The Gray Dawn | Page 3

This was Dick
Blatchford, a round-faced, rather corpulent, rather silent though
jovial-looking individual, with a calculating and humorous eye. He was
magnificently apparelled, but rather untidy.
"Well, I do ask it," said Rowlee.
But to this he got no response.
"Come on, ain't you got that valuable paper folded up yet?" rumbled
Webb to Sherwood.
They all turned down the high-pillared veranda, toward the bar, talking
idly and facetiously of last night's wine and this morning's head. A door
opened at their very elbow, and in it a woman appeared.

II
She was a slender woman, of medium height, with a small, well-poised

head, on which the hair lay smooth and glossy. Her age was somewhere
between thirty and thirty-five years. A stranger would have been first of
all impressed by the imperious carriage of her head and shoulders, the
repose of her attitude. Become a friend or a longer acquaintance, he
would have noticed more particularly her wide low brow, her steady
gray eyes and her grave but humorous lips. But inevitably he would
have gone back at last to her more general impression. Ben Sansome,
the only man in town who did nothing, made society and dress a
profession and the judgment of women a religion, had long since
summed her up: "She carries her head charmingly."
This poised, wise serenity of carriage was well set off by the costume
of the early fifties--a low collar, above which her neck rose like a
flower stem; flowing sleeves; full skirts with many silken petticoats
that whispered and rustled; low sandalled shoes, their ties crossed and
recrossed around white slender ankles. A cameo locket, hung on a
heavy gold chain, rose and fell with her breast; a cameo brooch pinned
together the folds of her bodice; massive and wide bracelets of gold
clasped her wrists and vastly set off her rounded, slender forearms.
She stood quite motionless in the doorway, nodding with a little smile
in response to the men's sweeping salutes.
"You will excuse me gentlemen, I am sure," said Sherwood formally,
and instantly turned aside.
The woman in the doorway thereupon preceded him down a narrow,
bare, unlighted hallway, opened another door, and entered a room.
Sherwood followed, closing the door after him.
"Want something, Patsy?" he inquired.
The room was obviously one of the best of the Bella Union. That is to
say, it was fairly large, the morning sun streamed in through its two
windows, and it contained a small iron stove. In all other respects it
differed quite from any other hotel room in the San Francisco of that
time. A heavy carpet covered the floor, the upholstery was of leather or
tapestry, wall paper adorned the walls, a large table supported a bronze

lamp and numerous books and papers, a canary, in a brass cage, hung
in the sunshine of one of the windows, flitted from perch to perch,
occasionally uttering a few liquid notes under its breath.
"Just a little change, Jack, if you have some with you," said the woman.
Her speaking voice was rich and low.
Sherwood thrust a forefinger into his waistcoat pocket, and produced
one of the hexagonal slugs of gold current at that time.
"Oh, not so much!" she protested.
"All I've got. What are you up to to-day, Patsy?"
"I thought of going down to Yet Lee's--unless there is something better
to do."
"Doesn't sound inspiring. Did you go to that fair or bazaar thing
yesterday?"
She smiled with her lips, but her eyes darkened.
"Yes, I went. It was not altogether enjoyable. I doubt if I'll try that sort
of thing again."
Sherwood's eye suddenly became cold and dangerous.
"If they didn't treat you right--"
She smiled, genuinely this time, at his sudden truculence.
"They didn't mob me," she rejoined equably, "and, anyway, I suppose it
is to be expected."
"It's that cat of Morrell's," he surmised.
"Oh, she--and others. I ought not to have spoken of it, Jack. It's really
beneath the contempt of sensible people."

"I'll get after Morrell, if he doesn't make that woman behave," said
Sherwood, without attention to her last speech.
She smiled at him again, entirely calm and reasonable.
"And what good would it do to get after Morrell?" she asked. "Mrs.
Morrell only stands for what most of them feel. I don't care, anyway. I
get along splendidly without them." She sauntered over to the window,
where she began idly to poke one finger at the canary.
"For the life of me, Patsy," confessed Sherwood, "I can't see that they're
an inspiring lot, anyway. From what little I've seen of them, they
haven't more than an idea apiece. They'd bore me to death in a week."
"I know that. They'd bore me, too. Don't talk about them. When do they
expect