Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “Bully, bully!” he muttered between his teeth as he finished the last paragraph. “It’s a corker! If it’s rejected everywhere, it’s an out-of-sight yarn just the same.”

  And there Condy’s enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story’s composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East — to the Centennial Company — to-morrow or the day after — some time that week. To mail the manuscript meant quite half an hour’s effort. He would have to buy stamps for return postage; a letter would have to be written, a large envelope procured, the accurate address ascertained. For the moment his supplement work demanded his attention. He put off sending the story from day to day. His interest in it had abated. And for that matter he soon discovered he had other things to think of.

  It had been easy to promise Blix that he would no longer gamble at his club with the other men of his acquaintance; but it was “death and the devil,” as he told himself, to abide by that promise. More than once in the fortnight following upon his resolution he had come up to the little flat on the Washington Street hill as to a place of refuge; and Blix, always pretending that it was all a huge joke and part of their good times, had brought out the cards and played with him. But she knew very well the fight he was making against the enemy, and how hard it was for him to keep from the round green tables and group of silent shirt-sleeved men in the card-rooms of his club. She looked forward to the time when Condy would cease to play even with her. But she was too sensible and practical a girl to expect him to break a habit of years’ standing in a couple of weeks. The thing would have to be accomplished little by little. At times she had misgivings as to the honesty of the course she had adopted. But nowadays, playing as he did with her only, Condy gambled but two or three evenings in the week, and then not for more than two hours at a time. Heretofore hardly an evening that had not seen him at the round table in his club’s card-room, whence he had not risen until long after midnight.

  Condy had told young Sargeant that he had “reformed” in the matter of gambling, and intended to swear off for a few months. Sargeant, like the thoroughbred he was, never urged him to play after that, and never spoke of the previous night’s game when Condy was about. The other men of his “set” were no less thoughtful, and, though they rallied him a little at first upon his defection, soon let the matter drop. Condy told himself that there were plenty of good people in the world, after all. Every one seemed conspiring to make it easy for him, and he swore at himself for a weak-kneed cad.

  On a certain Tuesday, about a week after the fishing excursion and the affair of the “Matrimonial Objects,” toward half-past six in the evening, Condy was in his room, dressing for a dinner engagement. Young Sargeant’s sister had invited him to be one of a party who were to dine at the University Club, and later on fill a box at a charity play, given by amateurs at one of the downtown theatres. But as he was washing his linen shirt-studs with his tooth-brush his eye fell upon a note, in Laurie Flagg’s handwriting, that lay on his writing-desk, and that he had received some ten days previous. Condy turned cold upon the instant, hurled the tooth-brush across the room, and dropped into a chair with a groan of despair. Miss Flagg was giving a theatre party for the same affair, and he remembered now that he had promised to join her party as well, forgetting all about the engagement he had made with Miss Sargeant. It was impossible at this late hour to accept either one of the young women’s invitations without offending the other.

  “Well, I won’t go to EITHER, that’s all,” he vociferated aloud to the opposite wall. “I’ll send ’em each a wire, and say that I’m sick or have got to go down to the office, and — and, by George! I’ll go up and see Blix, and we’ll read and make things to eat.”

  And no sooner had this alternative occurred to him than it appeared too fascinating to be resisted. A weight seemed removed from his mind. When it came to that, what amusement would he have at either affair?

  “Sit up there with your shirt-front starched like a board,” he blustered, “and your collar throttling you, and smile till your face is sore, and reel off small talk to a girl whose last name you can’t remember! Do I have any fun, does it do me any good, do I get ideas for yarns? What do I do it for? I don’t know.”

  While speaking he had been kicking off his tight shoes and such of his full dress as he had already put on, and with a feeling of enormous relief turned again to his sack suit of tweed. “Lord, these feel better!” he exclaimed, as he substituted the loose business suit for the formal rigidity of his evening dress. It was with a sensation of positive luxury that he put on a “soft” shirt of blue cheviot and his tan walking-shoes.

  “But no more red scarfs,” he declared, as he knotted his black satin “club” before the mirror. “She WAS right there.” He put his cigarettes in his pocket, caught up his gloves and stick, clapped on his hat, and started for the Bessemers’ flat with a feeling of joyous expectancy he had not known for days.

  Evidently Blix had seen him coming, for she opened the door herself; and it suited her humor for the moment to treat him as a peddler or book-agent.

  “No, no,” she said airily, her head in the air as she held the door. “No, we don’t want any to-day. We HAVE the biography of Abraham Lincoln. Don’t want to subscribe to any Home Book of Art. We’re not artistic; we use drapes in our parlors. Don’t want ‘The Wives and Mothers of Great Men.’”

  But Condy had noticed a couple of young women on the lower steps of the adjacent flat, quite within ear-shot, and at once he began in a loud, harsh voice:

  “Well, y’ know, we can’t wait for our rent forever; I’m only the collector, and I’ve nothing to do with repairs. Pay your rent that’s three months overdue, and then—”

  But Blix pulled him within the house and clapped to the door.

  “Condy RIVERS!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flaming, “those are our neighbors. They heard every word. What do you suppose they think?”

  “Huh! I’d rather have ’em think I was a rent-collector than a book-agent. You began it. ‘Evenin’, Miss Lady.”

  “‘Evenin’, Mister Man.”

  But Condy’s visit, begun thus gayly, soon developed along much more serious lines. After supper, while the light still lasted, Blix read stories to him while he smoked cigarettes in the bay window of the dining-room. But as soon as the light began to go she put the book aside, and the two took their accustomed places in the window, and watched the evening burning itself out over the Golden Gate.

  It was just warm enough to have one of the windows opened, and for a long time after the dusk they sat listening to the vague clamor of the city, lapsing by degrees, till it settled into a measured, soothing murmur, like the breathing of some vast monster asleep. Condy’s cigarette was a mere red point in the half-darkness. The smoke drifted out of the open window in long, blue strata. At his elbow Blix was leaning forward, looking down upon the darkening, drowsing city, her round, strong chin propped upon her hand. She was just close enough for Candy to catch the sweet, delicious feminine perfume that came indefinitely from her clothes, her hair, her neck. From where Condy sat he could see the silhouette of her head and shoulders against the dull golden blur of the open window; her round, high forehead, with the thick yellow hair rolling back from her temples and ears, her pink, clean cheeks, her little dark-brown, scintillating eyes, and her firm red mouth, made all the firmer by the position of her chin upon her hand. As ever, her round, strong neck was swathed high and tight in white satin; but between the topmost fold of the satin and the rose of one small ear-lobe was a little triangle of white skin, that was partly her neck and partly her cheek, and that Condy knew should be softer than down, smoother than satin, warm and sweet and redolent as new apples. Condy imagined himself having the right to lean toward her there and kiss that little spot upon her neck or her cheek; and as he fancied it, was surprised to find his breath come sudden
ly quick, and a barely perceptible qualm, as of a certain faintness, thrill him to his finger-tips; and then, he thought, how would it be if he could, without fear of rebuff, reach out his arm and put it about her trim, firm waist, and draw her very close to him, till he should feel the satiny coolness of her smooth cheek against his; till he could sink his face in the delicious, fragrant confusion of her hair, then turn that face to his — that face with its strong, calm mouth and sweet, full lips — the face of this dear young girl of nineteen, and then —

  “I say — I — shall we — let’s read again. Let’s — let’s do something.”

  “Condy, how you frightened me!” exclaimed Blix, with a great start. “No, listen: I want to talk to you, to tell you something. Papum and I have been having some very long and serious talks since you were last here. What do you think, I may go away.”

  “The deuce you say!” exclaimed Condy, sitting suddenly upright. “Where to, in Heaven’s name?” he added— “and when? and what for?”

  “To New York, to study medicine.”

  There was a silence; then Condy exclaimed, waving his hands at her:

  “Oh, go right on! Don’t mind me. Little thing like going to New York — to study medicine. Of course, that happens every day, a mere detail. I presume you’ll go back and forth for your meals?”

  Then Blix began to explain. It appeared that she had two aunts, both sisters of her father — one a widow, the other unmarried. The widow, a certain Mrs. Kihm, lived in New York, and was wealthy, and had views on “women’s sphere of usefulness.” The other, Miss Bessemer, a little old maid of fifty, Condy had on rare occasions seen at the flat, where every one called her Aunt Dodd. She lived in that vague region of the city known as the Mission, where she owned a little property.

  From what Blix told him that evening, Condy learned that Mrs. Kihm had visited the coast a few winters previous and had taken a great fancy to Blix. Even then she had proposed to Mr. Bessemer to take Blix back to New York with her, and educate her to some woman’s profession; but at that time the old man would not listen to it. Now it seemed that the opportunity had again presented itself.

  “She’s a dear old lady,” Blix said; “not a bit strong-minded, as you would think, and ever so much cleverer than most men. She manages all her property herself. For the last month she’s been writing again to Papum for me to come on and stay with her three, or four years. She hasn’t a chick nor a child, and she don’t entertain or go out any, so maybe she feels lonesome. Of course if I studied there, Papum wouldn’t think of Aunt Kihm — don’t you know — paying for it all. I wouldn’t go if it was that way. But I could stay with her and she could make a home for me while I was there — if I should study — anything — study medicine.”

  “But why!” he exclaimed. “What do you want to study to be a doctor for? It isn’t as though you had to support yourself.”

  “I know, I know I’ve not got to support myself. But why shouldn’t I have a profession just like a man — just like you, Condy? You stop and think. It seemed strange to me when I first thought of it; but I got thinking about it and talking it over with Papum, and I should LOVE it. I’d do it, not because I would have to do it, but because it would interest me. Condy, you know that I’m not a bit strong-minded, and that I hate a masculine, unfeminine girl as much as you do.”

  “But a medical college, Blix! You don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Yes, I do. There’s a college in New York just for women. Aunt Kihm sent me the prospectus, and it’s one of the best in the country. I don’t dream of practicing, you know; at least, I don’t think about that now. But one must have some occupation; and isn’t studying medicine, Condy, better than piano-playing, or French courses, or literary classes and Browning circles? Oh, I’ve no patience with that kind of girl! And look at the chance I have now; and Aunt Kihm is such a dear! Think, she writes, I could go to and from the college in her coupe every day, and I would see New York; and just being in a big city like that is an education.”

  “You’re right, it would be a big thing for you,” assented Condy, “and I like the idea of you studying something. It would be the making of such a girl as you, Blix.”

  And then Blix, seeing him thus acquiescent, said:

  “Well, it’s all settled; Papum and I both wrote last night.”

  “When are you going?”

  “The first week in January.”

  “Well, that’s not so AWFULLY soon. But who will take your place here? However in the world would your father get along without you — and Snooky and Howard?”

  “Aunt Dodd is going to come.”

  “Sudden enough,” said Condy, “but it IS a great thing for you, Blix, and I’m mighty glad for you. Your future is all cut out for you now. Of course your aunt, if she’s so fond of you and hasn’t any children, will leave you everything — maybe settle something on you right away; and you’ll marry some one of those New York chaps, and be great big people before you know it.”

  “The idea, Condy!” she protested. “No; I’m going there to study medicine. Oh, you don’t know how enthusiastic I am over the idea! I’ve bought some of the first-year books already, and have been reading them. Really, Condy, they are even better than ‘Many Inventions.’”

  “Wish I could get East,” muttered Condy gloomily. Blix forgot her own good fortune upon the instant.

  “I do so wish you COULD, Condy!” she exclaimed. “You are too good for a Sunday supplement. I know it and YOU know it, and I’ve heard ever so many people who have read your stories say the same thing. You could spend twenty years working as you are now, and at the end what would you be? Just an assistant editor of a Sunday supplement, and still in the same place; and worse, you’d come to be contented with that, and think you were only good for that and nothing better. You’ve got it in you, Condy, to be a great story-teller. I believe in you, and I’ve every confidence in you. But just so long as you stay here and are willing to do hack work, just so long you will be a hack writer. You must break from it; you MUST get away. I know you have a good time here; but there are so many things better than that and more worth while. You ought to make up your mind to get East, and work for that and nothing else. I know you want to go, but wanting isn’t enough. Enthusiasm without energy isn’t enough. You have enthusiasm, Condy; but you MUST have energy. You must be willing to give up things; you must make up your mind that you will go East, and then set your teeth together and do it. Oh, I LOVE a man that can do that — make up his mind to a thing and then put it through!”

  Condy watched her as she talked, her brown-black eyes coruscating, her cheeks glowing, her small hands curled into round pink fists.

  “Blix, you’re splendid!” he exclaimed; “you’re fine! You could put life into a dead man. You’re the kind of girl that are the making of men. By Jove, you’d back a man up, wouldn’t you? You’d stand by him till the last ditch. Of course,” he went on after a pause— “of course I ought to go to New York. But, Blix, suppose I went — well, then what? It isn’t as though I had any income of my own, or rich aunt. Suppose I didn’t find something to do — and the chances are that I wouldn’t for three or four months — what would I live on in the meanwhile? ‘What would the robin do then, poor thing?’ I’m a poor young man, Miss Bessemer, and I’ve got to eat. No; my only chance is ‘to be discovered’ by a magazine or a publishing house or somebody, and get a bid of some kind.”

  “Well, there is the Centennial Company. They have taken an interest in you, Condy. You must follow that right up and keep your name before them all the time. Have you sent them ‘A Victory Over Death’ yet?”

  Condy sat down to his eggs and coffee the next morning in the hotel, harried with a certain sense of depression and disappointment for which he could assign no cause. Nothing seemed to interest him. The newspaper was dull. He could look forward to no pleasure in his day’s work; and what was the matter with the sun that morning? As he walked down to the office he noted no cloud in th
e sky, but the brightness was gone from the day. He sat down to his desk and attacked his work, but “copy” would not come. The sporting editor and his inane jokes harassed him beyond expression. Just the sight of the clipping editor’s back was an irritation. The office boy was a mere incentive to profanity. There was no spring in Condy that morning, no elasticity, none of his natural buoyancy. As the day wore on, his ennui increased; his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had lost its charm. He ordered a cocktail in the wine-room, and put it aside with a wry face.

  The afternoon was one long tedium. At every hour he flung his pencil down, utterly unable to formulate the next sentence of his article, and, his hands in his pockets, gazed gloomily out of the window over the wilderness of roofs — grimy, dirty, ugly roofs that spread out below. He craved diversion, amusement, excitement. Something there was that he wanted with all his heart and soul; yet he was quite unable to say what it was. Something was gone from him to-day that he had possessed yesterday, and he knew he would not regain it on the morrow, nor the next day, nor the day after that. What was it? He could not say. For half an hour he imagined he was going to be sick. His mother was not to be at home that evening, and Condy dined at his club in the hopes of finding some one with whom he could go to the theatre later on in the evening. Sargeant joined him over his coffee and cigarette, but declined to go with him to the theatre.

  “Another game on to-night?” asked Condy.

  “I suppose so,” admitted the other.

  “I guess I’ll join you to-night,” said Condy. “I’ve had the blue devils since morning, and I’ve got to have something to drive them off.”

  “Don’t let me urge you, you know,” returned Sargeant.

  “Oh, that’s all right!” Condy assured him. “My time’s about up, anyways.”

  An hour later, just as he, Sargeant, and the other men of their “set” were in the act of going upstairs to the card-rooms, a hall-boy gave Condy a note, at that moment brought by a messenger, who was waiting for an answer. It was from Blix. She wrote: