by Frank Norris
“I’m not at home, Victorine,” announced Blix, intercepting the maid in the hall. It chanced that it was not Frank Catlin, but another boy of precisely the same breed; and Blix returned to Suddhoo, Mrs. Hawksbee, and Mulvaney with a little cuddling movement of satisfaction.
“There is only one thing I regret about this,” she said to Condy Rivers on the Friday night of that week; “that is, that I never thought of doing it before.” Then suddenly she put up her hand to shield her eyes, as though from an intense light, turning away her head abruptly.
“I say, what is it? What — what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
Blix peeped at him fearfully from between her fingers. “He’s got it on,” she whispered— “that awful crimson scarf.”
“Hoh!” said Condy, touching his scarf nervously, “it’s — it’s very swell. Is it too loud?” he asked uneasily.
Blix put her fingers in her ears; then:
“Condy, you’re a nice, amiable young man, and, if you’re not brilliant, you’re good and kind to your aged mother; but your scarfs and neckties are simply impossible.”
“Well, look at this room!” he shouted — they were in the parlor. “You needn’t talk about bad taste. Those drapes — oh-h! those drapes!! Yellow, s’help me! And those bisque figures that you get with every pound of tea you buy; and this, this, THIS,” he whimpered, waving his hands at the decorated sewer-pipe with its gilded cat-tails. “Oh, speak to me of this; speak to me of art; speak to me of aesthetics. Cat-tails, GILDED. Of course, why not GILDED!” He wrung his hands. “‘Somewhere people are happy. Somewhere little children are at play—’”
“Oh, hush!” she interrupted. “I know it’s bad; but we’ve always had it so, and I won’t have it abused. Let’s go into the dining-room, anyway. We’ll sit in there after this. We’ve always been stiff and constrained in here.”
They went out into the dining-room, and drew up a couple of armchairs into the bay window, and sat there looking out. Blix had not yet lighted the gas — it was hardly dark enough for that; and for upward of ten minutes they sat and watched the evening dropping into night.
Below them the hill fell away so abruptly that the roofs of the nearest houses were almost at their feet; and beyond these the city tumbled raggedly down to meet the bay in a confused, vague mass of roofs, cornices, cupolas, and chimneys, blurred and indistinct in the twilight, but here and there pierced by a new-lighted street lamp. Then came the bay. To the east they could see Goat Island, and the fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the water-front; while directly in their line of vision the island of Alcatraz, with its triple crown of forts, started from the surface of the water. Beyond was the Contra Costa shore, a vast streak of purple against the sky. The eye followed its sky-line westward till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope that suddenly leaped heavenward with the crest of Tamalpais, purple and still, looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx. Then, further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the Golden Gate — the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its flanking Presidio. But, further than this, the eye was stayed. Further than this there was nothing, nothing but a vast, illimitable plain of green — the open Pacific. But at this hour the color of the scene was its greatest charm. It glowed with all the sombre radiance of a cathedral. Everything was seen through a haze of purple — from the low green hills in the Presidio Reservation to the faint red mass of Mount Diablo shrugging its rugged shoulder over the Contra Costa foot-hills. As the evening faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that overlaid the blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. The foot-hills of the opposite shore, Diablo, and at last even Tamalpais, resolved themselves in the velvet gray of the sky. Outlines were lost. Only the masses remained, and these soon began to blend into one another. The sky, and land, and the city’s huddled roofs were one. Only the sheen of dull gold remained, piercing the single vast mass of purple like the blade of a golden sword.
“There’s a ship!” said Blix in a low tone.
A four-master was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green. In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone. By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean under the moon’s white eye.
Condy and Blix sat quiet and without speech, not caring to break the charm of the evening. For quite five minutes they sat thus, watching the stars light one by one, and the immense gray night settle and broaden and widen from mountain-top to horizon. They did not feel the necessity of making conversation. There was no constraint in their silence now.
Gently, and a little at a time, Condy turned his head and looked at Blix. There was just light enough to see. She was leaning back in her chair, her hands fallen into her lap, her head back and a little to one side. As usual, she was in black; but now it was some sort of dinner-gown that left her arms and neck bare. The line of the chin and the throat and the sweet round curve of the shoulder had in it something indescribable — something that was related to music, and that eluded speech. Her hair was nothing more than a warm colored mist without form or outline. The sloe-brown of her little eyes and the flush of her cheek were mere inferences — like the faintest stars that are never visible when looked at directly; and it seemed to him that there was disengaged from her something for which there was no name; something that appealed to a mysterious sixth sense — a sense that only stirred at such quiet moments as this; something that was now a dim, sweet radiance, now a faint aroma, and now again a mere essence, an influence, an impression — nothing more. It seemed to him as if her sweet, clean purity and womanliness took a form of its own which his accustomed senses were too gross to perceive. Only a certain vague tenderness in him went out to meet and receive this impalpable presence; a tenderness not for her only, but for all the good things of the world. Often he had experienced the same feeling when listening to music. Her sweetness, her goodness, appealed to what he guessed must be the noblest in him. And she was only nineteen. Suddenly his heart swelled, the ache came to his throat and the smart to his eyes.
“Blixy,” he said, just above a whisper; “Blixy, wish I was a better sort of chap.”
“That’s the beginning of being better, isn’t it, Condy?” she answered, turning toward him, her chin on her hand.
“It does seem a pity,” he went on, “that when you WANT to do the right, straight thing, and be clean and fine, that you can’t just BE it, and have it over with. It’s the keeping it up that’s the grind.”
“But it’s the keeping it up, Condy, that makes you WORTH BEING GOOD when you finally get to be good; don’t you think? It’s the keeping it up that makes you strong; and then when you get to be good you can make your goodness count. What’s a good man if he’s weak? — if his goodness is better than he is himself? It’s the good man who is strong — as strong as his goodness, and who can make his goodness count — who is the right kind of man. That’s what I think.”
“There’s something in that, there’s something in that.” Then, after a pause: “I played Monday night, after all, Blix, after promising I wouldn’t.”
For a time she did not answer, and when she spoke, she spoke quietly: “Well — I’m glad you told me”; and after a little she added, “Can’t you stop, Condy?”
“Why, yes — yes, of course — I — oh, Blix, sometimes I don’t know! You can’t understand! How could a girl understand the power of it? Other things, I don’t say; but when it comes to gambling, there seems to be another me that does precisely as he chooses, whether I will or not. But I’m going to do my best. I haven’t played since, although there was plenty of chance. You see, this card business is only a part of this club life, this city life — like drinking and — other vices of men. If I didn’t have to lead the life, or if I didn’t go with that crowd — Sarge
ant and the rest of those men — it would be different; easier, maybe.”
“But a man ought to be strong enough to be himself and master of himself anywhere. Condy, IS there anything in the world better or finer than a strong man?”
“Not unless it is a good woman, Blix.”
“I suppose I look at it from a woman’s point of view; but for me a STRONG man — strong in everything — is the grandest thing in the world. Women love strong men, Condy. They can forgive a strong man almost anything.”
Condy did not immediately answer, and in the interval an idea occurred to Blix that at once hardened into a determination. But she said nothing at the moment. The spell of the sunset was gone and they had evidently reached the end of that subject of their talk. Blix rose to light the gas. “Will you promise me one thing, Condy?” she said. “Don’t if you don’t want to. But will you promise me that you will tell me whenever you do play?”
“That I’ll promise you!” exclaimed Condy; “and I’ll keep that, too.”
“And now, let’s hear the story — or what you’ve done of it.”
They drew up to the dining-room table with its cover of blue denim edged with white cord, and Condy unrolled his manuscript and read through what he had written. She approved, and, as he had foreseen, “caught on” to every one of his points. He was almost ready to burst into cheers when she said:
“Any one reading that would almost believe you had been a diver yourself, or at least had lived with divers. Those little details count, don’t they? Condy, I’ve an idea. See what you think of it. Instead of having the story end with his leaving her down there and going away, do it this way. Let him leave her there, and then go back after a long time when he gets to be an old man. Fix it up some way to make it natural. Have him go down to see her and never come up again, see? And leave the reader in doubt as to whether it was an accident or whether he did it on purpose.”
Condy choked back a whoop and smote his knee. “Blix, you’re the eighth wonder! Magnificent — glorious! Say!” — he fixed her with a glance of curiosity— “you ought to take to story-writing yourself.”
“No, no,” she retorted significantly. “I’ll just stay with my singing and be content with that. But remember that story don’t go to ‘The Times’ supplement. At least not until you have tried it East — with the Centennial Company, at any rate.”
“Well, I guess NOT!” snorted Condy. “Why, this is going to be one of the best yarns I ever wrote.”
A little later on he inquired with sudden concern: “Have you got anything to eat in the house?”
“I never saw such a man!” declared Blix; “you are always hungry.”
“I love to eat,” he protested.
“Well, we’ll make some creamed oysters; how would that do?” suggested Blix.
Condy rolled his eyes. “Oh, speak to me of creamed oysters!” Then, with abrupt solemnity: “Blix, I never in my life had as many oysters as I could eat.”
She made the creamed oysters in the kitchen over the gas-stove, and they ate them there — Condy sitting on the washboard of the sink, his plate in his lap.
Condy had a way of catching up in his hands whatever happened to be nearest him, and, while still continuing to talk, examining it with apparent deep interest. Just now it happened to be the morning’s paper that Victorine had left on the table. For five minutes Condy had been picking it up and laying it down, frowning abstractedly at it during the pauses in the conversation. Suddenly he became aware of what it was, and instantly read aloud the first item that caught his glance:
“‘Personal. — Young woman, thirty-one, good housekeeper, desires acquaintance respectable middle-aged gentleman. Object, matrimony. Address K. D. B., this office.’ — Hum!” he commented, “nothing equivocal about K. D. B.; has the heroism to call herself young at thirty-one. I’ll bet she IS a good housekeeper. Right to the point. If K. D. B. don’t see what she wants, she asks for it.”
“I wonder,” mused Blix, “what kind of people they are who put personals in the papers. K. D. B., for instance; who is she, and what is she like?”
“They’re not tough,” Condy assured her. “I see ’em often down at ‘The Times’ office. They are usually a plain, matter-of-fact sort, quite conscientious, you know; generally middle-aged — or thirty-one; outgrown their youthful follies and illusions, and want to settle down.”
“Read some more,” urged Blix. Condy went on.
“‘Bachelor, good habits, twenty-five, affectionate disposition, accomplishments, money, desires acquaintance pretty, refined girl. Object, matrimony. McB., this office.’”
“No, I don’t like McB.,” said Blix. “He’s too — ornamental, somehow.”
“He wouldn’t do for K. D. B., would he?”
“Oh, my, no! He’d make her very unhappy.”
“‘Widower, two children, home-loving disposition, desires introduction to good, honest woman to make home for his children. Matrimony, if suitable. B. P. T., Box A, this office.’”
“He’s not for K. D. B., that’s flat,” declared Blix; “the idea, ‘matrimony if suitable’ — patronizing enough! I know just what kind of an old man B. P. T. is. I know he would want K. D. B. to warm his slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. B. P. T., just an abbreviation of bumptious. No, he can’t have her.”
Condy read the next two or three to himself, despite her protests.
“Condy, don’t be mean! Read them to—”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “here’s one for K. D. B. Behold, the bridegroom cometh! Listen.”
“‘Bachelor, thirty-nine, sober and industrious, retired sea captain, desires acquaintance respectable young woman, good housekeeper and manager. Object, matrimony. Address Captain Jack, office this paper.”
“I know he’s got a wooden leg!” cried Blix. “Can’t you just see it sticking out between the lines? And he lives all alone somewhere down near the bay with a parrot—”
“And makes a glass of grog every night.”
“And smokes a long clay pipe.”
“But he chews tobacco.”
“Yes, isn’t it a pity he will chew that nasty, smelly tobacco? But K. D. B. will break him of that.”
“Oh, is he for K. D. B.?”
“Sent by Providence!” declared Blix. “They were born for each other. Just see, K. D. B. is a good housekeeper, and wants a respectable middle-aged gentleman. Captain Jack is a respectable middle-aged gentleman, and wants a good housekeeper. Oh, and besides, I can read between the lines! I just feel they would be congenial. If they know what’s best for themselves, they would write to each other right away.”
“But wouldn’t you love to be there and see them meet!” exclaimed Condy.
“Can’t we fix it up some way,” said Blix, “to bring these two together — to help them out in some way?”
Condy smote the table and jumped to his feet.
“Write to ‘em!” he shouted. “Write to K. D. B. and sign it Captain Jack, and write to Captain Jack—”
“And sign it K. D. B.,” she interrupted, catching his idea.
“And have him tell her, and her tell him,” he added, “to meet at some place; and then we can go to that place and hide, and watch.”
“But how will we know them? How would they know each other? They’ve never met.”
“We’ll tell them both to wear a kind of flower. Then we can know them, and they can know each other. Of course as soon as they began to talk they would find out they hadn’t written.”
“But they wouldn’t care.”
“No — they want to meet each other. They would be thankful to us for bringing them together.”
“Won’t it be the greatest fun?”
“Fun! Why, it will be a regular drama. Only we are running the show, and everything is real. Let’s get at it!”
Blix ran into her room and returned with writing material. Condy looked at the note-paper critically. “This kind’s too swell. K. D. B. wouldn’t use Irish linen — nev
er! Here, this is better, glazed with blue lines and a flying bird stamped in the corner. Now I’ll write for the Captain, and you write for K. D. B.”
“But where will we have them meet?”
This was a point. They considered the Chinese restaurant, the Plaza, Lotta’s fountain, the Mechanics’ Library, and even the cathedral over in the Mexican quarter, but arrived at no decision.
“Did you ever hear of Luna’s restaurant?” said Condy. “By Jove, it’s just the place! It’s the restaurant where you get Mexican dinners; right in the heart of the Latin quarter; quiet little old-fashioned place, below the level of the street, respectable as a tomb. I was there just once. We’ll have ’em meet there at seven in the evening. No one is there at that hour. The place isn’t patronized much, and it shuts up at eight. You and I can go there and have dinner at six, say, and watch for them to come.”
Then they set to work at their letters.
“Now,” said Condy, “we must have these sound perfectly natural, because if either of these people smell the smallest kind of a rat, you won’t catch ‘em. You must write not as YOU would write, but as you think THEY would. This is an art, a kind of fiction, don’t you see? We must imagine a certain character, and write a letter consistent with that character. Then it’ll sound natural. Now, K. D. B. Well, K. D. B., she’s prim. Let’s have her prim, and proud of using correct, precise, ‘elegant’ language. I guess she wears mits, and believes in cremation. Let’s have her believe in cremation. And Captain Jack; oh! he’s got a terrible voice, like this, ROW-ROW-ROW see? and whiskers, very fierce; and he says, ‘Belay there!’ and ‘Avast!’ and is very grandiloquent and orotund and gallant when it comes to women. Oh, he’s the devil of a man when it comes to women, is Captain Jack!”
After countless trials and failures, they evolved the two following missives, which Condy posted that night:
“Captain Jack.
“SIR: — I have perused with entire satisfaction your personal in ‘The Times.’ I should like to know more of you. I read between the lines, and my perception ineradicably convinces me that you are honest and respectable. I do not believe I should compromise my self-esteem at all in granting you an interview. I shall be at Luna’s restaurant at seven precisely, next Monday eve, and will bear a bunch of white marguerites. Will you likewise, and wear a marguerite in your lapel?