by Frank Norris
Who went with a spring and a bounce.
His head was as flat
As the head of a cat,
This quadrupetantical Ounce,
— tical Ounce,
This quadrupetantical Ounce.
“You’d think from his name he was small,
But that was not like him at all.
He weighed, I’ll be bound,
Three or four hundred pound,
And he looked most uncommonly tall,
— monly tall,
And he looked most uncommonly tall.”
“Bravo! bravo!” cried Travis, pounding on the table. “Hear, hear — none, Brutus, none.”
Condy sat down on the table and swung his legs But during the next few moments, while they were eating the last of their cheese, his good spirits fell rapidly away from him. He heaved a sigh, and thrust both hands gloomily into his pockets.
“Cheese, Condy?” asked Travis.
He shook his head with a dark frown, muttering: “No cheese, no cheese.”
“What’s wrong, Condy — what’s the matter?” asked Travis, with concern.
For some time he would not tell her, answering all her inquiries by closing his eyes and putting his chin in the air, nodding his head in knowing fashion.
“But what is it?”
“You don’t respect me,” he muttered; and for a long time this was all that could be got from him. No, no, she did not respect him; no, she did not take him seriously.
“But of course I do. Why don’t I? Condy Rivers, what’s got into you NOW?”
“No, no; I know it. I can tell. You don’t take me seriously. You don’t respect me.”
“But why?”
“Make a blooming buffoon of myself,” he mumbled tragically.
In great distress Travis labored to contradict him. Why, they had just been having a good time, that was all. Why, she had been just as silly as he. Condy caught at the word.
“Silly! There. I knew it. I told you. I’m silly. I’m a buffoon. — But haven’t we had a great afternoon?” he added, with a sudden grin.
“I never remember,” announced Travis emphatically, “when I’ve had a better time than I’ve had to-day; and I know just why it’s been such a success.”
“Why, then?”
“Because we’ve had no foolishness. We’ve just been ourselves, and haven’t pretended we were in love with each other when we are not. Condy, let’s do this lots.”
“Do what?”
“Go round to queer little, interesting little places. We’ve had a glorious time to-day, haven’t we? — and we haven’t been talked out once.
“As we were last night, for instance,” he hazarded.
“I THOUGHT you felt it, the same as I did. It WAS a bit awful wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“From now on, let’s make a resolution. I know you’ve had a good time to-day. Haven’t you had a better time than if you had gone to the Tea?’”
“Well, RATHER. I don’t know when I’ve had a better, jollier afternoon.”
“Well, now, we’re going to try to have lots more good times, but just as chums. We’ve tried the other, and it failed. Now be sincere; didn’t it fail?”
“It worked out. It DID work out.”
“Now from this time on, no more foolishness. We’ll just be chums.”
“Chums it is. No more foolishness.”
“The moment you begin to pretend you’re in love with me, it will spoil everything. It’s funny,” said Travis, drawing on her gloves. “We’re doing a funny thing, Condy. With ninety-nine people out of one hundred, this little affair would have been all ended after our ‘explanation’ of last night — confessing, as we did, that we didn’t love each other. Most couples would have ‘drifted apart’; but here we are, planning to be chums, and have good times in our own original, unconventional way — and we can do it, too. There, there, he’s a thousand miles away. He’s not heard a single word I’ve said. Condy, are you listening to me?”
“Blix,” he murmured, staring at her vaguely. “Blix — you look that way; I don’t know, look kind of blix. Don’t you feel sort of blix?” he inquired anxiously.
“Blix?”
He smote the table with his palm. “Capital!” he cried; “sounds bully, and snappy, and crisp, and bright, and sort of sudden. Sounds — don’t you know, THIS way?” — and he snapped his fingers. “Don’t you see what I mean? Blix, that’s who you are. You’ve always been Blix, and I’ve just found it out. Blix,” he added, listening to the sound of the name. “Blix, Blix. Yes, yes; that’s your name.”
“Blix?” she repeated; “but why Blix?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Well, then,” he declared, as though that settled the question. They made ready to go, as it was growing late.
“Will you tie that for me, Condy,” she asked, rising and turning the back of her head toward him, the ends of the veil held under her fingers. “Not too tight. Condy, don’t pull it so tight. There, there, that will do. Have you everything that belongs to you? I know you’ll go away and leave something here. There’s your cigarette case, and your book, and of course the banjo.”
As if warned by a mysterious instinct, the fat Chinaman made his appearance in the outer room. Condy put his fingers into his vest pocket, then dropped back upon his stool with a suppressed exclamation of horror.
“Condy!” exclaimed Blix in alarm, “are you sick?” — for he had turned a positive white.
“I haven’t a cent of money,” he murmured faintly. “I spent my last quarter for those beastly crackers. What’s to be done? What is to be done? I’ll — I’ll leave him my watch. Yes, that’s the only thing.”
Blix calmly took out her purse. “I expected it,” she said resignedly. “I knew this would happen sooner or later, and I always have been prepared. How much is it, John?” she asked of the Chinaman.
“Hefahdollah.”
“I’ll never be able to look you in the face again,” protested Condy. “I’ll pay you back to-night. I will! I’ll send it up by a messenger boy.”
“Then you WOULD be a buffoon.”
“Don’t!” he exclaimed. “Don’t, it humiliates me to the dust.”
“Oh, come along and don’t be so absurd. It must be after five.”
Half-way down the brass-bound stairs, he clapped his hand to his head with a start.
“And NOW what is it?” she inquired meekly.
“Forgotten, forgotten!” he exclaimed. “I knew I would forget something.”
“I knew it, you mean.”
He ran back, and returned with the great bag of crackers, and thrust it into her hands. “Here, here, take these. We mustn’t leave these,” he declared earnestly. “It would be a shameful waste of money;” and in spite of all her protests, he insisted upon taking the crackers along.
“I wonder,” said Blix, as the two skirted the Plaza, going down to Kearney Street; “I wonder if I ought to ask him to supper?”
“Ask who — me? — how funny to—”
“I wonder if we are talked out — if it would spoil the day?”
“Anyhow, I’m going to have supper at the Club; and I’ve got to write my article some time to-night.”
Blix fixed him with a swift glance of genuine concern. “Don’t play to-night, Condy,” she said, with a sudden gravity.
“Fat lot I can play! What money have I got to play with?”
“You might get some somewheres. But, anyhow, promise me you won’t play.”
“Well, of course I’ll promise. How can I, if I haven’t any money? And besides, I’ve got my whaleback stuff to write. I’ll have supper at the Club, and go up in the library and grind out copy for a while.”
“Condy,” said Blix, “I think that diver’s story is almost too good for ‘The Times.’ Why don’t you write it and send it East? Send it to the Centennial Company, why don’t you? They’ve paid some attention to you now,
and it would keep your name in their minds if you sent the story to them, even if they didn’t publish it. Why don’t you think of that?”
“Fine — great idea! I’ll do that. Only I’ll have to write it out of business hours. It will be extra work.”
“Never mind, you do it; and,” she added, as he put her on the cable car, “keep your mind on that thirty-thousand-word story of adventure. Good-by, Condy; haven’t we had the jolliest day that ever was?”
“Couldn’t have been better. Good-by, Blix.”
Condy returned to his club., It was about six o’clock. In response to his question, the hall-boy told him that Tracy Sargeant had arrived a few moments previous, and had been asking for him.
The Saturday of the week before, Condy had made an engagement with young Sargeant to have supper together that night, and perhaps go to the theatre afterward. And now at the sight of Sargeant in the “round window” of the main room, buried in the file of the “Gil Blas,” Condy was pleased to note that neither of them had forgotten the matter.
Sargeant greeted him with extreme cordiality as he came up, and at once proposed a drink. Sargeant was a sleek, well-groomed, well-looking fellow of thirty, just beginning to show the effects of a certain amount of dissipation in the little puffs under the eyes and the faint blueness of the temples. The sudden death of his father for which event Sargeant was still mourning, had left him in such position that his monthly income was about five times as large as Condy’s salary. The two had supper together, and Sargeant proposed the theatre.
“No, no; I’ve got to work to-night,” asserted Condy.
After dinner, while they were smoking their cigars in a window of the main room, one of the hall-boys came up and touched Condy on the arm.
“Mr. Eckert, and Mr. Hendricks, and Mr. George Hands, and several other of those gentlemen are up in the card-room, and are asking for you and Mr. Sargeant.”
“Why, I didn’t know the boys were here! They’ve got a game going, Condy. Let’s go up and get in. Shall we?”
Condy remembered that he had no money. “I’m flat broke, Tracy,” he announced, for he knew Sargeant well enough to make the confession without wincing. “No, I’ll not get in; but I’ll go up and watch you a few minutes.”
They ascended to the card-room, where the air was heavy and acrid with cigar smoke, and where the silence was broken only by the click of poker-chips. At the end of twenty minutes Condy was playing, having borrowed enough money of Sargeant to start him in the game.
Unusually talkative and restless, he had suddenly hardened and stiffened to a repressed, tense calm; speechless, almost rigid in his chair. Excitable under even ordinary circumstances, his every faculty was now keyed to its highest pitch. The nervous strain upon him was like the stretching and tightening of harp-strings, too taut to quiver. The color left his face, and the moisture fled his lips. His projected article, his promise to Blix, all the jollity of the afternoon, all thought of time or place, faded away as the one indomitable, evil passion of the man leaped into life within him, and lashed and roweled him with excitement. His world resolved itself to a round green table, columns of tri-colored chips, and five ever-changing cards that came and went and came again before his tired eyes like the changing, weaving colors of the kaleidoscope. Midnight struck, then one o’clock, then two, three, and four. Still his passion rode him like a hag, spurring the jaded body, rousing up the wearied brain.
Finally, at half-past four, at a time when Condy was precisely where he had started, neither winner nor loser by so much as a dime, a round of Jack-pots was declared, and the game broke up. Condy walked home to the uptown hotel where he lived with his mother, and went to bed as the first milk-wagons began to make their appearance and the newsboys to cry the morning papers.
Then, as his tired eyes closed at last, occurred that strange trick of picture-making that the overtaxed brain plays upon the retina. A swift series of pictures of the day’s doings began to whirl THROUGH rather than BEFORE the pupils of his shut eyes. Condy saw again a brief vision of the street, and Blix upon the corner waiting to cross; then it was the gay, brisk confusion of the water-front, the old mate’s cabin aboard the whaleback, Chinatown, and a loop of vermilion cloth over a gallery rail, the golden balcony, the glint of the Stevenson ship upon the green Plaza, Blix playing the banjo, the delightful and picturesque confusion of the deserted Chinese restaurant; Blix again, turning her head for him to fasten her veil, holding the ends with her white-kid fingers; Blix once more, walking at his side with her trim black skirt, her round little turban hat, her yellow hair, and her small dark, dancing eyes.
Then, suddenly, he remembered the promise he had made her in the matter of playing that night. He winced sharply at this, and the remembrance of his fault harried and harassed him. In spite of himself, he felt contemptible. Yet he had broken his promises to her in this very matter of playing before — before that day of their visit to the Chinese restaurant — and had felt no great qualm of self-reproach. Had their relations changed? Rather the reverse for they had done with “foolishness.”
“Never worried me before,” muttered Condy, as he punched up his pillow— “never worried me before. Why should it worry me now — worry me like the devil; — and she caught on to that ‘point’ about the slope of forty-five degrees.”
Chapter V
Condy began his week’s work for the supplement behindhand. Naturally he overslept himself Tuesday morning, and, not having any change in his pockets, was obliged to walk down to the office. He arrived late, to find the compositors already fretting for copy. His editor promptly asked for the whaleback stuff, and Condy was forced into promising it within a half-hour. It was out of the question to write the article according to his own idea in so short a time; so Condy faked the stuff from the exchange clipping, after all. His description of the boat and his comments upon her mission — taken largely at second hand — served only to fill space in the paper. They were lacking both in interest and in point. There were no illustrations. The article was a failure.
But Condy redeemed himself by a witty interview later in the week with an emotional actress, and by a solemn article compiled after an hour’s reading in Lafcadio Hearn and the Encyclopedia — on the “Industrial Renaissance in Japan.”
But the idea of the diver’s story came back to him again and again, and Thursday night after supper he went down to his club, and hid himself at a corner desk in the library, and, in a burst of enthusiasm, wrote out some two thousand words of it. In order to get the “technical details,” upon which he set such store, he consulted the Encyclopedias again, and “worked in” a number of unfamiliar phrases and odd-sounding names. He was so proud of the result that he felt he could not wait until the tale was finished and in print to try its effect. He wanted appreciation and encouragement upon the instant. He thought of Blix.
“She saw the point in Morrowbie Jukes’ description of the slope of the sandhill,” he told himself; and the next moment had resolved to go up and see her the next evening, and read to her what he had written.
This was on Thursday. All through that week Blix had kept much to herself, and for the first time in two years had begun to spend every evening at home. In the morning of each day she helped Victorine with the upstairs work, making the beds, putting the rooms to rights; or consulted with the butcher’s and grocer’s boys at the head of the back stairs, or chaffered with urbane and smiling Chinamen with their balanced vegetable baskets. She knew the house and its management at her fingers’ ends, and supervised everything that went forward. Laurie Flagg coming to call upon her, on Wednesday afternoon, to remonstrate upon her sudden defection, found her in the act of tacking up a curtain across the pantry window.
But Blix had the afternoons and evenings almost entirely to herself. These hours, heretofore taken up with functions and the discharge of obligations, dragged not a little during the week that followed upon her declaration of independence. Wednesday afternoon, however, was warm and fine,
and she went to the Park with Snooky. Without looking for it or even expecting it, Blix came across a little Japanese tea-house, or rather a tiny Japanese garden, set with almost toy Japanese houses and pavilions, where tea was served and thin sweetish wafers for five cents. Blix and Snooky went in. There was nobody about but the Japanese serving woman. Snooky was in raptures, and Blix spent a delightful half-hour there, drinking Japanese tea, and feeding the wafers to the carp and gold-fish in the tiny pond immediately below where she sat. A Chinaman, evidently of the merchant class, came in, with a Chinese woman following. As he took his place and the Japanese girl came up to get his order, Blix overheard him say in English: “Bring tea for-um leddy.”
“He had to speak in English to her,” she whispered; “isn’t that splendid! Did you notice that, Snooky?”
On the way home Blix was wondering how she should pass her evening. She was to have made one of a theatre party where Jack Carter was to be present. Then she suddenly remembered “Morrowbie Jukes,” “The Return of Imri,” and “Krishna Mulvaney.” She continued on past her home, downtown, and returned late for supper with “Plain Tales” and “Many Inventions.”
Toward half-past eight there came a titter of the electric bell. At the moment Blix was in the upper chamber of the house of Suddhoo, quaking with exquisite horror at the Seal-cutter’s magic. She looked up quickly as the bell rang. It was not Condy Rivers’ touch. She swiftly reflected that it was Wednesday night, and that she might probably expect Frank Catlin. He was a fair specimen of the Younger Set, a sort of modified Jack Carter, and called upon her about once a fortnight. No doubt he would hint darkly as to his riotous living during the past few days and refer to his diet of bromo-seltzers. He would be slangy, familiar, call her by her first name as many times as he dared, discuss the last dance of the Saturday cotillion, and try to make her laugh over Carter’s drunkenness. Blix knew the type. Catlin was hardly out of college; but the older girls, even the young women of twenty-five or six, encouraged and petted these youngsters, driven to the alternative by the absolute dearth of older men.