by Frank Norris
“Well, Condy?”
“Well, Blix?”
“Just ‘well’?” she repeated. “Is that all? Is that all you have to say to me?”
He gave a great start.
“Blix!” he exclaimed.
“Is that all? And you are going to let me go away from you for so long, and say nothing more than that to me? You think you have been so careful, think you have kept your secret so close! Condy, don’t you suppose I know? Do you suppose women are so blind? No, you don’t need to tell me; I know — I’ve known it — oh, for weeks!”
“You know — know — know what?” he exclaimed, breathless.
“That you have been pretending that you did not love me. I know that you do love me — I know you have been trying to keep it from me for fear it would spoil our good times, and because we had made up our minds to be chums, and have ‘no more foolishness.’ Once — in those days when we first knew each other — I knew you did not love me when you said you did; but now, since — oh, since that afternoon in the Chinese restaurant, remember? — I’ve known that you did love me, although you pretended you didn’t. It was the pretence I wanted to be rid of; I wanted to be rid of it when you said you loved me and didn’t, and I want to be rid of it now when YOU pretend not to love me and I KNOW you do,” and Blix leaned back her head as she spoke that “know,” looking at him from under her lids, a smile upon her lips. “It’s the pretence that I won’t have,” she added. “We must be sincere with each other, you and I.”
“Blix, do YOU love ME?”
Condy had risen to his feet, his breath was coming quick, his cigarette was flung away, and his hands opened and shut swiftly.
“Oh, Blixy, little girl, do YOU love ME?”
They stood there for a moment in the half dark, facing one another, their hearts beating, their breath failing them in the tension of the instant. There in that room, high above the city, a little climax had come swiftly to a head, a crisis in two lives had suddenly developed. The moment that had been in preparation for the last few months, the last few years, the last few centuries, behold! it had arrived.
“Blix, do you love me?”
Suddenly it was the New Year. Somewhere close at hand a chorus of chiming church bells sang together. Far off in the direction of the wharves, where the great ocean steamships lay, came the glad, sonorous shouting of a whistle; from a nearby street a bugle called aloud. And then from point to point, from street to roof top, and from roof to spire, the vague murmur of many sounds grew and spread and widened, slowly, grandly; that profound and steady bourdon, as of an invisible organ swelling, deepening, and expanding to the full male diapason of the city aroused and signaling the advent of another year.
And they heard it, they two heard it, standing there face to face, looking into each other’s eyes, that unanswered question yet between them, the question that had come to them with the turning of the year. It was the old year yet when Condy had asked that question. In that moment’s pause, while Blix hesitated to answer him, the New Year had come. And while the huge, vast note of the city swelled and vibrated, she still kept silent. But only for a moment. Then she came closer to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.
“Happy New Year, dear,” she said.
On New Year’s Day, the last day they were to be together, Blix and Condy took “their walk,” as they had come to call it — the walk that included the lifeboat station, the Golden Gate, the ocean beach beyond the old fort, the green, bare, flower-starred hills and downs, and the smooth levels of the golf links. Blix had been busy with the last details of her packing, and they did not get started until toward two in the afternoon.
“Strike me!” exclaimed Captain Jack, as Blix informed him that she had come to say good-by. “Why, ain’t this very sudden-like, Miss Bessemer? Hey, Kitty, come in here. Here’s Miss Bessemer come to say good-by; going to New York to-morrow.”
“We’ll regularly be lonesome without you, miss,” said K. D. B., as she came into the front room, bringing with her a brisk, pungent odor of boiled vegetables. “New York — such a town as it must be! It was called Manhattan at first, you know, and was settled by the Dutch.”
Evidently K. D. B. had reached the N’s.
With such deftness as she possessed, Blix tried to turn the conversation upon the first meeting of the retired sea captain and the one-time costume reader, but all to no purpose. The “Matrimonial Objects” were perhaps a little ashamed of their “personals” by now, and neither Blix nor Condy were ever to hear their version of the meeting in the back dining-room of Luna’s Mexican restaurant. Captain Jack was, in fact, anxious to change the subject.
“Any news of the yarn yet?” he suddenly inquired of Condy “What do those Eastern publishin’ people think of Our Mug and Billy Isham and the whiskey schooner?”
Condy had received the rejected manuscript of “In Defiance of Authority” that morning, accompanied by a letter from the Centennial Company.
“Well,” he said in answer, “they’re not, as you might say, falling over themselves trying to see who’ll be the first to print it. It’s been returned.”
“The devil you say!” responded the Captain. “Well, that’s kind of disappointin’ to you, ain’t it?”
“But,” Blix hastened to add, “we’re not at all discouraged. We’re going to send it off again right away.”
Then she said good-by to them.
“I dunno as you’ll see me here when you come back, miss,” said the Captain, at the gate, his arm around K. D. B. “I’ve got to schemin’ again. Do you know,” he added, in a low, confidential tone, “that all the mines in California send their clean-ups and gold bricks down to the Selby smeltin’ works once every week? They send ’em to San Francisco first, and they are taken up to Selby’s Wednesday afternoons on a little stern-wheel steamer called the “Monticello.” All them bricks are in a box — dumped in like so much coal — and that box sets just under the wheel-house, for’ard. How much money do you suppose them bricks represent? Well, I’ll tell you; last week they represented seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Well, now, I got a chart of the bay near Vallejo; the channel’s all right, but there are mudflats that run out from shore three miles. Enough water for a whitehall, but not enough for — well, for the patrol boat, for instance. Two or three slick boys, of a foggy night — of course, I’m not in that kind of game, but strike! it would be a deal now, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t you believe him, miss,” put in K. D. B. “He’s just talking to show off.”
“I think your scheme of holding up a Cunard liner,” said Condy, with great earnestness, “is more feasible. You could lay across her course and fly a distress signal. She’d have to heave to.”
“Yes, I been thinkin’ o’ that; but look here — what’s to prevent the liner taking right after your schooner after you’ve got the stuff aboard — just followin’ you right around an’ findin’ out where you land?”
“She’d be under contract to carry Government mails,” contradicted Condy. “She couldn’t do that. You’d leave her mails aboard for just that reason. You wouldn’t rob her of her mails; just so long as she was carrying government mails she couldn’t stop.”
The Captain clapped his palm down upon the gate-post.
“Strike me straight! I never thought of that.”
Chapter XIV
Blix and Condy went on; on along the narrow road upon the edge of the salt marshes and tules that lay between the station and the Golden Gate; on to the Golden Gate itself, and around the old grime-incrusted fort to the ocean shore, with its reaches of hard, white sand, where the bowlders lay tumbled and the surf grumbled incessantly.
The world seemed very far away from them here on the shores of the Pacific, on that first afternoon of the New Year. They were supremely happy, and they sufficed to themselves. Condy had forgotten all about the next day, when he must say good-by to Blix.
It did not seem possible, it was not within the bounds of possibi
lity, that she was to go away — that they two were to be separated. And for that matter, to-morrow was to-morrow. It was twenty-four hours away. The present moment was sufficient.
The persistence with which they clung to the immediate moment, their happiness in living only in the present, had brought about a rather curious condition of things between them.
In their love for each other there was no thought of marriage; they were too much occupied with the joy of being together at that particular instant to think of the future. They loved each other, and that was enough. They did not look ahead further than the following day, and then but furtively, and only in order that their morrow’s parting might intensify their happiness of to-day. That New Year’s Day was to be the end of everything. Blix was going; she and Condy would never see each other again. The thought of marriage — with its certain responsibilities, its duties, its gravity, its vague, troublous seriousness, its inevitable disappointments — was even a little distasteful to them. Their romance had been hitherto without a flaw; they had been genuinely happy in little things. It was as well that it should end that day, in all its pristine sweetness, unsullied by a single bitter moment, undimmed by the cloud of a single disillusion or disappointment. Whatever chanced to them in later years, they could at least cherish this one memory of a pure, unselfish affection, young and unstained and almost without thought of sex, come and gone on the very threshold of their lives. This was the end, they both understood. They were glad that it was to be so. They did not even speak again of writing to each other.
They found once more the little semicircle of blackberry bushes and the fallen log, half-way up the hill above the shore, and sat there a while, looking down upon the long green rollers, marching incessantly toward the beach, and there breaking in a prolonged explosion of solid green water and flying spume. And their glance followed their succeeding ranks further and further out to sea, till the multitude blended into the mass — the vast, green, shifting mass that drew the eye on and on, to the abrupt, fine line of the horizon.
There was no detail in the scene. There was nothing but the great reach of the ocean floor, the unbroken plane of blue sky, and the bare green slope of land — three immensities, gigantic, vast, primordial. It was no place for trivial ideas and thoughts of little things. The mind harked back unconsciously to the broad, simpler, basic emotions, the fundamental instincts of the race. The huge spaces of earth and air and water carried with them a feeling of kindly but enormous force — elemental force, fresh, untutored, new, and young. There was buoyancy in it; a fine, breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration; a sensation as of bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural life, to the primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and unhampered; old as the ocean, stable as the hills, vast as the unplumbed depths of the sky.
Condy and Blix sat still, listening, looking, and watching — the intellect drowsy and numb; the emotions, the senses, all alive and brimming to the surface. Vaguely they felt the influence of the moment. Something was preparing for them. From the lowest, untouched depths in the hearts of each of them something was rising steadily to consciousness and the light of day. There is no name for such things, no name for the mystery that spans the interval between man and woman — the mystery that bears no relation to their love for each other, but that is something better than love, and whose coming savors of the miraculous.
The afternoon had waned and the sun had begun to set when Blix rose.
“We should be going, Condy,” she told him.
They started up the hill, and Condy said: “I feel as though I had been somehow asleep with my eyes wide open. What a glorious sunset! It seems to me as though I were living double every minute; and oh! Blix, isn’t it the greatest thing in the world to love each other as we do?”
They had come to the top of the hill by now, and went on across the open, breezy downs, all starred with blue iris and wild heliotrope. Blix drew his arm about her waist, and laid her cheek upon his shoulder with a little caressing motion.
“And I do love you, dear,” she said— “love you with all my heart. And it’s for always, too; I know that. I’ve been a girl until within the last three or four days — just a girl, dearest; not very serious, I’m afraid, and not caring for anything else beyond, what was happening close around me — don’t you understand? But since I’ve found out how much I loved you and knew that you loved me — why, everything is changed for me. I’m not the same, I enjoy things that I never thought of enjoying before, and I feel so — oh, LARGER, don’t you know? — and stronger, and so much more serious. Just a little while ago I was only nineteen, but I think, dear, that by loving you I have become — all of a sudden and without knowing it — a woman.”
A little trembling ran through her with the words. She stopped and put both arms around his neck, her head tipped back, her eyes half closed, her sweet yellow hair rolling from her forehead. Her whole dear being radiated with that sweet, clean perfume that seemed to come alike from her clothes, her neck, her arms, her hair, and mouth — the delicious, almost divine, feminine aroma that was part of herself.
“You do love me, Condy, don’t you, just as I love you?”
Such words as he could think of seemed pitifully inadequate. For answer he could only hold her the closer. She understood. Her eyes closed slowly, and her face drew nearer to his. Just above a whisper, she said:
“I love you, dear!”
“I love you, Blix!”
And they kissed each other then upon the mouth.
Meanwhile the sun had been setting. Such a sunset! The whole world, the three great spaces of sea and land and sky, were incarnadined with the glory of it. The ocean floor was a blinding red radiance, the hills were amethyst, the sky one gigantic opal, and they two seemed poised in the midst of all the chaotic glory of a primitive world. It was New Year’s Day; the earth was new, the year was new, and their love was new and strong. Everything was before them. There was no longer any past, no longer any present. Regrets and memories had no place in their new world. It was Hope, Hope, Hope, that sang to them and called to them and smote into life the new keen blood of them.
Then suddenly came the miracle, like the flashing out of a new star, whose radiance they felt but could not see, like a burst of music whose harmony they felt but could not hear. And as they stood there alone in all that simple glory of sky and earth and sea, they knew all in an instant that THEY WERE FOR EACH OTHER, forever and forever, for better or for worse, till death should them part. Into their romance, into their world of little things, their joys of the moment, their happiness of the hour, had suddenly descended a great and lasting joy, the happiness of the great, grave issues of life — a happiness so deep, so intense, as to thrill them with a sense of solemnity and wonder. Instead of being the end, that New Year’s Day was but the beginning — the beginning of their real romance. All the fine, virile, masculine energy of him was aroused and rampant. All her sweet, strong womanliness had been suddenly deepened and broadened. In fine, he had become a man, and she woman. Youth, life, and the love of man and woman, the strength of the hills, the depth of the ocean, and the beauty of the sky at sunset; that was what the New Year had brought to them.
“It’s good-by, dear, isn’t it?” said Blix.
But Condy would not have it so.
“No, no,” he told her; “no, Blix; no matter how often we separate after this wonderful New Year’s Day, no matter how far we are apart, WE two shall never, never say good-by.”
“Oh, you’re right, you’re right!” she answered, the tears beginning to shine in her little dark-brown eyes. “No; so long as we love each other, nothing matters. There’s no such thing as distance for us, is there? Just think, you will be here on the shores of the Pacific, and I on the shores of the Atlantic, but the whole continent can’t come between US.”
“And we’ll be together again, Blix,” he said; “and it won’t be very long now. Just give me time — a few years now.”
“But
so long as we love each other, TIME won’t matter either.”
“What are the tears for, Blixy?” he asked, pressing his handkerchief to her cheek.
“Because this is the saddest and happiest day of my life,” she answered. Then she pulled from him with a little laugh, adding: “Look, Condy, you’ve dropped your letter. You pulled it out just now with your handkerchief.”
As Condy picked it up, she noted the name of the Centennial Company upon the corner.
“It’s the letter I got with the manuscript of the novel when they sent it back,” he explained.
“What did they say?”
“Oh, the usual thing. I haven’t read it yet. Here’s what they say.” He opened it and read:
“We return to you herewith the MS. of your novel, ‘In Defiance of Authority,’ and regret that our reader does not recommend it as available for publication at present. We have, however, followed your work with considerable interest, and have read a story by you, copied in one of our exchanges, under the title, ‘A Victory Over Death,’ which we would have been glad to publish ourselves, had you given us the chance.
“Would you consider the offer of the assistant editorship of our QUARTERLY, a literary and critical pamphlet, that we publish in New York, and with which we presume you are familiar? We do not believe there would be any difficulty in the matter of financial arrangements. In case you should decide to come on, we inclose R. R. passes via the A. T. & S. F., C. & A., and New York Central.
“Very truly,
“THE CENTENNIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
“NEW YORK.”
The two exchanged glances. But Blix was too excited to speak, and could only give vent to a little, quivering, choking sigh. The letter was a veritable god from the machine, the one thing lacking to complete their happiness.
“I don’t know how this looks to you,” Condy began, trying to be calm, “but it seems to me that this is — that this — this—”