“I’d love to!”
“Then run out and get some pickles and things while I finish this story. Mother-of-Pearl! If those club women knew what I really think of most of ’em!” The typewriter keys clacked viciously under her flying fingers.
Smiling, Helen obeyed, and while she explored a delicatessen and loaded her arms with packages, she felt a flutter of pleased anticipation. It would be good to lie on the beach under the stars and listen to more of the curious talk of these girls. “But I must contribute something,” she thought. “I must make them like me if I can.”
When they assembled at the ferry, however, she found that they were not inclined to talk. Almost silently they waited for the big gates to open, surged with the crowd across the gangplank and found outside seats where the salt winds swept upon them.
“Tired, Marian?” said Anne Lester.
“Dead!” Marian answered. She rearranged the packages, took off her coat, put it on again, and began to walk restlessly up and down the deck.
“She lives on sheer nerve,” Anne remarked. “Never relaxes.” Her own long, thoroughbred body was a picture of reposeful lines. She said nothing more.
“How beautifully they let each other alone!” Helen thought, and in the restful silence she too relaxed, idly studying the others. They all worked. Beyond that she could see nothing in common; even their occupations differed widely. She checked them off, startled a little at the incongruity.
Anne, high-bred, imperious, with something of untamed freedom in every gesture—Anne was a teacher of economics! Beside her Willetta, demure, brown-eyed, brown-haired, knitting busily, had come from unknown labors in social service work. Across the aisle Sara and Mrs. Austin—they called her Dodo—were discussing samples of silk. And Sara was a miniature painter, Dodo executive secretary of an important California commission.
“I give it up!” Helen said to herself, marvelling again at the obvious affection that held them together. Turning her face to the keen cool wind blowing in through the Golden Gate she watched the thousand white-capped waves upon the bay and the flight of silvery-gray seagulls against a glowing sunset sky, drinking in the beauty of it all without thinking, letting the day’s burden of effort slip from her.
Around the campfire on the white half-moon of beach beyond the fisherman’s village of Tiburon the talk awoke again, idle talk, flippant, serious, bantering, dropping now and then into silence.
Sara sat on a bit of driftwood, her long, sensitive hands clasped around her knees, her eyes full of dreams. “How beautiful it is!” she said at intervals, lifting her face to the dark sky full of stars, or indicating with a nod the lights flung over the Berkeley hills like handfuls of jewels. Anne, stretched on the sand, spoke with passion of labor unions and I.W.W.’s, of strikes and lockouts, and the red glimmer of her cigarette sketched her gestures upon the darkness. Argument raged between her and Dodo, cross-legged like a boy, her fine, soft hair let down upon her shoulders. Hot words were exchanged. “Oh, you don’t know what you’re—” “If you’d read the reports of your own commission!” “Let me tell you, Anne Lester—where are the matches?” The twinkling flame lighted Dodo’s calm, unruffled brow as a thin curl of smoke came from her serious lips. “Just let me tell you, Anne Lester—” In the circle of firelight Marian was busily gathering up paper napkins, bits of string, wrapping paper. “Marian’s got to tidy the whole seashore!” they laughed, reaching lazily to help her. After a long silence they spoke of the war.
“It didn’t get me so much at first—it was like an earthquake shock. But lately—” “One feels like doing something. I know. What is a little Red Cross work here at home, when you think—”
“Oh, it’s all too horrible!” Sara cried.
“Yes. But lots of things are horrible. War isn’t the worst one. One has to—” “Yes, get up and face them. And do something. As much as you can.”
The words echoed Helen’s own feeling. In the folds of her coat, curled against a drift log, she listened, quiet, adding a word occasionally. She felt now the charm of this companionship, demanding nothing, unconstrained, full of understanding. It was freedom, relaxation, without loneliness. Like a plant kept too long in constricting soil and now transplanted to friendlier earth, she felt stirring within her innumerable impulses reaching out for nourishment.
“You know,” said Dodo suddenly, putting a warm hand over Helen’s. “I like you.”
Helen flushed with delight.
“I like you too.”
She remembered the words for long months, remembered the glow of firelight, the white, curving line of foam on the sand, the far lights scattered on a dozen hills, and the cool darkness over the bay. That evening had made her one of the group, given her the freedom of the luncheon table reserved for them in the quiet little restaurant, opened for her the door of a new and satisfying relationship.
She could always find one or two of the girls at the table, rarely all of them. They dropped in when they pleased, sure of finding a friend and sympathetic talk. When she had an idle half hour after luncheon she might go shopping with Willetta, always hunting bargains in dainty things for the little daughter in a convent. She learned the tragedy that had shattered Willetta’s home, and the reason for the cynicism that sometimes sharpened Dodo’s tongue. If they wondered about her own life they asked no questions, and they accepted Paul’s Sunday visits without comment.
Any other evening in the week might see Willetta running up the steps, knitting in hand, to spend an hour curled among the cushions on the hearth or to depart blithely if Helen were busy. Dodo’s voice might come over the telephone. “Tickets for
