“Delightful. Though, of course, if I may say so, scarcely to be compared with the scenery of my home State.”
“What State is that?”
“California,” replied the other, baring his head. “California, the Jewel State of the Union. With its azure sea, its noble hills, its eternal sunshine, and its fragrant flowers, California stands alone. Peopled by stalwart men and womanly women. …”
“California would be all right,” said Mr. Mulliner, “if it wasn’t for the earthquakes.”
Our guest started as though some venomous snake had bitten him.
“Earthquakes are absolutely unknown in California,” he said, hoarsely.
“What about the one in 1906?”
“That was not an earthquake. It was a fire.”
“An earthquake, I always understood,” said Mr. Mulliner. “My Uncle William was out there during it, and many a time has he said to me, ‘My boy, it was the San Francisco earthquake that won me a bride.’ ”
“Couldn’t have been the earthquake. May have been the fire.”
“Well, I will tell you the story, and you shall judge for yourself.”
“I shall be glad to hear your story about the San Francisco fire,” said the Californian, courteously.
My Uncle William (said Mr. Mulliner) was returning from the East at the time. The commercial interests of the Mulliners had always been far-flung: and he had been over in China looking into the workings of a tea-exporting business in which he held a number of shares. It was his intention to get off the boat at San Francisco and cross the continent by rail. He particularly wanted to see the Grand Canyon of Arizona. And when he found that Myrtle Banks had for years cherished the same desire, it seemed to him so plain a proof that they were twin souls that he decided to offer her his hand and heart without delay.
This Miss Banks had been a fellow-traveller on the boat all the way from Hong Kong; and day by day William Mulliner had fallen more and more deeply in love with her. So on the last day of the voyage, as they were steaming in at the Golden Gate, he proposed.
I have never been informed of the exact words which he employed, but no doubt they were eloquent. All the Mulliners have been able speakers, and on such an occasion, he would, of course, have extended himself. When at length he finished, it seemed to him that the girl’s attitude was distinctly promising. She stood gazing over the rail into the water below in a sort of rapt way. Then she turned.
“Mr. Mulliner,” she said, “I am greatly flattered and honoured by what you have just told me.” These things happened, you will remember, in the days when girls talked like that. “You have paid me the greatest compliment a man can bestow on a woman. And yet …”
William Mulliner’s heart stood still. He did not like that “And yet—”
“Is there another?” he muttered.
“Well, yes, there is. Mr. Franklyn proposed to me this morning. I told him I would think it over.”
There was a silence. William was telling himself that he had been afraid of that bounder Franklyn all along. He might have known, he felt, that Desmond Franklyn would be a menace. The man was one of those lean, keen, hawk-faced, Empire-building sort of chaps you find out East—the kind of fellow who stands on deck chewing his moustache with a faraway look in his eyes, and then, when the girl asks him what he is thinking about, draws a short, quick breath and says he is sorry to be so absentminded, but a sunset like that always reminds him of the day when he killed the four pirates with his bare hands and saved dear old Tuppy Smithers in the nick of time.
“There is a great glamour about Mr. Franklyn,” said Myrtle Banks. “We women admire men who do things. A girl cannot help but respect a man who once killed three sharks with a Boy Scout pocketknife.”
“So he says,” growled William.
“He showed me the pocketknife,” said the girl, simply. “And on another occasion he brought down two lions with one shot.”
William Mulliner’s heart was heavy, but he struggled on.
“Very possibly he may have done these things,” he said, “but surely marriage means more than this. Personally, if I were a girl, I would go rather for a certain steadiness and stability of character. To illustrate what I mean, did you happen to see me win the Egg-and-Spoon race at the ship’s sports? Now there, it seems to me, in what I might call microcosm, was an exhibition of all the qualities a married man most requires—intense coolness, iron resolution, and a quiet, unassuming courage. The man who under test conditions has carried an egg once and a half times round a deck in a small spoon is a man who can be trusted.”
She seemed to waver, but only for a moment.
“I must think,” she said. “I must think.”
“Certainly,” said William. “You will let me see something of you at the hotel, after we have landed?”
“Of course. And if—I mean to say, whatever happens, I shall always look on you as a dear, dear friend.”
“M’yes,” said William Mulliner.
For three days my Uncle William’s stay in San Francisco was as pleasant as could reasonably be expected, considering that Desmond Franklyn was also stopping at his and Miss Banks’s hotel. He contrived to get the girl to himself to quite a satisfactory extent; and they spent many happy hours together in the Golden Gate Park and at the Cliff House, watching the seals basking on the rocks. But on the evening of the third day the blow fell.
“Mr. Mulliner,” said Myrtle Banks, “I want to tell you something.”
“Anything,” breathed William tenderly, “except that you are going to marry that perisher Franklyn.”
“But that is exactly what I was going to tell you, and I must not let you call him a perisher, for he is a very brave, intrepid man.”
“When did you decide on this rash act?” asked William dully.
“Scarcely an hour ago. We were
