Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/107

Rh has overflowed with emotion and exaltation and high romance at the plaintive, liquid sounds rising to her rosebowered window through the tepid semi-tropical night, with the moon hung like a lantern above the sea, and the mountains slumbering dark like inert beasts.

"Adios, adios amores" and the thin high thrill of frogs; and the heavy scent of orange blossoms and honeysuckle lying in the dusk like a fog—it was perhaps as well that the serenaders did take it all impersonally as a pretty custom, leaving the surcharged damsels to write reams to an utterly sceptical bosom friend in the East.

In such an intimate community the hotel register was the most consulted volume in or out of the county library. It was mounted on a revolving stand for easier reference.

Patrick Boyd and his son Kenneth received on arrival their full share of discussion. Not only were they an attractive couple personally—Boyd thick-set, blue-clad, jolly and vital; Kenneth tall, goodlooking, curly haired, laughing—but their name itself meant something to the rocking chair conference of the powers.

George Scott told them about him. Scott was a short, thick apoplectic little man who had come to California to die of various plethoric complaints, but had postponed doing so. He had never done a stroke of work in his life; but he had belonged to all the best clubs; he had travelled not only in Europe but in the Far East as well; he knew all the great names in social, political, financial, and military circles; and the latter days of his New York life had been dumpily but magnificently spent in the deep leather chairs of the Union League Club, gazing forth on the shifting Avenue. He thus possessed a wide knowledge and had acquired a biting tongue. Whether from liver or pose he was not afraid to express his full opinion, uncoated with the sugar of tact or, indeed, of common charity. If he did not like a man, he said so. He prided himself, however, in maintaining strictly the spectator's standpoint, and in never taking sides. Add a faculty of making enthusiasms look ridiculous by a mere air of detached amusement. Naturally he was much sought after and deferred to.