"Only a few hours ago," said Paul.
"And I dare say you haven"t slept since you arrived. One doesn"t on the pa.s.sage, you know; the twenty hours pa.s.s so quickly, and the experience is so exciting--to US at least. But I suppose as an American you are used to it."
Paul gasped. He had pa.s.sively accepted the bodiless conversation, because it was at least intelligible! But NOW! Was he going mad?
She evidently noticed his silence. "Never mind," she continued, "you can tell me all about it at dinner. Do you know I always think that this sort of thing--what we"re doing now,--this ridiculous formality of reception,--which I suppose is after all only a concession to our English force of habit,--is absurd! We ought to pa.s.s, as it were, directly from our houses to the dinner-table. It saves time."
"Yes--no--that is--I"m afraid I don"t follow you," stammered Paul.
There was a slight pout in her voice as she replied: "No matter now--we must follow them--for our host is moving off with Lady Billingtree, and it"s our turn now."
So great was the illusion that he found himself mechanically offering his arm as he moved through the empty room towards the door. Then he descended the staircase without another word, preceded, however, by the sound of his host"s voice. Following this as a blind man might, he entered the dining-room, which to his discomfiture was as empty as the salon above. Still following the host"s voice, he dropped into a chair before the empty table, wondering what variation of the Barmecide feast was in store for him. Yet the hum of voices from the vacant chairs around the board so strongly impressed him that he could almost believe that he was actually at dinner.
"Are you seated?" asked the charming voice at his side.
"Yes," a little wonderingly, as his was the only seat visibly occupied.
"I am so glad that this silly ceremony is over. By the way, where are you?"
Paul would have liked to answer, "Lord only knows!" but he reflected that it might not sound polite. "Where am I?" he feebly repeated.
"Yes; where are you dining?"
It seemed a cool question under the circ.u.mstances, but he answered promptly,--
"With you."
"Of course," said the charming voice; "but where are you eating your dinner?"
Considering that he was not eating anything, Paul thought this cooler still. But he answered briefly, "In Upshire."
"Oh! At your uncle"s?"
"No," said Paul bluntly; "in the next house."
"Why, that"s Sir William"s--our host"s--and he and his family are here in London. You are joking."
"Listen!" said Paul desperately. Then in a voice unconsciously lowered he hurriedly told her where he was--how he came there--the empty house--the viewless company! To his surprise the only response was a musical little laugh. But the next moment her voice rose higher with an unmistakable concern in it, apparently addressing their invisible host.
"Oh, Sir William, only think how dreadful. Here"s poor Mr. Bunker, alone in an empty house, which he has mistaken for his uncle"s--and without any dinner!"
"Really; dear, dear! How provoking! But how does he happen to be WITH US? James, how is this?"
"If you please, Sir William," said a servant"s respectful voice, "Widdlestone is in the circuit and is switched on with the others. We heard that a gentleman"s luggage had arrived at Widdlestone, and we telegraphed for the rooms to be made ready, thinking we"d have her ladyship"s orders later."
A single gleam of intelligence flashed upon Paul. His luggage--yes, had been sent from the station to the wrong house, and he had unwittingly followed. But these voices! whence did they come? And where was the actual dinner at which his host was presiding? It clearly was not at this empty table.
"See that he has everything he wants at once," said Sir William; "there must be some one there." Then his voice turned in the direction of Paul again, and he said laughingly, "Possess your soul and appet.i.te in patience for a moment, Mr. Bunker; you will be only a course behind us.
But we are lucky in having your company--even at your own discomfort."
Still more bewildered, Paul turned to his invisible partner. "May I ask where YOU are dining?"
"Certainly; at home in Curzon Street," returned the pretty voice. "It was raining so, I did not go out."
"And--Lord Billington?" faltered Paul.
"Oh, he"s in Scotland--at his own place."
"Then, in fact, n.o.body is dining here at all," said Paul desperately.
There was a slight pause, and then the voice responded, with a touch of startled suggestion in it: "Good heavens, Mr. Bunker! Is it possible you don"t know we"re dining by telephone?"
"By what?"
"Telephone. Yes. We"re a telephonic dinner-party. We are dining in our own houses; but, being all friends, we"re switched on to each other, and converse exactly as we would at table. It saves a great trouble and expense, for any one of us can give the party, and the poorest can equal the most extravagant. People who are obliged to diet can partake of their own slops at home, and yet mingle with the gourmets without awkwardness or the necessity of apology. We are spared the spectacle, at least, of those who eat and drink too much. We can switch off a bore at once. We can retire when we are fatigued, without leaving a blank s.p.a.ce before the others. And all this without saying anything of the higher spiritual and intellectual effect--freed from material grossness of appet.i.te and show--which the dinner party thus attains. But you are surely joking! You, an American, and not know it! Why, it comes from Boston. Haven"t you read that book, "Jumping a Century"? It"s by an American."
A strange illumination came upon Paul. Where had he heard something like this before? But at the same moment his thoughts were diverted by the material entrance of a footman, bearing a silver salver with his dinner.
It was part of his singular experience that the visible entrance of this real, commonplace mortal--the only one he had seen--in the midst of this voiceless solitude was distinctly unreal, and had all the effect of an apparition. He distrusted it and the dishes before him. But his lively partner"s voice was now addressing an unseen occupant of the next chair.
Had she got tired of his ignorance, or was it feminine tact to enable him to eat something? He accepted the latter hypothesis, and tried to eat. But he felt himself following the fascinating voice in all the charm of its youthful and spiritual inflections. Taking advantage of its momentary silence, he said gently,--
"I confess my ignorance, and am willing to admit all you claim for this wonderful invention. But do you think it compensates for the loss of the individual person? Take my own case--if you will not think me personal.
I have never had the pleasure of seeing you; do you believe that I am content with only that suggestion of your personality which the satisfaction of hearing your voice affords me?"
There was a pause, and then a very mischievous ring in the voice that replied: "It certainly is a personal question, and it is another blessing of this invention that you"ll never know whether I am blushing or not; but I forgive you, for I never before spoke to any one I had never seen--and I suppose it"s confusion. But do you really think you would know me--the REAL one--any better? It is the real person who thinks and speaks, not the outward semblance that we see, which very often unfairly either attracts or repels us? We can always SHOW ourselves at our best, but we must, at last, reveal our true colors through our thoughts and speech. Isn"t it better to begin with the real thing first?"
"I hope, at least, to have the privilege of judging by myself," said Paul gallantly. "You will not be so cruel as not to let me see you elsewhere, otherwise I shall feel as if I were in some dream, and will certainly be opposed to your preference for realities."
"I am not certain if the dream would not be more interesting to you,"
said the voice laughingly. "But I think your hostess is already saying "good-by." You know everybody goes at once at this kind of party; the ladies don"t retire first, and the gentlemen join them afterwards. In another moment we"ll ALL be switched off; but Sir William wants me to tell you that his coachman will drive you to your uncle"s, unless you prefer to try and make yourself comfortable for the night here.
Good-by!"
The voices around him seemed to grow fainter, and then utterly cease.
The lights suddenly leaped up, went out, and left him in complete darkness. He attempted to rise, but in doing so overset the dishes before him, which slid to the floor. A cold air seemed to blow across his feet. The "good-by" was still ringing in his ears as he straightened himself to find he was in his railway carriage, whose door had just been opened for a young lady who was entering the compartment from a wayside station. "Good-by," she repeated to the friend who was seeing her off.
The Writer of Stories hurriedly straightened himself, gathered up the magazines and papers that had fallen from his lap, and glanced at the station walls. The old ill.u.s.trations glanced back at him! He looked at his watch; he had been asleep just ten minutes!
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO
It is but just to the respectable memory of San Francisco that in these vagrant recollections I should deprecate at once any suggestion that the levity of my t.i.tle described its dominant tone at any period of my early experiences. On the contrary, it was a singular fact that while the rest of California was swayed by an easy, careless unconventionalism, or swept over by waves of emotion and sentiment, San Francisco preserved an intensely material and practical att.i.tude, and even a certain austere morality. I do not, of course, allude to the brief days of "49, when it was a straggling beach of huts and stranded hulks, but to the earlier stages of its development into the metropolis of California. Its first tottering steps in that direction were marked by a distinct gravity and decorum. Even during the period when the revolver settled small private difficulties, and Vigilance Committees adjudicated larger public ones, an unmistakable seriousness and respectability was the ruling sign of its governing cla.s.s. It was not improbable that under the reign of the Committee the lawless and vicious cla.s.s were more appalled by the moral spectacle of several thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men in embattled procession than by mere force of arms, and one "suspect"--a prize-fighter--is known to have committed suicide in his cell after confrontation with his grave and pa.s.sionless shopkeeping judges. Even that peculiar quality of Californian humor which was apt to mitigate the extravagances of the revolver and the uncertainties of poker had no place in the decorous and responsible utterance of San Francisco. The press was sober, materialistic, practical--when it was not severely admonitory of existing evil; the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were considered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by heavy articles on the revenues of the State and inducements to the investment of capital. Local news was under an implied censorship which suppressed anything that might tend to discourage timid or cautious capital. Episodes of romantic lawlessness or pathetic incidents of mining life were carefully edited--with the comment that these things belonged to the past, and that life and property were now "as safe in San Francisco as in New York or London."
Wonder-loving visitors in quest of scenes characteristic of the civilization were coldly snubbed with this a.s.surance. Fires, floods, and even seismic convulsions were subjected to a like grimly materialistic optimism. I have a vivid recollection of a ponderous editorial on one of the severer earthquakes, in which it was a.s.serted that only the UNEXPECTEDNESS of the onset prevented San Francisco from meeting it in a way that would be deterrent of all future attacks. The unconsciousness of the humor was only equaled by the gravity with which it was received by the whole business community. Strangely enough, this grave materialism flourished side by side with--and was even sustained by--a narrow religious strictness more characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers of a past century than the Western pioneers of the present. San Francisco was early a city of churches and church organizations to which the leading men and merchants belonged. The lax Sundays of the dying Spanish race seemed only to provoke a revival of the rigors of the Puritan Sabbath. With the Spaniard and his Sunday afternoon bullfight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco pulpit thundered against Sunday picnics. One of the popular preachers, declaiming upon the practice of Sunday dinner-giving, averred that when he saw a guest in his best Sunday clothes standing shamelessly upon the doorstep of his host, he felt like seizing him by the shoulder and dragging him from that threshold of perdition.
Against the actual heathen the feeling was even stronger, and reached its climax one Sunday when a Chinaman was stoned to death by a crowd of children returning from Sunday-school. I am offering these examples with no ethical purpose, but merely to indicate a singular contradictory condition which I do not think writers of early Californian history have fairly recorded. It is not my province to suggest any theory for these appalling exceptions to the usual good-humored lawlessness and extravagance of the rest of the State. They may have been essential agencies to the growth and evolution of the city. They were undoubtedly sincere. The impressions I propose to give of certain scenes and incidents of my early experience must, therefore, be taken as purely personal and Bohemian, and their selection as equally individual and vagrant. I am writing of what interested me at the time, though not perhaps of what was more generally characteristic of San Francisco.
I had been there a week--an idle week, spent in listless outlook for employment; a full week in my eager absorption of the strange life around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes and incidents of those days, which start out of my memory to-day as freshly as the day they impressed me.