by Frank Norris
“Don’t try an’ load that gun either,” cried McTeague, fixing Marcus with his little eyes.
“Then don’t lay your finger on that sack,” shouted the other. “You’re my prisoner, do you understand? You’ll do as I say.” Marcus had drawn the handcuffs from his pocket, and stood ready with his revolver held as a club. “You soldiered me out of that money once, and played me for a sucker, an’ it’s my turn now. Don’t you lay your finger on that sack.”
Marcus barred McTeague’s way, white with passion. McTeague did not answer. His eyes drew to two fine, twinkling points, and his enormous hands knotted themselves into fists, hard as wooden mallets. He moved a step nearer to Marcus, then another.
Suddenly the men grappled, and in another instant were rolling and struggling upon the hot white ground. McTeague thrust Marcus backward until he tripped and fell over the body of the dead mule. The little bird cage broke from the saddle with the violence of their fall, and rolled out upon the ground, the flour-bags slipping from it. McTeague tore the revolver from Marcus’s grip and struck out with it blindly. Clouds of alkali dust, fine and pungent, enveloped the two fighting men, all but strangling them.
McTeague did not know how he killed his enemy, but all at once Marcus grew still beneath his blows. Then there was a sudden last return of energy. McTeague’s right wrist was caught, something licked upon it, then the struggling body fell limp and motionless with a long breath.
As McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist; something held it fast. Looking down, he saw that Marcus in that last struggle had found strength to handcuff their wrists together. Marcus was dead now; McTeague was locked to the body. All about him, vast interminable, stretched the measureless leagues of Death Valley.
McTeague remained stupidly looking around him, now at the distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary chittering feebly in its little gilt prison.
BLIX
Doubleday and McClure published Frank Norris’ Blix in September 1899, only eight months after publishing one of his acknowledged masterpieces, McTeague. Although still the work of a young man, Blix was very different in concept and execution from his first two novels, providing evidence of Norris’ remarkable versatility. Norris had prepared Blix for serial publication, beginning in the March 1899 issue of The Puritan, “A Journal for Gentelwomen.” He set the novel in San Francisco and used elements of his own life to flesh out the characters and scenes. While some critics dismiss Blix as a potboiler, one of Norris’ attempts at romantic, “popular” fiction, the novel has its champions as well, and received overall favorable reviews in its day, such as this one from The Speaker, July 7, 1900:
Mr. Frank Norris has quickly taken a good place among contemporary novelists. His name has become associated with lively and entertaining work. Shanghaied and McTeague both had buoyancy and invention and that kind of vigour which meant that the author would not soon work himself out. In Blix he shows that he can treat a hackneyed theme in a fresh and original manner. Blix is the story of a girl who keeps a young journalist from gambling and inspires his work. He calls her Blix, because — well, because she is Blix. They have tried pretending to be in love with one another and find it dull, so they resolve to be nothing more than comrades — with the usual result. The agony is not long drawn out. Condy Rivers is soon weaned from gambling. Though his first novel is rejected, he soon gets an offer of a post that takes him East, apparently the ambition of all Californians. Blix, of course, really understands that he has loved her ever since they determined to give up that nonsense, and so they both go to New York and the new life.
Thus it will be seen that Mr. Norris has not a very original story to tell. Even in detail we seem to have heard some of it before — such as the answering matrimonial advertisements in other people’s names and the encyclopedic education of the coastguard’s wife, the progress of whose knowledge could be tested by whether her subjects of conversation were in the H’s or the M’s. Yet the familiar air of everything is rather attractive when you get interested in Blix, as you do very soon, and in the somewhat naive journalist, who, to the male reader, at least, is by no means the attraction of the book. Mr. Norris has a very pretty talent in presenting the atmosphere of particular events. The tea in Chinatown and the day’s fishing described in Blix linger in the memory. They are complete pictures, in which nothing more is needed for the imagination to see everything that happened and to feel everything that was felt. We are grateful to Mr. Norris for a very charming bit of sentiment.
Many critics viewed Blix as the work of an uncommonly promising author just beginning to show off soon-to-be consummate skills. While commenting in the December 1899 issue of The Vassar Miscellany that Blix is “a pretty little love story,” a reviewer also noted that it is “a brisk tale with real force and vigor,” and pointed out what would soon be one of Norris’ hallmarks, realism:
It is wonderfully real... But it would take consummate skill to depict faithfully American life of to-day and make the picture a pleasing one in every detail. The nature descriptions are exquisite — the country on an early summer morning, the immense expanse of the Pacific, the setting of the sun at the Golden Gate — all are glowing with color, and full of the great mystery of Nature. The broad sweeps of his nature painting form a most effective background for the delicate touches of character drawing. The book is noteworthy; one waits for something more from Mr. Norris, for the sweetness and crispness and originality of Blix are full of promise.
Grosset & Dunlap edition, 1899
CONTENTS
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter I
It had just struck nine from the cuckoo clock that hung over the mantelpiece in the dining-room, when Victorine brought in the halved watermelon and set it in front of Mr. Bessemer’s plate. Then she went down to the front door for the damp, twisted roll of the Sunday morning’s paper, and came back and rang the breakfast-bell for the second time.
As the family still hesitated to appear, she went to the bay window at the end of the room, and stood there for a moment looking out. The view was wonderful. The Bessemers lived upon the Washington Street hill, almost at its very summit, in a flat in the third story of the building. The contractor had been clever enough to reverse the position of kitchen and dining-room, so that the latter room was at the rear of the house. From its window one could command a sweep of San Francisco Bay and the Contra Costa shore, from Mount Diablo, along past Oakland, Berkeley, Sausalito, and Mount Tamalpais, out to the Golden Gate, the Presidio, the ocean, and even — on very clear days — to the Farrallone islands.
For some time Victorine stood looking down at the great expanse of land and sea, then faced about with an impatient exclamation.
On Sundays all the week-day regime of the family was deranged, and breakfast was a movable feast, to be had any time after seven or before half-past nine. As Victorine was pouring the ice-water, Mr. Bessemer himself came in, and addressed himself at once to his meal, without so much as a thought of waiting for the others.
He was a little round man. He wore a skull-cap to keep his bald spot warm, and read his paper through a reading-glass. The expression of his face, wrinkled and bearded, the eyes shadowed by enormous gray eyebrows, was that of an amiable gorilla.
Bessemer was one of those men who seem entirely disassociated from their families. Only on rare and intense occasions did his paternal spirit or instincts assert themselves. At table he talked but little. Though devotedly fond of his eldest daughter, she was a puzzle and a stranger to him. His interests and hers were absolutely dissimilar. The children he seldom spoke to but to reprove; while Ho
ward, the son, the ten-year-old and terrible infant of the household, he always referred to as “that boy.”
He was an abstracted, self-centred old man, with but two hobbies — homoeopathy and the mechanism of clocks. But he had a strange way of talking to himself in a low voice, keeping up a running, half-whispered comment upon his own doings and actions; as, for instance, upon this occasion: “Nine o’clock — the clock’s a little fast. I think I’ll wind my watch. No, I’ve forgotten my watch. Watermelon this morning, eh? Where’s a knife? I’ll have a little salt. Victorine’s forgot the spoons — ha, here’s a spoon! No, it’s a knife I want.”
After he had finished his watermelon, and while Victorine was pouring his coffee, the two children came in, scrambling to their places, and drumming on the table with their knife-handles.
The son and heir, Howard, was very much a boy. He played baseball too well to be a very good boy, and for the sake of his own self-respect maintained an attitude of perpetual revolt against his older sister, who, as much as possible, took the place of the mother, long since dead. Under her supervision, Howard blacked his own shoes every morning before breakfast, changed his underclothes twice a week, and was dissuaded from playing with the dentist’s son who lived three doors below and who had St. Vitus’ dance.
His little sister was much more tractable. She had been christened Alberta, and was called Snooky. She promised to be pretty when she grew up, but was at this time in that distressing transitional stage between twelve and fifteen; was long-legged, and endowed with all the awkwardness of a colt. Her shoes were still innocent of heels; but on those occasions when she was allowed to wear her tiny first pair of corsets she was exalted to an almost celestial pitch of silent ecstasy. The clasp of the miniature stays around her small body was like the embrace of a little lover, and awoke in her ideas that were as vague, as immature and unformed as the straight little figure itself.
When Snooky and Howard had seated themselves, but one chair — at the end of the breakfast-table, opposite Mr. Bessemer — remained vacant.
“Is your sister — is Miss Travis going to have her breakfast now? Is she got up yet?” inquired Victorine of Howard and Snooky, as she pushed the cream pitcher out of Howard’s reach. It was significant of Mr. Bessemer’s relations with his family that Victorine did not address her question to him.
“Yes, yes, she’s coming,” said both the children, speaking together; and Howard added: “Here she comes now.”
Travis Bessemer came in. Even in San Francisco, where all women are more or less beautiful, Travis passed for a beautiful girl. She was young, but tall as most men, and solidly, almost heavily built. Her shoulders were broad, her chest was deep, her neck round and firm. She radiated health; there were exuberance and vitality in the very touch of her foot upon the carpet, and there was that cleanliness about her, that freshness, that suggested a recent plunge in the surf and a “constitutional” along the beach. One felt that here was stamina, good physical force, and fine animal vigor. Her arms were large, her wrists were large, and her fingers did not taper. Her hair was of a brown so light as to be almost yellow. In fact, it would be safer to call it yellow from the start — not golden nor flaxen, but plain, honest yellow. The skin of her face was clean and white, except where it flushed to a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks. Her lips were full and red, her chin very round and a little salient. Curiously enough, her eyes were small — small, but of the deepest, deepest brown, and always twinkling and alight, as though she were just ready to smile or had just done smiling, one could not say which. And nothing could have been more delightful than these sloe-brown, glinting little eyes of hers set off by her white skin and yellow hair.
She impressed one as being a very normal girl: nothing morbid about her, nothing nervous or false or overwrought. You did not expect to find her introspective. You felt sure that her mental life was not at all the result of thoughts and reflections germinating from within, but rather of impressions and sensations that came to her from without. There was nothing extraordinary about Travis. She never had her vagaries, was not moody — depressed one day and exalted the next. She was just a good, sweet, natural, healthy-minded, healthy-bodied girl, honest, strong, self-reliant, and good-tempered.
Though she was not yet dressed for church, there was style in her to the pointed tips of her patent-leather slippers. She wore a heavy black overskirt that rustled in delicious fashion over the colored silk skirt beneath, and a white shirt-waist, striped black, and starched to a rattling stiffness. Her neck was swathed tight and high with a broad ribbon of white satin, while around her waist, in place of a belt, she wore the huge dog-collar of a St. Bernard — a chic little idea which was all her own, and of which she was very proud.
She was as trig and trim and crisp as a crack yacht: not a pin was loose, not a seam that did not fall in its precise right line; and with every movement there emanated from her a barely perceptible delicious feminine odor — an odor that was in part perfume, but mostly a subtle, vague smell, charming beyond words, that came from her hair, her neck, her arms — her whole sweet personality. She was nineteen years old.
She sat down to breakfast and ate heartily, though with her attention divided between Howard — who was atrociously bad, as usual of a Sunday morning — and her father’s plate. Mr. Bessemer was as like as not to leave the table without any breakfast at all unless his fruit, chops, and coffee were actually thrust under his nose.
“Papum,” she called, speaking clear and distinct, as though to the deaf, “there’s your coffee there at your elbow; be careful, you’ll tip it over. Victorine, push his cup further on the table. Is it strong enough for you, Papum?”
“Eh? Ah, yes — yes — yes,” murmured the old man, looking vaguely about him; “coffee, to be sure” — and he emptied the cup at a single draught, hardly knowing whether it was coffee or tea. “Now I’ll take a roll,” he continued, in a monotonous murmur. “Where are the rolls? Here they are. Hot rolls are bad for my digestion — I ought to eat bread. I think I eat too much. Where’s my place in the paper? — always lose my place in the paper. Clever editorials this fellow Eastman writes, unbiassed by party prejudice — unbiassed — unbiassed.” His voice died to a whisper.
The breakfast proceeded, Travis supervising everything that went forward, even giving directions to Victorine as to the hour for serving dinner. It was while she was talking to Victorine as to this matter that Snooky began to whine.
“Stop!”
“And tell Maggie,” pursued Travis, “to fricassee her chicken, and not to have it too well done—”
“Sto-o-op!” whined Snooky again.
“And leave the heart out for Papum. He likes the heart—”
“Sto-o-op!”
“Unbiassed by prejudice,” murmured Mr. Bessemer, “vigorous and to the point. I’ll have another roll.”
“Pa, make Howard stop!”
“Howard!” exclaimed Travis; “what is it now?”
“Howard’s squirting watermelon-seeds at me,” whined Snooky, “and Pa won’t make him stop.”
“Oh, I didn’t so!” vociferated Howard. “I only held one between my fingers, and it just kind of shot out.”
“You’ll come upstairs with me in just five minutes,” announced Travis, “and get ready for Sunday-school.”
Howard knew that his older sister’s decisions were as the laws of the Persians, and found means to finish his breakfast within the specified time, though not without protest. Once upstairs, however, the usual Sunday morning drama of despatching him to Sunday-school in presentable condition was enacted. At every moment his voice could be heard uplifted in shrill expostulation and debate. No, his hands were clean enough, and he didn’t see why he had to wear that little old pink tie; and, oh! his new shoes were too tight and hurt his sore toe; and he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t — no, not if he were killed for it, change his shirt. Not for a moment did Travis lose her temper with him. But “very well,” she declared at lengt
h, “the next time she saw that little Miner girl she would tell her that he had said she was his beau-heart. NOW would he hold still while she brushed his hair?”
At a few minutes before eleven Travis and her father went to church. They were Episcopalians, and for time out of mind had rented a half-pew in the church of their denomination on California Street, not far from Chinatown. By noon the family reassembled at dinner-table, where Mr. Bessemer ate his chicken-heart — after Travis had thrice reminded him of it — and expressed himself as to the sermon and the minister’s theology: sometimes to his daughter and sometimes to himself.
After dinner Howard and Snooky foregathered in the nursery with their beloved lead soldiers; Travis went to her room to write letters; and Mr. Bessemer sat in the bay window of the dining-room reading the paper from end to end.
At five Travis bestirred herself. It was Victorine’s afternoon out. Travis set the table, spreading a cover of blue denim edged with white braid, which showed off the silver and the set of delft — her great and never-ending joy — to great effect. Then she tied her apron about her, and went into the kitchen to make the mayonnaise dressing for the potato salad, to slice the ham, and to help the cook (a most inefficient Irish person, taken on only for that month during the absence of the family’s beloved and venerated Sing Wo) in the matter of preparing the Sunday evening tea.
Tea was had at half-past five. Never in the history of the family had its menu varied: cold ham, potato salad, pork and beans, canned fruit, chocolate, and the inevitable pitcher of ice-water.
In the absence of Victorine, Maggie waited on the table, very uncomfortable in her one good dress and stiff white apron. She stood off from the table, making awkward dabs at it from time to time. In her excess of deference she developed a clumsiness that was beyond all expression. She passed the plates upon the wrong side, and remembered herself with a broken apology at inopportune moments. She dropped a spoon, she spilled the ice-water. She handled the delft cups and platters with an exaggerated solicitude, as though they were glass bombs. She brushed the crumbs into their laps instead of into the crumb-tray, and at last, when she had sat even Travis’ placid nerves in a jangle, was dismissed to the kitchen, and retired with a gasp of unspeakable relief.