“Want a taxi, mister?” asked a dim figure at my side.
“If you can find one,” I answered. “Things seem a bit thick.”
“It’s the tule-fog,” he told me. “Drifts down every year about this time from the tule-fields between here and Sacramento. Never knew one to stick around so late in the day before. Yes, sir—this is sure unusual.”
In reply to my query he told me that the tule was a sort of bulrush. And little Moses amid his bulrushes could have felt no more lost than I did at that moment.
“See what you can dig up,” I ordered.
“You just wait here,” he said. “It’ll take time. Don’t go away.”
Again I stood alone amid the strange shadow-shapes that came and went. Somewhere, behind that fog-curtain, the business of the town went on as usual. I made a neat pile of my luggage close to a telegraph pole and sat down to wait. My mind went back to the deck of the boat I had left, to Mary Will Tellfair, that wonderful girl.
And she was wonderful—in courage and in charm. I had met her three weeks before in Shanghai; and it was her dark hour, as it was mine. For Mary Will had come five thousand miles to marry Jack Paige, her sweetheart from a sleepy southern town. She had not seen him for six years, but there had been many letters, and life at home was dull. Then, too, she had been very fond of him once, I judge. So there had been parties, and jokes, and tears, and Mary Will had sailed for Shanghai and her wedding.
It has happened to other girls, no doubt. Young Paige met her boat. He was very drunk, and there was in his face evidence of a fall to depths unspeakable. Poor Mary Will saw at the first frightened look that the boy she had known and loved was gone forever. Many of the other girls—helpless, without money, alone—marry the men and make the best of it. Not Mary Will. Helpless, without money, alone, she was still brave enough to hold her head high and refuse.
Henry Drew had heard of her plight and, whatever his motive, had done a kind act for once. He engaged Mary, Will as companion for his wife, and on the boat coming over the girl and Mrs. Drew had occupied a cabin with a frail little missionary woman. For husbands and wives were ruthlessly torn apart, that each stateroom might have its full quota of three. As I sat there with the fog dripping down upon me I pictured again our good-bye on the deck, where we had been lined up to await the port doctor and be frisked, as a frivolous ship’s officer put it, for symptoms of yellow fever. By chance—more or less—I was waiting beside Mary Will.
“Too bad you can’t see the harbor,” said Mary Will. “Only six weeks ago I sailed away, and the sun was on it. It’s beautiful. But this silly old fog—”
“Never mind the fog,” I told her. “Please listen to me. What are you going to do? Where are you going? Home?”
“Home!” A bitter look came into her clear blue eyes. “I can’t go home.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you understand? There were showers—showers for the bride-to-be. And I kissed everybody good-bye and hurried away to be married. Can I go back husbandless?”
“You don’t have to. I told you last night—”
“I know. In the moonlight, with the band on the boat deck playing a waltz. You said you loved me—”
“And I do.”
She shook her head.
“You pity me. And it seems like love to you. But pity—pity isn’t love.”
Confound the girl! This was her story, and she seemed determined to stick to it.
“Ah, yes,” said I scornfully. “What pearls of wisdom fall from youthful lips.”
“You’ll discover how very wise I was in time.”
“Perhaps. But you haven’t answered my question. What are you going to do? You can’t stay on with the Drews—that little rotter—”
“I know. He hasn’t been nice to you. But he has been nice to me—very.”
“No man could help but be. And it hasn’t done that young wife of his any harm to have a companion like you for a change. But it’s not a job I care to see held by the girl I mean to marry.”
“If you mean me—I shan’t go on being a companion. Mr. Drew has promised to find me a position in San Francisco. They say it’s a charming city.”
“I don’t like to see you mixed up with Drew and his kind,” I protested. “I’ll not leave San Francisco until you do.”
“Then you’re going to settle down here. How nice!”
I could have slapped her. She was that sort of stubborn delightful child, and loving her was often that sort of emotion. The port doctor had reached her now in his passage down the line, and he stared firmly into her eyes, hunting symptoms. As he stared his hard face softened into a rather happy smile. I could have told him that looking into Mary Will’s eyes had always that effect.
“You’re all right,” he laughed, then turned and glared at me as though he dared me to make public his lapse into a human being. He went on down the line. After him came Parker, the ship’s doctor, with a wink at me, as much as to say: “Red tape. What a bore!”
The foghorn was making a frightful din, and the scene was all confusion, impatience. It was no moment for what I was about to say. But I was desperate; this was my last chance.
“Turn round, Mary Will.” I swung her about and pointed off into the fog. “Over there—don’t you see?”
“See what?” she gasped.
“How I love you,” I said in her ear, triumphing over the foghorn and the curiosity of the woman just beyond her: “With all my heart and soul, my dear. I’m an engineer—not up on sentimental stuff—can’t talk it—just feel it. Give me a chance to prove how much I care. Don’t you think that in time—”
She shook her head.
“What is it? Are you still fond of that other boy—the poor fellow in Shanghai?”
“No,” she answered seriously. “It isn’t that. I’ve just sort of buried him away off in a corner of my heart. And I’m not sure that I ever did care as much as I should. On the boat coming out—I had doubts of myself—but—”
“But what?”
“Oh—can’t you see? It’s just as that old dowager said it would be.”
“What old dowager?”
“That sharp-tongued Englishwoman who gave the dinner in Shanghai. She saw you talking and laughing with me, and she said: ‘I fancy he’ll be just like all the other boys who are shut up in China for a few years. They think themselves madly in love with the first white girl they meet who isn’t positively deformed.’”
“The old cat!”
“It was catty—but it was true. It’s exactly what has happened. That’s why I couldn’t be so frightfully unfair to you as to seize you when this madness is on you and bind you to me for life—before you have seen your own country again, where there are millions of girls nicer than I am.”
“Rot.”
“No, it isn’t. Go ashore and look them over. The streets of San Francisco are filled with them. Look them over from the Golden Gate to Fifth Avenue.”
“And if, after I’ve looked them all over, I still come back to you? Then what?”
“Then you will be a fool,” laughed Mary Will.
The voice of the ship’s doctor announced the end of inspection, and at once the deck was alive with an excited throng, all seeking to get somewhere else immediately. Carlotta Drew passed and