It was reception night at the Palace
Hotel. As usual the floating population of San
Francisco had drifted into the huge court of that
luxurious caravansary, and was ebbing and eddying among
the multitudes of white and shining columns that support
the six galleries under the crystal roof. The
band reveled in the last popular waltz, the hum of
the spectators was hushed, but among the galleries
might be seen pairs of adolescent youths and maidens
swaying to the rhythmical melody. We were taking
wine and cigarettes with the Colonel. He was always
at home to us on Monday nights, and even our boisterous
chat was suspended while the blustering trumpeters
in the court below blew out their delirious music.
It was at this moment that Bartholomew beckoned me
to follow him from the apartment. We quietly
repaired to the gallery among the huge vases of palms
and creepers, and there, bluntly and without a moment’s
warning, the dear fellow blurted out this startling
revelation: “I have made an engagement
for you; be ready on Thursday next at 4 p.m.; meet
me here; all arrangements are effected; say not a
word, but come; and I promise you one of the jolliest
experiences of the season.” All this was
delivered in a high voice, to the accompaniment of
drums and cymbals; he concluded with the last flourish
of the bandmaster’s baton, and the applause
of the public followed. Certainly dramatic effect
could go no further. I was more than half persuaded,
and yet, when the applause had ceased, the dancers
unwound themselves, and the low rumble of a thousand
restless feet rang on the marble pavement below, I
found voice sufficient to ask the all-important question,
“But what is the nature of this engagement?”
To which he answered, “Oh, we’re going
down the coast for a few days, you and I, and Alf
and Croesus. A charming bungalow by the sea;
capital bathing, shooting, fishing; nice quiet time
generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!”
This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went,
but I added, by way of parenthesis, “and who
else will be present?” knowing well enough that
one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us
all. To this Bartholomew responded, “No
one but ourselves, old fellow; now don’t be queer.”
He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements
unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept
very much to myself, except on Monday nights when
we all smoked and laughed with the Colonel-whose
uncommonly charming wife was abroad for the summer;
and on Tuesday and Saturday nights, when I was at
the club, and on Wednesdays, when I did the theatricals
of the town, and on Thursdays and Fridays-but
never mind! girls were out of the question in my case,
and he knew that the bachelor hall where I preside
was as difficult of access as a cloister. I might
not have given my word without further deliberation,
had not the impetuous Colonel seized us bodily and
borne us back into his smoking-room, where he was
about to shatter the wax on a flagon of wine, a brand
of fabulous age and excellence. Bartholomew nodded
to Alf, Alf passed the good news to Croesus, for we
were all at the Colonel’s by common consent,
and so it happened that the compact was made for Thursday.
That Thursday, at 4 p.m. we were on
our way to the station at 4:30; the town-houses were
growing few and far between, as the wheels of the
coaches spun over the iron road. At five o’clock
the green fields of the departed spring, already grown
bare and brown, rolled up between us and the horizon.
California is a naked land and no mistake, but how
beautiful in her nakedness! An hour later we descended
at School-house station; such is the matter-of-fact
pet-name given to a cluster of dull houses, once known
by some melodious but forgotten Spanish appellation.
The ranch wagon awaited us; a huge springless affair,
or if it had springs they were of that aggravating
stiffness that adds insult to injury. Excellent
beasts dragged us along a winding, dusty road, over
hill, down dale, into a land that grew more and more
lonely; not exactly “a land where it was always
afternoon,” but apparently always a little later
in the day, say 7 p.m. or thereabouts. We were
rapidly wending our way towards the coast, and on
the breezy hill-top a white fold of sea-fog swept
over and swathed us in its impalpable snow. Oh!
the chill, the rapturous agony of that chill.
Do you know what sea-fog is? It is the bodily,
spiritual and temporal life of California; it is the
immaculate mantle of the unclad coast; it feeds the
hungry soil, gives drink unto the thirsting corn,
and clothes the nakedness of nature. It is the
ghost of unshed showers-atomized dew, precipitated
in life-bestowing avalanches upon a dewless and parched
shore; it is the good angel that stands between a
careless people and contagion; it is heaven-sent nourishment.
It makes strong the weak; makes wise the foolish-you
don’t go out a second time in midsummer without
your wraps-and it is altogether the freshest,
purest, sweetest, most picturesque, and most precious
element in the physical geography of the Pacific Slope.
It is worth more to California than all her gold, and
silver, and copper, than all her corn and wine-in
short, it is simply indispensable.
This is the fog that dashed under
our hubs like noiseless surf, filled up the valleys
in our lee, shut the sea-view out entirely, and finally
left us on a mountaintop-our last ascension,
thank Heaven!-with nothing but clouds below
us and about us, and we sky-high and drenched to the
very bone.
The fog broke suddenly and rolled
away, wrapped in pale and splendid mystery; it broke
for us as we were upon the edge of a bluff. For
some moments we had been listening to the ever-recurring
sob of the sea. There at our feet curled the
huge breakers, shouldering the cliff as if they would
hurl it from its foundation. A little further
on in the gloaming was the last hill of all; from
its smooth, short summit we could look into the Delectable
Land by candle light, and mark how invitingly stands
a bungalow by the sea’s margin at the close of
a dusty day.
On the summit we paused; certain unregistered
packages under the wagon, which had preyed at intervals
upon the minds of Alf, Croesus, and Bartholomew, were
now drawn forth. Life is a series of surprises;
surprise N, a brace of long, tapering javelins
having villainous-looking heads, i.e., two marine
rockets, with which to rend the heavens, and notify
the vassals at the bungalow of our approach. One
of these rockets we planted with such care that having
touched it off, it could not free itself, but stood
stock still and with vicious fury blew off in a cloud
of dazzling sparks. The dry grass flamed in a
circle about us; never before had we fought fire with
wildly-waving ulsters, but they prove excellent weapons
in engagements of this character, I assure you.
Profiting by fatiguing experience, we poised the second
rocket so deftly that it could not fail to rise.
On it we hung our hopes, light enough burdens if they
were all as faint as mine. With the spurt of
a match we touched it, a stream of flaky gold rushed
forth and then, as if waiting to gather strength, biff!
and away she went. Never before soared rocket
so beautifully; it raked the very stars; its awful
voice died out in the dim distance; with infinite grace
it waved its trail of fire, and then spat forth such
constellations of variegated stars-you
would have thought a rainbow had burst into a million
fragments-that shamed the very planets,
and made us think mighty well of ourselves and our
achievement. There was still a long dark mile
between us and the bungalow; on this mile were strung
a fordable stream, a ragged village of Italian gardeners,
some monstrous looking hay-stacks, and troops of dogs
that mouthed horribly as we ploughed through the velvety
dust.
The bungalow at last! at the top of
an avenue of trees-and such a bungalow!
A peaked roof that sheltered everything, even the deepest
verandas imaginable; the rooms few, but large and airy;
everything wide open and one glorious blaze of light.
A table spread with the luxuries of the season, which
in California means four seasons massed in one.
Flowers on all sides; among these flowers Japanese
lanterns of inconceivable forms and colors. These
hung two or three deep-without, within,
above, below; nothing but light and fragrance, and
mirth and song. We were howling a chorus as we
drove up, and were received with a musical welcome,
bubbling over with laughter from the lips of three
pretty girls, dressed in white and pink-probably
the whitest and pinkest girls in all California; and
this was surprise N.
Perfect strangers to me were these
young ladies; but, like most confirmed bachelors,
I rather like being with the adorable sex, when I
find myself translated as if by magic.
We were formed of the dust of the
earth-there was no denying the fact, and
we speedily withdrew; but before our dinner toilets
were completed, such a collection of appetizers was
sent in to us as must distinguish forever the charming
hostess who concocted them. I need not recall
the dinner. Have you ever observed that there
is no real pleasure in reviving the memory of something
good to eat? Suffice it to state that the dinner
was such a one as was most likely to be laid for us
under the special supervision of three blooming maidens,
who had come hither four and twenty hours in advance
of us for this special purpose. That night we
played for moderate stakes until the hours were too
small to be mentioned. I forget who won; but
it was probably the girls, who were as clever at cards
as they were at everything else. We ultimately
retired, for the angel of sleep visits even a Californian
bungalow, though his hours are a trifle irregular.
Our rooms, two large chambers, with folding doors
thrown back, making the two as one, contained four
double beds; in one of the rooms was a small altar,
upon which stood a statue of the Madonna, veiled in
ample folds of lace and crowned with a coronet of
natural flowers; vases of flowers were at her feet,
and lighted tapers flickered on either hand.
The apartment occupied by the young ladies was at
the other corner of the bungalow; the servants, a good
old couple, retainers in Alf’s family, slept
in a cottage adjoining. We retired manfully;
we had smoked our last smoke, and were not a little
fatigued; hence this readiness on our part to lay down
the burdens and cares of the day. When the lights
were extinguished the moon, streaming in at the seaward
windows, flooded the long rooms. It was a glorious
night; no sound disturbed its exquisite serenity save
the subdued murmur of the waves, softened by an intervening
hillock on which the cypress trees stood like black
and solemn sentinels of the night.
I think I must have dozed, for it
first seemed like a dream-the crouching
figures that stole in Indian file along the carpet
from bed to bed; but soon enough I wakened to a reality,
for the Phillistines were upon us, and the pillows
fell like aérolites out of space. The air
was dense with flying bed-clothes; the assailants,
Bartholomew and Alf, his right-hand man, fell upon
us with school-boy fury; they made mad leaps, and
landed upon our stomachs. We grappled in deadly
combat; not an article of furniture was left unturned;
not one mattress remained upon another. We made
night hideous for some moments. We roused the
ladies from their virgin sleep, but paid little heed
to their piteous pleadings. The treaty of peace,
which followed none too soon-the pillow-cases
were like fringes and the sheets were linen shreds-culminated
in a round of night-caps which for potency and flavor
have, perhaps, never been equalled in the history of
the vine.
Then we did sleep-the
sleep of the just, who have earned their right to
it; the sleep of the horny-handed son of the soil,
whose muscles relax with a jerk that awakens the sleeper
to a realizing sense that he has been sleeping and
is going to sleep again at his earliest convenience:
the sweet, intense, and gracious sleep of innocence-out
of which we were awakened just before breakfast time
by the most considerate of hostesses and her ladies
of honor, who sent into us the reviving cup, without
which, I fear, we could not have begun the new day
in a spirit appropriate to the occasion.
The first day at the bungalow was
Friday and, of course, a fast day; we observed the
rule with a willingness which, I trust, the recording
angel made a note of. There was a bath at the
beach toward mid-day, followed by a cold collation
in the shelter of a rude chalet, which served the
ladies in the absence of the customary bathing-machine.
Lying upon rugs spread over the sand we chatted until
a drowsy mood persuaded us to return to the bungalow
and indulge in a siesta. It being summer,
and a California summer by the sea, a huge log fire
blazed upon the evening hearth; cards and the jingle
of golden counters again kept us at the table till
the night was far spent. Need I add that the ladies
presented a petition with the customary night-cap,
praying that the gentlemen in the double-chamber would
omit the midnight gymnastics upon retiring, and go
to sleep like “good boys.” It had
been our intention to do so; we were not wholly restored,
for the festivities of the night previous had been
prolonged and fatiguing.
We began our preparations by wheeling
the four bedsteads into one room. It seemed to
us cosier to be sleeping thus together; indeed, it
was quite a distance from the extremity of one room
to the extremity of the other. Resigning ourselves
to the pillows, each desired his neighbor to extinguish
the lights; no one moved to perform this necessary
duty. We slept, or pretended to sleep, and for
some moments the bungalow was quiet as the grave.
In the midst of this refreshing silence a panic seized
us; with one accord we sprang to arms; the pillows,
stripped of their cases on the night previous, again
darkened the air. We leaped gaily from bed to
bed, and in turn, took every corner of the room by
storm; the shout of victory mingled with the cry for
mercy. There was one solitary voice for peace;
it was the voice of the vexed hostess, and it was
followed by the suspension of hostilities and the instant
quenching of the four tapers, each blown by an individual
mouth, after which we groped back to our several couches
in a state of charming uncertainty as to which was
which.
Saturday followed, and, of all Saturdays
in the year, it chanced to be the vigil of a feast,
and therefore a day of abstinence. The ladies
held the key of the larder, and held it, permit me
to add, with a clenched hand. It may be that
all boys are not like our boys; that there are those
who, having ceased to elongate and increase in the
extremities out of all proportion, are willing to
fast from day to day; who no longer lust after the
flesh-pots, and whose appetites are governable-but
ours were not. The accustomed fish of a Friday
was welcome, but Saturday was out of the question.
“Something too much of this,” said Croesus
the Sybarite. “Amen!” cried the affable
Alf. There was an unwonted fire in the eye of
Bartholomew when he asked for a dispensation at the
hands of the hostess, and was refused.
All day the maidens sought to lighten
our burden of gloom; the sports in the bath were more
brilliant than usual. We adjourned to the hay-loft
and told stories till our very tongues were tired.
It is true that egg-nogg at intervals consoled us;
but when we had awakened from a refreshing sleep among
the hay, and fought a battle that ended in victory
for the Amazons and our ignominious flight, we bore
the scars of burr and hay-seed for hours afterwards.
Cold turkey and cranberry sauce at midnight had been
promised to us, yet how very distant that seemed.
Hunger cried loudly for beef and bouillon, and a strategic
movement was planned upon the spot.
The gaming, which followed a slim
supper, was not so interesting as usual. At intervals
we consulted the clock; how the hours lagged!
Croesus poured his gold upon the table in utter distraction.
The maidens, who sat in sack-cloth and ashes, sorrowing
for our sins, left the room at intervals to assure
themselves that the larder was intact. We, also,
quietly withdrew from time to time. Once, all
three of the girls fled in consternation-the
footsteps of Bartholomew had been heard in the vicinity
of the cupboard; but it was a false alarm, and the
game was at once resumed. Now, indeed, the hours
seemed to fly. To our surprise, upon referring
to the clock, the hands stood at ten minutes to twelve.
So swiftly speed the moments when the light hearts
of youth beat joyously in the knowledge that it is
almost time to eat!
Twelve o’clock! Cold turkey,
cranberry sauce, champagne, etc., and no more
fasting till the sixth day. Having devastated
the board, we must needs betray our folly by comparing
the several timepieces. Alf stood at five minutes
to eleven; Bartholomew some minutes behind him; Croesus,
with his infallible repeater, was but 10:45; as for
me, I had discreetly run down. The secret was
out. The clock had been tampered with, and the
trusting maids betrayed. At first they laughed
with us; then they sneered, and then they grew wroth,
and went apart in deep dismay. The dining-hall
resounded with our hollow mirth; like the scriptural
fool, we were laughing at our own folly. The
ladies solemnly re-entered; our hostess, the spokeswoman,
said, with the voice of an oracle, “You will
regret this before morning.” Still feigning
to be merry, we went speedily to bed, but there was
no night-cap sent to soothe us; and the lights went
out noiselessly and simultaneously.
After the heavy and regular breathing
had set in-I think all slept save myself-light
footsteps were heard without. Why should one turn
a key in a bungalow whose hospitality is only limited
by the boundary line of the county surveyor?
Our keys were not turned, in fact,-too late-we
discovered there were no keys to turn. In the
dim darkness-the moon lent us little aid
at the moment-our door was softly thrown
open, and the splash of fountains could be heard;
it was the sound of many waters. As I listened
to it in a half dream, it fell upon my ear most musically,
and then it fell upon my nose, and eyes, and mouth;
it seemed as if the windows of heaven were opened,
as if the dreadful deluge had come again. I soon
discovered what it was. I threw the damp bed clothes
over my head and awaited further developments.
I began to think they never would come-I
mean the developments. Meanwhile the garden hose,
in the hands of the irate maidens, played briskly
upon the four quarters of the room-not
a bed escaped the furious stream. Nothing was
left that was not saturated and soaked, sponge-full.
The floor ran torrents; our boots floated away upon
the mimic tide. We lay like inundated mummies,
but spake never a word. Possibly the girls thought
we were drowned; at all events, they withdrew in consternation,
leaving the hose so that it still belched its unwelcome
waters into the very centre of our drenched apartment.
Rising at last from our clammy shrouds,
we gave chase; but the water-nymphs had fled.
Then we barricaded the bungalow, and held a council
of war. Sitting in moist conclave, we were again
assailed and driven back to our rooms, which might
now be likened to a swimming bath at low-tide.
We shrieked for stimulants, but were stoutly denied,
and then we took to the woods in a fit of indignation,
bordering closely upon a state of nature.
I thought to bury myself in the trackless
wild; to end my days in the depths of the primeval
forest. But I remembered how a tiger-cat had been
lately seen emerging from these otherwise alluring
haunts, and returned at once to the open, where I
glistened in the moonlight, now radiant, and shivered
at the thought of the possible snakes coiling about
my feet. My disgust of life was full; yet in
the midst of it I saw the reviving flames dancing
upon the hearth-stone, and the click of glasses recalled
me to my senses.
We returned in a body, a defeated
brotherhood, accepting as a peace-offering such life-giving
draughts as compelled us, almost against our will,
to drink to the very dregs in token of full surrender.
Then rheumatism and I lay down together, and a little
child might have played with any two of us. I
assured my miserable companions that “I was
not accustomed to such treatment.” Alf added
that “it was more than he had bargained for.”
Bartholomew had neither speech nor language wherewith
to vent his spleen. As for the bland and blooming
Croesus-he who had been lapped in luxury
and cradled in delight-it was his private
opinion, publicly expressed, that “the like of
it was unknown in the annals of social history.”
Yet on the Sunday-our final
day at the bungalow-you would have thought
that the gods had assembled together to hold sweet
converse; and, when we lounged in the shadow of the
invisible Ida, never looked the earth more fair to
us. The whole land was in blossom from the summit
to the sea; the gardeners, as they walked among their
vines, prated of Sicily and sang songs of their Sun-land.
There was no chapel at hand, and no mass for the repose
of souls that had been sorely troubled; but the charm
of those young women-they were salving our
wounds as women know how to do-and the
voluptuous feast that was laid for us, when we emptied
the fatal larder; the music, and the thousand arts
employed to restore beauty and order out of the last
night’s chaos, made us better than new men,
and it taught us a lesson we never shall forget-though
from that hour to this, neither one nor the other of
us, in any way, shape, or fashion whatever, has referred
in the remotest degree to that eventful night in a
Californian bungalow.