Moran of the Lady Letty

Moran of the Lady Letty
Frank Norris

Frank Norris

Moran of the Lady Letty

I. SHANGHAIED

This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses.

There had been a great number of debutantes “coming out” that season in San Francisco by means of afternoon teas, pink, lavender, and otherwise. This particular tea was intended to celebrate the fact that Josie Herrick had arrived at that time of her life when she was to wear her hair high and her gowns long, and to have a “day” of her own quite distinct from that of her mother.

Ross Wilbur presented himself at the Herrick house on Pacific Avenue much too early upon the afternoon of Miss Herrick’s tea. As he made, his way up the canvased stairs he was aware of a terrifying array of millinery and a disquieting staccato chatter of feminine voices in the parlors and reception-rooms on either side of the hallway. A single high hat in the room that had been set apart for the men’s use confirmed him in his suspicions.

“Might have known it would be a hen party till six, anyhow,” he muttered, swinging out of his overcoat. “Bet I don’t know one girl in twenty down there now—all mamma’s friends at this hour, and papa’s maiden sisters, and Jo’s school-teachers and governesses and music-teachers, and I don’t know what all.”

When he went down he found it precisely as he expected. He went up to Miss Herrick, where she stood receiving with her mother and two of the other girls, and allowed them to chaff him on his forlornness.

“Maybe I seem at my ease,” said Ross Wilbur to them, “but really I am very much frightened. I’m going to run away as soon as it is decently possible, even before, unless you feed me.”

“I believe you had luncheon not two hours ago,” said Miss Herrick. “Come along, though, and I’ll give you some chocolate, and perhaps, if you’re good, a stuffed olive. I got them just because I knew you liked them. I ought to stay here and receive, so I can’t look after you for long.”

The two fought their way through the crowded rooms to the luncheon-table, and Miss Herrick got Wilbur his chocolate and his stuffed olives. They sat down and talked in a window recess for a moment, Wilbur toeing-in in absurd fashion as he tried to make a lap for his plate.

“I thought,” said Miss Herrick, “that you were going on the Ridgeways’ yachting party this afternoon. Mrs. Ridgeway said she was counting on you. They are going out with the ‘Petrel.’”

“She didn’t count above a hundred, though,” answered Wilbur. “I got your bid first, so I regretted the yachting party; and I guess I’d have regretted it anyhow,” and he grinned at her over his cup.

“Nice man,” she said—adding on the instant, “I must go now, Ross.”

“Wait till I eat the sugar out of my cup,” complained Wilbur. “Tell me,” he added, scraping vigorously at the bottom of the cup with the inadequate spoon; “tell me, you’re going to the hoe-down to-night?”

“If you mean the Assembly, yes, I am.”

“Will you give me the first and last?”

“I’ll give you the first, and you can ask for the last then.”

“Let’s put it down; I know you’ll forget it.” Wilbur drew a couple of cards from his case.

“Programmes are not good form any more,” said Miss Herrick.

“Forgetting a dance is worse.”

He made out the cards, writing on the one he kept for himself, “First waltz—Jo.”

“I must go back now,” said Miss Herrick, getting up.

“In that case I shall run—I’m afraid of girls.”

“It’s a pity about you.”

“I am; one girl, I don’t say, but girl in the aggregate like this,” and he pointed his chin toward the thronged parlors. “It un-mans me.”

“Good-by, then.”

“Good-by, until to-night, about—?”

“About nine.”

“About nine, then.”

Ross Wilbur made his adieu to Mrs. Herrick and the girls who were receiving, and took himself away. As he came out of the house and stood for a moment on the steps, settling his hat gingerly upon his hair so as not to disturb the parting, he was not by any means an ill-looking chap. His good height was helped out by his long coat and his high silk hat, and there was plenty of jaw in the lower part of his face. Nor was his tailor altogether answerable for his shoulders. Three years before this time Ross Wilbur had pulled at No. 5 in his varsity boat in an Eastern college that was not accustomed to athletic discomfiture.

“I wonder what I’m going to do with myself until supper time,” he muttered, as he came down the steps, feeling for the middle of his stick. He found no immediate answer to his question. But the afternoon was fine, and he set off to walk in the direction of the town, with a half-formed idea of looking in at his club.

At his club he found a letter in his box from his particular chum, who had been spending the month shooting elk in Oregon.

“Dear Old Man,” it said, “will be back on the afternoon you receive this. Will hit the town on the three o’clock boat. Get seats for the best show going—my treat—and arrange to assimilate nutriment at the Poodle Dog—also mine. I’ve got miles of talk in me that I’ve got to reel off before midnight. Yours.

    “JERRY.”

“I’ve got a stand of horns for you, Ross, that are Glory Hallelujah.”

“Well, I can’t go,” murmured Wilbur, as he remembered the Assembly that was to come off that night and his engaged dance with Jo Herrick. He decided that it would be best to meet Jerry as he came off the boat and tell him how matters stood. Then he resolved, since no one that he knew was in the club, and the instalment of the Paris weeklies had not arrived, that it would be amusing to go down to the water-front and loaf among the shipping until it was time for Jerry’s boat.

Wilbur spent an hour along the wharves, watching the great grain ships consigned to “Cork for orders” slowly gorging themselves with whole harvests of wheat from the San Joaquin Valley; lumber vessels for Durban and South African ports settling lower and lower to the water’s level as forests of pine and redwood stratified themselves along their decks and in their holds; coal barges discharging from Nanaimo; busy little tugs coughing and nuzzling at the flanks of the deep-sea tramps, while hay barges and Italian whitehalls came and went at every turn. A Stockton River boat went by, her stern wheel churning along behind, like a huge net-reel; a tiny maelstrom of activity centred about an Alaska Commercial Company’s steamboat that would clear for Dawson in the morning.

No quarter of one of the most picturesque cities in the world had more interest for Wilbur than the water-front. In the mile or so of shipping that stretched from the docks where the China steamships landed, down past the ferry slips and on to Meiggs’s Wharf, every maritime nation in the world was represented. More than once Wilbur had talked to the loungers of the wharves, stevedores out of work, sailors between voyages, caulkers and ship chandlers’ men looking—not too earnestly—for jobs; so that on this occasion, when a little, undersized fellow in dirty brown sweater and clothes of Barbary coast cut asked him for a match to light his pipe, Wilbur offered a cigar and passed the time of day with him. Wilbur had not forgotten that he himself was dressed for an afternoon function. But the incongruity of the business was precisely what most amused him.

After a time the fellow suggested drinks. Wilbur hesitated for a moment. It would be something to tell about, however, so, “All right, I’ll drink with you,” he said.

The brown sweater led the way to a sailors’ boarding-house hard by. The rear of the place was built upon piles over the water. But in front, on the ground floor, was a barroom.

“Rum an’ gum,” announced the brown sweater, as the two came in and took their places at the bar.

“Rum an’ gum, Tuck; wattle you have, sir?”

“Oh—I don’t know,” hesitated Wilbur; “give me a mild Manhattan.”

While the drinks were being mixed the brown sweater called Wilbur’s attention to a fighting head-dress from the Marquesas that was hung on the wall over the free-lunch counter and opposite the bar. Wilbur turned about to look at it, and remained so, his back to the barkeeper, till the latter told them their drinks were ready.

“Well, mate, here’s big blocks an’ taut hawse-pipes,” said the brown sweater cordially.

“Your very good health,” returned Wilbur.

The brown sweater wiped a thin mustache in the hollow of his palm, and wiped that palm upon his trouser leg.

“Yessir,” he continued, once more facing the Marquesas head-dress. “Yessir, they’re queer game down there.”