention upon him; and then resumed her guarded attitude toward that dynamo buzzing at her left. Insensible of the company on the lawn, they passed behind the grape arbor which fringed the gate and which hid them temporarily 29 from view; and the one-sided conversation became audible.
“It wasn’t a patch on fights I’ve had with ’em. Down home, I used to fight steers right along. That’s nothing to a nigger who used to work for us in Tulare. He’d jump on their backs and reach over and bite their noses till they hollered quits. Sure thing he did!” It died out as they turned in at the gate and faced the group about the trees.
Mrs. Goodyear made a gesture of an imaginary lorgnette toward her high-bridged nose. Mrs. Tiffany gathered herself and ran over to the gate. It was Mr. Heath—she noticed as she advanced—who was blushing. Bertram Chester stood square on his two feet smiling genially. As for Eleanor, she maintained that sweet inscrutability of face which became, as years and trouble came on, her great and unappreciated personal asset.
Young Chester spoke first:
“I knew Miss Gray was coming down this afternoon—so I laid for her on the road—didn’t I, Miss Gray?”
“Very nice of you, I’m sure,” murmured Mrs. Tiffany, though she bit her lip before 30